When TIME published Steve Rubin's series of photos (exhibited at the drkrm gallery in Los Angeles from April 28-May 26), my immediate thought was "I need to meet this photographer."

There is much debate online about whether his images exploit the subjects and perpetuate negative stereotypes about rural poverty, but I say no.  I see families, I see community, and I see connection in his photographs.  Most importantly, I see a piece of Maine that I recognize.

In fact, I see the Maine I wrote about in Show Me Good Land. These are my characters, or their cousins, without a doubt.  Rubin does with images, what I attempted in prose.

Well done, Steve Rubin.  Well done. I hope when you return to Maine, I have the opportunity to meet you.

Two things.  First, I will be at Kennebooks in Kennebunk this Thursday, April 12 at 7 pm.  Feel free to drop by, as the event is free and all are welcome!

Second, thank you to Howard Frank Mosher, who absolutely made my day.  I was gifted some wise professional advice many years ago, the gyst being that if I ignore the good stuff that's written about me, it makes any bad stuff easier to ignore.  Wise words.  Books and writing are largely subjective and life is short.  I am happy if you like my words, but it's okay if you don't.  (There are books I didn't enjoy reading, too.)

My book is little.  It was meant to be.  But, when my words prompt a reader to react in such a poignant way--when that reader really gets what I was trying to achieve, it feels fantastic.

Challenge:  Write a note of appreciation, because this made my day:

Maybe there's something about Aroostook County, Maine, that Rhetta Ballou,
the 35-year-old heroine of Shonna Milliken Humphrey's wondrous first novel, Show
Me Good Land, doesn't understand.  If so, however, I can't imagine what it might
be.  Though she fled "The County" 20 years ago, and currently works as a
university research fellow, Rhetta is still, at heart, "just an Aroostook County
girl."  So when her mother summons her home to attend the bedside of a cousin
near death from a methamphetamine-induced infection, Rhetta hops in her car and
heads north.  Most of Humphrey's story unfolds through Rhetta's recollections
during her ensuing 6-hour drive from Portland, up into the land of pointed fir
trees, rushing rivers, sandy potato fields, and endlessly intertwined families. 
 
What Rhetta comes to understand best, as, one by one by one, she confronts
her often-hilarious, yet always-tragic, memories of her incredibly extended
Ballou family, is her own inextricable ties to the remote northern New England
frontier that, like it or not, shaped her into the wonderfully
independent-minded yet emotionally vulnerable person she has become.  She may
have left behind the interminable winters, the mud season that passes for
spring, the hardscrabble labor of the annual potato harvest, the high-school and
small-town cliques and class-warfare, the family feuds, even her conflicted
feelings for Emmett Pratt, a decent and sensitive local mechanic now wrongfully
accused of a local murder.  But as she approaches the town she left two decades
ago, she, like Emmett, realizes that she is still "sewn into its fabric," and
always will be. 

This beautifully-written and deeply affecting novel reminds me of the
place-based, character-driven southern fiction of William Gay, Tom Franklin,
Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough.  Shonna Milliken Humphrey's Show Me Good
Land, for my money, is the most exciting first novel on the American literary
scene since Ann Patchett's Bel Canto.  I'll return to "The County" with her as
many times as she wants to take me back there.  Anyone who thinks that "the
novel," as we've known it for the past several centuries, is dead or dying
should read this fine book.  I loved every page.

For nearly twelve years, I have prepared at least one homecooked meal for my husband and myself every day.  This is my contribution to our shared life, and it is a task that comes easily to me.  I love recipes, and I love food.  My kitchen is tiny and cluttered, but it is a Zen spot for my creative energy. That half hour in the evening?  The one where I chop, bake, and sizzle while my dog is on guard for scraps that drop?

It is a mediation, of sorts.  I feel grounded, creative, and happy.  Also, I love grocery shopping.  (The trick is getting to the grocery store on a weekday, early afternoon.  People hate grocery shopping, I suspect, because they go at the worst possible times.)

So when Travis and I recently shifted roles, with me taking on more of our household's income generation, he offered to tackle the weekly shopping.

"Sure," I said.  "That would be awsome."

I never expected to miss grocery shopping as profoundly as I do, but there it is.  I miss it.  While it is interesting to see the results of his shopping logic (four pounds of fresh salmon?), I miss the adventure part.  What is on sale?  How can I change ingredients to meals?

As I grapple with the whole idea of gender roles, power dynamics, and a weepy nostalgia for the time I no longer spend in my kitchen, Travis suggests that I'm overthinking it. 

"As much as I love your cooking, I love being able to pay our bills so much more."

This is true, too.  I suppose.

Challenge:  What do you overthink?  What activities tap into your creative energy?  What chores do not feel like chores?