What ever happened to radical feminism? I think I know.

Truth in writing requires me to preface my reflection on writer-director Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister with a disclaimer. I am 1.5 generations removed from the film's protagonists. My right to an opinion on these Gen Y'ers derives from my having gotten a late start on parenting and, therefore, my two daughters are still in their late twenties--as are most of their friends, both male and female.

Halfway through the film, breathtakingly filmed in Washington State's San Juan Islands, I gave up trying to like what I was seeing. I opted instead to study the film as a sociological commentary. The question that kept nagging at me was, "Fifty-plus years after the rise of radical feminism (so-called "women's lib") in the United States, how is it possible that educated professional women still expect and accept so little of the men they partner with?"  

Iris (Emily Blunt) is madly in love with an immature and  self-confessed loser named Jack (Mark Duplass). In a key scene, Jack admits to Iris that he is nothing but a waste of any woman's time. That's just who he is and that's all Iris is ever going to get from him. Instead of fleeing to catch the next ferry back to Seattle, Iris melts and accepts his non-offer. What she is really saying yes to is being little-boy Jack's mother for the rest of his life. 

Oh, yes, there a bit more to the story, but that's the bottom
line--literally, the bottom.

I left the theater shaking my head. My main worry is that this film might represent the true state of single young women in America today. Has women's lib failed so miserably? Have women given up demanding equal status with their men? Have they given up on finding truly co-responsible life partners? 

What is correspondingly fascinating about all this is that this film arrives amid the Vatican's current inquisition against Catholic religious women (sisters/nuns) in the U.S. At the heart of the churchmen's fear is that these brave women have become "radical feminists" (read 'uppity,' demanding that the "boys" in their faith community grow up and be men!). I can only conclude from my viewing of Your Sister's Sister and the hierarchy's desire to purge strong women from spiritual leadership, that Roman Catholic nuns are America's last-standing daughters of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. God, bless them!

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Alfred J. Garrotto's most recent novel is The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story.

Where Has All the Wisdom Gone?

The whole month of May has gone by since my last post. I've tried, but finding big-stage wisdom on the edge of summer during a presidential campaign is nearly impossible. Normally, I can turn to people of faith for wisdom, especially within my own tradition. Not this time. Wisdom is not strident, yet "loud and louder" is all we too often get from religious leaders in the U.S.


So where does sanity reside in the late spring of 2012? Let me toss out a few rays of hope I cling to on these overcast days: Stephen Colbert, the American women religious, National Catholic Reporter, US Catholic Magazine (print and online), Fr. Richard Rohr, Sr. Joan Chittister, Fr. Brian Joyce and the people of Christ the King Parish, Jean Valjean and Bishop Charles Myriel inVictor Hugo's Les Miserables, and--of course--my wife Esther, a truly wise woman.


I invite the readers of this blog post to add their own wisdom sources to mine.

The Circle of Life

I'm the "little Italian kid" on the steps
in Butch Minds the Baby  (1942),
co-starring Virginia Bruce.

My first paid job was was as a movie extra in 1942. I was seven years old. Whenever Central Casting needed  Italian-looking kids, my dad got a call. Either my sister Natalie or I were in demand. The photos to the left are proof (unless you can't believe I was ever that cute).  World War II gas rationing destroyed my film career, so I'll never know what might have been. 

Yes, that's little Al at the extreme lower-
right edge of the frame. Co-starring  (with me)
were, left to right, Fuzzy Knight. Broderick
Crawford, and Dick Foran.

Long past fitting the description of "little Italian kid," I treasured my  Central Casting card. Life has taken me on a winding journey, since those bright-light and good pay days ($25 per diem in post-Great Depression dollars). I went from sound stage to  peddling peanuts on Santa Monica beach. From there to the Catholic priesthood, followed by marriage and parenthood. In my forties, I launched a career as a professional writer/editor, beginning with features for periodicals. I then got more ambitious, moving to book-length fiction and nonfiction. Not until my tenth book and most recent  novel (my sixth), The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story, did my work attract any broad-based attention.

Looking back, 7 must be my lucky number, indeed. Having retired from acting at that age, I find myself--in my 70s--I am currently in discussions that I hope will lead to optioning SOF, for production as a feature film. What Elton John wrote about the circle of life in The Lion King is really true. Life journeys often end where they began. 

Easter: Life in the Silence

[Disclaimer: I am not a pet person, so the following won't contain much scientific data or insight.]

Two weeks ago, five caterpillars moved into my office--rent free. They're part of a mail-order nature project my wife put together for our 4-1/2 year-old grandson Dominic. As soon as those little guys greeted the sunny  kitchen light streaming into their plastic container, they received new names. Dominic identified them as Nikki, Dom, Dominique, Penny, and Caleb. And I really think that he alone could tell who was who, as the days progressed. We chose my office for their greater habitat, because my computers are on all night and generate some warmth on chilled Northern California nights.

The caterpillars arrived tiny and skinny. The three of us  watched in awe as they practically doubled in size every day, consuming chunks of poop-like 'food' from the floor of their container. A week later, we had five long, fat caterpillars who each could stretched from the bottom of the cup to the lid (their evolutionary destination). After a lot of up-and-down trips to check out the best locations for their crusted, enclosed chrysalises, the day came to attach. That was our signal to make the transfer to their mesh habitat.

So, here we are on the Vigil of Easter, watching the 'lifeless' chrysalises, waiting, knowing that behind those little  hardened cases, an amazing transformation is occurring. Five fuzzy caterpillar bodies are growing wings that, when strong enough, will burst the walls of  their tombs and fly into a new and world-brightening stage of existence as Painted Lady butterflies (even the guys among them). 

What a wonderful reminder of the meaning and joy of Easter!


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Alfred J. Garrotto is the author of The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story.

Writing in the House of Dreams

British author Jenny Alexander has posted the story of how 

my novel, The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story, was 


'conceived.' Read it now at her blog, "Writing in the House 

of  Dreams." And tell me what you think. I've invited Ms.

Alexander to be my guest on this site and she has graciously

accepted the invitation. I'm looking forward to having her 

share about the wisdom of dreams and their importance in 

our lives. 



(c) 2012 by Alfred J. Garrotto

Inviting Readers to Rewrite My Stories

This post first appeared as a guest blog on the site of mystery writer, Camille Minichino, "The Real Me."  I am happy now to bring it home for my readers here to share.

As an author of fiction who writes for publication, I hold my stories lightly when I share them with my readers. I try not to be too possessive or caught up in “will they get it?” It has taken time, but I have come to understand that no two persons reading the same book will read it the same way, let alone imbibe the author’s precise intent. The same is true of film and the performing arts. No two movie goers interpret the same film in exactly the same way.

I’ve known this all my life as a reader and film lover. Now that I am on the other side of the artistic process, I am aware that I must let readers ‘rewrite’ my novels, find their own interpretation, and apply them to their own lives. I am no longer caught up in whether they “get” my story. Once out of my hands, it becomes their story.

The following “Aha!” passage in Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman made this insight click for me: “Once readers put a text in other words, they have changed the words. This is not optional when reading; it is not something you can choose not to do when you peruse a text. The only way to make sense of a text is to read it, and the only way to read it is by putting it in other words, and the only way to put it in other words is by having words to put it into, and the only way you have other words to put it into is to have a life, and the only way to have a life is by being filled with desires, longings, needs, wants, beliefs, perspectives, worldviews, opinions, likes, dislikes—and all the other things that make humans human. And so to read a text is, necessarily, to change a text”(the underline is mine).

Now, I look forward to readers’ interpretations of my stories. I  especially enjoy having someone discover a level of meaning beyond my conscious intent. Recently, I received this message in an e-mail from a reader: “The value of The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story is in it’s real life application to modern-day sainthood. In their day, all of our martyred saints’ lives (and deaths) would have been every bit as gruesome. In a sense, not to die and to live through it, may be even more brutal to the human spirit. Yet these two saints do survive.” That’s more than I had in mind when I wrote the book, and I am grateful to this reader—and others—for helping me to better understand my own stories.

(c) 2012 by Alfred J. Garrotto

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The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story is available in paperback and all e-book formats.

Guest Blogging at "Camille Minichino--The Real Me"

Today I have the privilege of guest blogging at "Camille Minichino--The Real Me." I hope you'll visit as I muse about the need for authors to let go of their stories once they share their creations with the universe. My understanding is that every reader becomes a co-author with the original writer. I hope you'll take a moment to read my short reflection and comment with how you see this process working--as a writer and/or reader.

Alfred J. Garrotto

The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story

Guest Blogger: Mystery Writer Camille Minichino

I am pleased to welcome my friend, colleague, and renowned mystery writer Camille Minichino, who today launches her third series with, The Probability of Murder. Writing as Ada Madison, she introduces her latest sleuth, college professor Sophie Knowles. 


It's an honor to have Ada Madison stop by at "The Wisdom of Les Miserables" as she continues her whirlwind launch-day blog tour. Get the full scoop about Camille/Ada, her noms de plume, and her crime solving protagonists on her website.

Small Truths, Great Truths

Where do you go when you need wisdom and a good quote? To a Nobel physicist, of course. Niels Bohr, born the year Victor Hugo died, and a pioneer in atomic structure, kept me up all night wondering about this observation. 

I thought blogging about it might help, or at least spark a good debate:

“There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.”

 It's clear how this works for a small truth. It's Monday, March 12, 2012 is a small truth. "It's not Monday, March 12, 2012," is clearly false, at least for a day. Small truths are simple, and often temporary, it seems: He's tall. I'm hungry. It's freezing outside.

What about the great truths? Say, one of the great truths of the Bible? In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

What would be its opposite? That the heaven and the earth created God, for example?

Now I get it. This fits in with my understanding of Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality, 1929): "It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent."

Who's to say which of these statements is the truer? They're both great truths. We can live wisely by either one.

 I'm reminded of an old cartoon where the dialogue goes like this:

Character 1: "Do you think humans on earth are the only intelligent life in the universe?"

Character 2: "Either way, it's a sobering thought."

I'll have to admit, for words of wisdom, cartoons are a close second to physics.

*  *  *

Alfred J. Garrotto is the author of the suspense novel, The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story.

The Wisdom of Being Woman

My ongoing search for wisdom has led me to a welcome an important discovery. Meditation on Woman by Aline Soules is a book of poetic essays that represent some of the deepest wisdom and insight I have ever encountered. I first read these meditations in draft form as part of a critique group of professional writers. I knew right off that I was in the presence of a marvelous, deep-spirited writer. I also realized that I stood at the door of a human mystery that I would never fully comprehend. When Aline invited me to write a cover blurb for the book, I accepted the task with humility and great pleasure; also with a measure of self-doubt about my ability to put into words feelings that seemed to defy adequate expression. 


I've learned that unworthiness can slow my response, but rarely has it stopped me from plowing ahead. So I wrote:
“Discovering Aline Soules’s Meditation on Woman is like chancing upon a long-hidden, primal road map for exploring the profound mystery that is the female spirit. How awesome it is to be invited into the raw complexity of woman’s aspirations, failures, and triumphs. Every man who cares about a woman at any level of relationship will come away enriched and grateful.” 


This is a beautiful book overflowing with joy, pain, and great compassion. Page after page from beginning to end, it speaks truth to the human spirit. I recommend it for all women, young and old--and for the men who love them.

*  *  *

Author-poet Aline Soules blogs at "My Creative World" 


Alfred J. Garrotto is the author of The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story.

Guest Blog: The Wisdom of Journaling

I am pleased to welcome B. Lynn Goodwin to my blog. Lynn is the author of You Want Me To Do What? – Journaling for Caregivers. With more and more mid-lifers and retirees involved in the care of aging and ailing family members, we  find ourselves needing to pay attention to our own mental and spiritual well-being. Lynn has helped many caregivers grow in wisdom through journaling and gain thereby a greater measure of healthy equilibrium.

Why Would a Caregiver Journal?

Journaling saves lives. It allows writers to vent, process, discover, and sometimes rejoice. It provides a safe place to examine your life. It’s especially helpful for anyone caring for a parent, spouse, or special needs child. 


If you are a caregiver, you spend every spare minute driving to medical appointments, stopping at the pharmacy, cooking, answering questions, paying bills, and probably helping with matters that used to be private. Journals give you a place to analyze, finish a thought without interruptions, and celebrate.

I was a caregiver for my mother. Then and now my journals have always been

o       A record

o       A place to say how I really feel

o       A place to explore what I truly mean to say

o       A place to find story ideas

o       A place to resolve dilemmas

o       A place to make lists and cross off what I accomplish

o       A place to acknowledge what’s right and gain perspective

o       And more…

Sometimes I journal online, but more often I write my journals in longhand. I like the smooth flow of a pen on paper. I like the progress of moving from left to right, line after line, traveling down one page and on to the next. The rhythm of longhand soothes me. 


Not sure why you’d journal? Not sure what to say? Look around the room for a sensory detail—the way the sun makes a path on the carpet, the way steam rises off a cup of coffee, carrying the aroma of morning with it. Let one sentence lead to another. 


Send your judgment gremlins out on the patio. You can pick them up later if you want them back. 

Journaling eliminates mental toxins and deepens awareness. It lets the strong, sane, safe, healthy, hopeful parts of you emerge. Do not underestimate its power. 

B. Lynn Goodwin’s stories and articles have been published many places including Voices of Caregivers; Hip Mama; the Oakland Tribune; the Contra Costa Times; the Danville Weekly; Staying Sane When You’re Dieting; Small Press Review; Dramatics Magazine; Career; We Care; and The Sun.

A former teacher, she’s conducted workshops and written reviews for Story Circle Network, www.storycircle.org. She also writes for Caregiver Village, www.caregivervillage.com and InspireMeToday.com, www.inspiremetoday.com/.  She facilitates writing workshops and publishes Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com. 


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Alfred J. Garrotto is the author of the suspense novel,

The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story.