Blog | It's a Writing Life

Paris in Spring: The Big Red Bus Tour

During the same trip to Europe that Bill, Tina and I took back in mid-March 2011, we also spent two days in Paris, in addition to our time in London.

Our first morning in Paris brought warm weather and sunny skies. Bill headed off early to meet up with business colleagues at a conference where he was scheduled to make a speech. Tina and I decided it was a great day to take the Big Red Bus Tour. It’s a hop-on, hop-off affair, featuring nine first rate tourist destination stops in Paris: the Tour Eiffel, Champs du Mars, Musee du Louvre, Notre Dame, Musee D’Orsay, Place de l’Opera, Champs-Elysees – Etoile, the Grand Palais and the Trocadero. There is no way anyone could cover all these sites in one day, so we cherry picked our targeted destinations.

Marianne and her sister Tina in the Jardin de Tuileries, Paris – Source: Family photos

We settled in on the top row of the bus. I was prepared to snap shots of important Paris destinations that were material to my research about Mom’s war years. Tina shared with me a picture practice advocated by her husband, Brian: have a person you know in the photo, even if the person is tiny in relation to the shot. It’s a lot more interesting. I actually agree, but this was going to be difficult when Tina and I started “suggesting” what we should do for the photo. The conversation could get out of hand.

“Stand there, no there!” Continue reading “Paris in Spring: The Big Red Bus Tour”

Shepherd Market, London

In 2011, Bill had a business trip to London and Paris and asked if I would like to come along. “Bien sur,” I replied, and quickly figured out how I would extricate myself from daily life at our house in Connecticut.

By sheer chance, I mentioned the trip to my sister, Tina. It turned out that she had a free ticket to fly anywhere in the world that was in danger of expiring, the result of a cancelled flight her husband Brian experienced the prior year. I asked if she’d like to join us on our upcoming trip and she replied, “Bien sur!” Kismet!

Sheperds House, Mayfair, London, where Mom lived in 1944-45 – Source: Family photos

A lot of great stuff happened on this trip. This was the real beginning of my book journey, and the research behind writing the story of my mother’s WW2 work for the Office of War Information (OWI). I’ll report on the other parts of the trip in additional posts.

On this day in London, March 16^th, 2011, we planned to visit Shepherd Market where our mother lived during her time in London from March 1944 – March 1945. Continue reading “Shepherd Market, London”

The Beach House Bookshelves

Just about my favorite place in the whole world is our family’s beach house in Rhode Island. The minute I walk in the door, all I can think about is getting to the beach, seeing family and friends and relaxing in a house that has a lower threshold of responsibilities (at least during July and August).

During a brief visit in the late 1950’s, my parents quickly fell in love with the ocean, the beach, the pond, the people and the tempo of a Quonnie summer day. They decided to build a cottage and set down roots there. They lived the summer dream for the next fifty odd years, until they could no longer make the trip.

To my great joy and relief, the very first time my future husband visited Quonochontaug, he immediately recognized its charms and announced, “I like it here.” With that, he opened a book and happily passed an afternoon reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. It was a window into the future.

A day at the beach with a good book is one of the finer elixir’s in life. Better yet, after a day of fun, a nice dinner and feeling the pleasant effect of a full day and perhaps, a bit of wine, a good read at night is one of my greatest creature comforts.

Our current house features the new mixed in with the old. It was built in 1978, and not much had been changed over the years, Continue reading “The Beach House Bookshelves”

Lifelong Friendships

My mother created many lifelong friendships during her time working for the OWI in New York, London and Paris. Three of them, among others, were her colleague Margaret McElderry, the Cornet family in Paris and Katherine Harding in London.

Margaret McElderry

A central character in the book, Elsa Sparks, is based on Margaret McElderry, a well-known children’s book editor and publisher. Marg, (with a hard “g”), as my mother called her, was a regular presence at our house. For many, many years, she would arrive with gifts of her newly published books for the five of us children. My sisters, who are a bit older than I am, received early copies of The Borrowers when Harcourt, Brace published the volume in the United States in 1953. All those books are still in our various library shelves.

Mom and Marg would meet for lunch or dinner a few times each year and when possible, enjoy a weekend Continue reading “Lifelong Friendships”

My Research Quest

One of my interests in writing my yet-to-be published book, The French Desk – A Brooklyn Gal’s Journey into Wartime Propaganda, has been to tell the story of my mother’s life experiences before she was married. During WWII, she worked for the Office of War Information from October, 1942 – August, 1945. I always felt the propaganda work she was involved with had a very interesting side, and one that I did not read about or see portrayed in books and movies all that much.

My other idea was to present the story from someone who was not way up, or even up, in the chain of command. As a Katherine Gibbs trained executive secretary, who happened to be a college graduate with a year of study abroad and fluency in French for good measure, my mother was qualified for more than secretarial work which is exactly what happened.

Dr. Jerry Bruner (1936) – Source: Wikipedia

Still only in her mid-twenties, she was moved from Clerk-Stenographer upon hiring to Junior Research Analyst to Junior Field Rep to Assistant Field Rep to Chief of the Speakers Bureau at the USIS in Paris within a two-year time frame.

After reading all the letters, I thought her personal experiences were interesting enough. Really, a book could be written about all that. But I liked the angle of the propaganda work and thought the combination would be a fun read. Little did I understand what I was taking on.

One of my earliest outreaches was to Dr. Jerome Bruner, an American Psychologist who had worked with Continue reading “My Research Quest”