Writing the Sauce of Life
by Patricia Volonakis Davis Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
From the supermarket tabloid headlines glaring out at us as we stand in line to check out our groceries, one gets the impression that any scion of a Hollywood superstar is bound to be self-seeking, superficial, dim-witted and disorderly. But if you thought that about James Redford, you’d discover in about two seconds after meeting him that you were wrong… so wrong.
In fact, the highest compliment I can give Jamie Redford after my interview with him is that he reminds me of my husband, who is my benchmark for measuring integrity, intelligence, and selflessness in men. (And they’re both from the west coast of the U.S. They grow ‘em real good out here ─ must be all the sunshine.)
If you have any interest in the Redford family and their doings, you’ll want to listen to this podcast, or even if you just in the mood to hear an inspiring story about a courageous, remarkable human being. For those who can’t access the audio, the gist of the Jamie’s story goes like this:
After suffering severe stomach problems from the age of 15, and being continually misdiagnosed, he finally learned that he had ulcerative colitis. Nonetheless, he managed to play guitar, be physically active, eventually go off to college and earn his Bachelor’s degree in creative writing and film from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Master’s degree in literature from Northwestern University. However, in a rare complication of the colitis,one much deadlier than the original disease itself, he developed primary sclerosing cholangitus ─ the blocking of the liver’s bile ducts ─ and was told his liver would eventually fail. Jame’s condition deteriorated rapidly, and he was admitted to the University of Nebraska Medical Center to deal with horrific pain and dangerous infection while waiting for a new liver. All of this happening to him at the ripe old age of 25.
A liver at last became available, but not long after the transplant it also began to fail, and James was readmitted to the hospital to wait yet again, closer to death every day, for another donor liver. Thankfully, a second one was found, and this time the transplant was a success.
It was during this ordeal that James starting thinking about the donor families and the courage and selflessness it took for them to be cognizant of their opportunity to give another person – a stranger – a second chance at life, while their own loved ones lay dying. He wanted to educate the public about the urgent need for donors, and erase the “Frankenstein image” attached, in addition to honoring donor families with the tribute they so richly deserved. And so, he established The James Redford Institute for Transplant Awareness (JRI), a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about the need for organ and tissue donation through film, educational outreach and the web. Through the JRI, he produced The Kindness of Strangers, an award-winning HBO documentary film, and Flow, a short drama targeted to high schools and community-based youth programs.
As a liver transplant recipient, James thinks it is “natural” for him to continue to speak to audiences about the miracle of organ donation. “Anybody would do it,” is what he says in our interview. Somehow, I don’t think that switching out someone’s internal organs would drastically change that person’s intrinsic generosity and/or self-centeredness. Especially as James, who calls himself “just a white boy” is also working on The Forgotten, a documentary about the Iroquois Confederacy and its impact upon the democratic ideals of the Founding Fathers of The United States of America, and Mann V. Ford, an HBO documentary about the Ramapough Indians of New Jersey and their fight against the toxic legacy of the Ford Motor Corporation. These for no reason other than that James thinks their stories should be told.
Other more mainstream credits include adapting and directing Spin, starring Stanley Tucci, Dana Delany, and Ruben Blades. James also wrote the original screenplays for Cowboy Up, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Darryl Hannah, as well as Skinwalkers, a PBS/Mystery! film which was the highest rated PBS program of 2002. James has also just completed writing and directing Quality Time, a short comedy starring Jason Patric, which will be premiering at the L.A. Film Festival in late July 2010. James filmed Quality Time in Marin County, California, where he lives with his devoted and beloved wife, Kyle, and their two children, Dylan and Lena. Two liver transplants have also not put James off from his long-held passion for music─ he plays his home town local music scene as a guitarist and songwriter with the Phat Barbees.
Note: I am honored to be speaking at the same charity conference where James will be keynote speaker, (along with Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn.) The First Annual Capitol City Young Writers Conference will be held here in Marin County on July 17, 2010, from 9-5 at San Domenico School in San Anselmo. Other speakers are (in alphabetical order) Peter Beren, David Corbett, Verna Dreisbach, Jane Friedman, Leah Garchik, Deborah Grabien, Seth Harwood, Paul Kaufman, Michael Krasny, Kay Kostopoulos, Vicki Larson, Gil Mansergh, Nick Petrulakis, Jeannette Sears, Huntington Sharp, Ransom Stephens, Bob Yehling, and Jeromy Zajonc. For info on this conference, click here.
Browse previous Podcasts by Patricia Volonakis Davis
Dear EFR:
I’ve been with my husband for nine years. He lost his job and took one as a security guard out of town for one month. Five months later, I picked up his phone one day and saw a text from someone saying, “Hi love, how are you?”
Then I found two photos of an ugly redheaded woman saved on his cell phone. I took his phone and messaged this girl, pretending to be my husband. At one point she asked if this was really him. I said it was. I told the girl that ‘my wife’ found her message and wants a divorce, and that I didn’t know what to tell her. Her advice was, “Well she’s p*ssed off already, so tell her everything or tell her nothing. It’s up to you. Why didn’t you delete my sh*t, did you want to get caught?”
I confronted my husband and asked him who this woman was. He told me he met her while doing that security job, but that they were just friends. My husband denied sleeping with her, but in later conversations I was having with this girl while she was still thinking I was my husband, she sure knew enough about me, the wife. My husband is usually a quiet, closed person, and I can’t believe he didn’t sleep with her, with the knowledge she has about me. But my husband says she’s just a drunk and he won’t talk about it anymore.
For the last two years of our marriage, I haven’t paid much attention to him, due to working on growing my own business. I know that’s not an excuse, but I think he slept with her, and don’t know how to get the truth from him. Now he is all lovey-dovey and wants our marriage to work.
How should I handle this?
Signed,
Security Guard Impersonator
Dear EFR:
I am a 36-year-old woman who has never married, because I could never seem to find a man who was up to my standards. By that I mean I exercise daily, am in great shape and — not to brag — am very beautiful. I recently started dating a man who measures up to all of that — he seemed my ideal physically, actually, until we had sex for the first time. It was then that I saw he has what looks like a third nipple, right next to his real left nipple. I have to say I was horrified. I can’t help it— it really grossed me out. We did have sex, because I didn’t want to be rude, but needless to say, I didn’t really enjoy it. He was good at it and all, in fact, he was really very sweet, but my mind mostly was focused on that third nipple looming over me. Now he wants to know why I keep making excuses not to see him, and I don’t know what to tell him. As I said, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. What should I do?
Signed,
No Nipple Nookie
Just in time for summer, representatives from 88 nations gathered in Agadir, Morocco, for the 62nd annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission on June 21st. The high ratings of Animal Planet’s “Whale Wars” and national newspaper headlines showing a giant Louisiana oil platform burning, sinking and spilling—on Earth Day—are among the telltale signs suggesting that this was the most contentious IWC meeting ever.
After the birth of my son in 2007, I felt an incredible energy and drive to make art. Contrary to the popular belief that art-making is one of the things that fall to the wayside after the birth of children, I felt not just inspired but compelled by my experience of childbirth and motherhood. The creative act of making another human being awoke a creative drive in me. I also found that the time limitations involved in caring for an infant forced me to be more disciplined, eking out an hour here and there when my son was sleeping to continue my portraits. After my daughter’s birth in 2008, I embarked on a series of mother and child portraits accompanied by birth stories written by each subject. I wanted to simultaneously express the imperfection and fallibility of the mothers and capture an element of the divine in the mother/child bond. Each mother in the series shares her birth story—life-changing, beautiful, or harrowing—and these experiences unify a very diverse group with a common theme: love, self sacrifice and transcendence. The inspiration for this project is my children: their beauty, their challenges and the unique and universal bond of motherhood.
John Robbins (Healthy at 100, Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution) and Dan Millman of the ever popular Peaceful Warrior books will be the keynoters when the 2010 San Francisco Writing for Change conference returns this November 13 and 14.
This will be John Robbins first appearance at the SFW4C Conference. Robbins wrote the groundbreaking and Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Diet for a New America, exposing connections between diet, physical health, animal cruelty, and environmentalism. Robbins’ first book really did change the world when he founded EarthSave, an international, non-profit organization which came out of the reader response to his Diet for a New America. The son of the Baskin-Robbins co-founder, John has been awarded the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, and the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award.
As previously announced, Dan Millman, a longtime friend of San Francisco Writers Conference and San Francisco Writing for Change Conference, will also be a keynote speaker. In addition to Way of the Peaceful Warrior and a dozen other spiritual books for adults, he’s also written children’s books. His keynote promises to be full of inspiration and motivation for writers who want to bring positive change to the world.
There will be many other publishing experts at this year’s SFW4C. A highlight will be a panel session featuring the trio that made the bestseller 29 Gifts a reality ─ author Cami Walker, her agent whom she met at the 2008 SFW4C, Rita Rosenkranz, and executive editor Katie McHugh of Da Capo Press. They can all tell you San Francisco Writing for Change conference really helps to get a good writer published!
The theme of this conference is “Changing the World One Book at a Time” and there is no reason one of those books can’t be yours! So get ready to be published. As always, attendees will have the chance to pitch their book to agents and editors, and to get feedback on their work from freelance editors at the SFW4C. This event is limited to 150 attendees. Go to the website to find out more and register today! (Founders of San Francisco Writers Conference and San Francisco Writing for Change Conference are Michael Larson and Elizabeth Pomada, of Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency, the oldest literary agency in San Francisco. Listen to HS Radio’s podcast interview with this dynamic couple here.
Join us at the 2010 San Francisco Writing for Change — November 13 and 14, 2010
Hilton Hotel (Financial District/Chinatown)
www.SFWritingforChange.org
by Cynthia Beecher
They switch places
To learn what the other knows
She usually leads
Her arrows ready
The gold dipped tips
Sharp and intuitive
It’s her turn to ride in back
He rides forward
Free to lead her
He can no longer say
I only went along
She never before saw his flowers turning into butterflies
Nor felt the breeze of wings
Never tasted the nectar drops carried by the flower
by Hannah Whitman
I feel the cold embrace
of these sullen shadows
thats all thats left of my reflection.
Reaching out to touch my face
I feel your cheeks are sallow
yet you’re still the picture of perfection
Hannah Whitman is 16 years old. She has loved writing short stories since she can remember, and as she grew, she started writing songs and poetry, also. She loves songs that make her “have to think long and hard” and that she…
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by Vicola England
Once again the issue of Islam in Britain has raised its head, this time courtesy of the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester in case you were wondering. The Bishop has announced that Islamic extremists have turned parts of Britain into ‘no-go areas’ for those who don’t follow Mohammad, stating that ‘those of a different faith or race may find it difficult to live and work there’. And do you know what? He’s absolutely right, although perhaps not for the reasons he thinks. The Bishop…
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The spring I turned twenty-two, I was desperately trying to recover from a ravaging love affair that had changed me from a girl who was somewhat confident for her age and mostly happy, to one who was completely demoralized. It was not only the relationship itself, but the reactions to the demise of the relationship by friends and family who I thought I knew that made me lose all trust in my perceptions of people.
And so, I stopped caring about anything at all. I was walking, eating, breathing, but…
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Nothing reminds me more of my childhood than gnocchi (pronounced ‘nyokie’) as my Mom and I spent many hours making pounds of gnocchi for Sunday dinners. We would usually make enough gnocchi to feast on with other large Italian families so we rolled, cut, and shaped thousands of gnocchi at a time. One thing my Mom taught through all of those gnocchi-making Saturdays is that good things are worth the extra effort. The whole time I was shaping those gnocchi, I would be dreaming of little dumplings floating in a bowl of sauce covered with Parmesan cheese!…
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A short story by Susanna Solomon
At seventeen, Christy St. Claire had been a virgin long enough. All of her friends had made it with guys, but she hadn’t, no, not yet. Having a boyfriend was a big deal for her, but that wasn’t the point, not really. It was this goddamn virginity, and it was in her way. It was time she joined the club.
Roberta Ann had told her she really wasn’t a woman until she’d lost it. Maybeth, in her history class, had lost hers in the back seat of a 1954 convertible, out…
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by Vicola England
The Catholic Church, not exactly a stranger to controversy, has once again found itself in the spotlight, but not for the usual reasons of sexual abuse by priests, or one of its clergy letting rip with a one-liner that breaks every equality law known to humankind. No — this is a new one.
Sister Margaret McBride was a hospital administrator at the Catholic run St Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, when a 27-year-old, pregnant mother of four was brought in suffering from pulmonary hypertension. Doctors determined that the risk of death from…
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by Natasha J. Stillman
Imagine one day, you turned on your usual radio station and there was no music – no songs, no instrumentals, not even a single commercial jingle. What would you think? What would you do? Sure, we’ve heard of songs being banned from radio play over the decades (from Billie Holiday’s “Love for Sale” to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”). And, certainly we all know when lyrics have been bleeped or “altered”. However, very few of us have experienced a radio ban of almost all music.
Last month, the…
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by Lindsey Kay
Jennifer Knapp is a lesbian. That probably doesn’t mean much to a lot of people who weren’t following contemporary Christian music in the mid-nineties. Yet there is a subset of people for whom this news is important. They seem to have already (in the short few weeks since the news became public) broken into three groups: the ambivalent, who say “Wait, now that she’s in the public eye again will she be releasing a new album?”; the supportive, “Well, good for her being open about it. Nothing good…
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by Ilias Kountoupis
Allow me to put graphically how my fellow countrymen are feeling right now: ridden hard by domestic politicians, pursued by international speculators lurking in the dark, and put away wet, exhausted, and abused. And now our pursuers are closing in for the kill, their appetite for blood reinvigorated just as our government is trying to put to rest the rumors of Greece defaulting on its debt and stop a lengthy panic attack throughout our society.
We want something more than to see embezzled public funds embezzled returned and taxation mechanisms functioning appropriately; we want justice.…
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by Kate Hansen
After the birth of my son in 2007, I felt an incredible energy and drive to make art. Contrary to the popular belief that art-making is one of the things that fall to the wayside after the birth of children, I felt not just inspired but compelled by my experience of childbirth and motherhood. The creative act of making another human being awoke a creative drive in me. I also found that the time limitations involved in caring for an infant forced me to be more disciplined, eking out an hour here…
Read the rest of this article»
by Joey Racano
(special to Harlots’ Sauce Radio)
‘Ye shall smell land, though none such is nigh
and ‘neath the laughter of gulls,
a white whale shall surface
spouting crimson into a wasted sea
And with his great flukes shall ye be made
to swim among the splinters’
-J. Racano
Just in time for summer, representatives from 88 nations gathered in Agadir, Morocco, for the 62nd annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission on June 21st. The high ratings of Animal…
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by Grace Bon
The other day we went to pick my niece up from pre-school. I waited in the car with my daughter while my cousin ran out to the classroom to get her daughter. It was just a normal afternoon.
Or so I thought.
I happened to look around and noticed a boy in a red shirt running around behind a tree. Then I see him pull his pants down. I’m sitting in my car with my mouth open thinking to myself, “Oh my… there’s no way he’s going to pee behind the tree right now!”
…
by Peter McCarthy
(reporting from Australia)
This last week has seen some interesting commentary about whether the current Pope can be put on trial for covering up child abuse when he was Cardinal Ratzinger as late as November 2002. This report from St Oswald Foundation is one of the better ones for covering the options. It’s an interesting question that has a few quirky responses that reveal more about the commentator than the facts.
Predictably some have attacked Richard Dawkins for wanting to destroy the Church, which is…
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by Jean Wong
I could no more procrastinate than bungee jump from a bridge. As children, we were taught that life was serious. “Fun” was tolerated as an incidental occurrence in everyday life, but had nothing to do with the main idea. “Study hard, make good grades, save money” was programmed into our minds like red banners emblazoned on a Communist party wall. No one had to remind us to do our homework. Work was the only course offered on the menu and each one of us dutifully proceeded to clean our plates.…
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A Satire by Stefanie Freele
Ballpark, Michigan: Mary Martha Seaton, age 42, eight months pregnant and proud mother of seven, pushes one full grocery cart and tugs another through the “Bed and Bath’ aisle of her nearest Walmart, ten miles away from her home in Ballpark Michigan. “I’ll be so glad when they build the new Walmart two blocks from my home.” She wipes her brow and one of her baby’s cheeks with her sleeve. “Between you and me,” she whispers, “I have more money now than I know what to do with. I mean, how many trailers can…
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Charlotte Hughes on Gossip Girl
personalised clothing on Brown Belt, Black Shoes
Ann Casolaro Minard on La Buona Cucina – NEW Harlots’ Sauce Food Column by Ann Minard
Grace on Poopy-Pants – Just Another Day in The Mommy Trenches
Janisia on Poopy-Pants – Just Another Day in The Mommy Trenches
Lee Radnich on ARTIST’s Madonna and Child Breastfeeding Paintings Removed from Facebook as “Obscenities”Grace on Poopy-Pants – Just Another Day in The Mommy Trenches
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