BABETTE

“Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth” has been in print now for several weeks and on March 14th I hosted a small dinner party for friends who helped out with the project. We shared halibut, Coho salmon and yelloweye rockfish I caught while commercial fishing in Alaska.

As the fish cooked, everyone examined  Babette artifacts including more than a hundred pounds of railroad spikes she collected over the years. Consistent with her dedication to every undertaking, each spike had been cleaned, polished, often enamel painted and in two cases, gold leaf plated, plus always engraved with the locations and dates of collection.

Afterward I read several selections from the manuscript, a piece where Babette describes her love for the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, another from our trip to Eastern Oregon where the old Rajneesh Puram cult became infamous, and lastly, my account of the final dinner party Babette ever threw just before her death less than a day later. Check out a clip of that here on youtube.

The most significant developments now are Babette’s availability in Portland-area bookstores, plus online, and a firm date of March 23rd for the release party. It is scheduled to take place at the Star Theater downtown which is a pretty slick venue. I will be escalating the promotion machine increasingly as that date approaches. Stay tuned, this ride is about to get exciting…

Unsurprisingly, I once again write to chronicle another setback. The proof of Babette arrived in the mail last Thursday from my printer. Despite multiple anxious nightmares, it looks beautiful, the cover is excellent, all formatting turned out perfect but the text… well, leaves something to be desired. Here is a close up…

As you can see, the letters turned out fairly pixelated. It creates an effect where the text looks faded and doesn’t pop off the page like it should. I’ve been attempting to remedy this difficulty, but as I will be busy with holiday affairs for the next several days, it must wait. I apologize to everyone for this hold up which can’t be more than a final gasp of resistance before Babette is loosed on the world.

In an aside, on Friday I happened to be working down near Babette’s old house on Tolman Street in SE Portland. The way home took me past Reed College so I paused a moment and stopped by the location where so much happened over ten years ago. It’s something I projected forward to, even then. I would sit on the front steps after some particularly bizarre adventure with my professor and imagine that someday years hence,  I would drive down the street and remember our lives together, however it all turned out…

Many people have heard me imitate Babette’s voice over the years, often while reading selections from my manuscript. Her way of pronouncing my name was aways comical, which I  spell “Wrahs.” While her accent is quite heavy, many have observed that it doesn’t quite sound French. The explanation I remember being given  is that after emigrating to America in 1946 and eventually attending college at Portland University, her English pronunciation needed work. The speech coach she learned from was Polish and soon her language molded around his accent as well.

Only a few recordings survive of Babette’s lectures, but one of particular interest is called “Dr. Ellsworth: Women in History.” It is dated March 8th, 1997 and was apparently taped by a student in her living room. It lasts almost forty minutes and at one point her beloved antique clock from Quebec can be heard ringing out the hour. I have made a brief excerpt from this and put it up on youtube here.

In other news, I have spent the last two weeks formatting my manuscript and all that is left should be making the front and back covers turn out right. This has been an extraordinarily painful task. I never want to format a book ever again, even of my life depended on it. We’re almost done. Thanks everyone for sticking with me on this.

So, I’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to the Babette fundraising project so far. I honestly never thought it would do this well. Here is a video of myself reading the brief first chapter…

So, here is the most recent update: I have at last completed my last significant revision and yesterday printed up two copies of the manuscript. One I am combing over myself to be sure every last detail is correct, while the other, my friend Katie Ash is examining. In addition, my friend Brian Fitzgerald is proofreading an electronic version. Hopefully, this will catch any remaining errors. Once final corrections are made, Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth, will be complete and ready to publish.

On that day I will drink one of my last few bottles of Babette’s favorite wine, a Greek  muscat variety called Samos. When I first moved into her cellar in 1999, we had about three crates of it, but over the years she gave many away, plus once inheriting the lot, I felt no need to conserve until now there are only three left. There will no doubt be difficult formatting issues and other technological problems until the print run is actually ready, but I will drink Babette’s wine on the day my manuscript is complete. That day is very close. Thanks to everyone who has helped bring it closer.