books – Caminobleu

Writing Down Rabbit Holes

I’m juggling so many projects that I haven’t finished any of them. My memoir Once a Pilgrim was nearly done when Kent and I walked on the Voie de Vézelay in May. But I haven’t returned to it. I’m uncertain about the structure. Should I end with the first half of my 2010 solo pilgrimage? Should I start a new book with the second half? Wherever I leave off, I want readers to wait breathlessly for the happy ending of my relationship with Kent.

I also created a children’s picture book based on We Ran Away to Sea, tentatively titled Home Sea Home. I thought it would be a great way to keep Kent’s book alive. Parents would buy the book for their kids and also read the adult version. Then the kids would grow up to read that one, too. I should have sent the picture book to a professional editor or queried it to agents. Instead, I showed it to other writers. Some loved it, and some had so many suggestions that I thought it would be better as a chapter book. That one is almost finished as well. One of the critics of the picture book said, “You’re not giving up on it, are you?”

Inspired by Facing East

When my friend, Evelyn Begody, published her second book, Facing East: Boarding School and Beyond, I was eager to read it. After finishing her kindergarten chapter, I was inspired to write about my own elementary school experiences. I wrote about Kindergarten and First Grade quickly and easily. But Second Grade was harder. The trauma I experienced with flashcards that year carried over to problems with math for the rest of my life. I’ve put the grown-up incidents in another chapter.

While writing about Third Grade, I really went down a rabbit hole. That was the year I fell in love with writing stories. While writing about that year, I remembered a collection of ribbon-tied, decorated books in the dining room bookcase. There is one for each year from grades 5 through 10, filled with my stories. Doesn’t everyone have a bookcase in their dining room? Mine has a set of encyclopedias to settle questions that come up in dinnertime conversations. They were a necessity before the Internet. Come to think of it, we haven’t looked at them since we got cell phones.

I’m still considering what, if anything, to do with those stories. I edited one about Santa, a mouse, a lonely reindeer, and a life-sized toy polar bear. They have an adventure with dancers in grass skirts on a tropical beach. There is also a witch and a volcano. I wrote it when I was 14. I’m sending that one to the grandsons for Christmas. I haven’t yet revisited Evelyn’s book, although Kent read it cover to cover. But I have finished writing about Third Grade, where the story-writing started.

Covers of the books and illustrations.

Childhood Writing

I’ve reflected on the kid I was all those years ago, and on how much the world has changed. I wonder where I got some of my ideas. Some are obvious, some not, and what, if anything, to do with them now.

I’m amazed by how many themes from those stories still hold my attention. They include the meaning of life, faith, irony, concern for injustice and the environment, and a love of travel. I was surprised to find neatly handwritten tables of contents with page numbers, and signatures with my full name. There are many illustrations. Linnea Hendrickson’s Freshman Folly of 1959 has a hand-lettered note: Copyright 1960 by L.M.H. Publishing House. All rights reserved.

The books include poems, jokes, limericks, and stories. In the upper grades, there are book reviews. My reading choices are revealing. As a freshman, I reviewed biographies of Nellie Bly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Hans Christian Andersen. There was also a biography of a pair of dancers who escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough captivated me. I became obsessed with Paris, although I didn’t get there until after I married Ed on my thirty-third birthday. Richard Halliburton’s New Worlds to Conquer (a book of my mother’s) fueled my love of travel and adventure. I read most, if not all, of Halliburton’s books. Who’s even heard of Halliburton today? There is a lengthy article in Wikipedia .

YouTube and Tiktok Videos

I have completed two videos from last May’s pilgrimage and many brief TikTok videos. Most of those were designed to bring attention to We Ran Away to Sea.

La Voie de Vézelay

Bourges and Chateauroux

Short TikTok Videos for We Ran Away to Sea

À Bien tôt! (Until next time! See you soon!)

Not a Christmas Letter (Maybe New Year)

After a long absence from Caminobleu, I am sharing two December morning reflections with you instead of my usual Christmas letter.

December 19, 2024

We have returned from a month in Egypt and Greece, where we immersed ourselves in the history of two ancient cultures that have influenced Western civilization for thousands of years. Yet, more than the ancient ruins and their mysteries, I was fascinated by the lives of ordinary people, the farmers and fishermen (we saw no fisherwomen) along the eternal life-giving Nile and the people still living in simple stone houses, much as their ancestors did on the small Greek island of Syros.

The herons, stilts, kingfishers, and small birds flitting through the trees and reeds along the Nile delighted me, as did the sunrises and sunsets. I was fascinated by the fishermen who rowed with clunky oars, usually two men in a boat: one young, one old. The old one handled the nets and studied the water, sometimes standing for a better view; the young one rowed, often in strong currents. I like to watch fishermen, perhaps because they remind me of my dad.

I loved the clear waters and brilliant pebbles on the Syros beaches, which reminded me of my childhood on Lake Superior. The autumn crocuses, struggling to bloom in the arid, rocky soil on the cliffs above the sea, brought back memories of autumn pilgrimages in France and Spain.

I photographed stones and waves on the beach and told Kent, “This is my happy place!”

We took a ferry to Syros, seeking quiet after the intensity and crowds of Egypt and Athens. Our six-day visit coincided with the fledgling Syros International Chamber Music Festival, now in its second year. Violinist Pinchas Zukerman was the “grand old man” among the performers and organizers, but the younger musicians, their names hitherto unknown to us, were stellar. We attended all but one of five performances in the celebrated nineteenth-century Apollon theater, said to resemble La Scala.

I was touched by the participation of school children and the somewhat disorganized festival structure (performances started late, people wandered up and down forever looking for their seats, buying tickets was cumbersome, and people clapped in the wrong places). I recalled chamber music groups from the University of Michigan performing in the school auditorium in my small hometown of Newberry, Michigan, when one affable female violinist slept on our couch and shared our small bathroom without complaint. My parents faithfully attended the performances, enjoying the rare opportunity to experience what my dad called “highbrow culture.”

For information on the Syros festival, the music played, and the biographies of the distinguished musicians, see: https://www.meet-the-violins.org/en/events

December 11, 2024

In October, we met Rebecca Reynolds at an author event she shared with Kent at Albuquerque’s Books on the Bosque. Although we’d just met, she cleverly used Kent’s decision to run away to sea as an example of an individual choosing to make a momentous change in his life. When Iwoke up this morning to begin reading the book, I found the first chapter of Thresholds of Change (Denver: Connolly Fox, 2024, so inspiring I stopped reading and wrote the following:

I am captivated by Reynolds’ use of the metaphor of the chambered nautilus. The nautilus creates new spiraled chambers as it grows, sealing each chamber except for one thread of living connective tissue called the siphuncle. As Reynolds describes it, “A core life-giving line that provides ballast and connects us to all parts of our lives, even those we’ve left behind.”

“The journey is what’s truly important.” Our experiences in life are not “over and done.” They are all connected.

As a pilgrim who sees my life as a journey, I like the concept of a living thread connecting all parts of my life.

I recall Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses.”

“I am a part of all that I have met.” These words mean more at eighty than they did at seventeen when I first read them in Miss Dwyer’s English class. I remember Miss Dwyer not only for what she taught but for her enthusiasm and implied belief in the importance of her subject matter. Through the siphuncle, the presence of Miss Dwyer and many family members, friends, and mentors connect my past and present.

At Miss Dwyer’s urging, we chose the final words of “Ulysses” as our Class of 1962 motto: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” (How many of you remember your high school class motto?) This morning, I reread the poem in tears because I, too, now look back “from that sad height” (Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night”) and reflect on the meaning and purpose of life from the perspective of old age.

Perhaps we live to love, learn, and grow in preparation for whatever comes next.

The dear friends I’m losing with increasing frequency remain part of my life forever. Sometimes, like this morning, my memories of them emerge through that life-giving core when they are least expected and most needed.

We have returned to a different America than the one we left. As the chaos and my feelings of foreboding intensify during this week before Christmas, I watch, wait, and pray for light to come as the world turns and the sacred sun returns.

“Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.”

“Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” – Tennyson, “Ulysses.”

Linnea and Kent at the Acropolis early in the morning

Links to the poems:

Poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46569/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night

December 29, 2025

I wish you all light, strength, and happiness in the new year. And thank you to all who sent cards in the mail. I will write to you individually.

Holy Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation to the VIrgin Mary, Athens, Greece

Please also see our JacanaPress.com blog for news relating to We Ran Away to Sea, which to our surprise and delight has recently earned three awards .

Why Is Route 66 So Famous?

The front page headlines of this morning’s Albuquerque Journal, “A Very Fun 60s Vibe” caught my eye. The lead story refers to the re-opening this week of the Imperial Motel on the “Mother Road” in Albuquerque, a renovated 1960s era motel, complete with its classic neon sign and “butterfly roof.” (Apparently it is not yet listed on hotel booking websites.)

A secondary article mentions a Route 66 Visitor Center at the top of Nine-Mile Hill that is being turned over to the City of Albuquerque from Bernalillo County. I’d never heard of this place, apparently built with pandemic development money and completed in 2023.

I mentioned the newspaper articles to Kent who wanted to know, “Why is Route 66 so famous? Is it the song? or the TV series? Why doesn’t anyone write about Highway 14?”

Me: “What is Highway 14? What TV series?”

I’d never heard of either Highway 14 or the Route 66 series that ran from 1960-64 and had its own theme song (not the more famous, “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” written by Bobby Troup in the 1940s” and first recorded by Nat King Cole).

Of course, I didn’t remember these details, but Google sent me to a lengthy Wikipedia article on the well-known song, and a separate article on the TV series.

From there it was a hop to a YouTube video featuring a couple of opening segments from the series with its theme music.

Meanwhile, the unsung Highway 14 that goes through Wyoming will be explored another day.

“I think it’s partly the song and maybe the TV series. It was the main road to California during the Dust Bowl. Let’s ask Jeanne!”

So, I texted our friend Jeanne Whitehouse Peterson, whose late husband David Kammer, did extensive research on the “Mother Road.” Jeanne is also the author of the children’s picture book illustrated by Kimberly Bulcken Root, Don’t Forget Winona

I’m already humming:

Well, it winds from Chicago to LA
More than two thousand miles all the way
Get your kicks on Route 66.

Jeanne replied:

David would tell you that:

(1) it’s important as the new highway system was east to west. Route 66 was meant to arc from the (rust belt) heartland ( Chicago), through the center of the country and on to LA.

(2) Easy then for migrants in Oklahoma to get to the “promised land.”

(3) Then the books, song and TV show because it became famous.

Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath? Wasn’t that set on Route 66? “Yes,” Jeanne said, “I think he used the term “Mother Road.”

See: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/back0303.cfm

I’ve found “Route 66” signs in far-flung places, including small towns in France and in a restaurant in Rome. I guess it’s true that “all roads lead to Rome.”

A route 66 sign along the Via Gebennensis in France

After Jeanne published Don’t Forget Winona, I became obsessed with the “Get Your Kicks” song and illegally downloaded at least a dozen versions from the now defunct Limewire and burned them onto a CD, which is now buried somewhere among many CDs (which reminds me, I took my Bose radio/player to a repair shop about 18 months ago, and last I checked about a year ago, it was still waiting for a replacement part). Wikipedia has an extensive history of the many recorded versions of the song, which will now be bouncing around in my head for the rest of the day (I’ll have to hunt for that CD or maybe I’ll just ask for it on Spotify).

A quick search of “Route 66” on Amazon brought up at least thirty-two books on the “Mother Road,” and did not include Jeanne Whitehouse Peterson’s Don’t Forget Winona.

Let’s get that keyword in the Amazon description somehow, Jeanne!

Now, maybe it’s time to take a ride or a walk on old Route 66 through Albuquerque.