Diving In.

While this video of my friend Thomas Hudson was airing all over national television last weekend, Thomas himself was off with his chainsaw, cleaning up tornado debris in a nearby county, wondering what all the fuss was about. THE APATHY OF KIDS TODAY, I TELL YOU.

He put out a statement today, in response to both the overwhelming positive accolades and the inevitable analysis by armchair heroes. Wow, there are some sanctimonious so-and-so's out there. I wonder if those people are anywhere near as quick to action as they are to judgment?

As Thomas says, don't pass out grades if you didn't take the test. Thankfully, my readers are 100 per cent sanctimony-free. I think you'll appreciate the rest of what Thomas had to say about acts of heroism, so I asked if I could publish his statement in full here. (The links have been added by me.) In his words:

On Thursday, October 29. after record-breaking downpours in Little Rock, fate arranged for my small part in a harrowing water rescue of a mother and 12-year-old son from a sinking SUV.

The next three days brought equally staggering showers of praise to me, a “hero,” as well as sharp criticism of KARK 4, whose journalists made no effort to intervene as they broadcast the dramatic rescue on live television. The video became one of the most viewed clips of the weekend on CNN.com.

All this “hero” talk is exciting to me, but also troublesome. Is "heroism" something to which we all can aspire, and to which we all are called, in duty to our neighbors? Or does naming a firefighter a "hero", for instance, excuse the rest of us from the duty of dragging a stranger from a burning building?

I give myself a "C" for that night. Subtract two letter grades for not having my rope more organized, for not realizing the car would go so deep, and for not having a metal tool in hand when I swam out to the vehicle.

I had not wrapped my mind around the intense panic that overtakes a person who cannot swim when he or she is surrounded by lethal water. Even as I swam out, I thought, in the absolute worst scenario, I will be carrying these people from the vehicle's rooftop back to shallow water. But in that vehicle, the airbags were going off, the power locks and windows were malfunctioning, and Amanda and Zeke were moving away from the open driver's side window to the rear of the cabin to keep their heads above water.

Arriving at the SUV’s left rear side (the least submerged), I pulled at the door handles, shouted to Amanda and Zeke, grabbed the luggage rack and kicked at the windows underwater. I stood on the exhaust pipe in water over my head and punched the little bit of glass above the water with everything I had, which may have broken my hand. Without the firefighters’ arrival, I could have been at least a minute more before returning from my truck with a tool to break the window, during which time Amanda and Zeke may or may not have lost the few inches of air remaining under the roof.

So I give myself a "C", which may be generous. Others cannot grade themselves until they take the test.

I tried to help that night, as I expect the same from anyone else if it is my ass, or anyone else’s, in trouble. It is our duty as humans, to all other humans, to do for others as we would have them do for us, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And by neighbors, I mean anyone, anywhere, in need. In the comfort of this country, we easily forget about our neighbors, both locally and abroad. Death from simple diarrhea kills more people every day than any other ailment. And right now, in this state, we have hundreds of victims coping with the loss of their homes from natural disaster.

The journalists of KARK 4 deserve no blame for making no attempt to help the occupants of the sinking vehicle. They watched helplessly from across 100 feet of dark black water, and they knew help was on the way.

Most of the time, the only dark water that separates us from those in need is in our minds and hearts. Yet help is rarely on the way with the timing caught on video Thursday night. What are you doing to be a hero?

We have wonderful organizations such as Heifer International, the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, to keep us plugged in. Or next time a tornado or hurricane strikes, give me a call.

Find out what you can do. Help people when you have the chance. All the mundane things you can do will mentally prepare you to step up to task when shit hits the fan.

Start taking small risks and build a good risk/gain calculator in your head. Help out people in disaster zones. Talking to someone who has lost everything puts life in perspective. We are here to help each other.

(My near-future plans include returning to East Camden to remove tornado debris, and driving to New Orleans to help rebuild homes. I could use your help.)

Thomas Hudson

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Minions

When your kids are still imaginary, you dream about all the cute, original, clever costumes they will wear at Hallowe'en, and how cute, original and clever you will seem by association. Then you have real kids, and they have their own ideas. Actually, they have Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney's ideas. Nothing but that $30 licensed costume (on sale the next day for five bucks) will do.

So I was really thrilled and surprised this year, when my boys ventured beyond Saturday morning cartoons for their costume ideas. We were lucky to snag the wonderfully soft and fuzzy Max costume on Amazon before the seller mysteriously disappeared (I'm guessing we are the proud owners of a bootleg wolf suit?). My Max has hardly taken it off. He wore it for nearly 72 hours straight this weekend. If you look closely, you can probably see cheeto dust and cereal O's clinging to it.

My middle son was a ghostbuster. The proton blaster was fashioned out of duct tape, milk jugs, foam pipe insulation, and a couple of funnels. We slimed him with silly string.

I'm not sure what my eldest was, exactly. I think some sort of fascist.

And me? I was one lucky devil.

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Hero

"Come out with us," I persuaded an old friend of mine and Patrick's, who stopped by last night as I was getting ready to go out with a girlfriend. He's in the coast guard, and home for a little break. "It'll be fun," I promised. "Drama-free."

Three hours later, the three of us were tearing down seventh street in the pouring rain toward a submerged SUV with a mother and her twelve-year-old son trapped in it. Our friend Thomas was in the water with two fireman, trying to get them out. Thank god, they were successful.

We've been having record rainfall, and I get flash flood alerts on my blackberry every few hours, it seems like. I've never taken them very seriously, but what I saw last night made me a believer. I was on the road above, where we had stepped out from a nightclub to gawk at a flooded spot below. We happened to be standing there when the SUV driver pulled up to the water's edge, paused, then drove forward as we shouted and waved. (I shouldn't have to say this, but obviously, I only took these photos once the rescue was underway, and there was nothing else for me to do but shout, "Go! Go! Go!" at the firemen.) Here is the car going into the water:



It's easy to say the driver should have known better, but in her defense, even from our vantage point, neither my girlfriend nor I could have imagined what would happen next:




Thomas sprang into action as soon as she drove in. And not just reflexively, but with a plan, and presence of mind. He was down there with his car, in a matter of minutes, tying a rope on. We were shouting to the passengers that help was coming, when the vehicle started to go forward again. We watched, horrified, as it was sucked in and under the water. That was when I ran for my coast guard friend. The one I'd promised no drama.

I burst in through the back door of the club, like a wet, wild-eyed rat, and grabbed him.

"YOUGOTTACOMENOWTHERESACARUNDERWATEROUTTHEREWITHKIDSINIT!"

So much for promises. How about a shot of adrenaline with your drink?

Fortunately, everybody was safely out by the time we made it back down. We went back inside to mop off with bar towels and hear the band.

I learned later that a camera crew had been on the other side of the flash flood, filming. You can watch the incredible footage here. Note that while the television camera guy was shooting, and the rescue guys were deciding what needed to happen, one man was already in the water, determined to rescue these folks. I'm proud to call him a friend.

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Cracking the Code

I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a while, and they asked what I've been up to.

"I've been writing a book."

"Oh, that must be fun!"

Yes, if by fun you mean being dropped into an iron soul-compactor formed by two walls of pressure, external and internal, bearing down on you for ten months.

"It's...ah...been an interesting process."

At times, it has been...well, fun is a stretch. It's felt really good, at least as often as it's felt really hard. I turned in all but the last few chapters on Thursday, and have a few more weeks to get happy enough with those to turn them loose. Patrick has also been under the gun of several big projects, so it's been pretty crazy around here. The kids go to bed, and the coffee pot goes on. The emotional climate is completely different, but the physical tension is weirdly similar to the way it felt two years ago, when we were about to lose our house. I guess in the body, stress is stress.

We try to stay in gratitude. I walked through his office late one night on my way to refill my coffee, and saw how exasperated he was with the project he was working on. I stopped to rub his shoulders, leaned down and kissed his head.

"Two years ago this October, you were up all night, staring into your computer because you had no work."

"I know, I know."

He managed a smile. He does the same for me, when I've lost perspective.

Sometimes it is granted in other ways. Our last date was a month or so ago (I've completely lost track of time--when did summer turn to autumn?), and we spent part of it wandering around the big chain bookstore, with coffees in hand. He stayed in the graphic novel section the whole time, while I strolled around. A bookstore like that is one of my favorite artist's playdates, but I have to be careful to keep it playful, or it can quickly turn into a busman's holiday. For example, I have to avoid the memoir section right now, which is usually my favorite, because I can't help but do market analysis. I stick to cookbooks and travel guides lately.

I was on my way to the magazine rack when I passed the writer's reference section, and it almost stopped me in my tracks. I had forgotten how much time I used to spend there, trying to crack the code. I spent so many Sunday afternoons by that shelf, thumbing through books telling me how to write, how to pitch, how to get published. I spent far more time circumambulating writing than actually writing. It's tempting to harbor regret for all the lost years, but it just wasn't time yet. No amount of my strategizing and studying was going to hurry up time, either. It happened when it happened, not a moment too late or too soon.

I could almost see myself there, running my fingers along the spines, looking for the way in, like it was a secret door.

I see myself also in the queries I get lately--a couple a week--from people who are looking for the same elusive opening. I feel very inadequately equipped to answer these. "I really don't know much about pitching," I responded recently. "More about dreaming." I'm afraid I disappoint, that they go away thinking I am willfully shutting them out. I very well remember feeling that published writers and the most well-known bloggers had magic wands they could wave over me if they cared to. All I needed was an invitation to the ball. If only they would link to me, or mention me to their agent, or put in a word with the editor. Access was the key, I was sure of it. I'd be so despondent when I'd learn that someone got a book deal only because (I thought) they "knew someone."

Access is key, but it doesn't work the way I thought it did. Publishing isn't the Junior League. It's not as simple as having someone vouch for you, and you're in. People say that publishing isn't a meritocracy, that it's a crapshoot. I think that's only partly true. There are best selling books by people who can barely string a sentence together, and there are talented, dedicated writers who may never make it out of the slushpile. But those are the extremes. In between, I believe most authors work for what they get, and get what they work for: a book. It may not be with their dream publisher. Chances are, it won't make Oprah's bookclub or win the Booker. Fame and fortune is a crapshoot. When you see how much people love to hate Elizabeth Gilbert or Julie Powell, you really have to ask yourself what you're in it for, because the best case scenario is being publicly loathed and snarked at by thousands, and the worst case is being publicly loathed and snarked at by dozens.

But if you know all that, and you still want to get published, it's hardly an esoteric mystery. For what it's worth, here's everything I know:

• Write. There came a day when I stopped reading about writing, and I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote things that embarrass me now, and things of which I'm still proud. I wrote when it made me feel good and people approved, and I wrote when it made me feel foolish and exposed-- worse, when it made others feel foolish and exposed and I felt like Edward Scissorhands. I wrote when there were no words for what I felt. I wrote when no one but Patrick and my mom was reading, when I was sure it was no good, and no one but Patrick and my mom would ever give a damn. I wrote when I read how impossible the odds were of someone like me ever being noticed, when I heard stories about editorial assistants whose job it was to keep letters from unknowns ever getting past the slushpile, when I was told that blogging was an utter waste of time. I wrote for the same reason Patrick and I stayed together through the darkest time of our marriage. Because there was nowhere else to go.
  
  There are times writing has made me miserable. But those are nothing compared to the misery I would suffer and inflict if I weren't writing.
  
  
• Risk. We gave up our house. We gave up our savings, benefits and security. We lost sleep, sanity, and serenity. We almost didn't make it. Any rational person would have cried uncle, and gone and gotten a job when things took a nosedive like they did for us in 2007. We could have a predictable payday and two cars in the driveway instead of a budget based on anybody's guess, and a six year old minivan with which we play Korean roulette every mile. I find it best not to pursue that line of thought too far, so I'll move on. But rest assured, you can stamp my dues statement paid.
  
  
• Persevere. Eventually I found agents and bloggers who would answer emails from unconnected nobodies like me. All it did was give me some more personalized rejections. Access turned out not to be the magical, mythical thing I thought it would be. I pitched, charmed, networked and sometimes just hurled myself at the door, but not ONE of those things is what gave me my first break. You know what was? See the top item: I wrote. I got rejected, I cried, I turned to my silly blog that no one read, and I wrote. And one day, opportunity stopped by without me knowing or engineering it, and there was a whole body of work for an editor to find. There was awful drivel, but there was also my best stuff, that people told me I shouldn't just give away.

So, there I was, "discovered," and the seas just parted before me: magazine articles, agent, book deal, code cracked, right?

Not quite. I just get to keep doing it all over at a different level. Write. Risk. Persevere. Repeat. The stakes and expectations get higher with the rewards. I try not to complain (much). If it doesn't ever get any better, if it all falls apart, I've still got Patrick and my mom. I'm good.

In my wildest dreams, I'd be that bestselling author whose influence is so great that I can make agents and editors read things that I think are wonderful and deserving, and have Oprah's number on speed dial. "Here's a blog I think you should read," I'd say to my agent, and a star is born. It would be fun to pretend it worked that way, so that people might try to buy me with candy and flowers, but in reality, my agent doesn't read my blog. She's busy selling books to publishers, which is exactly what you want an agent to be busy doing.

A lot of my regular readers have shared with me their aspirations to be published. I hope this doesn't discourage anyone. I hope you stick with it. I hope you have someone in your life who believes in you, no matter what. And I hope you believe in yourself, when it feels like no one will ever give a damn. If you don't have that foundation, I recommend Jen and Andrea's online class about dreaming big. I haven't taken the class myself, but I've been on the receiving end of Jen's infinite faith in possibility.

I'm very happy to answer any questions or read your insight about writing and publishing in the comments section. I'm not doing a great job with keeping up with email lately, and your query or experience might help someone else.

Posting will be very light for the next few weeks, but I'll be around. Thanks for all the good mojo. xo K.

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In and out of weeks and through a year.

Nearly there.

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Rummaging

These are my great-great grandparents, Henry and Julia Rogers. A cousin I've never met sent me this photograph last week, along with a chart that showed our shared ancestry back to my great X 5 grandparents, Oliver and Sophia Leonard, who came to Newfoundland from England in the late 1700s. Beyond that, we don't know. I've kept the name Leonard in the family, through one of my sons.

The paper trail for the Pittmans is much shorter. My great-grandparents, Martin and Lizzie, died young, and their orphan children left Merasheen Island for Boston. Only my grandfather returned as an adult, to marry my grandmother Mary Leonard, and have eight children. My great-grandparents' death was a catastrophe, but it was the kind of catastrophe that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Outliers, that alters the arc of the narrative for future generations, arguably for the better. Because of it, my grandfather was educated in Boston and became the very epitome of a 20th century man. He and his siblings jumped the track and moved from subsistence living to the modern middle class. But roots were snapped off in that seismic shift. I have no record of who his grandparents were, or where the Pittmans of Merasheen Island came from.

That could be about to change. Tomorrow, I'm flying to Utah, where some people want to help me trace my roots. The visit is sponsored, so I will be writing about the help I get on Noteworthy, techniques that Alex Haley only dreamed of (I have my family in a frenzy of collecting dates and cheek swabs). But my heritage is all mine, so you can bet some of those stories will get told here.

Like discovering another cousin, on the Pittman side, by googling "Pittman" and "Boston" last Sunday, and getting a hunch about one of the 704,000 results: someone with the same given name as one of my uncles and a first cousin. The link took me to the profile of someone who writes and argues with people for a living. Oh yeah, he's one of ours, I thought. I emailed him.

He got back to me the same day. Yes, his grandfather had come from Newfoundland. Orphaned, he had always been told. I sent him a link to the ship manifest showing his grandfather's passage to New England in 1917. He was seventeen years old. His eyes and hair were brown. He was going to stay with his brother.

We had a couple of lovely emails back and forth, trading names and dates. He has kept our great-grandfather's name in his family, through one of his children. I don't know if we'll keep up correspondence, but I felt the way my kids do, when they are rummaging through a drawer looking for one thing, and come up with something else, something really neat, that they didn't even know was missing. That night, I told the boys a story about some children whose mother and father died. My five-year-old's eyes welled up.

I nodded and hugged him. "It was very sad. It was a long time ago, and people died from things we don't die from now." My great-grandfather died of gangrene after he broke his leg, chopping wood.

"But the children grew up, and got married and had their own children. And they had children. I found one of them today, and he has children your age. They are your third cousins. Isn't that amazing?"

I don't know if they thought it was amazing or not. I looked at the three of them, sitting up in bed, and thought how terrible it would be for them to lose us, but how much worse for them to lose each other. If I could have only one line in my will, it would be that my boys stay together. As I understand it, my grandfather's oldest sister was largely responsible for keeping her siblings together. They remained a family until they had families of their own. I don't expect my sons' grandchildren to be close, necessarily, but I would like them to know of each other's existence, to know where they came from. I think Lizzie and Martin would have liked it too.

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Correcting Posture

Less than two weeks to my book deadline, and all three kids have come down with strep. I could crack walnuts between my shoulder blades. My son works beside me, and reminds me how making something is supposed to feel.

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Backstage Pass

For the loan of a spare hair iron, my friend, the immensely talented and fierce MIssy Lipps let me tag along behind the scenes of the Box Turtle Fall Fashion Show on Saturday night. The show has become a big event for our little town (helped by the addition of Project Runway finalist Korto Momolu to the program), with an actual runway and real models, yo. I had a blast following the girls with my little point-and-click, pretending to be a photographer. I worried they might find me a nuisance, but since I only come up to their waists, I don't think they noticed me.

It must be said that a large part of the appeal of Missy's presentation is in the amazing women she chooses to represent her style. They all happen to be stunning, but they are also wicked smart, funny and talented. My friend Emily, for example.

Here are some of my favorite snapshots from the night. Missy's clothes are available through the Box Turtle*.



*Hers are the smokey lavender dresses (with the exception of one fabulous black number, worn by raven-shooter and film/video producer Eva Fleischauer. There are a few shots of some of the other designer's creations that caught my magpie eye. If anyone can shout out the names, so I can give credit where credit is due, I'd be grateful.

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Couple things

First thing:

I'll be on a "Best Blogging Practices" panel tomorrow with Max Brantley of The Arkansas Times at the Blogging Academy presented by the Society of Professional Journalists at the University of Arkansas School of Law. Max is a seasoned, old-school print journalist, David Kinkade who writes about the burning political, social and economic issues of our time.

And I blog about my bangs.

It will either be very interesting or incredibly awkward. Either way, well worth seeing. Come down.

Second thing: There's a nice giveaway on Noteworthy, my review blog, this week. You can win a shiny new wedding ring. Mate not included.

Third thing: I forgot. But here's a dancing baby.

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Presto.

I've been working on a few chapters about what it was like to be a little girl growing up in the Free to Be, You and Me seventies. You wouldn't know it, to walk into the girl's section of a toy store today, but back then, froufrou was considered by some to be a hazardous substance. My consciousness-raised mom was one of the "some," and consequently, girly-girl stuff was rationed in our house the way Froot Loops and soda pop were: empty treats to be indulged in sparingly. (At least, that's how I remember it. Stay tuned for my mom's follow-up to my memoir, "The Way We Really Were." )

When I could get my hands on that kind of thing, I was obsessed with it. Of all the so-called feminine past times, I was fascinated in particular by hair and makeup. My mother had (and still has) beautiful wavy hair and flawless skin. Her entire beauty regimen consisted of lipstick and a tan. There was no vanity drawer full of paints and potions for me to play dress up with, and I wasn't allowed to own so much as a tube of lipgloss before I was fourteen. My dad's youngest sister always had stacks of Glamour lying around, and I snuck off with them the way boys might sneak off with copies of their father's Playboy ( I did that too--saving that one for the book).

I used to be riveted by the Merle Norman makeover ads, with their dramatic before and after pictures. In the before, the model was always dejected looking, as if she'd been told to contemplate the eternal nature of suffering for the camera. In the opposite photo, presto, she was made over, rapturous. As an adult, those spreads just annoy me. I think the expressions in both photos should be natural. It's just hair and makeup, after all (thank you, Mom, for that).

But maybe they're not always a set-up. I broke down and saw my hair stylist for my semi-annual visit last week, and instead of my usual trim, I got crazy and went for bangs and color.

Before:



Presto:



Can you tell how it made me feel on the inside?

I know, it's just hair and makeup. Believe me, this morning, pre-coffee and shower, I was right back at "before." But we've been talking about those little things we let go that go such a long way in terms of energy and outlook, and I guess this is one of mine. I've been very moved by your confidences, and I'm hoping that the act of sharing them will turn out to be a down payment on every one of those dreams.

---

P.S. I'm turning 40 on November 23, did I tell you? I've been making myself (and Patrick) crazy trying to decide how to celebrate, but I know one thing for sure: I've got a date with Leonard Cohen. Anything in the next sixty years after that is icing.

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