By John Ramsey Miller

Last week some woman in California had salsa shoot out from her blender and the red stain on the wall looked to her to be a precise likeness of the actual Virgin Mary. I’m not talking about a Virgin Mary (tomato juice, Tabasco, pepper, celery stick, but hold the vodka either. What are the odds that this freak accident might just be a random stain caused by a blender lid failure and not the actual Virgin Mary communicating with this Catholic housewife? It might be the former were it not for the unexplainable odor of roses in a kitchen that ought by rights to smell like decaying salsa. Just to make sure people make the connection, this woman placed a portrait (available in any Catholic relic superstore) of the Virgin Mary on the stove and pinned up her rosary in to encircle the Salsa Virgin Mary so one’s eyes immediately zero in on her SVM. This Holy kitchen event (worthy of being covered by the world press in the time of terror attacks) got me to thinking once again about the nature of religions icon sightings. We’ve all seen coverage of the face of Jesus in the screen door in a trailer park, drawn in dirt on the side of an eighteen wheeler, in a rust stain in a shower, and in a glass window in an office building. We’ve all seen the Virgin Mary spotted in the oozing of water leaking from the concrete wall under a bridge, in a potato chip, the spot on a cat’s stomach and in various other unusual places. People flock to these sights to see Jesus or Mary in the flesh, or Salsa, for themselves. It’s hard for me to imagine Jesus or Mary planning these events, or taking place in them. You can see a better likeness of either or both in any church or cathedral in the world.

The thing I find fascinating about these iconic appearances (or mysterious apparitions) is that Protestants “always” see Jesus, while Catholics seem universally to spot Mother Mary. Likenesses of Buddah and Mohammed either never turn up on a kettle fry, in black mold on sheetrock or some other odd media or simply aren’t ever covered by the world media. Well, I suppose any appearances by Mohammed would be immediately erased by nearby Moslems since there can be no likeness of him ever created for any reason whatsoever. I wonder if that was his edict or some decision of his loyal followers due to the sorry state of portrait art in the Middle East at the time? Obviously Mary and Jesus have the whole appearing icon thing monopolized. Graven images have come a very long way since the days when Mohammed was spreading his religion by the sword. In fairness most (if not all) religions have been spread by the sword, the dunking chair, or a nice hot fire.

You know, I like religion and I’m not surprised that the latest research says that you will live longer if you attend to church regularly. In fact the more often you go to church, the longer you live. When I sit through a church service time does tend to stand still, and an hour often feels like ten. I suppose, if that is correct, that if you have a Salsa Virgin Mary in your kitchen, a screen door Jesus on your trailer, or another equally interesting Holy Relic you could just hang out a at home and live as long as you like.

Any thoughts on these sightings?

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Forgive me for wandering from the topic of writing, per se, to something that’s been bugging me.

Five days out of every week, I commute from the Virginia suburbs into Washington, DC via Metrorail. Generally, it’s a half-hour drive to the station in the morning, then a half hour on the train, topped by a three-block walk to my office, which is itself three blocks from the White House. Until I took my job with the trade association, I’d never worked downtown. Washington is a beautiful city, so there’s something attractively urban to me about the commute. Most days, it’s an opportunity to read in peace amidst a couple hundred strangers.

n its busiest, craziest days, Metro sets new records that top out somewhere south of 850,000 passengers. That includes commuters and tourists in the high season, along with Independence Day celebrations when about a million people flood the city for the fireworks. During those occasions, for security reasons, the Metro stations closet to the action are all closed off, forcing revelers to flood fewer stations located quite a few blocks away. Imagine thousands of people crammed onto an underground train platform, each of them wanting to get on the next subway. It’s actually scary when you’re in the middle of it. That’s why I never go downtown on the Fourth of July.

On January 20—Inauguration Day–DC government officials are reportedly anticipating a crowd of four million people to observe the festivities. That’s four times more people than Washington has ever seen for an event! Each of them needs to get in and out of the city, and, presumably, at some point during the festivities they’re going to have to eat. More than that, they’re going to have to pee—or, worse yet, make big potty. I don’t care how many porta-poops you import; there’s no way to support that much excrement.

Judging from the barricades that are already beginning to be staged around the city, huge swaths of preferred viewing real estate are going to be closed off to mere mortals to leave plenty of elbow space for the bigwigs. Widespread street closures will make parking garages inaccessible, which will in turn force hundreds of thousands of would-be drivers onto the subways for which access will be limited.

Now let’s throw in the security checkpoints that will search all purses and bags within X yards of the Capitol Building or the White House, along with the fact that a huge percentage of those being searched wouldn’t know which building was which without a picture to guide them. The mind boggles.

I personally don’t have any hard plans for that day, but I do know precisely where I will not be. What do y’all think? Is any historical event worth that much inconvenience?

There was an interesting article in the Guardian this week asking whether or not young female writers are operating at a deficit when it comes to major literary awards. Not due to any shortcomings on their part, but because (as the author posits) "the literary industry as a whole – agents, editors, booksellers and critics – currently offer disproportionate encouragement to aspiring male writers to produce the kind of serious-minded, bookish work that gets on shortlists, compared to young female writers." The argument being that for whatever reason, publishers prefer discovering the next Norman Mailer to finding another Toni Morrison.

I’m not entirely certain I agree with this, but it’s an interesting piece, particularly since it was written by a young male author. I also did a quick head count, and during the past two decades only five women have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Five women won the Man Booker Prize. Only with the Pulitzer did women even approach parity, with eight out of twenty taking home the prize.

This got me thinking about gender bias in our own  neck of the woods. When my agent first called to sign me, she was noticeably taken aback. Toward the middle of our conversation she confessed that after reading THE TUNNELS, she’d thought I was a man (though the name "Michelle" was pretty straightforward, in my opinion). Since the subject matter was so dark, she felt it might appeal to more male readers than female ones. She recommended that I consider adopting a pseudonym, or shortening my name to just the initials (sadly, that would leave me "M.A.Gagnon," which doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, and sounds like something the Mayo Clinic might have a specialized treatment for).

In the end, I opted to stick with my full name. Partly because I didn’t entirely believe that gender bias exists, partly because I’m just obstinate that way. But I do wonder. When I meet people at conferences who have read my books, the universal exclamation is, "but you seem like such a sweet girl." I suspect that very few male authors are referred to as "sweet" when they meet their fans, or hear that they seem "too happy to write these sorts of books."

Impossible to say whether or not it affects my sales. Occasionally this question rears its head on one of the mystery discussion groups, and everyone gets up in arms. Most people declare that they will happily read any book regardless of who wrote it. But does that apply to the world at large? Especially since I don’t write cozies (which are marketed more toward women), but thrillers, is my name working against me?

Where do you stand? Will you read anything by anyone? Or does gender bias sneak into your decision-making process, subconsciously or otherwise?