Adventures in Research
Quests for answers that take us to unexpected places
In this Issue:
Adventures in Research
November
Wanted: Cookbooks
Adventures in Research
A little over 43 years ago, right around this time of year, I stood just inside the door of a tattoo establishment in Providence, Rhode Island waiting my turn. The customer in front of me leaned over a table, his pants around his ankles as the proprietor sketched in the outline of something I don’t remember. I do remember watching the line of blood following the ink and the way the guy’s butt cheeks jiggled under the vibration of the tattoo artist’s instrument and how the victim’s eyes widened as the needle tugged at his college-boy’s skin.
I wasn’t just there to get a tattoo. I was doing research for the first-person feature my journalism professor had assigned. I had to do something. A classmate had jumped from a plane with a professional skydiver and the professor could not stop talking about it. In those days, it was still uncommon for a woman to get a tattoo, especially a young mother who, up to this point, strived to present herself to the world as a model of responsibility and respectability.
Besides, I’d always wanted a tattoo, something small and tasteful, a crescent moon entwined with a single rose. What I got was a moon that looked more like a lumpy banana and a daisy flower. It’s right there on the front of my left thigh, color long-since faded, the edges soft and blurring like ink starting to diffuse on a wet page.
I got an “A” on that assignment but never managed to sell the story I wrote to a publication. I learned a lot though. I learned what a tattoo parlor smells like, sounds like. I learned what happens when you’re on a budget and you wind up with someone who can whip off a daisy flower in his sleep but is completely flummoxed when confronted with a crescent moon. I learned that the unexpected outcome makes a better story than the expected one.
I love doing research. Not all of it is experiential, of course. When I am in the thick of a project, I spend a lot of time on the Internet or reading books, articles, or watching films or movies. I’m one of those writers who is in constant danger of drowning in information. The Internet is especially seductive. For Casualties I discovered and watched videos of leg amputations and learned the differences between the various prosthetics available to different patients with different health profiles and different insurance. I looked up everything about Jaguars, with a particular focus on the amount of trunk space in an XK8. I discovered rivers, towns, and topography in the middle of the country and studied photos of the main streets and highway signs because my characters were driving across the country and I wanted to know everything about their route.
Here, in no particular order, are some of the things I’ve gleaned over the years in the course of research for my current project:
Children as young as a few months old can develop bias but they usually can’t lie before they are three or four years old
Erotic romance writers work hard but don’t necessarily make a ton of money; the women who read them are usually 25-35 and have more fantasies and have sex twice as often as those who report not reading them
A woman may not be diagnosed with ADHD until middle age or later. The arrival of children and, later, menopause makes those symptoms she’s somehow managed all her life less manageable.
When I wanted to understand what girls sound like at age 9, I stumbled across videos and interviews with the artist, Aelita Andre whose genius, to be honest, escapes me, but watching this interview with her family prompts thoughts about the dynamic between parents and children.
When I detached from the Internet, I learned from shadowing two veterinarians and an experienced dog foster volunteer that removing a dog’s tooth is bloodier and harder to watch than the removal of its uterus and while euthanasia is handled differently depending on financial resources and surroundings all the bodies all end up in a freezer while they wait for the “disposal.” The disposal ranges from group cremation in anonymity to ashes returned in a tasteful wooden box along with a plaster mold of a paw print. I learned that even when the dog is not mine, I still cry.
I collect first names and last names from obituaries, phone books, and unplanned encounters. Manley Love is one gentleman’s name that will always remain in my memory.
Most recently, my research combined both experience and the Internet. I wanted to cut my hair -- just a trim -- and I wanted to make sure I didn’t screw it up. There are hundreds of videos about how to cut and color one’s own hair. The one I finally selected resulted in a half-dozen nips in my left hand caused by the scissors I wielded unsteadily in my right. Everything, it seems, is backwards in the mirror. Blood mingled with the layers I was trying to cut in my hair. I’m not sure when, but I suspect I will find a way to work this into something I write. Well, actually, I just did, didn’t I?
Research is a quest that begins with a question. Getting the answer can take a few minutes or several days. It may require nothing more than a keyboard and screen or you may find yourself lurking about the library when the tweens get out of school so you can watch how they interact, hopefully without causing a visit from a suspicious security guard. I’ve found that it requires an open mind, a willingness to be surprised and led in a direction I didn’t expect.
What have you been researching lately? Take a look at the last few Internet searches you did. What would they tell someone about you or what you are working on?
Long Reads
If you are looking for new questions or fresh ways to come at old ones, here’s a book I found interesting: The Book of Beautiful Questions by Warren Berger. I was intrigued by the suggestion that we can cultivate our curiosity and use questions that take us beyond the simple answers when it comes to making decisions and connecting with other people.
I also wanted to share an oldie but goodie from Joyce in North Carolina who has been raiding the shelves of her community’s club house while the library and bookstores have been closed. After reading the post “What’s a Woman to Do?” she suggested The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells. It’s loaded with interesting, likable women even if Vivi “wouldn’t win the mother of the year award.”
Short Read
And here’s “The 52 Stages of Insomnia” a short, and very funny, list of exactly what happens when I can’t sleep. The only item on this list that I have NOT done when caught it the claws of insomnia is #44. You? (I found this piece when I was researching cures for insomnia.)
November
It’s that time of year. The sunlight doesn’t seem to make the same effort it does during the summer. Dawn is later and dusk is earlier; the rays slant as though the sun’s eye is half-closed.
Even here in San Diego where tourists and transplants assume there are no seasons, we can tell the difference. Darkness nibbles at both ends of the day, the ocean gets a little colder, the drought-tolerant gardens are caught in that awkward stage between parched and bloom where things are mostly brown or green.
As I write, I am wearing a fleece vest and sitting next to a space heater. I know, it’s ridiculous. It’s 65 degrees outside and gloriously sunny, nowhere close to the inside mood I carry with me during this month which looks a lot like this etching by New Hampshire artist Chauncey Foster Ryder (circa 1920).
It doesn’t seem to matter that November in San Diego is a different creature from the one I knew in the Northeast, one that was “gray and brown and no fun,” as my son used to put it when he was young. I feel caught in transition between light and dark, heat and cold, youth and ...something older. This feeling will pass. It always does. In the meantime, am I the only one who feels this way in November?
Cookbooks Wanted
And now back, briefly, to research. I’m looking for help for an upcoming issue of Spark. Seems to me that every book on our shelves has a story behind it and no book has more backstory than the cookbook(s) we dip into on a regular basis. You know, the one(s) with the battered cover, or the index box full of scrawled-on cards, or binders stuffed with pages torn from magazines. Or maybe it’s the one your mother or grandmother gave you with scribbled notes in the margins. It could be a brand new one with pictures of dishes that are more fun to look at than make. Whatever your go-to source for cooking anything is, I’m asking you to share a photo of it along with a few lines about why this is the one you are sharing, what you like/love/hate about it, how your relationship with that book has changed over time (or even if you never really started the relationship). You can take photos of any part of the book - the cover, a particular page, a single recipe. Send them to me at elizabethmarro@substack.com. Thank you in advance!
That’s it! Let me know how you are, and what you are reading. If you have a veteran you would like us to remember on Wednesday, let us know. And don’t forget - all books mentioned here are available through the Spark Community Recommendations page at bookshop.org where every sale benefits local bookstores and helps us raise money for literacy programs.
Gratefully yours,
Betsy
P.S. And now… your moment of Zen: Animal Dreams courtesy of Jen, from New Hampshire
I love the fascinating things that you've learned through your research, the world is such an amazing place -