The Women in White and Our First Woman President

You couldn't help but stare at the women in white last night during the State of the Union. It has been a hundred years since women got the vote and the women of the senate were showing their solidarity with those women who marched a century before. But there is another one hundred year anniversary and that is the Presidency of Edith Wilson. She took over the White House when Woodrow Wilson had a massive stroke and was hidden away in a bedroom. She really was our First Woman President even though she was not elected.

But the symbolism of all those women in the House of Representatives shows how far women have come. Edith Wilson only had three years of school and had buried a baby and a husband when she met Woodrow Wilson. She was forty four to his fifty nine and driving an electric car with the first drivers license issued in the District of Columbia. She had only been married to the President four years when he had a stroke after returning from a whistle stop tour to pass the League of Nations. The decision not to tell the public and the reluctance of the Vice President made Edith the defacto President.

She ruled for only two years and in a touch of irony the suffragettes had been chaining themselves to the White House gates for years to convince Wilson to support the vote for women. Little did they know a woman would run the White House. So the women in white are really celebrating two anniversaries, the vote for women and a secret presidency where a Woman ran the United States.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Why Families Moved After 9/11

A lot of families moved after 9/11 to get away from the unseeable horror. We moved after 9/11. And we moved because of 9/11. Yes there were other reasons, but ten years out I see how we were 9/11 refugees. We moved because our house had become smaller and there were some crime issues in our area, but the canvas of the tent was composed of fear. The fear was that Chicago would be hit and a dirty bombs radiation would engulf us on the edge of the city. Suddenly being eight miles away from the Sears Tower did not seem enough. We had to get further.

Four years after 9/11 is when we departed for the countryside. The anthrax mailings had started to taper off but we still had duct tape and plastic for the chemical attacks. Remember that? Rolls and rolls of duct tape to stop the seeping anthrax or whatever biological warfare agent came seeping our way. Our zone of safety had been reduced to our basement and the feeling that the world had gone crazy was every increasing. The war in Iraq was raging and the Homeland Security Czar was calling for another attack any day. It wasn't a matter of if but when.

So we found a place in the country in the furthest suburb. One stop before the end of the train line. We were so far out we heard Coyotes whining at night. We saw deer regularly. A wide open Prairie sky. There were no sirens, no sound of impending doom. We were like Dr. Zhivago running for the countryside away from a world gone mad. And so we sat in our splendid isolation, sure that if they did bomb Chicago then we would be the last to go.

Now ten years have come and gone and it is very clear why we made this choice. It never really fit us. We were urbanites and still are. The people who we have met are nice but their eyes question our membership. We never quite fit because we didn't make our decision in normal circumstances. We were pushed by fear, a fear that terrorism would swallow us up. And we lost something in the trade off. Certainly we lost friends, but more we lost our community.

Of course I cannot lay it all at the feet of Osama Bin Laden. We might have moved anyway, certainly we would have never moved as far. But we are 9/11 refugees and like any refugees we just want to return to our home. Maybe the era of 9/11 is ending, because we are thinking of moving again. We aren't sure where, but it will be toward the city this time.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Impact of 9/11 on Contemporary Novels

Writing a contemporary novel in the last nine years is writing under the shadow of 9/11. You cannot write any kind of book about American life and not have the impact of that day inform the work. To do so it as the author's peril. The world changed, America changed, people changed after that day. Life pivots around the day the planes struck the World Trade Center and you have life before and after and there is no comparison. Everything changed. Values. Lifestyles. Economics. Where we live. How we live. The spectre of 9/11 as a precursor of eventual Armageddon did not start to fade even five years after the event. Even if you did not put duct tape and  plastic on your windows, you excepted the other shoe to drop any minute.

And so that leaves the novelist. How to get your hands around such a monstrous event? Earlier writers had to deal with World War II in much the same way. It was too big to handle, yet it changed writing itself. As did World War I. But 9/11 was not a war in a classic sense and so war novels will not do. There has been no Naked and the Dead. There has been no Thin Red Line or From Here to Eternity. Jonathan Letham and a few others have taken stabs at parts of mushroom cloud that is 9/11, but no one has nailed it per say. Even Jonathan Franzen sidestepped it in Freedom. It is just too big

But novelists must factor in 9/11 into their landscape. It did affect people. It does affect people and where that fits into your particular fiction will be determined by the skill of the novelist. People literally changed the way they lived after that day. People moved out of cities. They moved into the country to get away from a potential mushroom cloud and then nine years later could not remember why they moved. But they do know. It is there every time the anniversary rolls around. Our very polarized schizophrenic society is a testament to that day. Glen Beck, Tea parties, Sarah Palin...these are products of our troubled times and must be recognized by the novelist.

So we may stick our head in the sand and say 9/11 belongs to an era. But it does not. It is the Perfect Storm of the Twenty First Century, informing every aspect of American life. For the novelist the trick is to deal with  this Perfect Storm, but not let it engulf and overwhelm the story. Anyone who lived through that very dark day can tell you that is no easy task.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in September.
http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Man-William-Elliott-Hazelgrove/dp/0982139241/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The 9/11 Essays in the Attic

Right after 9/11 I was gripped like everyone else and felt I had to do something. So I came up with the idea of getting responses on the tragedy from other authors. I contacted authors I knew and authors I didn't know and came up with quite a list. Everyone from Scott Turow to Rick Bragg to Dave Barry. I collected the essays and started about trying to find a publisher. We found several who were interested and my agent prepared to set up the deal.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/2001-10-18-writers.htm


But in the chaotic days after September 11 everyone was struggling with how to get a handle on this tragedy. Some publishers said it was too soon. Others said they were being swamped with 9/11 projects. Some thought 9/11 would fall from the public consciousness. One publisher proposed to put it in a shoe box with other mementos. We were never quite sure how that would work.

Finally an editor wanted to take the project on. The day he was to make the deal he lost his job. The essays went into a folder and began to gather dust. I took them out today and read through some of them. What jumps out at you is the feeling of anything could happen. These are authors who make a living out of writing books and they wrote like men and women under fire.  The frantic quality of the writing is something you would expect out of someone who has lived through the Holocaust.

But that is the way it was then. You just didn't know what was next. One world vanished and another world began. Even our polarized country can be attributed to the politics of fear that began after 9/11. I suppose that is what these essays are all about. Fear. And it is a pity they never saw the light of day because they are as historical as any letters from World War II. I guess all wars are about fear. America  knows what that's all about now.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
William Hazelgrove's latest novel is Rocket Man.

Hallowed Ground--visiting 9/11

It's our new Grand Canyon. Our Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor. You cannot believe a space like this can exist in New York. Something came and took out those buildings and those people. They are still there. You can feel them in the heat shimmer and the large steel skeletons starting for the sky. What did they think when those planes darted out of the clear blue September morn? Some thought of family and friends before fire or a hurtling death.

"They jump," the taxi driver says. " I see them and never forget. They jump because the fire is worse than you know jumping into the air."

You hear those words as you stare across the hazy chasm. Large white buildings used to be there--gone. No more. People ant climb around the chasm in a chain of silence. The steel workers are impervious now. They have worked in this space for years. Almost ten years but it still clings--the past battlefield of our republic. Go to any Civil War battlefield and it still clings there too. The death of all those people is in the still air. The heat. The grinding enormous cranes working like stoical robots to rebuild a city.

"I had to come see this," a man next to me says. We stand and stare into the yellow later afternoon void. "I had to," he says quietly.

Yes. No more spoken as the people stream by. A respectful silence. Young children have no idea and chatter away. You do have to see it. It is a memorial site and you cannot come to New York and not come pay your respects. That is what you are doing. You come to see those people who died all those years ago. Over three thousand. The cab drivers tell you there is nothing to see anymore. Not true. It is still there in the Grand Canyon of our sorrow. All those people lost in the wink of an eye.

You drift up to St. Paul's church. This is where it gets you. Here is where the firemen and the cops came to rest between shifts. It is right on the edge. Incredible this old church George Washington sat in with the time worn graves still there. You enter and you see the shrines of pictures still there. All those people looking for people no longer of this earth. All those fire department badges and then the pictures of the fallen. They are men of old America. Big bushy mustaches and wide smiles. Germans, Italians, Irish. The cops and the firemen. They have a fine sheen of dust on them. The Teddy Bears are coated in dust. It has been almost ten years and we are creeping around the remains of battle ships or tanks or any other debris left over from a war. Except these were civilians.

The church is stone quiet as people make their way past a cot used for firefighters to rest. The shrines of mementos left after the devastation brings you back to those days. Such heavy sorrow in the small shoes, slippers, boots, left outside the church. Where did all those people go? Women wipe their eyes and men hide behind shades. It still breaks your heart. Amazing we became such a divided nation after this. Seems nothing could have pulled us from our collective sorrow.

But you emerge back into the sunlight and start walking toward Broadway. You can no longer hear the cranes and the sorrow lifts as you pass into New York again. You walk on and it is behind you, but you will never forget. You will never let it go. Not until you follow your countrymen and breathe your last.

05/02/2009

http://www.billhazelgrove.com