Lifelong Learning by Jenn McKinlay

JENN McKINLAY: Picking up on Monday's discussion of languages, I'm realizing that while I was not a stellar student in school (if I wasn't interested in the subject, I was not motivated to study), I have always been a lifelong learner.

Over the years I have picked up classes and courses in whatever interested me at the time. From pottery to investing to master gardening, if there was a class that matched my current field of interest, I took it. 

I was knocked out the other day when Hooligan 1 stopped by the house to announce he'd signed up for a college class in photography - we're talking old timey film photography - just because he wanted to learn about it. "I think I'm a lifelong learner, Mom." This is mostly shocking to me because he just graduated college last May and I was certain he'd take a longer break than nine months. Apparently, not. 

It also cracked me up as I'm currently taking a class in Tai Chi (so much harder than I thought!) and I've joined a women's investment group because I've always been intimidated by investing but now I want to understand it down to the nuts and bolts. So, I think the constant quest for knowledge is hard wired into our DNA.

So, how about you, Reds, what adult education classes have you taken over the years? 

HALLIE EPHRON: For me, early on, I took adult ed classes in cooking and conversational Spanish (I was an elementary school teacher and lots of my kiddoes had parents were non-English Spanish-speaking.)

Since then, it’s been all about writing - finally succumbing to it. First I went to the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center for a week-long summer class on writing fiction. I was in the middle of writing my first unpublished novel. It was there that I learned all about the power of VERBS!

Then for several semesters, I took a weekly creative writing seminar at Racliffe Seminars in Cambridge with Arthur Edelstein. He was a brilliant teacher. That’s where I honed my first published novel.  

RHYS BOWEN:  I have been a lifelong learner/striver in art. Over the years I’ve taken courses in life drawing, pastels, oils and watercolor.  I have finally made some headway in the latter and paint quite often. I find it’s a great way to de-stress. When you are painting you can’t think about anything else.

I also tried ceramics once.  Not a success. Some big lumpy pots are all I have to show for it, and I didn’t really enjoy it. 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Well, as I was trying to write my first book. I took a two-day course in… mystery writing! From our very own Hallie Ephron. Talk about a game changer!  That became Prime time, and TRIH. And since then, I’ve participated in many many writing classes–but I have to say, almost always mostly teaching. But I always learn something when I teach!

I am deep into DuoLingo, does that count?  I took Tai Chi and Chi Gung for many years, and still love it. Oh, and let’s not forget that some years ago I decided to go back to ballet. TOTAL DISASTER. My brain knew exactly what to do, but my body was having none of it.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: After I graduated from college, I took some post grad courses in English lit, including medieval English literature, intending to work towards a masters degree. All that was upended by moving to Scotland and I never got back to it. I had already read most of the texts due to a teenage obsession with Arthurian legend and history. I also took non credit courses in French and in Creative Writing–that last one was a total bust as the instructor said I had zero talent.

It took a few years for my ego to recover, but eventually I started taking courses in novel writing and mystery writing, and research projects for different books have kept me pretty well occupied since.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Back when I was a young wife and mother, I took SO many adult ed homemaking courses. Sewing (beginner to advanced) vegetable gardening, canning and preserving… honestly, high schools need MORE home economics classes, not less!

But my formal learning bug was satisfied (or maybe burned out) with getting a masters and a Juris Doctor, so I haven’t done many “take a class activities,” other than the Stone Coast Writing Workshop after my first book sold. I’m more of a lifetime auto-didact; I love nonfiction, and the podcasts I listen to are about current events, economics, history and other interesting, educational topics. I want to feel like I’m learning something new while I’m washing dishes or walking the dogs.

LUCY BURDETTE: Besides French, which you’ve all heard about, I took many writing classes while writing my first mystery. I still like taking them because I learn something new every time. But my latest classes were in the fine points of beginner pickleball. This game is lots of fun, but it has many arcane rules about scoring and when you’re allowed to hit a volley (not in the kitchen, which is a marked off area closest to the net.) Did you happen to see the article in the NY Times about the big brawl over pickleball that happened in a retirement community in Florida recently? I definitely sense a mystery in the making…

JENN: There's a romcom series by Ilana Long called PICKLEBALLERS. Super cute!

How about you, Readers, what adult education classes have you signed up for and how did it go?

Solo Protagonist vs. the Squad

JENN McKINLAY: I'm currently working on my next contemporary romance, entitled IF SUMMER NEVER ENDS, and I'm in the "dead marsh" which for me is and always will be...the middle. If this was a mystery, there would 100% be a dead body to move the plot along, alas, it is not, so we are saddled with a donkey named Maybellene who can tell when people are lying. *Jenn shrugs*

All that to say, as I was toiling away on this saggy middle, I couldn't figure out why the book wasn't coming together for me and then I realized I hadn't crafted my squad. Doh! *Jenn smacks forehead* 

I am a pack animal. I always travel in a squad or a posse or a crew, whatever you want to call it. I’m not sure how it started but I think it goes back to when I was nine years old and my family moved across the state of Connecticut from Kent to Niantic, ripping me away from my best friend and the social status I had carved out for myself as one of the cool kids. Oh, the drama! The move was not easy. I went from a school where we called the bathroom a “bathroom” to a place where it was referred to as a “lav” as in lavatory. What? It melted my nine-year-old brain.

Then, of course, came the big trauma. I'd been at the new school for just a few weeks. I'd approached a few kids but I was freakishly tall in the fourth grade so I was regarded with suspicion at best and contempt at worst. The cool kids were already well established and there was no way I could break in, being a tomboy in a town where Barbie reigned supreme.

One of the only pics of Jenn in a dress in existence before the age of 16.

Naturally, I tried to fit in, clocking the other kids' slang, fashion, and social cues, as all newbies do, and I started wearing (kill me) dresses. But the thing is, you can stick a tomboy in a dress but you can't make her girly. For example, I was one of those kids who liked to tip her chair back in class, titling it on the back two legs and riding it like the horses I rode after school. Now in jeans a spill was no big deal, I'd simply pop back up to my feet and shake it off. But in a dress, yeah, not as easy to pop anywhere, especially when you're blinded by the skirt that is wrapped around your head and the entire class is dead quiet and then roaring with laughter while they check out your Underoos, mine were Wonder Woman, natch.

The humiliation dogged me for weeks. The mean kids mocked, derided and picked on me mercilessly. Good times! Sadly, my mother staunchly refused to let me drop out of the fourth grade. Darn it! I had it all planned. I was going to show them! I'd run off and be a jockey and win the Kentucky Derby, never mind that I was already too tall. With that dream squashed and with no other viable options in sight, I knew if I was going to survive this situation, I was going to have to form my own squad.

Did you ever see that episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy joins a rag tag group called the “Friends of the Friendless”? Yeah, that was me. Every classroom I entered I found the kid who looked as out of place as I felt and befriended them. Being a friend to others is not as difficult as people think. You smile and you ask them their origin story and then you listen and decide whether you click or not (i.e. does their crazy match your crazy?) and BOOM you have a squad or at the very least people to share Jell-O with at lunch. This skill set has served me well over the years and is one of the reasons I became a Red. Squad up with awesome writers? Yes, please!

It has also influenced my writing. While I mostly write my stories in the third person from the perspective of the main protagonist, they are never on a solitary journey. My characters all operate on the buddy system whether it's a bakery squad, library peeps, the Maine crew, a hat shop posse, or a clutch of neighbors on the OBX (Outer Banks).

Needless to say, with my crew formed in the new book the writing has taken off! Woo hoo!

Tell me, Reds and Readers, do you prefer a solo protagonist or one with a squad? Or does it not matter so long as the story is a page turner?

The Great Photo Purge (Send Snacks)

Jenn McKinlay: Recently (last year, the year before, I have no idea), I listened to The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson. It is exactly what it sounds like, a book about cleaning out your possessions before you die so that the people you leave behind don't have to. 

My best friend is Swedish and we talked quite a bit about the book while I was listening to it. My friend confirmed that this is how most Swedes are - thoughtful about not leaving behind problems for others. I can vouch that this is true because she and I are the same height and weight and every time we visit, she gives me shoes or clothes because she's also 12 years older than me and in constant death clean mode. I'm okay with this because she has excellent taste and takes care of her things so it's a win win.

What I loved about Magnusson's book was that she made the death cleaning easy and straightforward and then you get to the final chapters and she talks about the one thing that makes even death cleaners stumble -- photographs. 

Well, I was determined not to falter. Armed with a trash bag, a shredder, and the misplaced confidence of someone who has watched exactly one episode of a home organization show, I opened our storage unit.

You know the one. The Indiana Jones warehouse of my past where between the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail were seventeen boxes labeled “PHOTOS—IMPORTANT!!!” (Apparently, I felt very strongly about that in 2009.)

Here’s the thing about old photos. You don’t simply “go through” them. You time travel. One minute you’re tossing duplicates, the next you’re misty over a blurry snapshot of a long-gone dog who, in that photo, is mid-zoomie and eternal.

I found hairstyles that should have come with warning labels. Seriously, I think my bangs in the 80's are solely responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. Outfits that were clearly chosen during a period of temporary insanity, I mean, were shoulder pads that doubled as pillows really necessary? Entire vacations documented before smartphones, when I took 24 photos and 19 of them featured my thumb or a sunset that looked beige.

And yet.

There were the Hooligans dressed up as toilet paper mummies. The Hub's grandparents dancing at our wedding. Friends tailgating at the college game where the keg was featured but we're all there in our  day-glo highlighter hued clothing, holding red Solo cups.

I’ll confess: the shredder remained tragically underfed.

Yes, I mailed a decade of photos to an ex so he could remember what he looked like in the 90's. Yes, I let go of the mysterious landscapes that simply didn't translate their awesomeness to a faded 4 X 6 inch print. Yes, I bravely discarded photos of people I absolutely couldn't identify. Who are you, sir, and more importantly why are we hugging?

Still, knowing that my Hooligans (bless their hearts) are never going to care about the 20,000 photos that document their Dad's and my lifetimes, a solid dent was made. Many giant boxes have been distilled into several much smaller ones with their contents to be digitized at a future date. The rest? Well, progress is best measured by hefty bags and I have many to go before I sleep (nod to Robert Frost).

How about you, Reds and Readers, what do your photo archives look like?