Karen Harrington's blog, author of Janeology from Kunati Books

Dear Mom, I still find you in the little places

2009-05-10T18:37:52Z

Dear Mom:

It has been almost eight years since you died, but I still find you in unexpected places. Is it any wonder I continue to write about moms and motherhood?

I find you in the soap products I still use because you used them.

I find you every time I hear ANY song from Fiddler on the Roof because you played that 8-Track tape until it broke.

I find you in the lines on my face, which is starting to show glimpses of you in your 40s.

I find you in the little ways I protect my children; and though I haven't sewn them neon orange coats to wear to school so all the cars will see them - I now know that coat was stitched from a mother's love.

I find you in that old AM radio station when it plays The Entertainer.

I find you in slim, green glass iced-cold Coca-Cola bottles.

I find you in my brand new interest in knowing the actual names of flowers.

I find you when I make my kids Kool-Aid and I let them stir.

I find you when an older mom gives me a tip on how to keep your kid from getting lice at school only to think back, "Hey, my mom did that when I was little" and I never knew why. Now I do.

I find you when I discover a curious fact and squirrel it away in a notebook and everyone wonders why.

I find you in my recent need to have a magnifying glass handy.

I find you in canteloupe even though I LOATHE it due to that bumper crop you grew in our backyard and all there was to eat FOREVER was canteloupe; but my daughters love it like candy, so I buy it.

I find you in the Mother's Day cards I get from my daughters and wish I sent you one every year. If you were here, I would tell you that it is only through the lens of being a mother myself that I see and know and feel all that you did.

Keep showing up in little places and I'll keep looking.

Love,

K

My mom (right) with her sister in 1959.

"What's in the marrow is hard to take out of the bone." -

Karen Harrington

author, Janeology

www.karenharringtonbooks.com

If These Photos Could Talk

2009-05-08T00:42:49Z

Photos like these inspired me to write about a character, one Jane Nelson, from the perspective of her genealogy - and it was amazing what I unearthed when I posed the question "What if these photos could talk?"

My grandmother-in-law, Manhattan, Kansas; early 1930s

Read an excerpt of JANEOLOGY at www.karenharringtonbooks.com and view the pedigree chart of all of Jane's ancestors.

What did Jane do and why?

www.karenharringtonbooks.com

www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. ~Shirley Abbott

5 Thoughts To Inspire Your Writing

2009-05-05T13:33:06Z

I hope you'll enjoy these quotes as much as I do.

k. harrington

author, JANEOLOGY

1. The best research is talking to people. - Jeffrey Archer

2. You can. You know you can conquer your fears. That's what a writer is - a conquerer of fears. - Erica Jong

3. Each word should be weighed carefully as for a telegram to be paid for by the author. - Ernest Hemingway

4. To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man. - Aristrotle

5. One does not choose one's subject matter, one submits to it. - Gustave Flaubert

Stop by my blog - http://www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com

Wordless Wednesday: This Child Of Mine

2009-04-22T15:24:14Z

by Karen Harrington, author Janeology

I caught my daughter's silhouette in the clubhouse doorway at White Rock Lake in Dallas last week. I couldn't help but think that one day - all too soon - she will fill that doorway.

It's only for a moment you are mine to hold

The plans that heaven has for you

Will all too soon unfold

So many different prayers I'll pray

For all that you might do

But most of all I'll want to know

You're walking in the truth

And If I never told you I want you to know

As I watch you grow

I pray that God would fill your heart with dreams

And that faith gives you the courage

To dare to do great things

I'm here for you whatever this life brings

So let my love give you roots

And help you find your wings

-- Mark Harris, Find Your Wings
Watch his 3 hanky video here.

Come visit my blog - www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com

Follow me on Twitter. I'm pithy. twitter.com/karenzwriter

Don't Mess With....New Hampshire?

2009-04-15T13:23:59Z

That's right. This picture features four of Manchester's finest posing for a photo op earlier this month behind the town's city hall. See that guy on the far left? That's my brother, or, officer Harrington, SWAT team member and former Marine to us civillians. Woo-Haa!

To answer your questions in advance; yes, I'm a proud sis, and no, he's not single.

Cheers,

Karen Harrington

author, Janeology

www.karenharringtonbooks.com

"Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts."

2009-04-10T18:16:58Z

That's one of my favorite geneaology quotes. There's some truth it it, wouldn't you say?

To wrap up my JANEOLOGY Book-A-Versary celebration week, I thought I'd share a few of my other favorite sayings and quotes about geneology - which is the thematic centerpiece of my novel. Visit www.karenharringtonbooks.com to view the pedigree chart for all of the curious characters in Janeology.

Until then, enjoy!

----

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us. - Van Wyck Brooks

It is an unusual family that hath neither a Lady of the Evening or a Thief. - Unknown

Family is just accident. They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are. ~Marsha Norman

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genealogy: tracing yourself back to better people. - Unknown

Some men by ancestry are only the shadow of a mighty name. - Etheridge Knight

Old Genealogists never die - they just lose their census. - Unknown

23rd Psalm for Genealogists

I shall not stray
It maketh me to lie down
And examine half-buried tombstones
It leadeth me into still courthouses
It restoreth my Ancestral Knowledge
It leadeth me into the Paths of Census Records
And ships Passenger lists for my names sake

Yes, though I wade through the Shadows of Research Libraries and Microfilm Readers,
I shall fear no Discouragement
For a Strong urge is with me
The curiosity and Motivation
They comfort me

It demandeth preparation of Storage Space
For the Acquisition of Countless Documents
It annointeth my Head with burning Midnight Oil
My family Group sheet runneth over
Surely birth, marriage and death dates
Shall follow me all the Days of my Life
And I shall dwell in the House of a Family History Seeker Forever

---------

COOL GENEALOGY STOPS ON THE NET

Ancestry.com
The Genealogue: Genealogy News You Can't Possibly Use
Creative Gene
Tracing The Tribe
What's Past Is Prologue
Blacksheep Ancestors

Best,

Karen Harrington

author, Janeology

www.karenharringtonbooks.com

www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com

Follow me on Twitter - https://twitter.com/karenzwriter

Trial By Fire - A Janeology/Genealogy Story

2009-04-09T00:48:44Z

Following is a letter my great-great grandfather (who lived in the Somerville, MA house pictured above) wrote featuring his personal account of the Great Boston Fire. The fire destroyed 65 acres of the city's downtown.

Boston
November 12, 1872

Friends Ada and William,

Your sympathizing note dated Sunday, 10th, came to hand today. As you surmised we were among the burned out, but think ourselves lucky in having saved all our books and papers down to the bill-heads which plenty of poor fellows were not able to do. It was an awful night, such as I never hope to see again.

I noticed the fire from the R.R. bridge near our house about 10 o'clock Saturday night, thought they were having a pretty stout fire in the city but believed the Boston Fire department able to take care of anything in that line that could be got up. I have lost some confidence in them since I do not yet know how the fire got such a start, but imagine it came from substituting men to draw the steamers to save the sick horses. I imagine that if that was the case the chief has by this time made up his mind it would have been as well to have killed a few horses rather than to have had as brilliant an illumination.

Thinking they were having no very unusual large fire, about half-past ten Saturday night I went to bed. Clemie spoke to me once or twice during the night, saying they had quite a fire in the city. Still I did not think of turning out and went to sleep. About one o'clock Sunday morning our door bell rang and I got the word from Chaffee's man that they were having a tremendous fire and that it was working down towards the store. Mr. Chaffee had to send out to the house for his safe key and so by chance I was notified.

I at once dressed, took Nat and the revolver and walked from Somerville to the store, found some five or six of the clerks there. We at once went to work and packed up all the books and papers and got them near the front door read for immediate delivery. We then set about packing in trunks the pocket knives, razors and any cutlery, plated ware and a few articles that were not too heave and had the most value to them.

I sent a boy out to South Boston for Dana when I first go into the city and saw what a desperate fire we were having and had just got the trunks containing the papers loaded on a team loaned me by the kindness of neighbor Chaffee. By this time the fire was getting uncomfortably near but I climbed in the store through one of our front windows together with some of the clerks and we packed up a few more things. By this time, our street was completely blocked up with teams and I had but little hope of being able to move the goods. The Pearl Street house was a sheet of flame from the cellar to some twenty feet above the roof. They were blowing up buildings all around us and it was getting pretty hot. We concluded to retreat, which we did in good order. Our store key was with one of the boys out of town and our front door was locked all the time we were to work. We closed our shutters so that the thieves could not see that we had vacated, left our gas burning and then waited outside the store and kept guard.

Soon the fire lapped over from the Pearl Street house to our block and gradually got well hold of it. We had a drug store two doors above us. As soon as it got into that I did not think there was a ghost of a chance, in fact when it first lapped over from the opposite side of Pearl Street I was certain we were doomed. We stayed by the store until it was well in flames and then left for home. It was a pretty hard experience for Nat. He had walked in with me from Somerville and was in the store until around 8 Sunday morning.

Dana was fortunate enough to engage a store Sunday up on Milk Street upstairs, having our counting room on the third floor and our stock for the present (while rebuilding) on the 4th floor. We are having the carpenter to work shelving. We are ordering goods and in a week or ten days hope to be able to serve our friends to the best of our ability. Every wholesale hardware store in town was cleaned out. We have so far got the best store and stand of any of them, and believe me, we are farther along with our orders than any of them. We are pretty dead sure that some of the hardware houses will never get up again and we are hoping by getting an early start to be able to keep up in the race.

We are keeping a stiff upper lip, don't cry baby much, find we have got a pair of hands left and are going in again to try our luck once more.

Eleven o'clock, time I was in bed. Love to all. Remember me to all inquiring friends.

Truly yours,

N. D. Harrington

--

Following the fire, my great-great-grandfather often had to accept goods in trade. Once, it was a loose miner's cut diamond. He had the diamond made into a man's ring. Then, he passed it on to his children. This family story inspired yet another idea for Janeology - that of a diamond accepted in trade during the Boston Fire and passed down through the generations, connecting past and present.

But more important than the literary inspiration I draw from this letter is the pride I have in being related to this man. Specifically, this kind of man. It is this kind of grit and determination and putting one's back into work that built this country - and I think, truly, still exists in the hearts of men today, whether they are tapping into it or not. Does this nobility only present itself in the face of a fire - real or spiritual? Well, that's something to think about, isn't it? Maybe something to write about? (Oh snap, that's the theme of my next novel! Maybe yours, too?)

Wherever you are today, take a little inspiration from the past, won't you. - "We have got a pair of hands left and are going in again to try our luck once more."

--

For the final day of the Janeology Book-A-Versary, the prize is a brilliant illumination of another kind - a crystal paperweight in the shape of a diamond. But you have to leave a comment on my other blog - www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com to be entered.

It is simply stunning and would look very nice sitting atop your copy of Janeology - which happens to include an edited version of my great grandfather's letter. Leave me a comment with your email address to be entered in the giveway, open to U.S. residents only.

Peace

K. Harrington

author, Janeology

9 Reasons You Shouldn't Buy This Book

2009-04-06T14:41:01Z

Read my 9 Reasons post at the link below and leave a comment for a chance to win a FREE copy of my book. Giveaways all week long!

http://scobberlotch.blogspot.com/2009/03/9-reasons-you-shouldnt-buy-this-book.html

Cheers,

Karen Harrington

author, Janeology

www.karenharringtonbooks.com

There Will Be Cake!

2009-04-01T16:28:41Z

by Karen Harrington, author Janeology

My novel Janeology debuted one year ago and I'm celebrating. Hey, gotta have more reasons to have cake, right?

So here's your official invitation to the Janeology week-long birthday party on my blog - http://www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com

Book giveaways. Prizes. Thoughts about the debut year. Obnoxious self-promotion.

visit www.karenharringtonbooks.com to read an excerpt.

"It's a MAJOR award."

2009-03-27T16:27:15Z

It's a MAJOR award"
News! JANEOLOGY was just selected as a Pulpwood Queens Bookclub pick for July. As Ralphie's Dad said in A Christmas Story "This is a MAJOR award." The Pulpwood Queens have more than 200 bookclub chapters around the world!

You know how much I like you and I wish I could give you my book FREE so you, too, could read it this summer and then we could discuss it over coffee and donuts. I really do. Like most authors, I just want to be read.

Since I can't give everyone a free copy, I'm asking my friends and family for a wee little bit of help in getting JANEOLOGY in as many libraries as possible. If you request it in your library, not only can you read it FREE (a good thing in this economy), but then it will be there in time for summer reading...and in time for this major award thing.

So next time you are in your library, if the spirit moves you, please request my book. (It is already in 179 libraries nationwide.) And of course, this is a great idea for ANY book you'd like to read. On behalf of all authors across the planet, I thank you for your library requests. Like I said, we really just want to be read. (And loved and adored and respected and served copious amounts of donuts...but that's a blog of another color.)

Gracias. Danke. Merci. And thanks.

Author, Janeology

p.s. These people read the book and said it didn't suck.

- Mysterious Reviews
- The Literate Housewife Review
- Devourer of Books
- B&B Ex Libris