Saturday, July 27, 2013

The Royal Omaha Ballet Company


One summer I was on my annual excursion to Provincetown, Massachusetts, a quaint old England fishing town and one of the major gay getaways on the East Coast. It’s easy to meet people there – even Bostonians, traditionally an aloof crowd, let their hair down. You make eye contact, you smile, you say hi. It’s that easy.

The town’s merchants always pray for cloudy or rainy days, as people go shopping instead of to the beach. On such a cloudy day I was in town shopping with some friends, and I kept bumping into a very friendly guy from New York. We quickly struck up a conversation. I’ve blocked his name from my memory, as you’ll soon see why. 

A few days later I was headed to the beach and ran into him. He asked what I was doing that evening, and I told him I was cooking dinner for my housemates. I spontaneously invited him to join us. 

Sand dunes overlooking Provincetown (Garrett Peck)

A completely different person showed up that evening. I mean, it was the same person, only he seemed to be tweaking on something. He was combative, hyperactive and loud. He went to the bathroom every five minutes, I suspect to snort who knows what up his nose. 

While I was making dinner, he came into the kitchen and told me that none of my friends liked him. I didn’t deny it, but responded that that’s because he was arguing with everyone. He laughed way too loud, an eighty-decibel cackle that made you cover your ears. One of my friends, who never complains about anything, approached me privately to ask, What were you thinking?! I don’t know, I responded; he seemed nice before he got here, but now he’s stoned out of his mind.

My dinner guest was also a pathological liar whose tales stretched beyond belief. He claimed he was a fashion consultant and had danced for the Royal Omaha Ballet Company, which raised disbelieving eyebrows around the dinner table. He said he had walked into my friend Scott’s clothing studio in P-Town and offered advice on how to better display his wares. Scott supposedly paid him on the spot for his services. I checked with him the next day. He shook his head, explaining that he had no idea who this obnoxious person was who came in and rearranged his clothes. Scott moved all the clothes back as soon as he left. So you didn’t pay him? Hell no, Scott answered.

As the evening wore on, and as he came down from his high, the person who emerged was angry, bitter and quite toxic. He sat fuming to my left, while to my right was another guest, an 18-year old young man whose two moms were taking him off to college. He was sweet and full of optimism – every path was open to him, and the world was still a place of wonder. I thought, what a contrast between these two. It’s no wonder why we enjoy being around young people. Young people make us feel young. 

The next day I was at the beach with another friend, David. We had just laid our towels out on the sand when we suddenly heard a loud, obnoxious cackle from the sand dunes just fifty feet away. It was my dinner guest from the night before. He was with another man, and they were tumbling from the sand dunes naked and running to the water. I looked at David and asked if he minded that we move. We shifted down the beach several hundred feet. I was glad never to see that dancer from the Royal Omaha Ballet Company again. He was hands down the worst date ever. 

Garrett Peck

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Struck By Lightning: Book Reviews


Four books into my writing career and I finally got a major book review! Woo-hoo! 

The Washington Independent Review of Books reviewed my book, The Smithsonian Castle and the Seneca Quarry. The reviewer, architect Ellen Sands, wrote glowingly, "Interwoven with the history of the C&O Canal and the Civil War skirmishes raging around the fringes of the city, Peck's compact book is an immensely readable account....His affection for his subject shines through the book, prompting you to hop on your bike and pedal out to the ruins of the old quarry." You can read the full review online - and below it you'll see a video of Katie Dvorak interviewing me at the Gaithersburg Book Festival. 




Why am I so excited? Because getting a review these days is like being struck by lightning. 

The publishing world has changed significantly in recent years, largely because of the Internet and changing consumer behavior. A decade ago, a publisher would mail out review copies and send the author on a nationwide book tour. The reviews would be picked up by major publications; authors would quickly hit a mass audience, and the book would sell well. 

The old model no longer works. Along came the Internet and free online content, which seriously put a crimp in subscribers to major publications. The publisher for my first book, Rutgers University Press, sent out around 100 review copies of The Prohibition Hangover. We only got a handful of nibbles, mostly from bloggers and an academic journal a year after publication. Nothing earth shattering like being reviewed in The New York TimesThe Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post (all of whom got copies of the book).  

In order to cut costs, The Washington Post stopped publishing its weekly Book World section, which was a national outlet for book reviews. The Post has cut back significantly on reviews, and the books it does review are scattered throughout the week in the Style section, which lessens their impact. The newspaper rarely if ever touches local history books such as mine. Sadly, there is only one newspaper that even has a standalone book review section anymore: The New York Times

With the demise of the Post's Book World section, a few enterprising book readers decided they had to do something to replace it. And so was born the Washington Independent Review of Books

Why are book reviews so important to authors and readers? A review is a literary critique by one's peers, usually by a subject matter expert who has an informed opinion about a topic. A review can make or break a book's sales. And book reviews are still an important way to reach a large audience of readers. How often have you gone to a movie without first reading a review about it? Likewise, book reviews help readers find the content that they might enjoy. 

Without formal book reviews such as the Washington Independent provides, authors are heavily reliant on word-of-mouth, part of which comes from citizens writing reviews on Amazon and other websites. Now then, it's painfully difficult to get people to write reviews. Only a teeny, tiny fraction of readers ever bother. Some online reviews are less than helpful. You've probably seen five star reviews on Amazon that simply say, "Great book! A must read!" which is, honestly, next to useless. You might suspect that the reviewer is one of the author's friends who didn't take the time to read the book, but thought they'd be helpful. 

If you ever want to review a book, what should you include? It should be a literary critique (I'd use the word criticism, except that has a negative connotation). Did you enjoy or dislike the book? If you're a subject matter expert in a particular field, did the author widen the scholarship or thinking about the topic? Was the book easy to read and entertaining? Does it tell a good story? Did it make you laugh or cry - or cringe? Did you learn something you hadn't considered before? Your review doesn't have to be an essay - one well thought out paragraph suffices. 

I write reviews for the Washington Independent as well. With every book comes an instructions sheet which includes this vital statement: 

"Don't pan a book unless absolutely necessary. Don't flex your writerly muscles, show off your superior knowledge, or trout out your bitingly clever ripostes at the expense of another writer's dignity. Be true to your critical assessment of the book but never forget that behind the author's name on the title page stands a person who is feeling exposed and vulnerable right now and who may have spent years of his or her life trying to make that book the best it can be. Don't cut your career teeth on the flesh of a fellow or sister writer." 

You can follow the Washington Independent Review of Books on Facebook, or set up an RSS feed to get alerts. They post about two reviews daily. Go Independent! 

Garrett Peck

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The Pasty White Guy

So we’re deep into summer now. How’s your tan coming along? Got that nice golden bronze from laying out in the sun? Maybe you burned first, then it turned golden for the rest of the summer. And now your olive skin contrasts beautifully against the white pants you’re wearing.

I should be so lucky. I could spend a month at the beach, and come back hardly a shade darker. My only consolation is that I didn’t get sunburned. For January or July, it’s all the same when you’re a Pasty White Guy.

Call it what you like: fair, chalky, clear, ghost-like, luminescent, pale, pallid, pasty, see-through, strawberry, washed-out. Or my favorite: alabaster. My doctor jokingly calls it “Victorian.” Then again, he doesn’t want me getting melanoma, admittedly a much higher risk for people with such a fair hue. Why don’t we tan? Pasty white people have little melanin in our skin. We burn easily, then go right back to being white. My entire family is hopelessly chalky. I’ve never had a tan line in my life – though plenty of red neck.

In an era of sun worshipping, those who are fair are at a noticeable disadvantage. And I mean noticeable. We can’t tan any more than you can jump over a tall building in a single bound. It’s physically impossible. I’ve heard store clerks say, “Dude, you need to get a tan!” Gee, thanks for the condescension. Where can I pick one up? Aisle 9? 

You might ask, why not use self-tanning lotion, or go to a tanning booth? I’d rather kiss a Wookiee. Besides the risk of skin cancer, such an attitude buys into the belief that only one type of man can be good looking. Madison Avenue has done its best to define the archetype. I call it the Look. He is dark haired, dark eyed, and olive skinned. He forgot to shave…for the last two days (oops). And yeah, he’s hot.

Skin color is simply a matter of evolution. Yet upon this we place so much racism, cultural and class differences. People who live close to the equator have darker skin that protects them from the sun’s intensity. The opposite is true for people of northern European descent. I lived in Germany five years, and saw firsthand why the people are fair. It was cloudy, drizzly, frosty, hailing, overcast, rainy, snowy and spitting two out of three days in the year. White skin absorbs the sun quickly on those rare days it comes out. The reason? Vitamin D.

Vitamin D is a necessary nutrient. You can drink gallons of milk and take supplements, but you’ll never quite get a proper dose like being in the full sunlight. So getting sun is a careful balance – the need for Vitamin D now, versus skin cancer, basal cells, and leathery skin in the future.

The same thing applies for brown eyes. Those of us with fair eyes have increased sensitivity to sunlight. The worst days are those with thin, opaque clouds that scatter the sunlight in every direction. It’s nearly blinding, so painful the tears stream down your face. When my mom asked her ophthalmologist what she could do about her light sensitivity, the doctor responded, “Come back with brown eyes in your next life.”

Recently a couple in their early 80s sat waiting at the carwash. The man was very fair. He removed his baseball cap – one of those foam caps popular among old men – revealing a bald head with numerous sun spots. And several fresh scabs from where the dermatologist cut out the sins of the man’s youth.

I have a hunch that my generation, Generation X, will look much different when we are in our 80s. At least I hope. Yet the short-term desire for a tan wins over the long-term health consequences. Sun worshipping continues, despite the depletion of the ozone layer and the dramatic rise of skin cancer (Australia has the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world. It’s a sun-drenched country occupied by Englishmen). There are still a shocking number of people at the beach who don’t put on sunscreen.

Not so long ago, swarthiness meant you were a laborer, one who worked outside for your bread. The elite, on the other hand, could afford to stay inside. Being fair was fashionable. In fact, for much of recorded human history that was the case.

In the erotic Song of Songs from the Bible, the peasant girl is embarrassed that she is so tan from laboring outside. “Dark am I, yet lovely,” she tells her lover apologetically. “Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun. My mother’s sons were angry with me and made me take care of the vineyards.”

Blonde wigs became fashionable in the Roman Empire, as the swarthy Romans copied the barbarian Germanic tribes. This fascination with fairness carried over into the Renaissance. Have you ever taken a look at Renaissance art, and noted what the paintings have in common? The Holy Family – Joseph, Mary, and Baby Jesus – and all the saints, angels, cherubim and seraphim are portrayed as fair-skinned and blonde. The olive skinned Italians held light features as an artistic ideal.

Now the last time I checked, Jesus was a Jew living in the Middle East. Do you really think he looked blonde and blue eyed? He was Semitic, for Christ’s sake! I highly doubt he looked even remotely European.

Giovanni Boccaccio, the Medieval author of The Decameron, wrote scathingly that Florentine women would do anything to become blonde: wearing wigs, dousing their hair with lemon juice, even spending hours bleaching their hair in the sun (but without exposing their faces). And we all know that Queen Elizabeth I dabbed lead-based white makeup on her face. Ghostly white was the Look of her day – and it was hip.

Then one day I had a revelation: some people are actually attracted to whiteness.  It’s the timeless lesson that opposites attract. How well light and dark are together, like chocolate sauce with vanilla ice cream. And everyone wants what they don’t have. In Argentina, most of the upper middle-class and wealthy women have blonde hair, even though they’re of Italian and Spanish descent. Their blondness comes from a bottle.

Being fair was once an aesthetic ideal, but it certainly isn’t today – thanks to skimpier beachwear and Coco Chanel, two trends that date from the 1920s. Smaller swimsuits show a lot more skin, and fishbelly white suddenly became gross. Chanel started the craze for the “healthy tan.” (Healthy? More like cancerous and wrinkled.)

Today there aren’t many well-known pasty white men, other than former Pope Benedict XVI, probably the chalkiest Holy Father in history. House Speaker John Boehner has a suspicous orange tan that makes you suspect he regularly visits a tanning booth (puh-leaze! He works indoors all day long. When does he have time to be out in the sun?). Hollywood favors actors who are tall, dark, and handsome.

My ticket to fame is to create a line of cartoon superheroes: the PastyPuff Girls. They’ll blind their enemies with their brilliant luminescence. “Take that, Dark Vader!” says Buttermilk as she wields her SFP 30 dispensing wand. “You’ll never seduce me to the Dark Side of the Force! Then again, it couldn’t hurt to try. Would you rub this sunscreen on my back?”

There are some advantages to the Victorian look, especially in our youth-obsessed culture. So maybe we pasty white folk don’t have that “healthy tan” – but at least we won’t be prematurely aged. Sunscreen and moisturizer are my secret weapons. No need for Botox. And guess what? I still get carded occasionally when I buy alcohol – and I’m in my mid-forties.

Who says extreme fairness can’t be attractive? There is more than one kind of beauty. Can’t we appreciate the entire spectrum, from light to dark? We pasty people should embrace our pastiness. Repeat after me: I will wear shorts! I will not put on bronzer, self-tanning lotion or use a tanning booth! I will wear my sunscreen and reapply! I will not have body issues over being the whitest person at the beach!

The rest of you have been warned: put on your sunglasses or prepare to be blinded.

Garrett Peck

Friday, July 5, 2013

Paywalls

The Washington Post has initiated its online paywall. Online access to the newspaper is now $14.99 per month. For those who don't subscribe, you can read twenty articles in a month, and then the paywall will prevent you from reading further (although you will be able to access articles that friends post via social media, such as Facebook or Twitter). This mimics The New York Times paywall implemented a couple years ago for $15 per month.

There's this part of me that says, Pay up, freeloaders! 

There is no such thing as free. Free doesn't exist. There is always a cost. If you didn't pay for something, it means that someone else paid the bill. And without book buyers or newspaper subscribers, it becomes less financially tenable for people to write books or publish newspapers. Reporters and writers need to be able to make a living. Without subscribers, papers like the Post can't do the vital Fourth Estate work of investigative journalism, such as uncovering the Watergate break in. All these things have a real financial cost. 

One thing I am looking forward to through the Post's paywall is how it weeds out the online "trolls" (see the Wikipedia definition, which nails it). Many trolls are freeloaders, and without paying for an online subscription, they won't be able to comment. The New York Times has had advantage, not only in enlisting a paywall, but also in moderating comments to its articles. The Washington Post does not do so. The comments can be scathing and blood pressure raising. 

I will readily admit that the Post isn't the paper that it was ten years ago. Buyouts have weakened the news room, and it now outsources much more of its content to AP and Bloomberg. The Post has cut back significantly on the number of books it reviews. For us authors, seeing the demise of the Book World section was tragic. Only the New York Times has a dedicated book review section.

And the price for the Post has risen significantly: it is now $55.60 for eight weeks of home delivery. The Post has lost so many subscribers that it takes in less revenue for advertising, meaning that the remaining subscribers have to pick up the bill.

Consumers have gotten accustomed to content being free. They read blogs for free. Until now, they've been able to read most newspapers online for free. Or they expect a big, big discount to buy a book, thanks to Amazon's reduced pricing. At book signings over the years, I have seen numerous people who have told me to my face, "Oh, I'll just go buy your book on Amazon." All to save themselves a couple dollars. While I've never shamed anyone publicly over this, I have immediately thought: Frickin' cheapskate. You come to a bookstore, use their electricity and restroom, take up the staff's time, and yet you contribute nothing other than to add to their costs. The nerve!

You go to a restaurant and order food, or go to bar and order drinks. You don't expect your food or beer (or service for that matter) to be free, do you? Then why is content expected to be free? It isn't. By not purchasing a book, or by not subscribing to the newspaper, you are contributing to the demise of an vital industry and compromising people's livelihoods.

If you want good content, pay up.

Garrett Peck
www.garrettpeck.com

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Dedications


You may notice that many books have a dedication in the opening, a page where the author dedicates the book to someone meaningful in their lives. It's often to a spouse or partner, the author's parents or children. When I published my first book in 2009, The Prohibition Hangover, I dedicated it to someone I've never met: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. 

In mailing him a copy of the book, I sent Kennedy a letter explaining why I had given him the dedication. I wrote: 

"Besides the fact that we’re both from Sacramento, I wanted to explain the dedication. First off, you wrote the majority opinion in Granholm v. Heald in 2005, a case that required states to handle interstate wine shipments on an even-handed basis, rather than discriminating against out-of-state wine. Because of your opinion, the direct-to-consumer wine market has opened significantly. Consumers have many more choices now for wine, and we are one step closer to a 'virtual wine store.' Your decision was the right decision for consumers, and the wine industry owes you a debt of gratitude for your sound judgment.

"Equally important for me is that you have a lengthy history of deciding against discrimination. You wrote the majority opinions in both Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas, two cases with enormous significance for the gay community. As I’m a gay man, I am personally grateful for your being on the court and for being a decisive voice for fairness and equal treatment. Dedicating my book to you was the least I could do to express thanks from my community." 

Two months later, a FedEx envelop arrived. It was a thank-you card from Kennedy, which you'll see below. 



On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional in the case Windsor v. United States. Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. Likewise the court ruled that the supporters of California's Proposition 8 had no standing, making gay marriage legal in California. These decisions were narrow in scope, rather than sweeping judgments that demanded nationwide recognition of gay marriage. The court did not want to go beyond where American society is clearly headed. And yet these are major victories for the gay community, as the federal government now recognizes gay marriage de facto. 

A third of the country now lives in states where gay marriage is legal. That's huge. Most Americans are behind gay marriage. Those who aren't (such as Justice Antonin Scalia) are old and dying off. As the national consensus builds behind gay marriage, there's likely to be another Supreme Court decision in 5 or 10 years from now along the lines of Loving v. Virginia in 1967. That decision declared that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional. 

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer penned a thoughtful op-ed in the Washington Post two days after the historic Windsor v. United States decision. He argued that nationwide gay marriage is now inevitable. "Washington must give the same federal benefits to gay couples as to straight couples because to do otherwise is to discriminate against the gay couples," he wrote. "After all, they are equally married in their states. For Washington to discriminate against them is to deny them equal protection of the laws. Such discrimination is nothing more than irrational animus - and therefore constitutionally inadmissible." 

While states will now debate legalizing gay marriage in the coming years, you can expect to see additional legal battles that ultimately will lead to a national Supreme Court decision. Just remember this: A marriage contract is a legally binding contract. If a straight couple can marry in one state and have their marriage license recognized in any other state, but a legally married gay couple is likewise denied recognition in a particular state (such as mine, Virginia) because it doesn't recognize such marriages, you now have a Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause violation. The Supreme Court can then make a sweeping decision, a la Loving v. Virginia, that sweeps away state constitutional amendments and laws that ban gay marriage on grounds of discrimination. This will happen, and yes, we will live to see it. 

I extend my sincere thanks to Justice Anthony Kennedy for yet another vital decision based on equality and fairness, "in order to form a more perfect union." 

Garrett Peck