In addition to the upcoming Vancouver Barnes & Nobles book signing (if you’re in the area stop by!) I’ll be selling and signing books over the Memorial Day Weekend at scenic Willamette Vally Vineyards on I-5 between Salem and Albany. It will be a three-day extravaganza of wine-tasting, music, breathtaking views and plain ol’ fun in vineyards throughout  the Willamette Valley.  If you’re looking for something special to do, check it out.

Oh, and by the way, the award-winning wines at Willamette Valley Vineyards are fabulous 🙂

An update on the Bianca’s Vineyard sequel: the rough manuscript is done!! Now the brutal, extensive task of editing and rewriting. Stay tuned for a book release date late this summer.

On a final note, Oriana Fallaci. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I began reading her books.

Let me begin with a lesson learned earlier.  I was a huge Tolstoy fan in my youth. I still am.  BUT, after reading several of his novels, I decided to read his biography. Bad move. At least, bad move for someone who had fallen into idolizing the man for his literary genius.  I found out that Tolstoy – like all of us — was all too human. It was quite awhile before I could bring myself to read anymore of his works because, for me, the author’s life got in the way of his stories.

Which is why I will never write a biography of my own life and am thankful for the non-celebrity status that protects me from anyone ever wanting to write an autobiography of me. I’m all too aware of my personal flaws, thank you, and I ascribe to the philosophy that you treat everyone with respect and avoid as much as possible alienating people for no good reason. All of them good reason being discerning about what you go public with. An  anything goes Facebooker, I’m not.

That said, we all have opinions, myself included.

Back to Oriana.  She blasted on to my radar after 9/11 because she was, at that time, a voice crying in the news wilderness so to speak.  I marveled at her courage to stand up for America when others were celebrating our tragedy and intended demise in their streets. The woman was truly one-of-a-kind. As a journalist she had the platform to speak harsh truths about terrorism few dared to print.  As a result, she was reviled and hounded constantly with death threats. Had she not died an untimely death from cancer, one only wonders how she would have met her demise.  Still, she refused to not speak truth as she saw it.

For this reason alone, and the fact that she also bared her soul in a way many of us would never dare to publicly, I continue to respect her journalistic heroism and greatly admire her literary skills.

Sadly, I also discovered, on a few personal, and two important spiritual issues, that Oriana and I are polar opposites.  I am an optimist; Fallaci is a somewhat cynical realist. I believe love is a supreme reality.  She intimates love is impossible. Whereas I am a Christian, she was an avowed atheist and while I am pro-life, she was not.  These crucial differences played out considerably when I began reading “Letter to a Child Never Born,” even though it is heart-wrenching and incredibly moving in places.

Fallaci, I have discovered, besides being an unrestrained voice, was a tough woman who lived through WWII; quite likely the product of a dysfunctional family.  Her personal bitterness and cynicism peeks out in themes such as the “love” she thought she had with the father of her unborn child.

After a telephone conversation in which the baby’s father tries to convince her to  have an abortion, Fallaci writes: “I suddenly felt nauseated. I was ashamed for him. I hung up thinking that once I had loved him … I still don’t understand what it’s all about. My guess is that it’s just a gigantic hoax, invented to keep people quiet and diverted.  Everyone talks about love …and in speaking of love and offering it as a panacea for every tragedy, they kill both body and soul. I hate this word [love] which you find everywhere, in every language … I try never to use it.”

Talking to her unborn child, she continues, “Beware of giving yourself to someone in the name of that rapture: it only means forgetting yourself, your rights, your dignity, and thus your freedom. Like a dog floundering in the water you try vainly to reach a shore that doesn’t exist, a shore whose name is Loving and Being Loved, and you end in frustration, scorn and disillusionment.”

Well, you get the picture. Sad, heavy stuff.

So, true to my commitment to reciprocate reading books shared by friends, I am nearly done with Oriana’s tomes. Despite the jarring differences I find myself gobsmacked with as I read them, I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I am thankful I have plumbed the identity of the woman behind the name.  Now, when I read her other publications – primarily her expose’s on the post 9/11 world, I’ll know what makes her tick.

Were she still alive, I would love to meet her.  If we could have stood each other’s wildly different world views on several subjects — both of us definitely scrabblers in our own way —  we could have had some wildly invigorating discussions. With her Italian dramatics and my Irish penchant for intellectual wrestling, it would have been a rip-roaring time, for sure.

Until we meet again, friends, enjoy your summer and live each moment as though it’s your last.  And for the record?  You can quote me:  There IS a shore called Loved and Being Loved.