Tag: Inspiration

Going on an Architectural Adventure

Going on an Architectural Adventure

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

 

Just last week, we took off to Pasadena—a mere twenty-seven miles from home yet worlds apart. We go fairly often to appreciate the architecture whenever we get the chance, but our favorite season is the Heritage Weekend in October, when we tour the craftsman homes built by architects Greene and Greene between 1894 and 1922. Brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Charles Sumner Greene brought their degrees from MIT and apprenticeships from Boston to California to define a new style and a new word. “Bungalows” were not little shacks where Hollywood stars changed into their bathing clothes. No “Bungalows à la Greene and Greene were specific and of various sizes. In fact, the popular and famous Gamble House, completed in 1909 for David and Mary Gamble (of the Proctor and Gamble family), is an 8,000-square-foot home that is defined architecturally as a bungalow.

The Pasadena Showcase House of Design was built in 1902 and remodeled in 1922. At 7,300 square feet, it is slightly smaller than the Gamble house but in a totally different style now. The remodel was redesigned as a Tudor revival-style home, but architect Joseph J. Blick originally thought created it as a craftsman home for Gertrude Potter Daniels, who paid $15,000 to build it. It’s hard to believe!

Oh… that’s the bathtub in one of the redesigned rooms for the Showcase. It was amazing!

The Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts committee that sponsors the event contributes to arts and music nonprofits in Southern California and appreciates the 25,000 or so visitors to the Showcase every year. It’s a treat. You should go. It’s a fundraiser!

Information is here, and after 59 years of doing it, they have it down to a lovely and elegant science.

Enjoy!

A Deep Dive into US History in Boston

A Deep Dive into US History in Boston

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

I often feel like I should be paid for how much I “advertise” for Road Scholar. Like similar travel companies, the company has created the best of both worlds for people of a certain age and income. That is, they set about making traveling easy and educational at reasonable prices for experiences (three for us so far) that will remain in our hearts and minds as we travel this thing called life.

I need to talk about their six-day Boston trip in particular because it was all about the founding of our great country, the United States of America. Every morning, our group would listen to a lecture by Charles Bahne, a noted historian specializing in the American Revolution, that detailed different aspects of the times, the people, and even the buildings in place during our march to independence!

What I got out of the lectures was exactly how much of our country’s founding relied on lots of luck (besides the blood and fighting, of course.) That these particular men lived in this part of our country at exactly that time was a star-crossed, magical intertwining of events that defies imagination. What chances did these scruffy, determined misfits and miscreants have against an established world conqueror like England? The scrappy colonists were, at the same time, highly-regarded members of the 1760s society and sly, under-the-table, blackened-faced tea hurlers who were the Boston Tea Party celebrants. During that Tea Party morning lecture, we were there with the colonists, slinging tea. And we were all but “sitting with them” the next morning, happy as heck with innocent inside smiles hidden beneath quiet smugness. “We got ‘em.”

Stupid England

The English puffed themselves up in their stuffy egotistic Red Coats, blinded to the quest for freedom that gave our United States ruffians the power to overcome mighty England. And King George? Ha. He was a puffball of the highest order. Remember the play Hamilton? The song runs through my head now as it does yours if you’ve seen the musical. Dah da da dah dah, da da da da da da da, dah da dah. All right, then. It’s stuck in your mind now, isn’t it?

Bricks!

I am not sure anything says bricks like Boston. We saw bricks here, there, and everywhere,

Bricks and Barrels

Brick-y patterns define walls, walkways, and courtyards on campuses and around homes, government buildings, and parks.

We like clinker bricks, too!! We loved those rascally, uneven, wavy, and often blackened bricks that give chimneys and walls even more character.

On many tours, the spirits of Paul Revere, George Washington, Sam Adams, and Ben Franklin all but walked among us. We went to the churches, battlefields, and homes where history dripped off the walls or reached out from balconies and balustrades, farmhouses, and bridges. We closed our eyes to “hear” fevered speeches that started our patriotic blood stirring. Don’t you just love the United States? Well, if you don’t, you’re probably not an American. If you love America, you’d love the Boston story. It’s a good one, and I believe traveling in the United States can be just as exciting as other countries across the seas. Maybe more so.

 

Deep-Dive Traveling

You know, we’ve been on many of the types of tours that say, “If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium.” Those are fun too, for you get to see a lot of countries and cities in a one- or two-week span. However, six days in one city touches all your senses — the smell of the harbor, the feel of the bricks beneath your feet, the sights of battles and buildings, the taste of real Boston clam chowder, and the sounds of the wind rustling in trees that may well have been tiny saplings at the very spot you’re standing. Isn’t that cool?

If You Go

Don’t forget the cannoli! These sweet, filled pastries have people lined up around the block. It’s a good thing we walked a lot on the trip! And do try to catch a guided tour for part of your stay—even if you don’t go with a tour company. You’ll learn so much!

 

 

 

Inspiration for the Novel “Deathlist”

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

I’m often asked, “What was the inspiration for this novel?”

Well, pretty often.  Um, so. Hmmm. Okay. I’m telling you now that you’ve asked. Thanks! 🙂

Here’s my ANSWER: Every time I saw someone on the news or heard of a person dying that seemed especially odd (like a child, for gosh sakes, or someone sitting on a bench eating a sandwich and a tree fell on them, maybe), I began to form a theory that everyone had a specified death date. Death was not by chance, happenstance, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. God had it planned out. He kept track of it in a big database, which someone or other dubbed the Deathlist.

I still believe there might be one somewhere. How do you explain those little times when you were two seconds behind that huge traffic accident? Or, okay, on a morbid but equally mysterious level, why do some suicide attempts not work? Without bogging down my explanation with statistics, we can all report anecdotal evidence of failed suicides.

Then imagine that humans were somehow allowed to know what their death date was. That was the germ of the book.

Would you want to know when you’re going to die? 

I could know how much time I had to finish and publish the Deathlist. Write a how-to book about anything. (I’m not sure, but I buy a lot of those fix-me-please books, so I think I should write one!)

 

LOVE to have you take the survey and… oh yes, buy the book. 🙂

Deathlist FAQs

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

The novel Deathlist is on its way to an early 2022 launch. It’s a visionary & metaphysical book written as a satire with some pretty irreverent and funny depictions of the Holy Trinity. That said, it is not a lightweight book by any means. We caught up with author Kathryn Atkins and have transcribed our interview here to get you as excited about her book as we are.

1. What was the inspiration for this novel?

ANSWER: Every time I saw someone in the news or heard of a person dying that seemed especially odd (like a child, or someone sitting on a bench, maybe) I began to form a theory that everyone had a specified death date. Our deaths are not chance because God has it planned out, as he does our birth! He has to keep track of it all and I think it’s in a huge database that the characters in the book and I dubbed the Deathlist. I still believe there might be one somewhere. Next, I began to imagine that humans were somehow allowed to know what their death date was. How would knowing it change how we live? That was the germ of the book.

2. How long did it take you to write the book?

ANSWER: Eighteen years on and off. I found an early draft of this book in a drawer dating back to 2003. It came in and out of the drawer and many times the characters changed, but the Deathlist was always the driving force behind the plot.

 3. Who are your favorite authors and why?

ANSWER: I love Neil Gaiman. Terry Pratchett, who’s gone now. I like their quirky style, but with thoughtful, multidimensional characters, even if they’re not human, which comes through, I hope, in the Deathlist. I also like Christopher Moore, a satirist. I think the Deathlist stands up as a satire. But also, Amor Towles is a favorite because of his writing style. Rich. Deep. Experimental. There are so many it’s hard to pick!

4. You have published two collections of shorter works – stories, poems, and essays. What made you want to write a novel this time?

ANSWER: I wrote a novel this time because I couldn’t fit all the themes of it into a short story. Good and evil. Trust. Hope. Friendship. Life and death. Free will. It needed a longer character arc, and the scenes just kept coming. Plus, I feel very strongly that there is a Deathlist of a sort somewhere, and I had to write and finish this novel before my name popped up on the list.

5. In the story, Death (a female who loves designer clothes) is the main character. We learn right away that she hates her job and is not very fond of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Why did you make her the main character?

 ANSWER: The main character at one time was a young man, not a woman, and not a celestial being. At one of my many rewrites, a novel coach whom I respect very much said Death was stealing every scene. That’s how she became the MC.

6. We also find out that the Deathlist was meant as a memory crutch for God. Why did you make this somewhat of a satire of some important beings? And how does God not know all this?

ANSWER: The book is fiction. But on the other hand, there might just be a limit to what God wants to remember. Or, he might have other things he’d rather be thinking about. Like playing golf or something. And about making this a satire, Oscar Wilde said, “Life is too important to be taken seriously.” I felt the themes would more accessible and be easier to swallow if the book wasn’t too heavy-duty and preachy.

7. There are some odd things about Death. For one, she loves beautiful designer clothes, but for another, she has this horrible stench around her. Besides the fact that she has few friends, she also doesn’t know how she got the job of being Death or who her parents were. How did these come about? And why are these points so important to the story or the character?

ANSWER: Death dresses in expensive clothes to keep her from feeling so horrible about her job, which is depressing enough, but she rarely gets a vacation. She loves art, too. It’s another way to have nice things to offset her gloomy job. As for the smell, it has always been with her. It’s the stench of death and it drives her nuts. It’s a metaphor for a flaw that she sometimes has control over, but most times not. It’s part of her character arc, as is her quest to find out who her parents were and why she had been assigned such a thankless job.

 8. The story takes place in Heaven, Hell, the Garden of Eden, and New York City. And it’s in the future. What made you choose these unusual settings for your novel?

 ANSWER: The story starts in Heaven. Death and the Trinity are there as is the Deathlist. When the devil enters the scene later in the book, another POV character, Ariadne finds herself in hell as the result of her actions. The Garden of Eden is where Death goes to make some huge plot-driving decisions. New York City is where Death meets Ariadne, a website designer and the other POV character in the book. NYC is also the location of the book’s climax. It had to be New York. Everything happens there. The book is set in the future because, well, it could still happen, but also, it gives a slight authenticity to a dystopia that we could face if science progresses as it’s heading now. 

9. The devil is pivotal to the story. Hasn’t the idea of God and the devil, good and evil been done too many times?

ANSWER: It’s been done a lot because the battle between good and evil has taken place since time began. The tension between the two at the edges of life and death and within and among literature and the arts, sports, and politics, war and peace cannot be overdone. It’s life. As a religious person, God and the devil exist. For other people, God and the devil are convenient personifications of good and evil. Each has the letters of the words in each name. Go_d and the _evil.

10. Do you have a favorite character?

ANSWER: I love them all. Death is me and she’s not. The Holy Spirit is another favorite. He’s a clotheshorse and cares for Death and Ariadne both. I like Ariadne because she’s got attitude. I do not like the devil. I do like Forceps, a nerdy tech angel in Heaven with a lopsided wing who is scared of Death, but he ends up being a good guy and helping her.

BONUS QUESTION: What are you working on next? 

ANSWER: I’d like to write a non-fiction full-length work the next time. I’m thinking of a biography of a woman who is a role model for me. On the other hand, I would also like to write a musical. I don’t know—something on the order of “West Side Story.” Or a book about coffee!