I wasn\u2019t blogging in 2000 when the University of Arizona awarded me an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just call it war reparations.\u00a0 Those of you who\u2019ve seen me do presentations are well aware that in 1964 I was refused entry into the U of A\u2019s Creative Writing program.\u00a0 I was working fifteen hours a week in the English Department.\u00a0 When I approached the Creative Writing professor about enrolling in his class he said, \u201cYou\u2019re a girl.\u201d\u00a0 To which I responded, \u201cSo?\u201d\u00a0 He replied, \u201cGirls become teachers or nurses.\u00a0 Boys become writers.\u201d\u00a0 End of story.\u00a0 I ended up first with a teaching degree and later an M.Ed. with a major in Library Science.<\/p>\n
I need to mention that my Honorary Doctorate came via the School of Library Science rather than the English Department where, according to a recent graduate, they are still teaching students the art of writing \u201cliterary fiction\u201d as opposed to \u201cgenre fiction,\u201d or, as I sometimes like to call it, the literary equivalent of castor oil.\u00a0 (No, I have no strong opinions on the subject, and it\u2019s sheer coincidence that the crazed killer in the first Walker Family book, Hour of the Hunter, turns out to be a former professor of Creative Writing from the University of Arizona!)<\/p>\n
But I digress.\u00a0 This week Proof of Life is debuting at # 8 on the combined New York Times Bestsellers list for Hardback\/E-books.\u00a0 (I\u2019d rub that professor\u2019s nose in it, but he\u2019s been dead since before my first book was published in 1985!)\u00a0 And this week, while on a book tour, Bill and I spent three nights at Tucson’s Arizona Inn where I spent big chunks of those three days outdoors getting my steps.<\/p>\n
For those of you who have never visited there, I wish I were an artist and could paint a picture.\u00a0 It\u2019s is a true oasis, carved out of a wild piece of desert by an Arizona pioneer named Isabella Greenway, the widow of a copper baron named Jack Greenway.\u00a0 At the time she established the place as a home for gassed World War I soldiers, it was on the far outskirts of the city.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s in the center of what\u2019s called \u201cmidtown.\u201d\u00a0 It is a true oasis in the desert\u2014a place of lush lawns and colorful flowerbeds, complete with plenty of magnificent butterflies and hummingbirds.\u00a0 Brick paved paths wander between casita style buildings\u2014some with flat roofs, some with red tiles.<\/p>\n
All of the buildings are a deep, orangish pink.\u00a0 Not a bright pink, but more of an Arizona sunset pink.\u00a0 The shutters, door frames, window trims, and awnings are all bright blue.\u00a0 Most of the outdoor furniture has blue cushions as well, except for the Alice in Wonderland chairs around the ping pong table.\u00a0 Those throne-like pieces are comprised of a blue painted wooden frame with bright yellow cushions.\u00a0 Oh, and all the outdoor umbrellas are bright yellow as well.\u00a0 Much of the Inn\u2019s furniture, both indoors and out, was manufactured in the sheltered workshop Isabella Greenway ran for those disabled vets, one where she paid union wages all through the depths of the Depression.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s impossible to wander those manicured lawns past aged cactus, towering palms, and leafy mesquite trees without being grateful to be there.\u00a0 But while I was walking, I was recalling Bill\u2019s and my history with the Inn.\u00a0 In college, one of my friends was Isabella Breasted, Isabella Greenway\u2019s granddaughter, and it was with Isabella # 2 and her mother Martha Breasted, that I first visited the Inn for the first time while still in college.\u00a0 In the mid-eighties when Bill and I first stayed there together, we filled out our registration form and were agog to see that the form called for our names as well as the names of our maid, chauffeur, and valet!\u00a0 The registration form in use this past week wanted our names, cell phone numbers, and e-mail addresses.\u00a0 No chauffeurs or maids need apply.<\/p>\n
In the late seventies, when my father retired from the life insurance business, the then agency manager was planning on sending him off with a low-brow party of coffee and doughnuts in the agency office.\u00a0 I went around the chintzy manager and finagled a luncheon at a banquet room at the Arizona Inn when the menu was grilled red snapper.<\/p>\n
In the late eighties, Bill and I sat in the bar at the Inn one quiet Saturday afternoon, wondering if it would be possible for me to earn enough money writing books to support our family.\u00a0 Fortunately the answer to that question turned out to be a resounding yes, and he was able to retire in 1994 at age 54.<\/p>\n
Which brings me around, eventually, to December of 2000, and winter graduation where I was to be awarded my honorary degree.\u00a0 We had invited thirty or so people to come to the event, and we had booked rooms for all of them\u2014my parents included\u2014at the Arizona Inn.\u00a0 My mother, who had only a seventh grade graduation, was 86 at the time.\u00a0 My Dad was 84.\u00a0 They were both thrilled to be there.\u00a0 They drove the hundred miles from Bisbee the night before and stayed in one of the casitas directly across the croquet court from the dining room.<\/p>\n
Kids and grandkids who were flying in from Seattle had late arrivals, and I knew having the folks wait up for dinner with them was not going to work.\u00a0 I also knew that, their early evening meal usually consisted of hot cocoa, toast, cheese, and fruit.\u00a0 So I called up room service and asked for that to be delivered to them.\u00a0 The next morning at breakfast my mother said to me, \u201cThis is the nicest place.\u00a0 Do you know they deliver cocoa and toast to your room in the evening, and you don\u2019t even have to order it?\u201d\u00a0 I never told my mother that I had placed the order, and since we were paying for all the rooms and related charges, she was never any the wiser.<\/p>\n
And so, doing my steps at the Arizona Inn this week was like stepping back in time, sorting through fifty plus years of history.\u00a0 I may have been on a book tour and bouncing all over the country, but it was good to be back home.<\/p>\n
It turns out you really can go home again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wasn\u2019t blogging in 2000 when the University of Arizona awarded me an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just call it war reparations.\u00a0 Those of you who\u2019ve seen me do presentations are well aware that in 1964 I was refused entry into the U of A\u2019s Creative Writing program.\u00a0 I was working fifteen hours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,165,110,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tour-2","category-traveling","category-tucson","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-nw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1459,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458\/revisions\/1459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}