Try this, Penney’s

Yes, I’m kind of obsessed with the department store J.C. Penney. Actually, I’m kind of obsessed with retail icons in general. See this post. And this one. And…  well, you get the idea.

Now, at last, the J.C. Penney board has listened to me. I’m sure it was my blogging and a letter to the Wall Street Journal that caused them to let CEO Ron Johnson, whose changes to the store had led to precipitous declines in sales and stock values, go. What else could have forced the change, really?

Now that they’ve listened to me, the hard work really begins. How do they turn around this retail giant? It’s one thing to halt a store’s slow slide into irrelevancy, which is where Penney was when Johnson took over. Its quite another to try to stop a speeding train careening down a hillside on iced tracks, which is where they are now that Johnson’s plans were being implemented.

The problem, you see, isn’t just that Penney’s lost customers. Penney’s ticked off customers. Made them mad. Luring them back will require the opposite of subtlety.

Okay, I’ll roll up my sleeves and offer more advice. Maybe they’ll listen again.

ADVERTISE IMMEDIATELY

The average customer isn’t reading the financial pages. She might not know the company just did a big 180. You have to tell her. I suggest three possibilities for ads that should get on the air and in print pronto:

1. The funny message: Play off the theme that it’s now “safe” to go back to Penney’s. I’m sure some Mad Man could come up with something that would have viewers howling with laughter. Caution, though–don’t let the laughs eclipse the underlying message, which should be: Come back, customers, we’ve changed for the better.

2. The straightforward message: Air/print something that merely says “we heard you, we’ve gone back to what you loved best about us, come in again and see.”

3. The apology: As I mentioned above, Penney’s has the distinction of not just losing customers but pissing them off. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the new CEO (who happens to be the fellow who ran the place before Johnson took over) just stare into the camera and apologize to customers, urging them to give Penney’s a try again.

THE STORES THEMSELVES

The problem with urging folks back into the stores, though, is…the stores themselves. If you’ve been near a Penney’s lately, you know they’re now in the midst of construction, putting into place new displays, new “stores within stores” that were the brainchild of the former CEO. This has been a visual and retailing mess as large plastic sheets drape huge parts of the stores, yellow tape roping off others, making them seem more like a crime scene than a place to shop. All this makes inventory hard to find or even see, and it’s been taking an inordinately long time to get it all done.

I don’t know the details of the construction contracts, but here’s what I would do were I CEO: stop any construction immediately, having the crews clean up their mess. Then task individual store managers and employees with restoring order. Get on the phone with each store manager, asking what the status of their construction is. Walk him or her through some ways to get inventory on shelves immediately. Empower local staff to set things up in attractive displays. Worry about uniformity later. The goal now should be: get customers back in the stores, and get inventory back on the shelves for customers to buy. If inventory is slim, get more in–start by going back to big sellers in the past. Your current tactic has to be to stop the slide. The turnaround will come later.

COUPONS OR NOT?

Penney’s used to kill many a tree in their coupon mailing frenzies. It wasn’t a bad idea to cut back on those confusing discounts. But it was a bad idea to get rid of them entirely.

As part of the strategy to aggressively entice customers back to the store, start a one-for-one campaign: for every dollar you spend at Penney’s during a certain few days, you’ll get a dollar of “Penney cash,” to use in the store at a subsequent visit. Yes, put a fuse on those Penney dollars so they don’t last forever, but make them good on any merchandise, on sale or not. Sure, you can put a limit on how many you can earn, too. The idea, however, is to make a bold move to bring folks back.

Another possibility: discount cards that can be swiped by the cashier for a ten or twenty percent discount on all merchandise during a certain period of time. Kohl’s uses these to great effect.

AFTER THE SLIDE IS STOPPED

Once  you get customers back in the store regularly, it’s time to start the hard work of the slow rebuild, the re-evaluation of where Penney’s is and where it needs to be. I know it will shock folks who’ve listened to me rant about the store and its just-ousted CEO, but he did have a right idea in trying to attract a new customer base to Penney’s. (Where he went wrong was ignoring the base that was already there, even treating them with disdain.)

Get moving, J.C., time’s a’wastin’!

Libby Sternberg is a novelist and busybody.

The perils of writing about the near past

You’ve set your story in the near past, a time period with which you are familiar because you grew up in those decades or had relatives who lived through them. Research should be a breeze, right? After all, how hard can it be to get the time period of your own life right? You have memories. And you have internet research at your fingertips, a wealth of information just awaiting your mouse click.

But, beware. The near past as a story setting is a minefield. Step out of line, and verisimilitude explodes, throwing the reader out of your narrative.

You’d think that writing about the near past would be easier, though, than setting tales in faraway times. Easy-to-access research and memory both provide ample material for the meticulous writer of near-past stories. But there’s the rub. Almost too  much is available on the near past, making it difficult for the careful writer to find small details that make a story resonate with truth. And sometimes, we make assumptions about certain aspects of life in the near past that turn out not to be true, had we bothered to look them up.

A few examples: don’t assume that because you grew up watching certain television shows that your characters can watch them…whenever. Back in the days before syndication, TV programs aired in specific time slots. Reruns aired in those slots, too. It took decades for many shows to reach the hamster wheel of syndication, available at all hours and days.

A man wouldn’t “zip” his pants in a story set before the 1940s.

Don’t assume, either, that a movie released in a particular year was available the month in which your story is set. Singin in the Rain came out in 1952, but that doesn’t mean the characters in your story could go see it in January of that year, or even in August. It was released, according to IMDB, in U.S. movie theaters in April of that year.

Don’t assume, either, that modern dress was completely modernized at the time of your tale, just because the outfits bear a resemblance to what we wear now. A famous bestseller of the past few years set in the 1930s mentioned a man zipping his pants. But men’s trousers had button flies even up until the 1940s. When zippers replaced buttons, tailors advertised they’d take out the newfangled gadget, replacing them with the old-fashioned buttons, for men who didn’t like this latest sartorial trend.

Think twice, too, about icons of the past. I once began a tale set in the early 1950s, describing one of my characters as having Marilyn Monroe looks. Only problem? I needed to find out specifically when Monroe became well-known during that period. Yes, Monroe’s star had started to soar in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until at least 1953 that she became the sex symbol we all now think of when her name is mentioned. Would she have been hot enough at the early part of that decade to use as a descriptor? I wasn’t sure. I took the reference out.

I also once set a story whose denouement was on December 7, 1941. It took a great deal of time to find out how most Americans learned the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, what radio show was on at the time, when it was interrupted.  Oh, there was a huge amount of information on the attack, but it was all too broad-brush for my story. I needed to know how this news would have reached a particular family in a particular city.

The point is that you might know the macro details of those times, but getting the tick-tock of a momentous day’s hours right is a lot tougher.

The writer who sets a story in the near past has an entire population of possible nitpickers who also lived through those times or know folks who did. And, while there aren’t any Tudorites still living to wag their fingers at the author who gets an arcane fact wrong in a story set during Henry’s reign, armchair critics abound who don’t need a history degree to point out your mistakes in a near-past setting.

So, when writing about the near past, it’s best to treat it as if it were a foreign time long ago. Don’t completely trust your memory, and do look up details whenever possible.

Fruitcake, balls and tornadoes

Like Ahab hunting Moby Dick, I’ve been on an obsessive search–to find those big, fat, shiny ornaments you hang on deciduous trees outside. Finally, I hit the target. I mean Target, the store. That’s where I found them. And I’ve hung them outside as my own clenched-fist protest against the winter sky–its shortening days and longer nights:

Speaking of things Christmasy, let’s take a break from making fruitcake jokes to actually make…fruitcake. Or, rather, fruitcake bar cookies. Believe it or not, until I was in my twenties, I’d never tasted fruitcake. But after I married, I discovered that my mother-in-law not only liked it, she made batches of it every Christmas, all soaked in apple brandy, to send as gifts to friends and relatives. Her recipe was very good–a dark, dense cake filled with candied citron, orange peel, cherries and nuts and raisins, too. When she lived in Maryland, she’d go to Lexington market to find these candied treasures.

She is gone now, and I can’t recreate her fruitcake success. Her recipe was for many cakes–I tried one year to make only one loaf by doing lots of math (long division, even!) with the recipe. Me + lots of math = not-so-good-fruitcake.

Not to worry — she also left us a recipe for fruitcake bar cookies, a lighter batter but still moist and sweet. So if you happen to be among the few, the happy few, who enjoy fruitcake, here’s the recipe:

EDITH STERNBERG’S FRUITCAKE BARS

Cream together:

• 1/2 cup butter (one stick)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsns milk

Sift:

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• (dash of nutmeg if desired)

Mix dry and wet ingredients. Batter is VERY thick.

Add: 1/2 cup raisins, 1/4 cup candied cherries, 1/4 cup candied orange peel, 1/4 cup pineapple — whatever candied fruits you like and, really, as many of them as you like.

Spread with spoon (or your clean fingers!) in a greased 9 x 13 pan and bake at 350 for 1/2 hour. Cool and cut into bars.

Fruitcake cookie

I saved the recipe in my new recipe book. The one I made. Yes, I did.

Finally, a note about a previous post…

I wrote about my recent trip to Kansas where I met long-time writer pals for the very first time after corresponding with them for more than ten years. In looking through my photos of that trip, I came across this one, from the Kansas City Airport:

Hmm….I guess they have tornadoes out there sometimes. Would make a great setting for a fantasy tale….

I am not crafty

This is why I don’t do crafts.

I had this idea to gather the various recipes I’ve jammed in cookbooks on notebook paper over the years and to organize them. So I have this black plastic binder, left over from who knows what, and I punch holes in the recipe papers to insert in said binder. So far, so good. I’m using up something old, I’m doing the organizing. I’m very proud of myself.

But then I think: this binder looks so blah, and I have some material left over from a time I tried to make a slip cover for a wing chair cushion (“tried” is the key word – do you detect a pattern?)….  And wouldn’t this binder be so sweet and homey and cute every time I pull it out to use a recipe if it looks like something other than leftover office supplies?

So I cut out a rectangle of fabric for the cover for this binder, but the fabric was wrinkled-looking. Back in the day, I might have been okay with that, but now, I’ve decided I’m going to do this right. Ironing! That’s the solution!

Turns out it’s one of those “Goldilocks” fabrics, though, where the temperature on the iron has to be just right in order for the wrinkles to come out and the fabric-like qualities to stay in. Ahem.

Okay, so one piece of the fabric now has a slight imprint on it  that looks like the bow of a ship. That’s okay. Since this project is all about not wasting materials, it will do. It’s just a light image, after all. The kind of thing where you look at it and think, is something off there or is it my eyes?

Moving on, I apply glue to the front of the binder and smooth the fabric over that section. I then set a big, heavy pot on top of it to make sure the fabric stays stuck to the binder.

The picture tells the tale. First of all, the glue isn’t really drying. Maybe it’s not the kind of glue you use with plastic binders and cloth with odd plastic-like qualities? Second of all, you can see the pattern of the glue through this fabric! And it’s heavy stuff. It feels like a double burlap bag. It’s like woven steel. You could probably build a house with it! (Especially if you iron it first, bringing out its stiffer aspects.) Yet it’s transparent enough to show the glue lines? What the what the…. Maybe the military should learn about this fabric…

Notice the glue swirls. How is this possible?

End of craft experiment for me. Next time I’m at the mall, I’m buying a nice recipe book I can throw my papers in, something already manufactured by people who know how to work with fabric and irons and glue, who have the skill set I was obviously not born with. I’ll step away from the glue gun…before another innocent binder gets hurt.

A twelve-year writer’s journey

About a dozen years ago, I made two amazing friends. We met on the internet through Romance Writers of America. RWA had set up some email discussion groups that proved to be a trove of information, shared by the writers on the groups– on what editors were looking for, how to format manuscripts, contests open to unpublished authors, conferences that were coming up, general encouragement for those of us still struggling to get our books into print and cheerleading for those who got “the call” from agent and/or editor.

Out of the multitude of voices on those lists, two writers and I seemed to click. We started emailing each other privately, off the various lists. It was pure happenstance that of the three of us, two lived in Kansas. (I lived in Vermont at the time, then eventually moved to Pennsylvania.) A spine-tingling discovery, however, was this: when sharing our various addresses, Writer A learned that Writer B was living in a house Writer A had lived in years ago! If any of us had written that into a story, we envisioned an editor red-penciling it with a note: “Too coincidental and not necessary to advance the story. Change.”

Together, we went through the nail-biting waits to hear back from agents and editors, the celebrations when agents offered representation and contracts appeared. Writer B sold first, to a Penguin imprint, Writer A not long after to another Penguin imprint. And, although I’d sold a YA mystery to a small press, I didn’t join my friends in Big Publisher Land until a year or so after them, when I, too, got a call,  from Harlequin offering a contract on a “chick lit” novel.

After we’d all sold, our conversations turned to other topics, but our worries didn’t end. We discussed book marketing, we anguished over the nail-biting wait for sales numbers and reviews, we commiserated when agents and editors were sometimes unresponsive, and we analyzed why some writers were realizing great success and how we could try to emulate them. Or not.

While our correspondence began focused on writing and the publishing business, it moved on to more personal news–deaths in our families, serious illness, our hopes and fears for our children (two of us have kids), job changes, divorce and remarriage for one in the group, a move to another state for me, and the deployment of two sons among us to Afghanistan at roughly the same time. We never stopped talking about writing, but it seemed to consume less and less of our friendly chatter, with more and more attention spent on what really mattered in our lives–our families.

Writers A and B were able to meet during this time, of course, both being in the Sunflower State. But I, hundreds of miles away, never got to see these wonderful women face-to-face. I did talk to them on the phone occasionally–usually conversations when the publishing business was throwing challenges our way. I remember very well being on the phone with Writer B anguishing over whether to drop a prestigious agent whom I believed wasn’t really representing my best interests when said agent interrupted the call for our ultimate break-up talk.

We’ve laughed, too, until we’ve cried, usually over the lunacy we sometimes observe in the book business, getting into ever-more-ridiculous Round Robin emails with each other filled with fantastical scenarios about…well, I won’t tell.

As much as I wanted to meet them, a big obstacle stood in my way. I’m excruciatingly afraid of flying, a fear I developed later in life for no reason I can figure. It’s such a painful experience that my husband drove us all the way from PA to Mississippi last year to attend our son’s graduation from pilot training at a U.S. Air Force base rather than ask me to get on a plane myself. We enjoyed that journey, but I didn’t want to put him through that kind of long drive again.

But then, our Air Force son got posted to….Kansas. Wichita, to be exact. And he and his wife invited us out for Thanksgiving. My husband started mulling our route, being careful to include a stop to see my writer friends. But I just couldn’t make him give up so much time on the road behind the wheel, simply because I couldn’t bring myself to fly.

The solution: better living through chemistry! I asked a doctor about my problem, and she suggested Valium. It helped tremendously, allowing me to control my nerves.

So, last week, we flew to Kansas City, and at long last–after twelve years of sharing stories with each other (real stories and fictional stories), we finally met! My writer friends and me! They are, from left to right, below: me, Jerri Corgiat and Karen Brichoux. Look them up on Amazon to see what wonderful writers they are.

Me, Jerri Corgiat, Karen Brichoux
Together at last!

I thought the meeting would feel strange, but it felt as if we’d been getting together regularly all these years. Maybe that’s a testament to their writer voices–”hearing” them through their notes for so long, it was as if I’d been seeing them all along. It’s an evening I will treasure, along with the rest of a phenomenal holiday, seeing the wonderful state of Kansas and being lovingly hosted by my son and daughter-in-law in their cozy Wichita home.

I can’t say enough, in fact, about how exciting and fantastic this trip was, from start to finish. Since I focus on many writerly things here, I won’t go into detail about the Wichita visit, but it will be a gilded memory for me–seeing my son and daughter-in-law so happy, and enjoying their company.

Now that this trip is finished, I look forward to future ones–and seeing my friends more often.

Tip for YA writers: learn about graduated licenses

I received my driver’s license mumble-mumble years ago in Maryland, back in the day when teen driving regulations were pretty light–no restrictions on number and age of passengers or driving at night.

Since that time, however, many states have adopted “graduated license” regulations that place specific limitations on drivers under the age of 18, who are driving on “learner’s permits” or “provisional licenses.” For example, in Pennsylvania, the state where I now reside, this relatively new restriction exists:

As of Dec. 27, 2011, for the first six months after receiving their junior  driver’s license, a driver is not permitted to have more than one passenger  under age 18 who is not an immediate family member (brother, sister,
stepbrother, stepsister of the junior driver and adopted or foster children  living in the same household as the junior driver) in their vehicle unless they are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. If they have not been convicted  of a driving violation or been partially or fully responsible for a reportable  crash after six months, they may have up to three passengers under age 18 who  are not immediate family members without a parent or legal guardian present. If  they have any convictions or are partially or fully responsible for a reportable  crash while a junior driver, they are once again restricted to one passenger.

Other restrictions–such as not being able to drive late at night or not being able to drive late at night without a licensed driver over the age of 21 in the car–are part of some states’ graduated license provisions.

So, what does this mean to an author?

Beware when crafting contemporary stories involving young drivers. Make sure you know the restrictions on young drivers in the state where your story is set. Don’t have your underage driver tootling around the countryside with a car packed full of underage passengers after midnight unless you note he or she is flaunting the law.

Authors who learned to drive “back in the day” before graduated licenses and don’t have any teen drivers in their households might not be aware of these licensing laws. As a copy editor who’s flagged this issue a few times now, my helpful hint to writers of YA (or adult fiction featuring a young driver) is this: save yourself rewrites later and go to the transportation department website to look up the law on young drivers in the state where your story is set. You’ll be glad you did!

When a Bad Review Isn’t Bad

Some time ago, I vented about a careless review of one of my books. But that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy with all bad reviews. Reading tastes vary. It’s highly unlikely that there will be unanimous praise for or criticism of an author’s offerings. Authors know that and accept it. But sometimes a bad review still conveys to the reader enough about the book to alert readers with different tastes to what they might find enjoyable–even as the critic pans those parts.  As an example, I’m going to reprint here a review that dinged my romantic comedy, My Own Personal Soap Opera (written as Libby Malin). This appeared in Publishers Weekly:

Malin’s latest is heavy on humor, but disappoints with plot. Frankie McNally is the head writer for Lust for Life , the longest-running (and currently lowest-rated) television soap opera, and while she can’t shake the sense that she should be writing the Great American Novel, Frankie’s use of the show to “work out her innermost frustrations” through the characters has therapeutic value. But when management calls in “marketing guru” Victor Pendergrast to save the show, Frankie’s suddenly a little less comfortable. Victor immediately clashes with Frankie on the show’s biggest problem: how to address the fact that a real-life jewel thief has adopted a modus operandi similar to one used by a thief on the show. Meanwhile, Frankie’s predictable attraction to Victor is at odds with the sparks she feels with the show’s leading man. Malin (Fire Me ) coaxes plenty of laughs, but the multitude of misunderstandings and contrivances needed to resolve the mystery and concoct a happily-ever-after are painfully melodramatic, even by daytime TV standards. (Apr.) Reviewed on: 02/15/2010

When I read this review, I did cringe at first at the “disappoints with plot.” But then when I got to the end, the final “painfully melodramatic, even by daytime TV standards” actually lifted my spirits. That’s because this was my goal in writing the book. Oh, not to be “painful” — who wants to do that?–but to be “melodramatic,” even over-the-top compared to “daytime TV standards.” I wanted the denouement to be head-spinningly-outrageous. Obviously, I succeeded. And anyone who likes that kind of madcap storytelling might have thought, “Hmm, I might enjoy this book.”

I’ve read comments about bad reviews from readers that talk about that precise effect–that is, details in a bad review that alert them to aspects of a story they would find appealing, even if the reviewer wasn’t in love with the tale. This Publishers Weekly review falls into that category. The reviewer did a terrific summary of the book’s main plot points, and the criticisms, while unvarnished, are not gratuitous. They are specific. And that makes all the difference in whether a bad review is really “bad.”

When a reviewer takes the time and care to craft a critique that gives the reader a)  a fair and dispassionate summary of what’s in the book; and b) the specific aspects of the book that didn’t work for the reviewer, that’s not necessarily a bad review, even if it contains criticism.

So, this writer is grateful for the attention from Publishers Weekly for this goofy story of mine, My Own Personal Soap Opera.

Inspirationals: Where faith isn’t preachy; it’s just not hidden

by Libby Sternberg

I have to admit that I cringe a bit when I see/hear the word “Inspirational,” the name given to a specific genre of fiction. These books include faith elements but leave out any cursing or sex or anything else that might offend a faith-filled reader.

And for this, they’re put in a special category, often shelved away from regular fiction, sometimes with religious nonfiction books.

What a shame if readers miss out on finding these novels because of this categorization! And what a shame if readers skip over this category if they think inspirationals are preachy, filled with evangelizing and proselytizing. They’re not. They’re usually just good stories whose characters don’t keep their spiritual sides under wraps. They might talk about their belief in God. They might even quote scriptures or pray. What they don’t do is offer up a “Believe or you’re going to hell” kind of message. They don’t even suggest that their characters’ way is the only way.

In fact, I think characters in these books are much closer to the reality of most Americans’ lives. Gallup, the well-known polling organization, regularly measures how important religion is in our lives. Its 2010 survey found these numbers holding steady throughout the years, with 54 percent expressing the view that religion was very important in their lives, and 26 percent saying it was “fairly important.” While the same poll shows that many Americans see religion losing influence in the country, it still clearly plays a large role in individual lives.

Despite the importance of religion in Americans’ lives, faith issues are usually not front and center in most fiction. In fact, if you’ve ever written a book with faith issues in it, you might find it difficult at times to convince an editor it’s not necessarily an “inspirational”–as that genre is understood today– and you might also find your book reviewed as an “inspirational” when it’s not. Both experiences have happened to me.

That said, I am the happy author of two bona fide inspirational novels, books that fall within the genre’s parameters. Both are historicals and both deal with the same family. Kit Austen’s Journey, the tale of a woman on the Oregon trail running away from secrets and toward a new life, was released through Istoria several years ago, hitting Amazon best seller lists for a time. Mending Ruth’s Heart,just released, tells the tale of Kit’s granddaughter, on the mend after a tragedy in which her fiance was lost, and finding herself in San Francisco right before the fateful earthquake hits the city in 1906.

In both books, the heroines go to church (or church services, in the case of Kit) and both wrestle with their own behavior and outlook on life in the context of what God expects of them. Kit has to learn to forgive herself for past decisions. Ruth has to learn to set aside a judgmental attitude if she wants others not to unfairly judge her.

In Mending Ruth’s Heart, the faith elements are whispers on a breeze, not a dominant part of the story but not hidden. And I think that’s what I enjoy about writing inspirationals. You don’t need to hide the fact that ordinary people do think about God and their relationships with God. In that way, characters in inspirationals are much more like ordinarily Americans than characters in other books where scant–if any–notice of God or prayer or church is mentioned.

Here’s hoping more readers discover the world of inspirationals. No matter what your personal faith level is, these are good stories, well-told about real people confronting moral and spiritual issues in their lives.

Random garden and food tips

Tip Number One: When growing vegetables, make sure you plant ones you like. A lot.

I planted a small veggie garden this year, and husband and I have been enjoying the fruits of our labor (he built the raised bed) for many weeks now. I have discovered there are some vegetables I like… but maybe not a summer crop’s worth. On the yes side: tomatoes, especially grape tomatoes. We’ve been picking enough for nightly salad (and more) and marveling at how these fruits/veggies actually taste like something!

On the not-so-much side: squash. Yes, I like yellow squash. And I’ve got a great recipe (thanks, Ina Garten cookbook) for butternut squash that’s easy-peasy and delish (my variation below). But after a while, it’s hard to think of things to do with these vegetables. They’re not wasted, though. They go to neighbors and husband’s office workers. Next year: one, just one, squash plant each.

Butternut squash and pancetta

• Peel and dice one butternut squash, and spread on baking sheet (lined with parchment paper is good).
• Peel cloves of an entire head of garlic (this is where I digress from Ina – she says to leave the garlic as is) and put among squash pieces.
• Sprinkle with salt and pepper and olive oil and…TWO TABLESPOONS of maple syrup. Real maple syrup.
• Dice up a small package of pancetta (I can’t remember how many ounces – just the smallest prepackaged kind!)
• Throw on top of squash

Roast in 350 oven until squash is soft (about a half hour) and pancetta is crispy.

Tip Number Two: fresh fruit…crisps. Now’s peach season in south-central PA, and the peaches are magnificently sweet and succulent. So sweet that it’s a shame to put them in baked recipes where they lose a bit of that just-from-the-tree taste and aroma. But I love baked fruit crisps! So…I’ve come up with a compromise. Bake the crisp topping alone. When it’s cool enough to handle, crumble and serve over fresh sliced peaches. Mmm…  Recipe below, a variation on a Giada one (I was half listening when this particular show was on…):

Half cup crisp:

• Half cup butter
• Half cup instant oatmeal
• Half cup flour
• Half cup brown sugar
• Half cup slivered almonds (don’t roast them)
• Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste (about a teaspoon of the former, dash of the latter is good for me).
• Either cut the butter into the mixed dry ingredients or melt the butter and mix it all together. I’ve done it both ways and it doesn’t seem to matter.
• Place cookie-like dollops on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet.
• Bake at 350 until it’s done. Hey – you expect me to remember the timing? All I remember was it didn’t take long.
• Crumble over fresh fruit.

Tip Number Three: A garden next to your patio or deck can be a fragrant as well as visual delight. Around our patio, we have the usual assortment of colorful flowers–feathery astilbe for early summer, coneflowers later in the season, drought-resistant Sedum opening late August into early fall, along with vibrant mums. But we also have some boxwood shrubs and ground-cover thyme along a short flagstone path. Every time you step on the thyme, it releases a soothing tea-like aroma. And the occasional breeze wafts the musky odor of boxwoods to us, a memory trigger if ever there was one. For me, it’s a mental trip back to the gardens of Fontainebleau, where I spent a summer, or walks around Williamsburg, where my son went to college. For my husband, it’s a journey back to childhood where a neighbor had a hedge of the shrubs. Don’t forgo boxwood because it takes so long to get a hedge of them going. Their scent is just as wonderful as the privacy they can provide.

After the War: An Excerpt

by Libby Sternberg

“There you are!” Kate breathed a huge sigh of relief, hoping he didn’t notice as he approached the small booth near the back of Beck’s Tavern, a few blocks from the hospital. She was still new enough to going out again—going out seriously, that is—that she though

t it might all disappear in a blink.

After a day shift made longer by a tardy afternoon nurse, she’d rushed home to change and had been afraid of not making it back in time. Then, as she’d waited, she’d worried that he wouldn’t show up. Oh, because he’d been delayed by a patient, but still… Then what would she say, how would she act when she saw him the next day?

He’d suggested seven-thirty because he had so many things to do at the hospital. She normally ate much earlier with her mother, usually around five or so.

He grinned and looked down as he approached.  Aaron was so timid, she sometimes felt like a tugboat nudging a big ship with him. She knew he wanted to see her, but was she being too pushy? She felt out of practice.

He’d kissed her at the end of their last get-together, an outing to a concert, music she didn’t know and had been intimidated by. She’d enjoyed his explanations, and she’d known that they’d relaxed him. He’d driven them—my, he was a timid driver, too, but Baltimore was still relatively new to him, and he’d confessed to not driving at all in New York—and walked her to her door, held her hands in his and planted the sweetest kiss on her lips, tickling her cheek with his beard.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, easing into the seat across from her.

He smiled directly at her, and she was glad she’d changed. She wore a pale green cotton dress, with a light white sweater draped over her shoulders and big gold earrings and matching necklace her mother had given her last Christmas and she hardly wore at all—only to church every once in a while.

“I never expect a doctor to be on time,” she joked. “Burgers are good here. You hungry?”

“Yes, very.” He nodded, then reached for a menu, propped against the wall behind the sugar container. “Burgers, you say?”

“Or pork barbeque, whichever you prefer. Best barbeque north of Charlotte, I’ve been told.” And immediately, she warmed with blush. Pork—really, Kate? “I mean, the burgers are really the best. Everybody loves ’em.”

The waitress came by and they both placed orders for burgers. She ordered a beer, and he followed suit. She knew he had to head back to the hospital after their dinner—that’s why she’d come in to meet him. He had a new admit that he wanted to see this evening when the family visited.

“You look lovely,” he said, smiling.

“Why, thank you, kind sir,” she joked. They were still in the getting-to-know-you stage, and Kate had determined she’d find out more about his history tonight after someone at the hospital had told her he was divorced. Oh, she didn’t hold that against him, but it had made him a rarer creature than he already was. In her circles, people didn’t divorce. Catholics didn’t, at least. There was still so much to learn about him…and lately, it had been making her afraid. He’s Jewish, her mother had said when Kate had told her about him. She knew that didn’t mean her mother wouldn’t like him. It meant she was telling her daughter that it wouldn’t be easy should they become closer. But nothing was easy, was it? Kate had learned that the hard way.

“I took your advice and talked to Sister’s superior,” he said, leaning in. But even that hadn’t helped much, he went on to tell her, outlining the conversation he’d had, before asking if she knew if it were true that Sister wouldn’t be assigned back to the Mother House so late in the summer.

“Hmm, I’m not sure. When I was a kid, it did seem we knew when a nun wouldn’t be back the next year—before the school year ended.”

“You were taught by them?”

She nodded. “Twelve years. And then I went to nursing school atSt.   Joseph’s and had a few there, too.”

“So you know a great deal.”

“Yup. But not just from that. I actually thought of being one.”

He straightened.

“You can relax,” she said, smiling. “It’s quite common among Catholic girls. We all dream of wearing the habit one day. It’s romantic-looking. And we all dream of being the Little Flower—that’s Saint Teresa—being loved through the ages.”

“But with you, it was something more?” he prodded.

Their beers arrived, tall, frosty glasses with foam skimming the top. After taking a sip of the malty brew, she answered.

“Yes, I looked into it seriously. I considered it twice, actually. Once when I was in nursing school and then—well about five years ago.”

“So recent,” he said and then sipped his own beer. His eyebrows shot up.

Oh, that was good, Kate, giving him the impression you’re not interested in anything but the single life. Best correct that misperception quickly…

“Well, I was going through a bad time. My husband was MIA in the war. I found out he was really dead.” She remembered how it had appealed to her right after finding out Brian was gone, for sure. Oh, how nice it would have been to lose herself in a white habit, in anonymity. She felt so exposed in the world, so foolish for cherishing the hope he was alive for so long. She had wanted so badly to hide.

She had planned on telling him about Brian, as a way of getting him to tell her about his marriage. She’d share her story, and surely he’d share his. It was the nice thing to do, and he was very nice hidden away under that beard. It was what had attracted her to him. He wasn’t like the other doctors—imperious and dismissive.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“And I thought maybe I should dust off that convent dream. But it’s not something you should do to run away from problems. You should be running toward it.”

He smiled. “Like everything in life really.”

She eagerly agreed. “Yeah. Like everything in life.” She felt him relaxing, so she relaxed, too, the tension easing out of her shoulders as she looked into his eyes. They were very dark eyes—a deep, earthy brown. She realized this was the first time they’d had a chance to really look at each other, not just talk. Besides the concert, they’d been to the movies once, and to an art gallery—none of them occasions for deep conversations about their lives.

“So tell me about your life, during the war, after,” he began, looking back into her own eyes, as if he were realizing the same pleasure as she at this chance to deepen their relationship. She couldn’t remember him doing that at the hospital—that kind of straight-on stare. It made her feel giddy, almost lightheaded.

And afraid.

“Spoken like a psychiatrist.”

He grimaced, and she reached for his hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend…you must get that all the time.”

“I don’t want you to think my interest is clinical,” he said. “I’d really like to know. Tell me about your husband. He was MIA? That’s a hard sentence.”

“It was like a sentence,” she said, surprised at his insight. “A prison sentence. Waiting and waiting.”

“I’m sorry you had to suffer that.” His voice was gentle, like warm rain. How good it made her feel, to find someone who understood. She’d not talked about Brian much to anyone beside her mother. So many men didn’t come home, their widows and mothers receiving the news in a cutting blow. At least when Brian had been listed as missing, she’d had hope. Oh, yes, she’d had hope. She looked up again and saw a hesitant eagerness in his eyes, anxious to know more even at the cost of pain.

“He was lost in the Pacific,” she said at last, head high, shoulders straight. She’d not suffer again.

“It was fierce fighting there,” he said.

“Fierce everywhere is my guess—were you in it?” She said it lightly so he wouldn’t be ashamed of admitting to not having served.

“Yes, but often behind the fighting lines, in Europe.” He looked down. “I don’t like people to think I was in the thick of it when others experienced so much more.”

Her heart went out to him. “It didn’t matter what you did if you were there, Aaron!”

“But people like your husband, they had to face things every day, quickly, with no time to think.”

Inwardly, she smiled. Yes, Aaron would have struggled with the lack of thoughtfulness in war.

Their dinners arrived, but before they dug in, he prodded her again to tell her story. She took a couple of bites and decided to get it over with quickly.

“We were married a year before he got the call up. He shipped out to the Pacific in ’44, was missing in action six months later.”

“When did you come to accept he wasn’t coming back?” He wiped a bit of grease from his beard. That small movement startled her. Brian had done that. Oh, not on a beard. His chin. He had a distinctive chin with a dimple in it, and he’d wipe it a lot when they went out for burgers or sandwiches.

“Come to accept—I don’t know if I’d use that turn of phrase exactly. ‘Forced to accept’ is more like it. See, after a year went by and the war ended—I started having a different vision. I thought maybe he’d been taken prisoner. So I just moved on to believing in something else. But then he didn’t come home with the other prisoners, he wasn’t on those lists.”

She’d never thought of him as dead. Never dead. Never a lifeless body. No, in a hospital somewhere swaddled in bandages, unable to speak. She’d said Novenas, bought Mass cards, prayed the rosary.

The end of the war—what a time that had been. The whole city one big party. And she’d thought:  Bri will come home. Now it’s over, he’ll be coming home.

“So you were forced to accept it then.”

She patted his hand, comforting him. Even he didn’t like to think of how foolish she’d been.

“No,” she said, “I’m mulishly stubborn. A couple years after the war, I read of some fellow in a hospital inCalifornia, burned real bad and unable to talk or use his hands or anything for a long, long time. They didn’t know who he was until he fully recovered. And then I heard of some other guys who were hurt so bad—disfigured, you know—that they stayed away from home for a long time.”

“And you thought that’s what happened to him.”

She nodded without looking at him. It seemed so humiliating now, pinning her hopes on all those stories, and selfish, too, to hope that Brian had been so grievously injured. But she couldn’t help it. She remembered her Ma just looking at her so sad when she showed her the newspaper stories. “Yes, Kate, I guess it’s possible,” she’d say. “But it’s best to let it go.” Let him go, was what she’d really been saying.

She’d even had a big fight with her mother after one of these talks. Her own faith had been flagging, and she’d needed her mother to be more enthusiastic about the wild scenarios she was envisioning for Brian. When her mother failed to deliver, Kate had accused her of giving up too soon, suggesting she’d done the same when her father had been in the hospital after an accident that had ultimately claimed his life. How could she have said that to her mother?

“I even thought. . .well, I’d heard a story of a friend of a friend of a friend….”  She looked up, shaking her head, her appetite gone now. She put down her burger. “Her husband hadn’t come home because he didn’t want to be married anymore. He’d taken on a new name in another city. She found out from someone who ran into him.”

“You believed your husband had done that, too?” He sounded incredulous.

“Yeah, pretty bad, huh? But I figured if Brian had wanted to move on, I would have told him that was okay. I just wanted to know he was still alive. I just wanted to be…right about him being alive and the Army being wrong.”

They both lapsed into silence. When she thought of this story now, it was only in snippets, not one long tale. It seemed much sadder as a whole. The little pieces were all noble. The whole added up to something pathetic and miserable.

“It took me five years,” she said at last, her voice low. “An old Army pal of Brian’s came into town—Bob Brody.  Big Bob, Bri used to call him in his letters home. Big Bob was such a cut-up that Brian said he would forget where he was from laughing so hard. Big Bob went through training with Brian, saw combat with him. And he was in town on some sales meeting—he lived in Pennsylvania, had a wife and two kids—and he called me up out of the blue and said he’d like to meet me.”

She smiled at the memory, at how happy it had made her feel to hear his voice, this connection to Brian. She’d danced on air all afternoon. Her heart hadn’t felt so light since before the war. She’d spent hours deciding what to wear, how to do her hair. It was as if she were going to meet Brian himself.

“I got it in my head that…see, this was just after I’d heard that story about the husband who’d changed his name. So I was kind of thinking about that a lot. And I got it in my head that Big Bob was going to break the news to me—that Brian was living near him and all. That’s what I thought. I was sure of it. I felt it in my bones. I even knew what I was going to say to him, how I was going to tell Bob that all I cared about was that Brian was alive. And you know what? I believed I would have said that and meant it, too.”

“But that wasn’t why he wanted to see you. Did he come on to you?”

“No, no, nothing like that at all. Bob was a gentleman, happily married, just working hard to take care of his family. No, he wanted to see me because…” Even now, it choked her to say it. “Because Brian had died saving Bob’s life. At least that was the way Bob saw it. It was some big ambush and Brian had provided cover for Bob and a bunch of guys. Bob says he saw Brian go down and then a big shell blew up the spot where he and a couple other stragglers had been…. Poor Bob. He didn’t know Brian had been listed as MIA. He thought I’d been told outright he died.”

She looked up at the ceiling, blinking. “I was a blubbering idiot the rest of the meal. I couldn’t touch a thing. And he was paying for a nice steak dinner for the two of us, me in my gloves and crinoline and he in a fancy blue suit. Goodness, he must have been embarrassed.”

She’d dissolved that evening. She couldn’t even remember all of it, so drastic had been her loss of composure. All that hoping—it had come crashing on her like a crumbling building. No digging out easy from that. The waiter had come by asking if she needed a doctor. And Bob had told him to get her a brandy in a big, commanding voice. Big Bob with the booming voice. She’d sat for another hour, staring straight ahead with a stupid half smile on her face, trying to listen to Bob tell stories about Brian he’d figured she would want to hear. But all she’d wanted to do was run screaming from that restaurant out into the street, hoping a car would hit her.

Later, she realized she had been right in one aspect—the Army had made a mistake. Brian hadn’t been MIA. He’d definitely been killed. It was a strange but real comfort knowing they’d been wrong. She’d faced the unpleasant task of getting in touch with Brian’s family, asking Bob if he’d mind if she gave Brian’s mother Bob’s address in case she wanted to write to him. He’d said, sure, sure thing. Anything for Brian McClaren.

“All right, I’ve told you my story,” she said, her voice’s brightness covered as if by a scrim. “Now you tell me yours.”

Copyright 2012 Libby Sternberg

From the novel After the War by Libby Sternberg