Wonderings - Michelle Richmond

Late night at Chez Panisse

So we have reservations tonight at Chez Panisse Cafe to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I’m super excited about the “grilled Wolfe Ranch quail with Romano beans, roasted figs, watercress, and sage,” and hopefully someone will order the “Becker Lane Farm pork loin roast with wild fennel, peperonata, and fried okra.” I mean, there’s not much I won’t do for figs and fried okra, and everybody knows you pick your entree based upon what it’s served with. What good is a perfect leg of lamb if you have to eat it with polenta? (Yes, I admit, you can take the girl out of Alabama, but…if I’m going to have polenta, why not just go all the way and eat grits instead?)

Unfortunately, the earliest available slot was 9:30. Maybe I’m showing my age, or maybe I’m just not very European, but I’m thinking 9:30 is way too late to sit down for dinner. Cocktails? Bring them on! Dinner? I’m just not hungry. I mean, I’m hungry for chocolate, but that’s different.

In your opinion, how late is too late for dinner?

This post originally appeared on my SFGate blog.

Help me map the fog

Some time ago, I began building an interactive map of THE YEAR OF FOG, so that readers can follow Abby through the streets of San Francisco as she searches for Emma. The map contains images, text from the novel, and personal reflections on places that hold a special meaning for me. Now, I’m looking to expand the map, with your help. If there’s a specific location from the book that you want to see incuded, please send me the page number and any text from the book that you would like to accompany the marker. I’m also trying to build an image gallery for the map, so any personal photographs from readers would be much appreciated! Please email images and suggestions to fogtalk at g mail dot com; please include your name so that I can credit you. View the complete map, along with a list of mapped locations and street view capabilities, here.

View Interactive Map of San Francisco, based on the novel THE YEAR OF FOG in a larger map

Ode to an Island

It’s called “Petit Bois,” which means “little woods,” and it’s located off the coast of Southeastern Mississippi. As a child in Alabama, I knew it as “Petty Boy.” We used to put our small family boat in the water at Pascagoula and make the short trip out. I remember the sun’s good heat on my arms, the saltwater spray in my face, and the strange feeling of floating momentarily in space each time the bow of the boat lifted off the water.

We’d drop anchor a few hundred feet from shore and swim to the gorgeous beach. The most amazing thing about Petit Bois was that it was almost always deserted. And the sand was always white and unbroken. Every time we went, it felt like landing in some new country. My sisters and I used to love running along the beach, making footprints in the blank canvas of sand. On a tiny grill, we’d cook fish that my dad had caught. By the time we swam back to the boat in the early evening, we’d be so exhausted we could barely keep our eyes open. Back on the boat, we donned life jackets and sat close together, entering some strange dream state, half-awake, half sleeping, while the boat rocked over the waves.

According to Wikipedia, Petit Bois received its name from French explorers “due to a small wooded section located on the eastern end of this mostly sand and scrub-covered island.” I remember, strangely, there being fields of flowers there. I haven’t been back in almost thirty years, but apparently, the trees were wiped out during Katrina.

An island, of course, is a thing of change. Its contours shift, its dimensions shrink or multiply. Sometimes it disappears altogether. It is constantly subjected to the whims of its surrounding waters, which are constantly subjected to the whims of human intervention. Some of these interventions are on a relatively small scale–a family boat skimming over the water, making waves. Others are more noticeable, and more permanent. A fisherman who has been helping with the cleanup recently told me that Petit Bois is completely covered in oil.

A Sister’s Mission

You write a book, it goes out into the world. You have no idea whom it will reach, and when, and how they will react to it. You hope it finds its way into the hands of someone who finds it useful–as entertainment, of course, and, occasionally, as something more substantial than that. It is a matter of luck that a book sometimes finds its way to someone who, due to her own personal circumstances, is able to find some kind of comfort or familiarity in it.

So I was humbled and moved to come across a blog post by Shevonne Polastre, who lost her sister to alcohol poisoning in January of this year. She happened to pick up No One You Know based upon the synopsis, and found that the feeling experienced by the book’s narrator mirrored her own.

I am constantly comparing my life before and after Kristine’s death. It’s like an abrupt slice of my life. There is no continuum; just a sudden halt. There is also a heaviness in the air now that I can’t escape. Every day I wake up missing my sister, but also my old life. It’s a life that seems like it’s always out of my grasp.
Like the family in the book, we are having a hard time getting closure due to the mystery still surrounding my sister’s death. How can you move on when no answers have been given to you? The only thing that we have been told is that Kristine died due to alcohol poisoning.

Shevonne has started a non-profit organization, Stop Alcohol Deaths (S.A.D.), in order to raise awareness about the dangers of excessive drinking.
You can follow her tweets here.

Over the years, I’ve heard from a number of readers about their own experiences with grief. For a fiction writer, a story is just a story. While writing a book requires a degree of emotional commitment, there is clearly no comparison between writing about grief and living it. As a novelist, I’m always aware of that distinction, and always hopeful that I can write about the fictional experiences of my characters with some measure of truth. Which is why Shevonne’s post meant so much to me, and why I hope you’ll stop by her website, and, if you’re in the D.C. area, participate in the running event that she is planning in honor of her sister Kristine.