Karen Sandler

Author: Karen Sandler

  • Happy Birthday, Dad

    Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have been 86 today. He died of Alzheimer’s nearly 5 months ago on January 9th. I’d like to share his eulogy today as a way to remember him.

    Great men don’t always become president, or build tall buildings, or run corporations. Sometimes greatness comes from a man’s kindness, his generosity, his good heart. Sam Stier was that kind of man.

    Sam was a loving husband of Barbara, father to four daughters and stepfather to one son, grandfather to nine grandchildren, great-grandfather to five great-grandchildren. He was also a friend to everyone he met. That last is no exaggeration—everyone who met him came to love him.

    Sam was born in Los Angeles, California, June 4th, 1926, the oldest of Harry and Rose Stier’s three sons. Sam was just 10 years old when his mother died of tuberculosis. Before she left for the hospital that last time, she took her oldest son aside and told him, “Sam, be a good boy.” He took those words to heart after she died, watching over his two younger brothers, Irwin and Arnold, while their dad worked as a long-haul trucker.

    When World War II broke out in 1941, Sam was too young to enlist, but felt a sense of duty to fight for his country. When he turned 16, he tried to persuade his father to sign the papers allowing him to enlist in the Navy. His father refused. Sam asked again when he was 17. This time his father relented. Sam served in the Navy from 1943 through 1946, mostly in the South Pacific.

    One of his first jobs out of the Navy was as a TV repairman. He loved working with his hands and he loved electronics and figuring out how things worked. He was always thinking of better ways to do something, even when the “better way” took longer than the other way. In the case of his job repairing TVs, Sam just wanted to fix the TV right there at the customer’s house. Sam’s boss wanted those TVs brought into the shop so he could charge a higher price for repairing it. Sam was far too honest a man to go along with his boss’s scheme, so he quit.

    Not long after, Sam started working at Space Technology Laboratories, which later became TRW. As a spacecraft technician, Sam helped build many a communications satellite. He traveled to Cocoa Beach, Florida numerous times to help with the launches. He enjoyed those trips to the East Coast, but at the same time hated leaving his family.

    Over the years, he enjoyed a wide variety of activities. He was an avid skier and loved tinkering with cars. In the ‘70s he bought an Alfa Romeo, fixed it up, and raced it at the track in Gardena, California. He was a voracious reader, but also enjoyed outdoor sports like hiking and whitewater rafting. In later life, he took up woodworking, and did much of the work remodeling his home in Pollock Pines.

    And throughout his life, Sam was an amazing father. He supported his four daughters in everything they did. He always let them know he loved them and how proud he was of them. He taught his daughters by example. They learned to be kind from his kindness. They grew to be generous through witnessing so many acts of Sam’s generosity. They became responsible adults because he took responsibility for his actions. Everything Sam gave his daughters, they passed down to their own children, raising another generation of loving, generous people who live by their grandfather’s example.

    For many people afflicted with Alzheimer’s as Sam was, their personalities change. They become unhappy, sad, or angry. But Sam’s spirit was so strong that despite the theft of his memories by the disease, his basic nature never changed. He was just as kind, just as generous and upbeat throughout his illness as he’d always been. He charmed the staff at his care home, and they grew to love him as their own “Papa Sam.” And although it was difficult for his family to see Sam fade, to have him move farther and farther away from them with time, it was a great blessing that he never lost his loving nature.

    I love you, Dad. Still missing you.

  • Pride and Education

    In the last week, my son and daughter-in-law have both been awarded their PhDs in economics. To say I’m proud of them is an understatement. I’m pretty much doing the Snoopy dance of joy in response to their accomplishments. It’s made even more impressive by the fact that both of them achieved their bachelors degrees in three years rather than the usual four. And they did that by excelling in their high school AP courses so that those classes counted toward their BA.

    On my husband’s side of the family, his dad was an attorney. His mom completed some college. But on my side, both my mom’s mom and dad’s dad only went as far as the 8th grade. My dad didn’t finish high school. He got his GED from the Navy. My mom graduated high school, then attended beauty school. She ended up spending much of her working life as a waitress (although in the last part of her life, she owned a restaurant).

    Of my three sisters, only the oldest one went to college, and she got an AA. I knew I wanted more than that. I remember sitting down with my dad one day, telling him I wanted to go to college. He asked, “But what if you get married and quit?” I told him, “Oh, Dad, I won’t do that.” It seems so old-fashioned for a dad to ask a daughter that question, but at that time, we were on the cusp between women being homemakers only and women beginning to test the waters that only men swam in.

    So I got my BA and later a masters. The first one in my family to go that far. And when I had my own kids, we never lectured them about college, we never pushed them, but it must have been in their DNA. They went straight from high school to college. Leading to a BA for my older son and an eventual PhD for my younger son.

    This blog post is a bragfest, but it’s also me announcing how fanatical I am about education. I feel strongly that kids have to do something after high school, whether it’s four-year college, trade school, apprenticeship. If they want a job that’s going to pay more than minimum wage, that might eventually earn them a profession, they need education. And if there’s any way to do that without a pile of debt at the end, that’s ideal. It sucks that education costs so much at many institutions.

    So I’m going to bask a little in the reflected glow of my son’s accomplishment (and my daughter-in-law’s even though that’s even more reflected). And there will be a massive grin on my face (and a few tears) when they graduate June 14th.

  • RTW – Dream Writer’s Conference

    This week YA Highway‘s Road Trip Wednesday asks, What book and/or writing conference would you love to go to? I’ve been lucky to attend tons of great writers conferences over the years (the majority of them RWA annual conferences when I was a member). And this year I’ve attended two already (LTUE & Spring Spirit) and have a couple more great conferences planned for the latter half of the year (the SCBWI annual summer conference and the 2012 Novelists, Inc conference).

    There are a couple of conferences I dream of attending every year. The first one looks like I will only be able to attend in my imagination–the Maui Writer’s Conference. A quick search on Google tells me that after 17 years, Maui Writers has died. No new conferences since 2009.

    But it always sounded like the coolest (albeit quite expensive) conference ever. First of all, who wouldn’t want to go to Maui? It was always over Labor Day weekend, so you already had that extra day off. And I know of one author (James Rollins) who told me he sold his first book thanks to the Maui Writer’s Conference writing competition.

    Well, putting aside now imaginary writer’s/books conferences, on to reality. I’ve attended BEA once and that’s a conference I’d like to attend again. Also, ALA, which happens to be in Anaheim this year and I ought to attend since it’s reasonably close. (Note: Tip from a conference-attending pro. If the conference is a short drive or plane ride away, scrape your shekels together and attend).

    In the farther away category, I’ve always thought it would be cool to attend one of the big foreign rights book fairs. London, Frankfurt, or Bologna would be great destinations for a combo author’s business trip and vacation. I’d love to see what one of those big international book fairs are like, even thought they’re not geared towards authors.

    This wasn’t part of the original question, but of the conferences I’ve attended, I’d highly recommend the RWA conferences (expensive, but plenty of good general information), LTUE for speculative fiction, and the SCBWI conferences for children’s lit, of course (smaller local ones can be especially valuable). Wear comfortable shoes and layers for the over-air-conditioned rooms and you’ll have a great time.

  • Kill Your Darlings

    When William Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings,” the darlings he referred to were those elegantly composed sections of prose you adore beyond reason. They do nothing for the story, they stick out like garish jewels on an otherwise humble hand, and they must be killed (i.e., deleted). It’s difficult to say goodbye to those intricate metaphors and precious phrasing, but they have no business being in your manuscript. Sorry, gotta go.

    There are other kinds of problem children that we sometimes insert into our prose, that also have a bad influence on our work.  For instance, words we have a compulsion to use often and liberally (redundantly even) in our books. Punctuation we have a special affection for. Turns of phrase we throw in at every opportunity.

    Since confession is good for the soul, I’ll reveal mine here. I love em dashes. You know what they are–those long dashes that break up two clauses. When I do a final edit of my book, I search for all the em dashes and in most cases, I can either replace them with a comma, or separate the two clauses into two sentences. I also have a particular fondness for ellipses (also ruthlessly squelched), and am a recovering semi-colon-aholic. In the word choice department, adverbs are my bad actors. Really.

    In other authors’ work, I’ve seen overuse of the word mumble (a very useful word that loses its power when utilized too often), nervous characters chewing their lips so often it’s surprising their mouth is not in shreds, and the italic overload (IMO, italics are hard on the eyes and should be used sparingly). The exclamation point is also a travesty, although its overuse seems to be limited to newbies.

    The nice thing about all these pecadillos that creep into our writing is that once we recognize the problem, we can fix it on that final edit. I’ve acknowledged to myself that em dashes and ellipses are part of my process, how I get the words down on the page. I know I can take them out later, but in the draft process it works best to just let myself put them in. Same for my adverbosity. I’ll trim those back in a later draft.

    So what are your problem children? Metaphors you overuse, that character action you repeat ten times too many in your manuscript? Feel free to share.

  • On the Back of a Winged Horse

    All through grade school, I had one best friend–Suzy. We were in the same class from kindergarten through 6th grade. The summer before 7th grade, I moved with my mom and two older sisters to the San Bernardino mountains about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. Suzy and I kept in touch via letters and would get together when I’d go back to L.A. to see my dad or grandma.

    We were pretty much glued at the hip during elementary school. We’d hang out at her house or mine (they were about a block away from each other), stroll around the corner to the house where Carl, Brian, and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys lived just to stare at it, or go to the little neighborhood store for wax lips and candy cigarettes. Sometimes we’d head over to the school that was nearer to her house (our school was nearer to mine) and sneak under the fence to play in the playground. It’s a little hard to see, but at left is a particularly flattering picture (ahem, not) of me with my sweatshirt snagged on the fence while I’m trying to shimmy through.

    One thing we definitely had in common was a love of books and stories. We hung out in the school library so much that the librarian fell in love with us. She liked us so much she took me and Suzy to Marineland over in Palos Verdes, a fabulous (but now defunct) aquarium/marine life exhibit on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

    And Suzy and I loved to make up stories. I remember sitting in Suzy’s garage one time while she created and told a story that involved us flying around on winged horses, traveling around the clouds (they were solid so we could walk on them). Another friend of ours, Janet, was also featured in the story with us. But at some point, Janet fell off her winged horse and was killed. We had nothing against Janet; that was just the way the story went.

    Of course when we got to school the next day and Janet was absent, we were a little freaked out. Luckily, it wasn’t our fictional death that did her in. She was just sick for the day.

    When I moved to the Lake Arrowhead area for those four years, I did make a new friend (Virginia), but I kept in touch with Suzy. I hadn’t realized how many letters I wrote to her until a few years ago she sent me a cool spiral-bound book filled with old photographs (like the ones above) and several of my letters. The one at left is pretty typical. I loved playing with words even then (a cackle of witches, a waddle of ducks).

    Suzy attended my wedding 30+ years ago, then we lost touch for a long time. I think it was my mom’s death that reconnected us (which is when she sent the book). Then with the miracle that is Facebook, we’re at least virtually back in each other’s lives. I keep hoping that one of my trips to L.A. we’ll be able to meet IRL.

    Meanwhile, I’ll just unreel the memories from time to time and keep that winged horse handy.