Author name: Sayling@@Away

Last week, Hubs and I went to a production of My Fair Lady by Playmakers Theater, the oldest theater that is part of a university (UNC). This production did not have the glitz and glam of a Broadway play – with two pianos in place of a full orchestra, a horseshoe- shaped stage, and an audience of 200 – but the story is ageless, the voices were excellent, and I fell in love with Alfred P. Doolittle all over again. Most of you know that the musical My Fair Lady is based on a play by George Bernard Shaw called Pygmalion, first performed in 1914. Pygmalion is, of course, the story told by the Roman poet Ovid of a celibate sculptor who creates and falls in love with a statue of Galatea. Galatea is brought to life by Venus, and Ovid created a love-conquers-all sentimental finish. A lifelong champion of progressive causes and a reformist crusader on a host of fronts, Shaw used the stage to engage and confront the world, a venue for a clash of ideas. My Fair Lady is the story of an increasingly combustible relationship between a humorless, goal driven teacher (Pygmalion) and a lively, intelligent female pupil of the lowest class (Galatea), a pointed critique of the class system in England. In1912, Shaw was experiencing the decline of Victorian moralities, the rise of women in society as embodied by suffragists, shifts in politics that led to the destabilization of Europe and ultimately WWI. Shaw loathed the adaptation of plays to musicals, as a result of what he saw as a terrible transposition of his play Arms and the Man to a operetta, The Chocolate Soldier. He stated “nothing will ever induce me to allow any other play of mine to be… set to any music..” The first step in the creation of My Fair Lady occurred because Shaw held the cinema in slightly less contempt. Hungarian filmmaker Gabriel Pasqual charmed Shaw into giving him the film rights to Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion, Caesar and Cleopatra, and…Pygmalion. Shaw insisted that no happy ending be given to his play, even though actors knew this is what audiences wanted. Nevertheless, Pascal’s film ends with the implication of a love match for Eliza and Henry Higgens. Pascal’s film studio retained its licensing to Shaw’s plays, and after Shaw’s death in 1950 at the age of 94, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe signed on to reinvent Pygmalion as a musical, with the creation of My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady, as described in our program notes by Gregory Kable, is a delightful marriage of contraries in the stage and screen version, and captures the tensions Shaw wanted to portray. The perfection of Lerner and Loewe’s musical adaption of Pygmalion is such that six decades later, audiences still experience the context of the original play – the tension,  the beauty, the humanity, and now the soaring lyrics – of which even Shaw would approve. PS Some trivia Rex Harrison, who played ‘enry ‘iggens in both the stage and movie version of MFL, was very disappointed when Audrey Hepburn was cast as Eliza, since he felt she was miscast and had hoped to work with Julie Andrews, who had played Eliza on stage. He told an interviewer, “Eliza Doolittle is supposed to be ill at ease in European ballrooms. Bloody Audrey has never spent a day in her life out of European ballrooms.” Nevertheless, when Harrison was once later asked to identify his favorite leading lady, he replied without hesitation, he replied, “Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.“ Although playing a 19-year-old, Audrey Hepburn was actually 35 in real life. Jeremy Brett was cast as 20-year-old Freddie so Hepburn would not seem too old in comparison. Most, but not all, of Audrey Hepburn’s singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon (who also dubbed for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and  Natalie Wood in West Side Story), despite Hepburn’s lengthy vocal preparation for the role. A dubber was required because Eliza Doolittle’s songs could not be transposed down to Hepburn’s lower vocal range. 0 0

Hi and a huge welcome to Rave Reviews Book Club’s BOOK & BLOG BLOCK PARTY at Watch Nonnie Write!  Location:  Chicago, Illinois, the City of the Big Shoulders, which just happens to be where I used to live. *** Here’s What I’m Giving Away Today: One autographed paperback copy of Death in a Red Canvas Chair One autographed paperback copy of Death in a Dacron Sail One autographed paperback copy of Death by Pumpkin  So there will be three winners! ***** Let me introduce myself to anyone new to Saylingaway: I’m a Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. After forty years of research and teaching undergraduates and medical students, I decided to turn my knowledge of human anatomy to the craft of mystery writing. I’m still learning my craft! In addition to the Rhe Brewster mystery series, I have written for Death South and Sea Level magazines and the Bella Online Literary Review. I live with my husband, a cat who blogs, and a hyperactive dog in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and spend a portion of every summer in Maine, researching new ideas for my books and eating lobster. I’ve written three books in the Rhe Brewster Mystery Series so far, the fourth – Death in a Mudflat – will be out by the end of this year. There’s no end to the deadly mischief my protagonist can get into… DEATH IN A RED CANVAS CHAIR On a warm fall afternoon, the sweet odor of decay distracts Rhe Brewster from the noise and fury of her son’s soccer game. She’s a tall, attractive emergency room nurse with a type A personality, a nose for investigation and a yen for adrenalin. This time her nose leads her to the wet, decaying body of a young woman, sitting in a red canvas chair at the far end of the soccer field. Following her discovery that the victim is a student at the local college, her investigation is thwarted by an old frenemy, Bitsy Wellington, the Dean of Students and Will, Rhe’s husband, who resents her involvement in anything other than being a wife and mother. Rhe’s interviews of college students leads her to a young woman who had been recruited to be an escort on a Caribbean cruise ship, and Rhe trails her to a high class brothel at a local seaside estate. The man behind the escort services is the owner of a chain of mortuaries and is related to the dead student. When Rhe becomes too much of a threat to the owner’s multiple enterprises, he takes steps to eliminate her. Can she survive being kidnapped and locked in a refrigerator with the dead? In this first in the Rhe Brewster Mystery Series, Rhe more than holds her own, but can she figure out why the body was placed in the chair on the soccer field? ***** DEATH IN A DACRON SAIL On an icy February morning, Rhe Brewster, an emergency room nurse with an unstoppable yen for investigation, is called to a dock in the harbor of the small coastal town of Pequod, Maine. A consultant to the Pequod Police Department, Rhe is responding to a discovery by one of the local lobstermen: a finger caught in one of his traps. The subsequent finding of the body of a young girl, wrapped in a sail and without a finger, sends the investigation into high gear and reveals the existence of three other missing girls of the same age, plus a childhood friend of Rhe’s. Battered by increasingly vitriolic objections from her husband, the pregnant Rhe continues her search, dealing with unexpected obstacles and ultimately facing the challenge of crossing an enormous frozen bog to save herself. Will she survive? Is the kidnapper someone she knows? In Death in a Dacron Sail, the second book in the Rhe Brewster Mystery Series, Rhe’s nerves and endurance are put to the test as the kidnapper’s action hits closer to home. ***** DEATH BY PUMPKIN   At the annual Pumpkin Festival in the coastal town of Pequod, Maine, Rhe Brewster, an ER nurse and Police Department consultant, responds to screams at the site of the Pumpkin Drop. Racing to the scene, where a one-ton pumpkin was dropped from a crane to crush an old car, Rhe and her brother-in-law, Sam, Pequod’s Chief of Police, discover the car contains the smashed remains of a man’s body. After the police confirm the death as a homicide, Rhe embarks on a statewide search to identify the victim and find the killer. During the course of the emotional investigation, she survives an attempt on her life at 10,000 feet, endures the trauma of witnessing the murder of an old flame, and escapes an arson attack on her family’s home. There is clearly a sociopath on the loose who is gunning for Rhe and leaving bodies behind. With Sam unable to offer his usual support due to an election recall and a needy new girlfriend, Rhe realizes that the only way to stop the insanity is to risk it all and play the killer’s game. Maine’s most tenacious sleuth is back, this time to confront a menace that threatens to destroy her life and those closest to her ***** This is the first blog block party I’ve joined. I hope you’ll come back to visit my blog. It’s very eclectic – I never know what I will post (so far book reviews, historical pieces about the Pilgrims, art, short stories, interviews), whatever floats my boat each week. You can find me here and On Twitter: @rhebrewster And on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noelle.a.granger And:  https://www.facebook.com/search/str/n.a.+granger+-+the+rhe+brewster+mysteries/keywords_top Hope you are enjoying the book and block party! 0 0

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The book is the first of a trilogy about John Knox, a Scottish minister, theologian, and writer who was a leader of the Reformation and the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, marking the 500th anniversary of his birth. In this first book, Knox plays a minor role to the two main characters: Elizabeth Hepburn, a feisty woman who becomes the Prioress of a convent, and David Lindsey, her one-time lover, who is the long-time tutor and confidant of King James V of Scotland. The story opens with a charming scene that reminded me of Little Women, where Betsy, the nanny to the three Hepburn daughter, herbalist and possible witch, divines the girls’ fates from the tossing of nuts into a blazing fire. The three girls are completely different in character and although the book traces the fate of little Meg and the voluptuous and fiery Kate, it is the strong-willed Elizabeth who drives the story. This is a meticulously researched historical novel, right down to the immediate inclusion of a Scots dialect with the English. I must admit this put me off at first, because there were many words I didn’t know and I hardly wanted to take time to look them up. However, as the chapters passed it became clear what the words meant, much like reading English with words represented by only a few letters. The amount of detail, intertwined plots, religious conflicts, monarchical rivalries, and interpersonal connections are too much for this reviewer to detail, but if a sense of time and place drive your interest in history, and especially Scottish history, you will be in pig heaven. Ms. Macpherson’s main characters shine with description like bright pennies – the gluttonous and painted Dame Janet, Prioress before Elizabeth; Maryoth, the nun covetous of being prioress, evil and conniving against Elizabeth; John, Elizabeth’s uncle and Prior of St. Mary’s, greedy and eager to have Elizabeth replace Janet, his sister, to keep the rich convent in the family; and Davie Lindsey, Elizabeth’s young lover, who proves feckless and sacrifices Elizabeth more than once to serve his king.  If there was any downside to the many characters, it was the number of them, but the author includes family trees and a complete cast of characters for the challenged! There are no lusty love scenes, although rape and sex abound, so this is not a romantic barn-burner. The author, however, does a great job educating the reader about the social mores of sex, courtship, marriage and child-bearing. John Knox comes into the tale rather late, as the apparent son of a poor woman, into whose lungs Elizabeth breathes life, then adopts as her godson. He will be a major character in the next two books. This volume lays down the considerable history of the time from Margaret Tudor, sister to Henry VIII and wife of James IV, to the birth and early years of Mary, Queen of Scots, and sets the stage for Mary’s contentious relationship with Knox. All in all, a challenging and intellectual but satisfying read, which I recommend – but not to the casual reader. About the author Marie Macpherson was born in the Honest Toun of Musselburgh, six miles from the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. After earning an Honours Degree in Russian and English, she spent a year in Moscow and Leningrad to research her PhD thesis on the work of the 19th century Russian writer, Lermontov, said to be descended from the Scottish poet and seer, Thomas the Rhymer. The rich history of East Lothian – especially the Reformation period – provides the inspiration for her first fictional work, based on the early life of the Scottish reformer, John Knox. Ms.Macpherson is the winner of the Martha Hamilton Prize for Creative Writing from Edinburgh University and was awarded the title ‘Writer of the Year 2011’ by Tyne & Esk Writers. You can find her on Twitter: @MGMacpherson Her blog:  https://mariemacpherson.wordpress.com/ And on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/Marie-Macpherson-218696288265954/ 0 0

The Curse of Arundel Hall is a cozy, the second in the Yellow Cottage Vintage Mystery series. There is a lot to like about this book, but it does have its drawbacks. Ella, following the death of her husband is given the strong suggestion by his boss, the British Home Secretary, that she forget about hIm and move away. She has decides to live on Linhay Island and take up residence in a refurbished cottage that was once a part of the Arundel Hall estate. There is a ghost living in a secret dining room that Ella discovers behind the kitchen, and she visits her friend, Harriet, the local librarian to find out more about her cottage and its history in relation to Arundel Hall. Her friend tells her a curse was placed on the hall by its first owner. Ella discovers a secret stairway from the hidden dining room to the cottage’s upper floors, and a centuries-old skeleton of a woman at the bottom of the stairs. The skeleton gives evidence she was murdered. Ella is invited to the manor hall for a celebration dinner of the engagement of the elderly owner to a much younger woman who claims to have been a stage actress. The evening takes a shocking turn when one member of the dinner party is murdered. Ella again joins forces with Scotland Yard’s Police Commissioner, her uncle, to find and catch the killer(s). The author creates a colorful world in Linhay Island, with wonderful, well-drawn characters, and after I got into the book, I found it very entertaining. Her descriptions convey the life on an island, the charm of Ella’s cottage and the menace and gloom of Arundel Hall exceedingly well. The main problem I encountered derives from the fact I hadn’t read the first book. I had no idea that Ella could really see ghosts and that Phantom, which I thought was her cat, was also a ghost. This was compounded by a substantial first chapter going into great detail – although beautifully written — about Ella’s childhood. I had to wait until midway through the second chapter to be introduced to the woman’s ghost. I also did not realize the era of the mystery until I took a close look at the stylish cover. More confusion derived from Ella’s traveling back and forth from the city to Linhay Island by car and train. Was there a bridge or a ferry? Finally, the book needs the hand of a copy editor. There were a sufficient number of errors to detract from the enjoyment I derived from the book. Now that I have become acquainted with Ella and her abilities, and despite the shortcomings, I do look forward to Ms. New’s next book in this series. About the author: J. New has been a voracious reader and writer all her life. She took her first foray into publishing in 2013 with An Accidental Murder, the first in her Yellow Cottage Vintage Mystery series. Originally from a small picturesque town in Yorkshire, she relocated in 2007 and currently resides with her partner and an ever-expanding family of rescue animals. She particularly loves murder mysteries set in past times, where steam trains, house staff and afternoon tea abound, and surmises she was born in the wrong era. She also has an impossible bucket list: to travel on the Orient Express with Hercule Poirot, shop in Diagon Alley with Sirius Black, laze around The Shire with Bilbo and Gandalf, explore Pico Mundo with Odd Thomas and have Tea at the Ritz with Miss Marple. J. New can be found at https://www.jnewwrites.com and on her blog https://www.jnewwrites.com/Blog.php 0 0

Clay Tongue was all too short for this reader. It is described as a short fantasy about the unspoken love between a shy little girl and her grandfather, the secrets of human communication, and discovered bravery. Katie Mirowitz lives in a household with her parents and her grandfather. She is so shy and afraid to speak she can’t even tell her mother that she loves her, but her grandfather is her lodestone, the one person with whom she can talk. When he has a stroke leaving him with aphasia, the inability to speak anything other than gibberish, they still communicate – she can interpret his facial expressions and meaningless words. Her anxieties come to a crescendo when she overhears her mother telling the grandfather she is not sure how long they can continue to care for him because of the family’s finances. When Katie finds her grandfather with an old journal, which he doesn’t want her to see, she just has to read what is inside. She sneaks downstairs at night to read it and with it, finds an ancient key. The journal contains a story, written by her grandfather many years earlier, of a mythical being – a golem – who can grant wishes. Screwing her courage to the wall, she goes in search of the golem. How Katie finds the golem and what happens when he asks her for her wish is sweet and heart-warming. The story line is predictable, but the writing is superlative and the author creates a read-out loud story for both children and adults with truths about love and selflessness.  The characters, especially the grandfather, colorfully and realistically drawn and stayed with this reader long after the end of the story. I highly recommend Clay Tongue, five stars. About the author (from Amazon) Nicholas Conley is a novelist, world traveler, playwright, and coffee vigilante. His passion for storytelling is evident in Clay Tongue as well a Pale Highway, the winner of the 2015 Predators & Editors Award for Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novel. He has written for Vox, Truthout, The Huffington Post, SFFWorld, and Alzheimers.net, and his original radio play Something in the Nothing was performed live on the radio station WSCA 106.1 FM in 2016. He is a member of PEN America, the writers organization dedicated to human rights and freedom of expression. You can find Nicholas Conley On twitter: @NcholasConley1 And at: www.nicholasconley.com 0 0

A pictorial essay of what is currently in bloom around our house and pool, with a few comments. Enjoy! It’s spring!                   Not sure you can see the load of blossoms on our weeping cherry tree. They are dropping already, leading to what we call pink snow!   Some late blooming daffodils in the garden:                Some as yet unpotted blooms on the porch.          We have some lovely azaleas also in bloom.   And one even had a yellow visitor!   Do you think these are blossoms on our bushes in the front of the house? Nope, it’s our last snowfall!                                                                       0 0

I came across the name of Mary Semple while reading a book called Dust Bowl Girls, about a national champions women’s college basketball team in the 1930s. The book itself is a great read about women’s sports at that time, something I knew nothing about. Sort of like A league of Their Own, but a decade earlier and concerning basketball, which is on everyone’s mind with the national collegiate championship coming up. Mary Semple was a cultured society girl from Steubenville, OH, born in July of 1836. Her father was a dentist so Mary enjoyed the luxuries of an upper-middle class young woman – pretty clothes, parties, and all the social advantages. She was also a top student with a strong Presbyterian upbringing. This religious background exposed her to various missionaries for her church, and when she was ten or twelve, at a lecture by Dr. John Scudder, a famous medical missionary to India, she was told to write in her Bible, “Mr. Scudder asked me to be a missionary.” She apparently felt bound to those words, keeping them in mind as she grew and at age nineteen, while singing a solo in her church choir with the words, “There comes a call and I must go,” she felt it was the call for her own mission and time to leave home. Being a missionary in those days, as is often the case now, could lead to injury, illness, starvation and even death. When she met with Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, who was seeking teachers and other workers for missions in the Indian Territory, he disparaged her application. After all, she presented wearing fashionable hoop skirts and a guitar. She didn’t know how to cook, sew or raise vegetables. He told her of the poor food, the isolation, the difficult living conditions and the difficult Indian languages and vile customs (to him). She was not deterred and somehow managed to convince him she wasn’t soft, spoiled or naïve, so he sent her off to eastern Oklahoma, where the Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole nations had been sent by the federal government. She travelled by boat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to Arkansas, then overland by wagon through swamps, brush, streams and rivers, heat and swarming insects. One night she stayed at a plantation with the slaves and 30-40 children. The plantation owner asked her and her companions to stay to teach the children, offering them a salary three times what they were paid for their mission work, but they refused. Mary’s first school had been founded in 1832 for Choctaw orphans, situated north of the Red River and the Texas border. Her arrival there caused great consternation among those running the school. How could a delicate teenager who spoke no Choctaw manage a classroom. She surprised them all – by the end of her first year all her students new English and she spoke fluent Choctaw. The next year, she was sent to the Bennington Mission Station, close to what is modern day Durant, OK, and the following year to the mission called Living Land, established by Ebenezer Hotchkin, Sr., where she met his son, Henry. Food was scarce – mainly bacon, corn bread and sorghum – and the accommodations wherever they lived, were primitive. Soon after Mary and Henry were married, he left to serve in the Confederate Army and I can only imagine how desolate she must have felt. A few years after Henry came home, the couple was transferred to a new mission in Caddo north of Denton, TX, bringing with them their five children, four of whom were born between 1861 and 1866. They had the luxury of a two-room house near the Missouri- Kansas-Texas Railroad. Mary taught school wherever she was sent, and often taught with a baby in her lap since she eventually had twelve children (three died). Her husband then moved his family to a wilderness called Chikiki one hundred miles north of Caddo. She and the children moved by covered wagon, camping in the wilds, and when they arrived, found her husband had purchased for them a two-room log cabin with one small window in each room. The school was an even more primitive one room affair, although over time her husband expanded it to six rooms. Henry eventually went back to farming, but died soon thereafter from pneumonia. Mary ran the farm but broke her hip when she was thrown from a buggy, and lay in pain until she was  discovered by a search party. The hip was not set and thereafter she walked with crutches. She kept teaching the Native American children throughout this time and at the age of 60 was teaching at a Chicasaw academy when she was asked to run the Oklahoma Presbyterian College for Girls, founded in 1896. Assisted by her son Ebenezer, the school grew and prospered. How is she linked to the Dust Bowl Girls? Her son was the President of this college for which the dust bowl girls played basketball while earning a degree. While mainly a teacher, Mary was also a nurse, doctor, friend and spiritual advisor to her classes, giving marked copies of the New Testament to her students. When she died in 1919, her last words were, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.” She is buried in the Stigler, OK, cemetery under a white marble stone, with the inscription, “Came to Indian Territory as a Missionary to the Choctaw Indians in 1857. Taught for 40 years among the Choctaws and Chickasaws.” An inscription that understates her importance in the growth of the western United States and her devotion to Native Americans. From her bones was this country made. 0 0