Malice: A Forethought, Part II

Sheila York
On the night table: The Question of the Missing Head, EJ Copperman & Jeff Cohen
(who are the same person)

Too bad there isn't a legal term Malice Afterthought. Or Malice After-anything, actually, as far as I can determine. 

So I have to settle for Part II as the title for my follow-up to last week's blog & my visit to the Malice Domestic mystery writer/fan convention over the weekend.

To recap, Malice (as everybody calls it) celebrates traditional mysteries, which are, by Malice's definition, those "...which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence." There is a traditional-mystery subcategory, called cozy, which would certainly add “no profanity".

Thursday, following the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Awards  Wednesday night, I took a midday train down to Washington DC. Leisurely, quiet – well, okay, I giggle-snorted most of the trip at comments from buddy Judy Bobalik, who is one of the funniest people I know and one of the biggest "bookies". You mention it, she's read it. Judy's been one of the movers behind several past Bouchercon conventions, including being co-chair of the 2008 BCon in Baltimore. 

That's Judy, fourth from left, hugging on Charles Todd (third from left) outside The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC at the launch party of the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook on April 27. 

Charles gave No Broken Hearts a rave review. I should be the one hugging on him!

When Judy and I weren’t disporting ourselves, we helped a colleague – whose name we will protect to preserve any dignity he has left after hanging out with us – download apps. I always enjoy helping people who know even less than I do about tech.

Malice is held each year in the first weekend of May in Bethesda, and you can ride the Washington DC Metro from Union Station to the Bethesda stop right under the hotel, so there's no cab fare, and this year I traveled light, having finally got around to buying a 22-inch bag, which is just the perfect size for those of us not encumbered by the need to wear more than 2 outfits all weekend. Of course, it won't hold all the books you want to buy written by all the terrific writers you want to read, but that's what Malice's shipping service is for! 

Thursday night, Judy and I went out to dinner, and our restraint, such as it is, lasted just as long as it took for us to spot a burger with whipped goat cheese on the menu. In truth, healthy eating is not something I can often be caught doing away from home. Then I collapsed into bed, hoping I would not be punished for eating more red meat than I generally get in a month. [I was not.] 

Alice writes a series about an ex-nun turned PI.
The latest is Second to Nun

Friday, I got up early and eased into the day in the hotel's lobby catching up with people I hadn't seen in a year, and meeting some new folks, including Alice Loweecey, who would be one of my Saturday panel-mates. Here we are caffeinating together.

Even ignoring the caffeine contribution, the rest of Friday flew by, with panels by Agatha Award nominees, and so I was left at the end of the day to deal with my requisite obsessing about my own panel. To distract me, my writing buddy, John Billheimer (John lives on the West Coast, but we exchange chapters for gentle critique), took me out to dinner and then to Eno’s in Georgetown, my favorite wine bar. Okay, I've never been to any other wine bar in Washington DC, but the first time I went there, a few Malices ago, I was having trouble reading the wine list in the dim lighting, and the server gently pointed out that the cell phone beside me had a flashlight. I thanked him. He bowed and said, "Sommelier and tech support." I was won over. 

Saturday started with the Sisters in Crime breakfast, overseen by President Catriona McPherson. How can a woman be that funny at 7:30 in the morning? (Pick up her The Day She Died, nominated for an Edgar this year.) 

Then, at 10:00a, my panel: Cozy Noir?: Private Eyes. Why had I been worried? How can a girl go wrong on a panel with Sara Paretsky, Elaine Viets, Alice Loweecey, Lane Stone, and moderated by Marcia Talley? The room was packed (thank you, Sara and Elaine!), and it was as if we were all old friends, easy give-and-take on the subject and plenty of laughs for the audience. 

The full-panel picture taken by the Malice photog won't be available for a while. Trying to get an amateur group shot before or after was impossible because of the crush of attendees wanting to chat. (My favorite kind of crush.) But here is one taken during the panel of me and Lane Stone (author of the Tiara Investigations series; we are sisters in hair color).

It was a glorious ride. Thanks, ladies, and especially to Marcia, who stepped in at practically the last minute as replacement moderator. And well done, Malice!

And while I was away for only 3 days:

Copyright 2015 Sheila York

A Bouchercon Photo Essay

I am in the midst of a quick turnaround between Bouchercon and Icelandic Noir.  Who knew writing books would be so strenuous.  In truth, I feel tremendously lucky to be attending these book festivals.  And especially now, at my ADVANCED age, to be part of such a welcoming tribe of talented and interesting people.

My time for the keyboard is limited, so today the best I can managed is these glimpses of what the last week was like.

My week began with a visit to a life-long friend, which included her grandson's
second birthday party and an unforgettably joyous reaction of the little guy to
her birthday gift to him.

The pre-B'con days included visits to LA's museums.  LACMA has on view a
fabulous exhibition of samurai armor.

  

We continued with the Asian aesthetic at Huntington Gardens and the Chinese
and Japanese gardens.  These are bonsai Italian cypresses. 

A pavilion in the Chinese gardens.

The view from my room at the Long Beach Hyatt

The MWA table featured a cut-out of our patron saint.  When
I happened by, friends Michael Sears and Susan Spann were
also on view.

My panel with the Murder is Everywhere bloggers: Stan Trollip, Cara Black,
yours truly, Jeff Siger, Caro Ramsay, and the other Michael Sears.

The panel on Asian mysteries, with Lisa Brackmann (on the right) holding forth.

Since I was on the Pacific coast and this is the sun over water,
you might think this is sunset, taken from my room.  But it is dawn !?!
And I thought the geography of LA was difficult to understand.

Annamaria Alfieri

Cons

Over the course of my checkered writing career I have attended a number of conventions and conferences, with varying degrees of success. The nicest things that happened at these gatherings were encounters with writers and editors who later became my friends, or who were my friends already. The most disagreeable things were snubs by people who weren't my friends (and never will be, if I can remember their names and faces), and also occasions when I screwed up so badly that I was like to die of embarrassment.


But all that is personal. I'm not going to talk about it. I came here today to talk about the uses of convention- and conference-going to advance one's career.

My agent used to give me advice about that. I arrived late at my first Bouchercon convention in Philadelphia, years and years ago, failed to tell anybody I was a published writer, and wandered around from panel to panel listening to people talk, profoundly impressed to find myself in such exalted company. My agent told me later that this was wrong. I was supposed to make an impression on people, myself, she said.

The writer who made the deepest impression on me that weekend was Walter Moseley, who was still relatively unknown, at least by me. Some woman in the audience asked him a completely silly, fundamentally racist question at the end of his panel and I saw him straighten his face and give her a civil answer. I loved the way he straightened his face. It only took a microsecond. This is what you do. You keep yourself under complete control, never letting on what a pain in the ass it is to suffer fools.

As years went by I learned to put myself forward more at these confabs, making a fool of my own self from time to time, appearing on panels, even moderating them when the organizers discovered I was willing. I wasn't bad at that, actually. One time I moderated a panel with Grace Edwards and I-forget-who on it, terrific panelists all. We met for breakfast beforehand to hash over the topic. At breakfast we were wildly entertaining. By the time we got to the panel the fizz was gone. The lesson I took from that was not to overprepare, merely to make sure that every panelist got a chance to shine.

So that became my style of moderating, read everybody's work, put some questions together to showcase each panelist, meet shortly beforehand to get comfortable with each other, and let 'er rip. Usually this worked fine.

It's hard for me to remember that not everyone is as easy as I am, or as hammy, in front of an audience. Once there was a panelist, an excellent writer, a successful writer still today, maybe even a nice guy under ordinary circumstances, who was so put off by what he thought was my casual attitude that he panicked. He convinced himself that if I were left in charge of this panel I would somehow torpedo his career. As if one bad panel could even do that. He must have had terrible stage fright. So he decided to run the panel himself.

First he switched the name signs to put himself at my left elbow. Then he stuck a list of his own questions in front of me, on top of my own set of questions. Then, as I endeavored to find my own rhythm for moving the panel along, he kept interrupting, poking at his questions with a trembling finger. It was kind of an ordeal.

But at least there were people watching us. Later there was the Bouchercon in some midwestern city where I met Donna Murray, lovely woman, excellent writer. They signed us up to read for half an hour in a room right across the hall from a panel with Parnell Hall, Joan Hess and some other entertaining folks. Not a single soul came to hear us read. The two of us sat on the dais chatting in front of an empty room as gales of merry laughter rolled across the hall from the fun panel.

As a result I said, "Ha!" when the organizers of a Bouchercon in Toronto offered me fifteen minutes to do whatever I liked. "Ha! I would have to tap dance and set my hair on fire to get any attention." Then I thought, "Why in hell not? I'll promise to do that, and maybe I'll get some attention."

I won't go into the logistical problems this presented, or the long weeks of practicing my tap dance. Suffice it to say that I came to the little room ten minutes early. There I found fifteen women watching the handsome Barry Eisler read from a work in progress, in which his protagonist took off all his clothes and ran through the countryside outside of Los Angeles, for recreational purposes, I think it was. The piece was extremely well written, very descriptive. I was impressed. So were the women. In fact after he yielded the stage to me they remained sitting where they were, stupefied by visions of Barry Eisler running around the chaparral buck naked, while I tap danced and set my hair on fire. One hair. I plucked it out and set it on fire. I have no idea whether any of them bought my books.

© 2014 Kate Gallison

Watch on the Hudson

Last week, I spent a few days at Bouchercon, the largest of the US mystery writer/fan conventions, held this year in Albany, New York, a couple of hours up the Hudson River from my house.

Four swell things happened up there.

One, I was assigned a terrific panel on amateur sleuths, with Catherine Astolfo, Kate George and M.K. Graff. Here’s a pic of me with moderator Nora McFarland, who did a tremendous job – preparation is the key to spontaneity (and lots of laughs)!

Second, Rose and Robert Knightly threw a buffet dinner for writers and readers at their lovely townhouse in Albany. It was the only location associated with the conference that did not seem to be uphill both ways.

Third, I discovered my opening line to the fifth Lauren Atwill mystery. [Book number 4 in the series is already cuddled up with the publisher, ready to go out next spring.] It’s weird how one line can generate so much enthusiasm to get to the computer each day.

Four, I was able to share with an audience of mystery fans a portion of the screenshow I've created for presentations at libraries. Called “You Can’t Put That in the Movies”, it’s about the Production Code censorship in Hollywood in the Golden Age of Film. [I blogged a bit about the Code back on April 25.] It’s always good to get your work out before an audience: I saw I needed to shorten it, to allow for more discussion afterward.

There’s one part of the presentation I’m pretty sure I’ll never cut: The Production Code vs. Watch on the Rhine.

Let me tell you the story, briefly (I promise).

The 1943 film Watch on the Rhine is based on a stage play by Lillian Hellman. Warner Brothers wanted to turn it into a movie, and had submitted a preliminary script for Production Code Administration (PCA) review as was required by the Code office. 

Spoiler Alert! Watch on the Rhine is set in 1940, when Europe is at war but the US remains on the sidelines. Its hero is Kurt (Paul Lukas, who played the role on Broadway), an engineer who’s been working in Europe and has returned to the US with his family to visit relatives of his wife (Bette Davis, who took a smaller role than she normally would because of her strong opinions about the subject matter). It becomes clear along the way that Kurt has been working with and raising money for anti-Nazis in Europe. When one of a network of operatives is arrested, Kurt’s determined to go back to try to free the man, at great risk to himself. The villain of the piece, a Romanian count called Teck, discovers all this, and threatens to go to the German embassy with his information unless his silence is purchased. Kurt kills him.

The PCA had some ‘suggestions’ for the final script. One in particular astonished and disgusted the playwright Hellman, and here’s part of the letter she wrote to the Code office. (I found the letters included here during research at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles.)

In the red-framed portion, she says “There is, however, one suggested change which I find deeply shocking. Your office says that, in order to have Teck killed by Kurt, it must be established that Kurt will be assassinated if Teck reports him and that, having killed Teck, it must be clearly established that Kurt has been finally killed by the Nazis.”

Yep, the PCA wanted Kurt to die.

Today in film, we grant vigilante rights to anybody who could even marginally be considered a protagonist. But the PCA took seriously its rule that crime cannot pay. Criminal acts – for example, taking the law into one’s own hands – were not allowed to go unpunished.

Here’s part of the letter Joe Breen – who was in charge of administering the Code – wrote to his boss, Will Hays, about the situation, no doubt in anticipation of the uproar that might occur if Hellman went public. Remember that in 1943, the US was fighting Germany in World War II.

He contends that in the movies under the Code, the law "can not be suspended, even when there is great provocation and even when we are at war." No matter the circumstances of a movie, no exceptions should be made.

And the PCA had the last word: they had to approve your script and your movie.

How did all this end?

No matter that America was at war, and that anti-Nazis were risking their lives every day in Europe, the Code office could not bring themselves to allow a man to kill another outside the framework of the justice system, even in the circumstances set forth in the script. In the released film, Kurt does kill Teck, and Teck is unarmed when it happens. Although the killing is committed offscreen, it remains a shocking moment when this good man marches Teck away. Kurt returns to Europe and communication is lost (which would not have been unusual in time of war). He is missing, but there is still hope he could be alive, which is the play’s original ending. The compromise from the PCA was to allow the movie to retain it.

What Breen's (and the Code's) position ends up accomplishing of course is to make it very difficult to portray the risks faced by the anti-Nazi underground in Europe.

Lots of books have been written about Hollywood’s neglect of social and political issues beginning from the moment the Code was adopted in 1934, and about Hollywood's unwillingness to take an on-film stand against Nazi oppression, particularly of Jews, after it was clear what was happening in Europe with the rise of Nazism and even after America got into the war. While it’s true that Hollywood was careful not to offend the Hitler regime in the 1930s (and threaten overseas revenues) and that the PCA even allowed the German attaché in Los Angeles on occasion to review draft scripts during that period, the industry was largely held hostage, not by Europeans, but by the considerable power of what most of us today would consider extremist views inside the United States – racial, religious, ethnic. Studios were very reluctant to endanger their domestic business by opening themselves up to vitriolic charges that they were making "political" movies, advocating certain kinds of social change or promulgating before Pearl Harbor American involvement in what was often referred to as a "Jewish war" in Europe. 

Hollywood was not alone in kowtowing to the power of those who advocated these views, but some other American corporations went even further, with some of their leaders (see Henry Ford for one) publicly and enthusiastically embracing shockingly racist and anti-Semitic views.

But unlike those companies, Hollywood left behind a powerful visual history of what it had done. Or not done.


© 2013 Sheila York

My First Bouchercon

Connie Dial and Bob on Saturday

I attended my first Bouchercon because it was held this weekend in Albany, my adopted hometown. I’ve reached that time of Life when I’m not traveling to another city for any convention (except NYC, my real hometown, of course). Actually, Bouchercon opened on a Thursday and concluded yesterday, Sunday. Truth is, I went because so many writers from around the country and Europe would be talking, on 25 panels a day from 9:00 a.m. to 4:05 p.m., then interviews of Famous Mystery Authors and the Awards Ceremonies at night. The Anthony (from Bouchercon) and Macavity (from the Mystery Readers International/Mystery Readers Journal) for Best Novel went to my friend, Louise Penny, for ‘The Beautiful Mystery.’ I wasn’t there because by late Saturday afternoon, I was nodding in the easy chair in my den, wiped out.

I live just three blocks from the Empire Plaza and the Egg (the Hart Theatre) and the euphemistically named Convention Center underneath it—beneath the four-square blocks of stone pavement known grandly as the ‘Empire Plaza’ (In the finest tradition of the Egyptian Pyramids, a memorial to its builder, the dead New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who wiped out an untold number of neighborhoods, homes and mom-and-pop stores to leave us it.) If I sound cranky, it’s from humping up and back on my cane between the Great Book Room and the seven Lecture Rooms on the rolling institutional expanse of the Convention Center floor, looking like nothing so much as a Giant Underground Parking Garage. If you made the mistake of coming in from the Madison Avenue entrance as I did, you had a half-mile trek ahead of you. And the only watering holes along the route were McDonald’s-class. You couldn’t get a decent meal in The Hole and you had to be a long-distance race walker to find help above ground on the streets of Albany. If they’d asked me, I’d have told them: Albany’s a pretty piece of architectural history, and just as dead. Unless you’re driving.

Okay, I got that off my chest. Yes, I had a good time with my companions in the mystery field as my fellow-blogger Thelma Straw predicted. I had the most fun putting faces to the names I’ve long known; some good talks with PI writers; and a really fine nuts-and-bolts panel of women—Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, Jennifer McMahon and Moderator Clair Lamb—discussing the likes of unreliable narrators and shifting points-of-view in their novels.

And, of course, my own panel, Law Enforcement & Fiction. We were three ex-cop novelists with 77 years of policing among us: Moderator Colin Campbell, 30 years on the streets of Leeds, in West Yorkshire, England; Captain Connie Dial, 27 years in the LAPD; myself, with 20 years in the NYPD. That Saturday was my best day. It ended with lunch at Albany Pump Station (reached by car) with old friends, P.M. Carlson and Annamaria Alfieri (a/k/a Patricia King), whom I met in the writers group we formed 27 years ago in Manhattan and worked away happily in for years.

On second thought, forget all my bellyaching. (Old people are allowed to be grouchy, right?) I have this Bouchercon to thank for a good couple of days among friends.

© 2013 Robert Knightly

Tribal Rites of Passage…

Writing is often solitary. Sometimes you feel you're a secluded hermit. But at other times your membership in this society dictates that you join the other tribesmen in one of the various group rites of passage.

You get out of your holy sanctuary and take a bus-train-car-plane to stand in a sacred circle and chat with dozens-hundreds-thousands of your fellow tribe-scribes in a meeting-party-conference or world convocation.

You drink in the wine of talent and success. You absorb, soak up, imbibe all the wonders of this world that can't be really shared in solitude.

You indulge in handshakes, hugs, laughs, smiles, frowns - tons of human emotions rush into your whole being. You're thrilled to rub shoulders with the great gods of Crime Literature! You blossom with pride to see how much you fit into the rituals of your tribe. Their folkways become your laws.

You say a silent prayer—"It is good to be here!"

Within minutes after you walk in the sacred portals, you exchange brain waves with the lofty, the eminent, the exalted ones of the tribe.

Once there were only a couple of these powwows. In 2013-14 they are ubiquitous and omni-present. City after city, state after state, you can even go to distant lands to join the tribe!

You can link brains with everyone from the bestselling darlings of the literary world to the unknown newborns who have ventured into the tribal haunts for the first time.

As a member of the Mystery Tribe you can choose your poison:

• murder methods
• love and sex
• 10 commandments of mysteries
• perfect villains
• taboos, telling lies and thrills

to name a few...

Of course the world's leading Tribal Convention is called The Bouchercon, held yearly since 1970. Named for that noted tribesman, author/editor/reviewer , Anthony Boucher, it is known universally as " A convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction." This year , Albany, New York, becomes the tribal Mecca.

Whether you are a senior tribesperson or a neophyte, tell us your feelings and reactions to these tribal gatherings. Which one, where and why! And even suggestions for future conventions.

We'd love to have you share your thoughts, opinions and experiences with us at Crime Writer's Chronicle! Click on comments and enlighten us!

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

Leighton Gage, a Personal Remembrance

At Bouchercon in Indianapolis in 2009, Leighton Gage moderated a panel called Murder at the Edge of the Map. The other writers on the dais included Yrsa and Stan. Since my first novel, out just a month, was set not only far away, but long ago, I was anxious to hear what other, more experienced writers had to say on the subject of stories set in exotic locations. The meeting room was packed with people.

Leighton showed the audience a bracelet he wore, made by a Brazilian Indians, that was a charm to boost one’s creativity. I remember wishing I had such a thing, but I was too shy to introduce myself to Leighton, much less ask him where I could get one. Had I been more courageous, I have no doubt he would have sent me one, if not taken his off and given it to me on the spot. That was the kind of man he was: generous, giving, helpful, encouraging. But I did not know that yet.

Several months later, out of the blue, an email from Leighton arrived in my inbox. He had searched me out to tell me that he had read City of Silver as part of his service on the Edgar Awards jury for best first novel. He had been disappointed that the book had not garnered a nomination, and he was talking it up on internet chat rooms because he knew how difficult it is to get a good book noticed. He invited me to Murder is Everywhere to do a guest post. He stayed in touch, always encouraging, open, warm, and charming.

Then, one day, we found we would both be in Italy at the same time. He came with his friend Jes to visit me in Florence. We had two days to eat good food, drink good wine, and talk writing, books, the biz, life. In those days, Leighton learned of my husband’s Alzheimer’s disease. One of the things I confessed to him was that my weekends were lonely, when I was caring for David on my own and when the love of my life could no longer be a companion. After that, on Fridays Leighton would write me an email posing a subject for discussion, usually one having to do with writing fiction. Then, through the weekend, he would keep me company in long written conversations.

In the past few days, with comments here on Murder is Everywhere and on Facebook, it has become clear how many people Leighton befriended in just such ways. It’s impossible to fathom how he had the time to do all that while being a loving husband and father AND writing such wonderful books—one every year.

The people Leighton gathered around him are themselves a warm, welcoming, affectionate bunch. They are generous and bring out the best in one another. They are different from Leighton and from each other in many ways, but not in all the virtues one would desire in a colleague and friend. He brought out in others what was wonderful in himself. It seems a magic trick, but he performed it. Then he gave us one another.

My gratitude and love and admiration are Leighton’s forever.

Annamaria Alfieri

I Remember Liz… Elizabeth Daniels Squire

Bouchercon Sunday is a fitting time to recall a shining star of the mystery world, a first-rate American writer, who won a prestigious Agatha Award and was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.

Who left a huge hole at her sudden death in 2001, while on a book promotion tour to Alaska.

An esteemed leader of the Southeastern Chapter of MWA, national SinC, and Carolina Crime Writers, Liz began her career as a book writer in 1960 with Fortune in Your Hand, a history of palmistry, with intriguing data on hands of celebrities such as Dali, Sandburg, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Helen Keller.

PW wrote: "Forceful and engrossing!"

Kill the Messenger was her debut crime novel, about a newspaper publisher killed by cyanide poisoning in his bourbon and the menace of corporate takeovers.

Then Peaches Dann hit the world of mystery with a bang! A Southern amateur detective with a memory problem - who dazzled readers for several books: Where There's a Will, Whose Death Is It Anyway?, Memory can Be Murder, Remember the Alibi, Who Killed What's Her Name? and Is There a Dead Man in the House?

Kirkus Reviews wrote: " A talent to watch!"

I knew her as Dizzy, before I knew Liz the famous author!

A warm, gifted person, devoted wife of Chick Squire, New York Times correspondent, and the mother of three children, Jonathan, Mark and Worth.

Though she ranks high in the pantheon of America's crime literature, Dizzy's pride was in her boys.

One summer, when a group of us were having fun on the beach at Nag's Head, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, she announced — " I am the mother of THREE sons!"

Vibrant, witty, often self-effacing, Liz came from an illustrious literary family.

Josephus Daniels, her grandfather, founded the renowned Raleigh News and Observer, served as Secretary of the Navy and Ambassador to Mexico, and was a friend of Franklin Roosevelt.

Jonathan Daniels, her father, was a famous and prolific author, who also served as Press Secretary to Harry Truman.

A journalist in Beirut and Connecticut, Dizzy was also invloved in the family business in Raleigh.

She graduated from Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, where Barbara Bush was also a student, then from Vassar.

I remember Dizzy for many little things:

• Her zany earrings, her prized bargain clothes from Carolina outlets, her unique salads from her own garden.
• Her prim and proper front parlor in the house at Weaverville, next to the enormous and friendly kitchen, where we were all welcome from morning to night!
• Her genial hospitality, where friends brought their friends, whatever the occasion.
• Visits and walks by Connecticut lakes, Carolina beaches, Weaverville woods, shared birthdays in Manhattan, drinks on the lawn .
• Sharing the mystery galas, the Toronto Bouchercon, the Florida Sleuthfest, the Edgars receptions, the unique SinC celebration at St. Bart's Episopal Church in NYC, where she introduced me to a new writer in a blue silk dress named Annette Meyers, the MWA Symposia at Vanderbilt Hall at NYU.

One special memory - I wish I had a picture of this - took place one Thanksgiving Day. There were four of us, Dizzy, her roommate from days at Ashley Hall, Chick and I - sitting by a picture window in rural Connecticut. We looked out - and watched to our delight - a deer and her fawn, like two silent but majestic ballerinas, tiptoe daintily across the lawn, giving us a private performance!

We can only guess what memorable volumes remained in her brain, when she was taken, so suddenly, from all of us — her family, her friends, her colleagues, her fans.

As they said about John Kennedy… "Liz, we hardly knew ye."

Thelma Jacqueline Straw