Questions: And The Dominoes Fall

After Terri S read And The Dominoes Fall she sent me some question.

This question is about your novel and about your approach to edible landscaping. How would you distinguish your approach from the survivalists?
When I think of the survivalist concept I think about people who desire to become as self-sufficient as possible by preparing to go it alone in the event of disaster. Often they relocate to fairly isolated areas although I know at least one gentleman who lives in a high-rise apartment building. He is well-stocked with rifles, ammunition and MREs and if the world suddenly goes haywire I guess he will try to defend the entire building. I wanted to work a similar character into Dominoes. I came closest with ‘Old Man Patterson’s secret storeroom’.

Even though the neighborhood in my novel is fairly isolated my point was still about building community. For several reasons, not least of which was to keep the number of characters manageable, I needed to keep the community fairly small.

I have seen how quickly store shelves empty and gas pumps run dry when a hurricane threatens. Preparedness matters. But the more we work together the better prepared we become.

I look at the current state of politics, at every level. We find ourselves in shockingly bad shape as a society because we have allowed career politicians to build ineffective bureaucracies that are all about building power for the political class. Of course the same could be said about big media, big business or big religion. When any organization becomes big enough it function like an organism. Its own survival is paramount. To feed themselves they sap our communities.

Communities have suffered and have practically ceased functioning as communities. We allow ourselves to become influenced and divided by political and media game playing to the point that we are strangers to our own neighbors. We even live in fear of one another.

Yes, I very much want to encourage preparedness and growing edibles, but I see this as only one aspect of reclaiming our communities. We need to rediscover good neighboring. We need to stand our ground and reclaim our communities, not in the sense that this community belongs to me, but rather this community belong to us. All of us, no matter how little we seem to have in common.

Along with turning my little space into an edible landscape, I want to encourage others to grow their own food. I want to arrive at the point where I can take baskets of home grown fruit, vegetable and herbs to share with the people that come to the food pantry at my church. I want others to be able to do the same. I want to show the people who come to the food pantry how to grow fruits, vegetables and herbs. I want to see the common spaces such as our church yards and school yards thriving with fresh fruits and vegetables. And while I want to see all of that it is also metaphor for reclaiming community.

I have much more to say about community and certainly plan to do so in the near future.

The Nursing home scene. That’s a hard section to read and knowing you, it had to be difficult to write?
Yes it was very difficult to write and to rewrite and to edit. But the writer can’t shy away from the difficult scenes. Remember what Vicki’s grandmother says? Betty Sue was a member of the community but nobody really knew her. Nobody could predict how she would respond to disaster because nobody knew her at all? This had to be said, even if the scene is very difficult to read. This had to be said because there are invisible people in every community. None of us know how they will respond to disaster because we never make the effort to know them now.

Why do you write about natural disasters so much?
My very earliest memory is Hurricane Donna back in 1960. I don’t know. Maybe that experience warped my mind in some twisted way. I have been through several hurricanes and one terrible season of wildfire. These are things that stay with a person.

Even at the end of the book Vicki has questions about faith. What are you saying with this?
I thought that was being true to the character. I felt that she had more questions to ask. As Jane tells her, the questions may lead to an even deeper faith. I think that is often true, so long as we keep asking the questions. I wanted Vicki to keep asking questions.

You had to know that some Christians will disagree with your views on scripture. How do you deal with that?
All scripture is interpreted. There is no way we can help but interpret because we read scripture through the lens of our own experiences. Preachers and parents teach us their interpretations, also understood through the lens of their experiences. When people say they take scripture literally what they mean is they take it literally according to current use of language.

Regardless of interpretation I think many Christians would agree that each time we read a passage prayerfully we understand new levels of meaning. Doesn’t this show us that no verse can be taken with an emphatic this is what it says—this is what it means attitude? The best we can say is this is what it means to me today, in this precise moment. Let me pray for more guidance and read it again, maybe read a few different translations and then I will tell you what it means to me in that moment.

Of course there are Christians that will disagree with views expressed in Dominoes. I have no interest in imposing my views on anybody. I merely wish to provoke thought.

When you write these scenes with characters expressing different views about faith does it ever make you rethink your own beliefs?
I’m always questioning. That is the only way I know to get answers.

The interesting thing, and in this way writing Dominoes was great therapy. each time I wrote or rewrote a scene that included a discussion about faith I prayed about the scene. What came back to me had most to do with how I presented the characters, particularly Daphne Anne.

Daphne Anne expresses a fundamentalist view of Christianity, close to what was taught in the churches of my childhood. Because I have spent so much time learning to deal with lingering resentments about those churches it would have been too easy to make Daphne Anne a shallow caricature. But when I prayed about these scenes I felt I was being unfair to Daphne Anne. I didn’t have to agree with her to see her as a fully developed human being. I was being shown tolerance in a way I never expected. We don’t have to agree; it’s about recognizing that we share faithfulness to God. At that point we can worship together, regardless of interpretation, because our hearts are focused on fidelity to God.

The scene with Gypsy the golden retriever. How could you write that without crying?
I cried. But the scene needed to be there.

Are you planning a sequel? It seemed so with the final few pages.
I have no idea.

What are you working on now?
I’m not working on a book write now. I want to spend more time writing about gardening and community.

Can I have your recipe for sweet potato biscuits?
Actually I think it’s in the gardening section but I’ll add it here.

Recipe Sweet Potato Biscuits
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 or 3 tablespoons brown sugar, depending on your preference.
1 teaspoon cinnamon Add a pinch more if you like cinnamon.
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons chilled butter
¾ cup cooked sweet potato that has been chilled.
1/3 cup buttermilk
Heat oven to 425 degrees
Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Cut in the butter as you normally do with pastry.
Add chilled sweet potatoes and buttermilk.
Use clean hands to form into dough.
I never roll out biscuits. I form them by hand, but do whichever way you prefer.
Bake at 425 for about 22 minutes.
Makes 8 or 9 large biscuits.