Unexpected iris and other flashbacks

A garden as untended, and unintended, as mine, tends to bring the unexpected. This iris, a rebloomer which not only never rebloomed, but never bloomed at all for several years suddenly showed up, and very welcome, too. Two views

There are two other rebloomers,  one a beautiful pale blue which bloomed exactly once and another I don't even remember the color because she declined to bloom at all.

The roses are booming though, out back

And another memory out of nowhere, speaking of sudden appearances, I remembered Fred Whitehead, my brilliant, eccentric lecturer in Old French texts at uni. Name came up in an unrelated search.

He was the editor of the text we used in the course of learning Old French. It's as different from modern French as Beowulf is from modern English. 

Here's a sample from that text, La Chatelaine de Vergi different spellings, different editions:

Une maniere de gent sont

qui d'estre loial samblant font

et de si bien conseil celer

qu'il se covient en aus tier 

etc etc

The gist, being a very modern one, considering this was written in the thirteenth century, unknown author, goes like this:

There's a kind of person who pretends to be a friend and learns all about your business then runs about telling everyone and making fun of you, and here's the story of a secret affair gossiped about, and disaster.

Which of us has never lived through that or seen it happen? Some of us even have relatives who do that, read the advice columns for examples!

Long ago, and I do have a point here, I used to teach community writing classes largely to educated young women, going mad at home with young children, who, however beloved, didn't exactly function as intellectual companions. 

The moms, and some older women convinced they could write gripping memoirs, seized on what I had to offer as an outlet for their thinking. Always wildly overbooked, the classes ran for years and quite a few published pieces came out of them. 

Eventually I began gently to discourage people from repeatedly signing up because I wanted them to function as independent writers, not as my students. This wasn't popular, since some folks were willing to depend on me forever! 

Anyway one technique I taught, to enable them to set up their own writing life, was to analyze features and stories and note which publications ran them. Then they could target their submissions.  

This was back in the days of dozens of print publications open to freelance and spec. submissions. I sold regularly that way, taught myself by observation how this worked, and passed on the info.

I'd bring  in to class features and stories I'd clipped, and read them without any indication of the source, and have students guess the source.

Now this was also the days of the true confession mags, full of fiction written in the first person, rattling good stories and snubbed by a lot of wannabes who refused even to buy them to study style, because the covers were lurid. They were missing a lot, out of a bit of snobbery,  wanting their friends to see them in classy mags, not in, clutching pearls, confession mags for working class ladies.

Anyway I wanted them to be writers, understanding that your market might be unexpected. At that time I was selling some great stuff routinely to the confessions, as well as to name brand places, paying my son's considerable medical bills from the proceeds. This was also the days when pre existing conditions rendered a baby patient uninsurable, but moving on.

So there were a few hilarious sessions of people guessing oh, Redbook? McCalls? No? True Confessions! Oh. They began to realize some really snappy fiction was to be found in those despised mags. I showed them how the stories worked, not to copy but to get the hang of rhythm and structure.

Then when they were pretty knowledgeable, I brought in the Chatelaine, classic old French text, very respected literature, and translated as I went, not explaining the origin. You were wondering when I would get to the point of mentioning it at all.. 

And half the class said, oh, that's so gripping and immediate, it must be from a confessional mag! It's wonderful!  You can't fool us!

Then I passed  around the book, in Old French and, as they puzzled over the weird language. explained nope, classic tale of love and secrecy and crossed wires and despair and hope. Cornerstone of early French literature.

Which shows that you get good lit where you find it, not always where academia says it's spozed to be. It might be in the canon. It might not. And then again, you have to be your own guide. And read, and write, your own choice, no matter what anyone tells you. Including me.

Also there's animal action in old stories. In the Chatelaine, a little dog is an important actor. Seven centuries before Toto.

Meanwhile back nearer the present

This is easier to get hold of than the Chatelaine de Vergi, (though that's online in translation, not very long, if you fancy taking a stab at it)  and another great Brunetti narrative.  

As always I recommend it both for excellent storytelling and incidental learning about history and food and languages of Venice and Italy in general.

Another day in the ragbag of my mind!