Category Archives: Books

Cocktail Corner: Literary Libations

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A spirited toast to all things alcoholic! by Leslie Dinaberg |

The Cocktail Chart of Film & Literature (Pop Chart Art)

The Cocktail Chart of Film & Literature (Pop Chart Art)

The James Bond Vodka Martini order—”shaken, not stirred”—is one of the most famous literary libation catch phrases (I’ve even used it myself, in a fake deep British accent of course!), but there are plenty of others.

Ian Fleming himself had a long line of cocktails for 007, including the Negroni, Americano and Vesper.

From Daisy Buchanan‘s Mint Julep and Jay Gatsby‘s Gin Rickey in The Great Gatsby to Zaphod Beeblebrox‘s Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, our fictional friends make pretty good bartenders.

They also make for pretty good graphics. Check out The Cocktail Chart of Film & Literature from Pop Chart Labs. If your idea of a perfect evening is to settle in with a good cocktail and a great novel (or a good cocktail and a great movie) then you’ll love this poster.

tequila-mockingbird1-350x400If you lack wall space for the poster, dip into Tim Federle‘s Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist, a highly entertaining recipe book that pays homage to literary libations with drinks like Romeo and Julep, The Pitcher of Dorian Grey Goose, Love in the Time of Kahlua, The Deviled Egg Wears Prada and more.

Whoever said drinking doesn’t make you smarter obviously never read this book. Cheers!

Click below for a fun look at James Bond ordering his favorite cocktail.

Click here for more cocktail corner columns. Originally published in Santa Barbara SEASONS on October 25, 2013.

Leslie Dinaberg

Leslie Dinaberg

When she’s not busy working as the editor of Santa Barbara SEASONS, Cocktail Corner author Leslie Dinaberg writes magazine articles, newspaper columns and grocery lists. When it comes to cocktails, Leslie considers herself a “goal-oriented drinker.”

Eat, Drink and Be Married

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Photo by Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee, freedigitalphotos.net

Photo by Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee, freedigitalphotos.net

Chatting with Author Rebecca Bloom

“What is it about wedding preparations that makes the ordinary tasks usually taking a woman from bed to bath, to bra, to base, to bagel, to bag, to butt-on-the-seat-of- the-car in 28 minutes flat, suddenly expand, exhale and evolve into hours upon hours of careful mirror observations and highly scrutinized tinkering?” writes Rebecca Bloom in her new novel, “Eat, Drink, and Be Married.”

I’m giggling as I read these words (So very true!) and laughing even more as I speak to their author, who is sneaking in our phone call during the precious naptime of her two-year-old son. Along with some of the laugh-out-loud-in-recognition scenes in her book, this is yet another thing about Rebecca Bloom that I can relate to.

Expecting her second child in the fall, Rebecca chats easily about writing, kids, tequila and the birth of “Eat, Drink, and Be Married,” her third novel. Here are some highlights:

Leslie Dinaberg: I really enjoyed the book. What was your inspiration?

Rebecca Bloom: I had been going to a lot of weddings and I was noticing that there is so much else that goes on around the wedding. There’s such a heightened sense of emotions for everybody. I wanted to write something that explored not just what the bride and groom were going through but what the guests themselves were going through. Weddings bring out a lot of different kinds of things for people and I wanted to explore those things.

LD: I was really struck by the coming together of the college friends who got back into their old dynamic so quickly and reverted to their old selves. Was that your experience?

RB: With my girlfriends from college, we have this shorthand that it doesn’t matter how long it has been since we’ve talked or how much has happened, the minute we’re together there’s not a lag, we don’t really have to catch up. There’s an instant repartee and there’s an instant sort of comfort and camaraderie. I wanted to put that in the book because I do think that in college you form such intense bonds because you’re with people 24/7 and you don’t really have time past college to ever really do that. … I wanted to capture that because I think it’s the case for a lot of people that the old friends sometimes are the ones that know you the best.

LD: A while back my husband and I were in that wedding a weekend phase and we sort of became the wedding critics. What do you think makes a really good wedding or a really not so good wedding?

RB: It is funny, when you write a wedding book everyone thinks you’re an expert on weddings but it’s sort of just your own opinion.

I think the best weddings are the weddings that really represent the bride and groom and you can tell that they really planned it for themselves and not for their moms and their friends. It’s really all about them. And those are often the most fun.

Our wedding had a lot of tequila and that really made it fun (Laughs). … I think the ones that are the best are the most relaxed and represent the couple-not just the bride.

LD: Were you married when you wrote this book?

RB: Actually I wrote this book, the first draft of it, when I was single. I wrote this wedding book and then I met my husband. So we’re sort of like that movie “Field of Dreams,” where the whole thing is like if you build it he will come. (Laughs)

LD: And now you have a husband, a young son and another on the way. How do you write and juggle all of that?

RB: Not as well as I would like. I am trying to start writing something new and it’s just hard. It’s hard to find the balance. … You just do the best you can. I can’t do everything all the time. And I can’t do it very well. My kids right now are the most important and that’s okay for me for right now.

LD: Not only are weddings fraught with drama, they’re also a huge business. Was that sort of marketing angle in your mind when you developed the story?

RB: I definitely knew … that there might be more avenues open maybe for publicity or marketing but I didn’t really think about that when I was writing it.

As I’ve gotten older though and as I end up starting my next book I’m thinking about that more because I want to make a living and I want it to sell and so I’m letting that come in a little bit. I have a bunch of ideas, so I am thinking which one is the most marketable and I’ll go with that.

But I’m not writing about zombies or anything (Laughs).

LD: I don’t know, a vampire, shades of grey, zombie wedding book with a historical twist could be huge.

For more information about Rebecca Bloom, visit www.rebeccabloom.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.  Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 8, 2012.

Bonding Over Books

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Honeymoon-Jenna-McCarthy-214x322Santa Barbara has a lot of great fundraisers, but one of my favorites is the annual CALM (Child Abuse Listening Mediation) Celebrity Authors’ Luncheon.

It’s easy to get excited about buying books, talking about books with other readers and listening to authors talk about books, not to mention a great lunch with a dessert of chocolate ganache and caramel tart with raspberry garnish chocolate ring coulis (they had me at chocolate ganache), and last but foremost on everyone’s mind, a really important and worthy cause.

As I hope most people already know, CALM has led the way in building awareness, providing education and inspiring hope to everyone involved in the effort to prevent child abuse and neglect in the Santa Barbara community for the past 40 years.

Last Saturday was the 26th event of its kind-and the first to be planned by event co- chairs Becky Cohn and Carolyn Gillio. They stepped into the stylin’ stilettos left by former co-chairs Sharon Bifano and Stephanie Ortale, who created and organized CALM’s first Annual Authors’ Luncheon in 1987 and only recently gave up the reins.

Thankfully, they left them in very good hands: the day went off without a hitch.

The theme of the decor was apples-Sunday was Johnny Appleseed Day, and I’m sure you all celebrated by spitting seeds around town: Artist Susan Day’s whimsical artwork, which graced the invitation and program and was raffled off for CALM, showed children reading atop and under an inviting apple tree. The centerpieces were full of apples and the first course was chilled strawberry and apple soup-but spilling the beans felt like the theme of the author interviews.

First up, was actor Joseph Mascalo, who has starred off and on as drug dealing murdering crime lord Stefano DiMera on the soap opera Days of Our Lives since 1982 (and was ostensibly there to talk about the coffee table book Days of Our Lives 45 Years: A Celebration in Photos). He spilled the beans on what it’s really like to work on a series where kidnaping, art theft, assassinations, fake deaths and real long lost evil twins are part of “just another day at the office.” The reality is a whole lot of hard work, as he explained in a charmingly booming voice that had the mostly female audience on the edge of their seats.

Next to spill the beans was Simon Tolkien, author of several British mystery thrillers (including his latest, The King of Diamonds) and a new resident of Santa Barbara. As the grandson of beloved author J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit) Simon talked movingly about what it was like to grow up with such a famous surname and his bold decision, at the age of 40, to give up his career as a barrister and pursue a career writing novels.

Batting third and definitely leaving no holds barred was Meredith Baxter, an acclaimed actress, who most of us recognize from her years playing Michael J. Fox’s mother on the sitcom Family Ties. What many people didn’t realize, until she notably spilled the beans that she was a lesbian on The Today Show a few years ago, is that she’s also battled breast cancer, survived domestic abuse and has been a sober alcoholic for 19 years. If her book, Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame, and Floundering, is anything like her frank discussion at the CALM lunch, she definitely has few secrets left to tell.

Last but most definitely funniest, Santa Barbara’s own Jenna McCarthy (who used to banter on KTYD with Matt McAllister in the morning). She elicited nods, laughter and a whole lot of guffaws when she shared insights from her recent book, If It Was Easy They’d Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon: Living with and Loving the TV- Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-so-handy Man You Married. She spilled the beans on what married life is really like and why sticking with the man (did we really all just marry the same guy?) you’ve got might just be a very good idea after all.

Over the years some of the authors interviewed have included: Sue Grafton, Jane Russell, Barnaby Conrad, Michael Crichton, Julia Child, Ray Bradbury, Fanny Flagg, Maria Shriver and Jonathan Winters. While big names help fill seats and raise money for the child abuse, sexual abuse and incest services and programs at CALM, longtime luncheon goers agree that the “best known celebrity is not always the best interview.” I would have to agree. This year’s panel was among the best I’ve seen.

For more information about CALM visit www.calm4kids.org. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on March 16, 2012.

Is happiness overrated

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I Just Want My Kids to be Happy!“America’s youth are drowning in happiness,” says Aaron Cooper, Ph.D., a psychologist concerned about the rising rates of youth depression and anxiety.

“Millions of well-intentioned parents have made life harder for their children by shielding the kids from every kind of unhappiness,” according to Cooper, who co- authored a book on the dangers when parents make happiness the most important thing in their children’s lives. “These parents try to soften every edge in their children’s lives, and it’s crippling the kids emotionally.”

That’s a scary thought, but he might be right. “I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy!” has become the mantra of today’s parents. I hear people say that all of the time. I’m just as guilty as the next mom of sometimes valuing my son’s short-term happiness over the long-term lessons I could-and should-be teaching him.

I just read Cooper’s book called, I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy! Why you shouldn’t say it, why you shouldn’t think it, what you should embrace instead,” which he co-authored with Eric Keitel, M.Ed., and they explain why buying into the happiness mantra is a mistake.

“Without plenty of practice coping with ordinary sadness, upset, disappointment, and hurt, kids don’t develop resilience,” Cooper says. “And without resilience, they’re vulnerable to all kinds of problems.”

Of course everyone wants their kids to be happy, that’s human nature. But according to this book, “I just want them to be happy” is more than just a wish. It’s also expressing a belief that our kids’ happiness is the most important thing.

After reading it I began to think that happiness might actually be overrated.

Some of the negative consequences that result from just wanting children to be happy include:

Being captive to our children’s moods. I am so guilty of this one. From the time that Koss was a teeny tiny baby I have hated to see him be the least bit unhappy or god forbid, cry, and will do just about anything to make it stop.

Feeling unnecessary guilt and shame when our kids aren’t happy. I’m the poster child for this one. When Koss is upset I feel personally responsible. It’s all my fault. It’s always all my fault. Even if it’s his fault, I feel like it’s all my fault.

Overprotecting our children from adversity. Guilty again. I can’t help it. It’s so hard not to want protect your child from life’s pain. Every time I hear about another kid being mean to Koss, or even inadvertently hurting his feelings, the mama bear in me wants to swoop in and make everything all right again-even if it means permanently banishing the mean kid from the forest. I’m still holding grudges from kindergarten while Koss has long since moved on.

Abdicating parental authority rather than cause our kids unhappiness. Again, guilty as charged. Really guilty. I can’t tell you how often I abandon my plans to run errands after school and agree to let him have a friend over, or agree to five more minutes of playtime (which turns into ten or 15 minutes) because he looked at me with sadness in those big brown eyes. This one’s a double whammy because after I give in, then I feel guilty for not being strict enough with him.

It might even be a triple whammy because, as Cooper explains: “Kids know how much their parents want them to be happy, and so when they’re sad or upset for whatever reason, they feel guilty thinking they’re letting their parents down. Many hide their distress at home, which compounds the problem and they end up feeling worse.”

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned as a parent-okay I’m still working on this one-is to allow Koss to be unhappy. My impulse is to want to wipe away his sadness like it was spilt milk. At the same time I know that I’m doing him a disservice by trying to “make it all better.”

When it comes to our children’s happiness, less may actually be more. So instead of focusing on happiness, what should parents emphasize? Cooper and Keitel reviewed decades of research and found eight ingredients in people’s lives that reliably predict who is happy and who is not, including a sense of gratitude, closeness to others, and an optimistic outlook.

I think I get it now. The next time Koss is sad I won’t try to make it all better, I’ll just give him a hug, tell him how much I love him, and hope for the best.

Are we overemphasizing our children’s happiness? Tell Leslie what you think by emailing Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 15. 2011.

Heating up to Fifty

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Between a Rock and Hot Place, by Tracey Jackson

Between a Rock and Hot Place, by Tracey Jackson

Let me start out this column by saying that I am not 50 yet.

I am nowhere near 50 years old.

OK, the sum total of my journeys around the sun is not quite 50–yet–but I’m a heck of a lot closer to being 50 than I am to being 30.

The fact that I have difficulty wrapping my head around this oh-so-obvious reality was part of the inspiration for Tracey Jackson‘s humorous new book, Between a Rock and a Hot Place: Why Fifty is Not the New Thirty, a part memoir, part self-help, part rant and always entertaining look at what happens to women when they hit the big Five-O.

“The idea that just because we want to we can turn back the clock and pretend to be thirty is both amusing and insane,” laughed Jackson, speaking to me from the back room of a hair salon. This busy lady fit in our interview during a quick trip home to New York before flying off to D.C. to continue a book tour that includes visits with Kathie Lee and Hoda, Meredith Vierra on “The Today Show” and the Writing Mamas of Corte Madera County.

“Being on a book tour is tiring, but it’s a good kind of whirlwind,” said Jackson, who has had a lot of whirlwinds since her childhood in Santa Barbara, where her extended family still resides. A comedy screenwriter for 17 years–Confessions of a Shopholic and The Guru are some of her better known titles–Jackson writes frankly about being shocked when she got older and the writing jobs started drying up. Ironically, her last screenwriting job was adapting a book called “The Ivy Chronicles,” about a woman who loses her job and reinvents herself.

Jackson also reinvented herself, producing and starring with her daughter in a documentary film called Lucky Ducks, (about the complex relationship boomer parents have with their over-indulged teens), daily blogging and most recently, writing “Between a Rock and a Hot Place.”

All of the hot button middle age stuff is there, with her amusing takes on what could be depressing topics like menopause (“it’s not all in your head, it’s in your vagina”), money (“I didn’t mean to spend it all”), death (“ready or not, here death comes”) and my favorite, “Sex, Estrogen and Not So Much Rock and Roll.”

Of course I immediately turned to the chapter about sex, where Jackson describes in hilarious detail her attempt to spice up her marriage with a trip to a very posh sex store. The resulting misadventures involving Jackson, her husband, a shiny black bag of toys, and Lola Falana (their Chihuahua) made me laugh so hard that I woke up my husband.

With sex, face lifts, finances and sandwich generation challenges of aging parents and exhausting teenagers sitting side-by-side, the book casts a pretty wide net over the issues of “second adulthood.” Jackson said that was her plan from the start.

“When you’re writing a comedic book, which a lot of this is, and then you have to throw in things that aren’t funny, it’s hard. … When you’re writing about death, you’re writing about death so it’s trickier to make that buoyant and make that something that people don’t go ‘OK now I’ve read this really funny chapter about sex and now I’m reading about dying.’ How do you keep that light? … At the end of the day you kind of give in and say OK I’m writing about death, this is not a funny topic any way you cut it, so we just have to kind of go for it. ”

She still manages to get the comedy in– when she talks about death she includes the story of her husband’s spinning teacher dropping dead at the gym. In fact, no matter what the topic, the laughs and hard truths resonate throughout both the book and my conversation with Jackson.

“We aren’t old and we aren’t young; we are in kind of in-between states, passing through the transit lounge of life,” she writes. “No matter how much Botox you get, things will start falling apart: some marriages end, some kids are job, some jobs are terminated, most faces fall and all boobs do. No one bothered to fill us in on this.”

Luckily that’s where Jackson and “Between a Rock and Hot Place” come in.

Tracey Jackson blogs daily at www.traceyjacksononline.com. Maybe Leslie will do that when she’s 50, but for now she writes weekly. Read her columns every Friday in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound or at www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on March 4, 2011.

Top Shelf — Works From Local Authors

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Top Shelf — Works by Local Authors, originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons, Fall 2010.

Top Shelf — Works by Local Authors, originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons, Fall 2010.

THIS FALL’S HARVEST from our homegrown authors is every bit as interesting and eclectic as Santa Barbara Farmers’ Markets. Here’s a peek at what some of our local scribes will have on the bookstore shelves this season.

Travel back in time with Joan Tapper to a time when it was possible to tour The Wild West on 5 Bits a Day (Thames & Hudson). Part travel guide, part historical journey, this clever tome invites readers to climb onboard a horse or a stagecoach and enter the world of colorful characters like Wyatt Earp and Buffalo Bill Cody. The book is written like an 1880 guide to traveling, eating,
drinking and surviving in frontier America, but with a fast-paced style to
satisfy today’s readers.

 While Tapper’s book is rooted in the past, former Santa Barbara Writers Conference director Marcia Meier’s  book, Navigating the Rough Waters of Today’s Publishing World: Critical Advice for Writers from Industry Insiders (Quill Driver), casts its view firmly toward the future, setting an investigative reporter’s eye on the book publishing industry, now “going through a revolution unlike anything since Gutenberg.” Meier interviews some of the top figures in the industry to provide an insider’s gaze into the crystal ball of the future of books.

Celeste Varner, owner of the charming yarn and fiber store Loop & Leaf recently published Shibui Baby (Shibui Knits), a so-cute-it’s-hardto-resist book of sweet, yet practical, baby patterns for knitters, designed especially to work well with the unique fiber and texture combinations in the Shibui Knits (Japanese translation: “elegant with a touch of bitterness”) lines of yarn.

Top Shelf — Works by Local Authors, originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons, Fall 2010.

Top Shelf — Works by Local Authors, originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons, Fall 2010.

Architects Russell Shubin and Robin Donaldson, whose partnership comprises the award-winning Shubin + Donaldson Architects, explore the inspirations and influences behind a number of local dwellings in their gorgeously glossy book Live + Work: Modern Homes and Offices: The Southern California Architecture of Shubin + Donaldson  (ORO Editions), which showcases modern homes in Montecito, the Riviera and Toro Canyon, among others.

Inspiration often springs from unexpected sources, an idea psychotherapist Jennifer Freed explores with affectionate humor and surprising depth in her book Lessons from Stanley the Cat: Nine Lives of Everyday Wisdom  (Penguin Group). Freed, who is best known locally as a marriage and family counselor, professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute and co-founder of the teen program AHA! (Academy of the Healing Arts), “translates” her beloved feline companion’s wit and wisdom into life lessons such as “Trust your instincts and stay away from people or creatures who smell like bad things or bad moods” and “Walk proud in the body you have and all will find you appealing,” then elaborates on these simple ideas with a professional’s insight and wisdom.

Dr. Maria Chesley Fisk, an educational consultant who specializes in training adults to work with children, takes almost the opposite approach of Dr. Freed. Fisk’s book Teach Your Kids to Think: Simple Tools You Can Use Every Day (That’s Good Thinking) dissects the complexities of the latest research on intelligence and converts it into a series of easy-to-use tools for parents to use in everyday conversations with their children.

Local artist Cathy Feldman of Blue Point Books has designed the book as a fast read for busy parents, while Fisk has stuffed it full of immediately useful takeaway tips on how to converse with your child, and at the same time, strategically develop their analytical, creative, social/emotional and practical thinking skills.

Originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine, Fall 2010. Cover photo by Jim Bartsch.

Cover photo by Jim Bartsch.

Originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine, Fall 2010. Cover photo by Jim Bartsch.

The Write Stuff

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Rebecca McClanahan "Word Painting"A Conversation With Rebecca McClanahan

When we’re not gobbling up the written word with a gusto that bewilders non-readers as much as whatever it is they do for pleasure baffles us, one of the things we writers like to do most is talk to other writers.

This week I had the pleasure of chatting with Rebecca McClanahan, the 2010 winner of Santa Barbara City College’s Raab Award in Creative Nonfiction, who will give a reading from her work from 7-8 p.m. on Friday, October 8, in the Fe Bland Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Leslie Dinaberg: You’ve published in many different genres. How do you decide that this idea will be an essay rather than a poem or fiction or creative nonfiction?

Rebecca McClanahan: I don’t think particularly about that, though I’m sure you could find little vestigial tails of experience in poems that I have written. … I think I’ve always written about home and loss of home and homesickness. … There are certain things, themes and characters and places that I revisit whether in fiction, poetry or nonfiction. … Certain things that continue to float up, that you revisit in some ways, you gnawed on it, you buried it and then it came up in another shape another form. … At some point you do begin to notice patterns.

LD: You often write about your personal experiences and your own life. When things are happening are you writing about them or do you wait a while?

RM: I think I maybe do a little of both. I have a writer’s notebook and sometimes I’ll jot down things as they are happening to me, events or specific details that I want to retain. But I think especially as an essayist, and that’s sort of the main hat I’ll be wearing in Santa Barbara because of the Raab Award, I really think that nonfiction and the essay is a reflective stance, that’s the genre. With a good essay, I think you really want the sense that you are discovering the meaning, the why of the experience, you’re not just writing down what happened.

… The best essays require reflective distance, especially if you’re a character in them. You’ve got to be the person on the other end of the experience trying to understand it because being in the middle of it, it’s a muddle. … I think there’s a place certainly for blogs and for instant writing and all of that but I don’t want to lose the power of reflection and time. You know that old saying; “we serve no wine before its time.” I tell my young graduate students “we serve no memoir before its time.” Wait a little bit.

LD: I read an interview where you were talking about how much more difficult it is to write sincerely about happy feelings as opposed to darker material. Can you talk a little bit about that?

RM: I hosted a panel called “Joy: The Last Taboo” a couple of years ago. It really is very difficult to not be Hallmarky about it … It’s very, very hard in our culture. I think especially because we really want to go to that sordid troubled dark memoir. I’m just so tired of them I can’t tell you.

LD: My husband and I have a running joke that our childhoods were too happy for us to really be successful writers because we didn’t have enough drama-no alcoholic parents or poverty or any of that great material.

RM: (Laughs) There are so many sad things out there. But here’s a quote by the poet John Ciardi: “You don’t have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.”

I definitely have written about a lot of dark things, personal and otherwise, but that’s not a whole life and that doesn’t make it interesting just because your father raped you or something. Even that has to be shaped into a text that is beautiful and meaningful to others. … What I look for in writers is someone who has really, really worked hard and allowed the truth to come through them in a way that’s going to change my life. That’s why I read. I can read the newspaper for the other stuff.

LD: As a writer, how do you know when you’re done?

RM: With briefer pieces, poems and brief lyric essays, I think I have a very firm sense when they’re done. The longer book length essays, it’s much harder to know because it’s such a complicated weaving. … I try to explain to my students, it’s like all the plates are spinning, and you’ve spun one and you’ve spun another and before the first one drops you have to run back to spin it again and finally when all of the plates of the world of the poem or the essay or the novel are in the air spinning as beautifully and blissfully as they can, they’re all alive at the same time, then you know it’s done and you get out right then-before you fall on your head.

Rebecca McClanahan will be reading from her work at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 8, in the Fe Bland Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. For information about her writing visit www.mcclanmuse.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.

Random Acts of Awesomeness

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Courtesy Operation Beautiful

Courtesy Operation Beautiful

For all of the hype about women and their low self esteem, it didn’t really hit home until the other night when I was out with a few of my beautiful and brilliant girlfriends laughing and chatting and having a great time until-dare I say it-one of them challenged the rest of us to say two things that we were good at.

You’d think she had ordered us to rob a bank or step on a crack and break our mother’s back for all of the nervous shudders that greeted the prospect of simply giving ourselves a compliment.

“I think I’m a pretty good cook,” said T, who could easily rival Rachael Ray in the kitchen. “I guess I’m sort of creative,” said M, who has such a beautifully decorated house that it could put Martha Stewart to shame.

You think?

You guess?

You’ve got to be kidding me!

I couldn’t help but contrast these women’s struggles to say something nice about themselves with the way my 11-year-old son’s top three adjectives to describe himself rolled off his tongue: “awesome, awesomer and awesomest.”

Awesome indeed. How can an untested 11-year-old kid have so much more confidence in himself than a group of fully-grown women who have proven their awesomeness time and time again? The answer is complicated, but one antidote is amazingly simple-in fact, it’s as simple as a Post-It note. Just ask Caitlin Boyle, founder of Operation Beautiful, a positive thinking movement so simple that all you need is a pen and some paper to participate.

It all began when Caitlin was having a really bad day and wanted to do something small and simple for someone else to make herself feel better. Tired of watching women criticize themselves while staring into bathroom mirrors, she scribbled, “You are beautiful” on a Post-it and slapped it on one of the mirrors in her Florida office building. Then she posted a picture of the note on her blog, www.HealthyTippingPoint.com. Soon women around the globe began mimicking her random act of kindness.

Notes started showing up on diet books, scales at gyms and on Slim-Fast boxes. Then Caitlin started the operationbeautiful.com blog, with a simple mission to leave positive, body-affirming notes in public spaces and invite others to do the same. The response was so overwhelming that she’s chronicled some of her favorite messages in a new book, Operation Beautiful: Transforming the Way You See Yourself One Post-it Note at a Time.

Since starting the project about a year and a half ago, Caitlin’s left hundreds of Operation Beautiful notes of her own, including her favorite saying of the moment, “Scales Measure Weight, Not Worth.” She also leaves notes around the house to inspire and motivate her, like the recent “You are the creator of your own destiny.”

Talk about a girl after my own heart.

One of my favorite things to do is write myself a message when I order things online, like a recent prescription order that came with a gift card saying, “Leslie, you rock!” And a book I got for my son arrived with the message, “Your mom must be awesome to have such an awesome kid.”

Not surprisingly, when it was my turn to say what I was good at, “amusing myself” was at the top of my list. As for Caitlin, she said, “I can seriously do anything I put my mind to- launch a small business, move across the country, practice yoga, run a marathon. And I have epic calf muscles.”

She’s got some pretty epic ideas too.

Keep an eye out ladies: you might just see a message on a mirror near you.

When Leslie’s not leaving random post-it notes in library books and public bathrooms, or writing cards to herself, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on September 24, 2010.

History in the Making

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Boehm Family Photo by V. Smith, courtesy Boehm Group

Boehm Family Photo by V. Smith, courtesy Boehm Group

Eric Boehm & Family

Honoring the past while looking toward the future has been a recurring theme throughout the 92 years of Eric Boehm’s life and his most recent venture, Boehm Biography Group, brings together three generations of his own family-son Steven, 49, and grandson Jeff, 25-to help others preserve their heritage and create meaningful legacies.

Boehm’s brush with history began just before World War II in 1934, when his German-Jewish parents’ prescient concerns about their son’s future stirred them to ship 16-year-old Eric from Hof, Germany, to live with his aunt and uncle in Youngstown, Ohio. “If you have to leave home, my suggestion is the time to leave is when you’re 16 years old, because you are young enough to adapt and old enough to be looking for adventure,” twinkles Eric, as he recalls his early life in America.

By the time his parents and brother had escaped Germany in 1941, Eric had received a B.A. from the College of Wooster and was working on his M.A. from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Those diplomatic skills came into play almost immediately, when he served a critical role in helping dissolve the Supreme Command of the Luftwaffe in Germany at the end of World War II. In a life with many high points, this experience stands out as one of the most significant, says Eric, whose work as an intelligence officer and interrogator is detailed in a new book, The Enemy I Knew (Zenith Press, 2009) by Steven Karras.

After leaving the military, Eric continued to work for the U.S. government in Germany as part of the press scrutiny board, reviewing German newspapers to glean information. While there, he met his wife, Inge Pauli. His cocker spaniel puppy played matchmaker for the couple. ” I took him to work with me every once in a while and he would disappear. He kept going upstairs looking and seeing if Fraulein Pauli was there,” laughs Eric. “She had been feeding him.”

The couple married in a double wedding ceremony with Eric’s brother and sister-in-law in Blake Wood, Illinois in 1948 and worked together until Inge died a decade ago. They had four children: two girls that died as children and two sons, Ronald and Steven, who live in Santa Barbara. If not for an encounter with anti-Semitism from a chemical company, Eric might have become a chemist rather than a historian. He was shattered after losing a job he thought was a sure thing. His history professor pulled some strings, and, unbeknownst to Eric at the time, created a job for him at the University of Massachusetts. While completing his doctoral studies at Yale, Eric published a collection of personal accounts of survival in Nazi Germany.

This passion for preserving knowledge led Eric and Inge to found historical bibliography company ABC-CLIO in 1955. The family and the company moved to Santa Barbara in 1960, soon after they spotted the while town en route to Los Angeles for a vacation. “We said you know, this is a nice place. On our way back let’s stop,” says Eric. “Then we took a hotel room by the beach … and one night here turned into two nights and three nights and four nights and while we were here we looked at houses.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Son Ronald now runs what has grown to become an international academic publishing enterprise.

About five years ago, the family founded Boehm Group. “At 87, I was too young to retire, but I was too old to spell bibliography, so I spelled biography,” smiles Eric, who credits his health and longevity mostly to good genetics. “My father died at 98, and I had a great grandfather who died at 98. The name of one of my ancestors is Liverecht, which translates to ‘live right,’-that’s what I try to do.”

In addition to producing individuals’ biographies to preserve family stories and institutional biographies, such as an upcoming coffee table book commemorating the 100th anniversary of Santa Barbara City College, Boehm Group plans to develop an online program that will offer college degrees in biography, explains Jeff, who is responsible for the technical project management.

“I see huge potential and it’s in the family business-plus I get to spend time with my grandfather and my father,” says Jeff, who affectionately calls his “Opa” (German for grandpa) Eric only when they’re in work mode. “I thought that I’d want to spend time doing something on my own, but this is something exciting that they’re starting new and I’m creating it with them.”

“The idea of working together, making it a family enterprise had meaning to me that I enjoyed,” says Eric. “What greater thing could you have than having a grandfather working with his son and grandson? It’s a real joy.”

Originally published in Santa Barbara Magazine In Spring 2010.

The Girl Who Stared Into Space

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Image by marcolm, freedigitalphotos.net

Image by marcolm, freedigitalphotos.net

Last Sunday I went to the beach to relax with my husband and son. It was a perfect warm day, with just the right amount of sea breeze. I had warned them both earlier that I wasn’t in the mood to socialize. I just wanted to veg out with the sand in my toes and a book under my nose.

We spotted friends a few yards up the shoreline but I wasn’t in the mood to socialize. I was determined to $#% relax that afternoon, as I ever so (im)patiently explained to my loved ones. They were supposed to read their books too.

That was our plan.

I was going to $#% relax if it killed me.

I had said so-clearly-before we left the house.

The tall guy immediately took off on a walk, while the short one read his book and I read mine. “Ah summer,” I thought lazily. “This is exactly what I needed. Pure bliss.”

That blissful feeling lasted a whole 45 minutes till I turned the last page of Richard Russo’s “That Old Cape Magic” (good book, by the way) at the exact same moment the short one turned the last page of Cory Doctorow’s “For the Win.”

I handed him my iPhone to play with (hey, it was an emergency) and dug in my beach bag for another book.

Now, if I were to have my own version of “The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut” it would be “The Girl Who Never Ever EVER Wanted to Run Out of Books to Read,” as evidenced by the 18 unread books I have sitting by the bedside and the other 247 I have in various rooms around the house.

I am never ever EVER without a book to read and yet I didn’t seem to have another one in my bag. This couldn’t be happening to me! I was always prepared with an extra book (or two or three), yet there I was sitting on the beach with perfect weather and a child who was uncharacteristically tired enough to sit there contentedly playing a game on my phone with little or no interaction required on my part-and no book to read!

I honestly had no idea what to do with myself.

I was so un-used to having the luxury of a few minutes just to space out that it took a little while for this to option occur to me.

I’m so used to always having a child to entertain, a project to think about, an article to work on, a book to read, a problem to solve or a friend to talk to that the idea of sitting and staring out at the vastness of the ocean took a while to sink in.

Then it took me a while to remember how to do it. To simply sit and do nothing and allow my thoughts to wander where they may, with no specific purpose or direction.

To simply be.

To relax and enjoy the sounds of the birds and the warmth of the sunshine and the salty smell of the ocean and the gritty sand between my toes was pure bliss once I got the hang of it.

Who knows, by the end of August maybe I’ll actually be “The Girl Who Stared Into Space-and Liked It” after all.

Share your summer stories with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on July 23, 2010.