Sandi Kahn Shelton

I went yesterday to Channel 8 once again, and got to talk about writing workshops with Desiree Fontaine, who is the most fun person to be interviewed by. She gets excited about everything. I think you could talk to her about the alphabet and she would make you feel as though you were piles of fun.

But I wasn’t there to talk about the alphabet—except as it helps a person in writing. I’ve become a real believer lately in writing workshops, perhaps because the ones I’ve been giving have shown me how people who consider themselves non-writers can come together and reach deep inside themselves and write amazing stories! I also love the way they support each other, the encouraging things they say, and all the ways in which they enhance each other’s work.

One woman was telling me the other day how the workshops feel like therapy to her. They’re not, of course—but they might give people something that’s just as valuable as therapy: the chance to take the past and make sense of it, wrestle it onto the page and create some understanding of it. And then you get to get up and read it aloud to an audience of people who laugh and cry with you, who notice your superb use of adjectives at the same time they’re noticing how hard you worked and how much you gave of yourself in writing.

And then we eat fruit and scones and drink tea and lemonade, and feel a little bit more at peace.

Okay, so my hair was in my eyes, and I tended to flap my arms around a bit when I got excited…but at least today I could watch this all the way through without screaming or hiding my eyes.

I’ve spent this week trying to figure out how to embed this video into my website, to no avail. And my trusty webmaster is raising children and shoveling his Massachusetts driveway, so he’s out of commission when it comes to things that aren’t absolute emergencies. 

So, anyway, here is the interview that the lovely, fun, excitable, and intense Desiree Fontaine did on Connecticut Style on WTNH-TV Tuesday. What a fun time we had!

Just go to this link, and you can see it all.

http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/ct_style/book_lovers/kissing-games-of-the-world

It is obviously time to blog again.

I have to keep blogging, you see, or else I will forget how, the way I neglected to watch television for a while and then discovered I had forgotten why we have so many remotes and what purpose they all serve. This is a modern problem for which there does not seem to be any solution. Apparently TV sets require NUMEROUS sets of remotes, and hardly ever do you find buttons on them for the things you really, really need, like: TURN OFF. TURN ON. LOUDER. SOFTER. PLAY DVD. STOP DVD.

There. Six choices. Why does this require two remotes, each with 150 inscrutably worded buttons?

Here are what the buttons on my main remote say: REC LINK. PROG CHECK. ANGLE. 3D-PHONIC. TOP MENU. MENU. MONITOR.

What, I would like to ask, does any of this mean? 

You see, engineers of America? This is why I and most of my friends are unable to watch movies unless our children are at home. Press the wrong button, and the whole thing stops working.

We at least need a button that says: UNDO EFFECTS OF BUTTON YOU JUST PUSHED. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I thought I was the only one who couldn’t work the TV set, until I talked to my friend Karen. She has a fancy TV, the kind that has picture-in-picture, which is handy for when you are waiting for the Weather Channel to get around to telling you what the forecast is in your area, and you want to watch something else while you wait. Which is what Karen was doing: watching a regular show, with the Weather Channel on in a little tiny screen in the bottom of her TV.

Let me just say that I would never be able to do something this risky, so when Karen was telling me this story, I was already in awe of her and wanted to nominate her for some kind of technology award.

So there she was, watching, and then the moment came when she wanted the Weather Channel to be on the big screen and the other show to be on the little screen, and so she pressed a button on one of her remotes…and poof! The big screen turned into a fuzzy mass of black stuff, and the Weather Channel stayed where it was…tiny and unhearable.

Then she did what anyone would do: she pressed each and every button on all her remotes, trying to find the one that would work.

I had to laugh when she was telling me this. I have been in this situation before–madly, insanely pressing all buttons on the remotes, including the secret, unmarked button that translates as: BLOW UP THIS TV SET AND MAKE SURE IT NEVER GIVES ME A PICTURE AGAIN.

It is when you have pressed every single button for the third time and nothing has happened that you see there is only one thing left to do: you hurl all the remotes across the room, and then go and kick them. Sometimes crying is necessary.

In my circle of friends, it is widely known that if you were able to restrain yourself from throwing the remotes AT the televsion set, you deserve a special award.