After our non-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving in Glasgow Ei and I flew to southern Spain. The 2+ hour flight that departed at 8 am from Glasgow was packed with Scottish vacationers, many sporting flip flops and shorts and drinking beer for breakfast. We flew Easy-Jet, a European no-frills carrier. Nice folks, no rowdiness, just a little noisy. With Glasgow’s climate, who could blame them for starting their holiday from the moment of take-off?

We and they were rewarded with perfect weather along Spain’s Costa del Sol, Coast of the Sun. Everyday was sunny, temperatures up into the 70s. We stayed near Marbella, about an hour from Malaga’s airport, our arrival and departure point. We’d never been to Spain before–and hope to return to see Madrid, Barcelona and other areas–but made the most of our location. Marbella is a resort destination of the rich and famous, and we stayed in a beachside resort with the less rich and famous, but it was very nice. A number of destination cities are within two hours driving distance from Marbella. We rented a car and visited:

Gibraltar: great views from the Rock and fascinating tunnels inside it, but the commercial area rivals Fisherman’s Wharf in touristy-ness. In case we hadn’t seen enough wildlife in 2011, the apes on the Rock were pretty cute. albeit domesticated, as we were warned not to eat anything that one of the aggressive monkeys could swipe!

Ronda: a scenic hill town above a gorge, with its “New Bridge” (Nueva Puerta) dating from the 18th century. Charming!

Cordoba: The only Jewish sightseeing of the trip. We spent a night in the old Juderia quarter. Our hotel was around the corner from a statue of Maimonides, the Rambam–the famous physician, rabbi and philosopher. Though born in Cordoba, he and his family fled Spanish persecution, and he lived out his life afterward across the Mediterranean Sea in the Middle East, mainly Egypt. Although this was a few hundred years before the notorious Inquisition and the more widespread expulsion of Jews from Spain, the so-called Golden Age for Jews in Spain had pretty much ended by the 11th century. One of the very few remaining synagogues in Spain is in the Juderia, as is a small Sephardic Museum we visited. The quarter was eerily uncrowded and quiet, especially at night. One could almost feel the atmosphere that must have existed there a thousand years ago–and envision its cloaked inhabitants scurrying through the narrow streets and alleys. Nearby is the huge and legendary Mezquita de Cordoba, formerly a mosque that is now a cathedral. Jews were hardly the only victims of persecution in Spain.

Granada: The Alhambra, of course.

Malaga: Fascinating Picasso Museum and birthplace home, as well as locals getting into the holiday spirit enjoying the lights and decorations as they shopped and ate in the Old Quarter area.

Marbella: great beach walking and tapas in the Old City!

We ended this trip with a night in London (after another no-frills flight on Monarch Air, where I stuffed my purse contents into our backpacks to avoid a 60 Euro charge for a second piece of “hand luggage” and declined a cup on tea on board when I found out it would cost 2.5 Euros. This was less than no-frills! (Yes, the price was right, but…)

London: Despite less than 24 hours there before our flight back to San Francisco, we made the most of it and saw a fabulous play, “Three Days in May.” It’s the story of Churchill and his War Cabinet in May 1940, during Dunkirk just before the fall of France, still debating whether or not to negotiate with Hitler. It’s a gripping reminder of how close the entire western world came to Nazi dominance. On the only-in-London side of things, it was thrilling to hear Big Ben peal on a stage within earshot of the real thing.

Here are some photos from our week in Spain. By the way, we’re home now for a while. Really!

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AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Eli "discusses" with Maimonides, the Rambam

Aping it up on the Rock of Gibraltar

The New Bridge, from the 1800s, in Ronda.

The Mesquita of Cordoba, former mosque now cathedral.

The Alhambra in Granada

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Lamp Shade Tower at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art

Thanksgiving used to be my favorite holiday. No services, no matzah, clear guidelines on menu planning. For many years a joyful gathering of family and/or friends. But holidays in general are a challenge when your kids are far-flung and when you’ve moved around a bit later in life. Where you move people you meet have established traditions either with their own families or others, and it can even be hard to find people to invite to our home. This year I decided to circumvent any potential Thanksgiving angst and trauma by going away. Not that we hadn’t BEEN away this year (or any other year), but about August we began to make plans. Eli suggested a car trip to Carmel or Palm Desert. I got a British Air sale email and said Glasgow. I really wanted to see my Cousin Hannah, AND I wanted to avoid Thanksgiving so much that I said, “Let’s go where there’s NO Thanksgiving.” I didn’t want to feel badly going out to dinner alone, watching others enjoy their families.

Glasgow, Scotland, in November? Not exactly a garden spot when you’ve left Wisconsin and moved to California. But that’s where Hannah lives, and she’s 91 and not exactly running around traveling anymore. We’d been to Glasgow before–a few days one January after a very cold week in London–and Eli was not keen on another British Isles winter wonderland vacation. Remarkably, as we often despair of why we own a timeshare, we were able to get an exchange week in Marbella, Spain, to tack onto a few days in grey, chilly, sopping Glasgow. (Stay tuned for post on Spain.)

But, as penetrating as the rain and cold were, the visit was warm, welcoming and worthwhile.

Who is Cousin Hannah, and how do I come to have relatives in Scotland?

Dinner with Cousins Hannah and Eliot in Glasgow

My grandfather (my  mother’s father, who died when I was under three) came from Poland. His mother had brothers who’d emigrated from there to Glasgow (maybe 130 years ago) and started a jewelry business. I suspect it wasn’t exactly the Tiffany’s of the north (pawnshop and loans come to mind), but my great-grandmother was encouraged by her brothers to send her sons, just after their Bar Mitzvahs, to live and work with the uncles. There were originally five sons,  but I believe that Hannah’s father and my grandfather were the only two who went to Scotland. Hannah’s father stayed and had a family, but my grandfather came to the US after a few years in Scotland, still not even 20 years old. (Imagine our kids uprooting themselves and making these moves to the New World all alone, probably never to see their parents again. My other grandfather came on his own as a teen-ager, too, as did so many of that generation.) My grandfather’s time in Scotland made an impact: my mother used to say that her father spoke Yiddish with a Scottish accent.

So, Hannah is my mother’s first cousin, a year older than my mother, who died in 2008, would have been. The two of  them traveled together a few times over the years, including a tour to China. Even at 91 Hannah retains vestiges of the stunning chic she had then and, of course, her charming, cultivated accent. (Many people in Scotland are impossible to understand, but to hear Hannah you’d think you’re listening to Helen Mirren.)

Although she’s a bit forgetful, it was great to visit with Hannah. I brought her a photo I had of an old lady, who I thought was my great-grandmother in Poland, sitting with a youngish man, both of them surrounded by three middle-aged women standing behind them. Hannah verified that the man was her father, who returned to Poland to visit the family after several years in Glasgow. We assume that the three women were the aunts presumably killed in the Holocaust. They were grandmothers by the time of World War II, and they and their families totally vanished. I don’t know their married names, and attempts I’ve made to trace via alternate spellings of the family name (Cukert? in Poland, Suckert in Scotland, Zuckert in the US) have failed. Hannah thanked me over and over for bringing the photo, which she didn’t remember ever seeing. She’s not in a position to enlighten me too much on family history, as–memory issues aside–her father died when she was only ten years old.

While in Glasgow we did a little sightseeing of places we hadn’t seen the first time, including a tour of the historic Glasgow School of Art, designed by the notable architect, Charles Rennie McInstosh. Hannah’s son, Eliot, is Director of Finance & Resources there. We also toured the new Riverside Museum, which is a museum of transportation–a bit of a mishmosh, but interesting–and the Gallery of Modern Art, incongruously housed in an iconic historic edifice built in 1775. One evening we heard the Chief Rabbi of the UK, Sir Jonathan Sacks (LORD Sacks, if you please), speak. It’s hard to imagine a similar post in the US–one rabbi purporting to be the spokesman for the entire Jewish community–but to be a LORD! It was simply an informal Wednesday night lecture at a synagogue, not a religious service, and a paltry crowd of 100 at most. One striking note was that everyone stood up when Lord Sacks walked into the room and again when he departed from the lectern. Cousin Eliot told us this is customary whenever any rabbi enters an assemblage. Another anomaly.

The Cukerts (sp?) in Warsaw, 19??: My great-grandmother with Uncle David (Hannah's father) and the three sisters presumed perished in the Holocaust. Their names were Sarah, Esther and Leah. I'm named for Leah.

Hannah thanked us for coming to see her. I thanked her for her hospitality and for the lasting connection to my mother and departed family.  I’m so thankful we could take this trip.

It was one of the most memorable Thanksgivings ever–without Thanksgiving.

But, more significantly, I’ve been AWOL from writing.

Sure, I got very busy this summer with the new novel, finishing a prologue and two chapters. Then there was Chapter 3–started on the plane home from meetings in New York City  in September and…not touched again for nearly a month. I finally buckled down and finished it two weeks ago. And, you may have noticed, no blog posts, either.

So, is this what they call writer’s block? A month of down time?

It took me 20+ years of research and four years of writing process to get AFTER THE AUCTION into the hands of readers. I’d like to think I have that kind of time left to publish #2, but let’s be candid: at 63, that’s magical thinking (sorry, Joan Didion). Every day should be viewed as a gift and an opportunity.

I’d call this unproductive period writer’s malaise–or funk. Mostly, it’s been a time of questioning. As in: What the hell am I doing? Why? Is writing the next Lily Kovner-based novel worthwhile? Has the experience of publishing the first book been fulfilling enough to keep on? Should I take my cue from naysaying agents and decide that I’m no good? Should I close down when contacts at potential speaking venues (like Jewish organizational professionals in various cities) don’t even bother to acknowledge an email? When a newspaper book critic says point blank to forget a review, if the book is self-published?

After all the years I did marketing and sales in business, is the rejection factor too much at this stage of life? I have always prided myself on being willing and able to cold call (or cold email) anyone. Are recipients too swamped for even a tacit response, or is business just that much ruder these days?

Today it’s all about social media marketing–the constant push to post on Facebook, to tweet on Twitter, to blog post, to get the book and me out there. Am I doing enough? Doing it right (whatever that means)? I do note that Twitter followers tend to increase when I’ve tweeted more. (How followers find me or anyone else not famous I have no clue. And the time it takes to follow those you follow–who gets anything else done?) Re: Facebook, I’m always amazed at the postings throughout the day from “friends” whom I know still work full-time. However useful these resources are, they’re also distracting.

Bottom line I’ve been asking myself, like Lily going after the Seder plate, do I need this in my life? Do I want it?

I’m trying hard to remind myself that this is a tough business, and I have had some nice surprises along the way.

The reviews in the Forward and Hadassah’s online summer edition were rare gifts. Some people like the book. The talks I give are very well-received.  I am fortunate enough to not have to write for a living. Maybe this whole new direction of writing books will keep my young (OK, a stretch…)

I HAVE met some very nice new people along the way (in person, online, by phone) and have been warmed by their support and that of long-cherished friends and family.

Writing is like exercising: hard to get started, something to bear while you’re doing it, but a great feeling when you’ve finished. Until it’s time to start all over again.

I am goal-oriented and today, after exercising (weight machines and a swim), I set the goal of writing a blog post. Goal for the coming week: Finish chapter 4  of The Lost Torah of Shanghai.

Let’s see if posting a to-do list will keep this writer writing!

This is part of the email response I got yesterday morning from a New York literary agent, who shall remain nameless. I read it on my IPhone, while my husband and I were driving back to San Francisco from a quick weekend trip to Los Angeles. The thumbs-on-phone approach wouldn’t work for my reply, and I wouldn’t have time to write back on my computer until later in the evening. But I had plenty of time to think about it the challenge it presented. Those “fighting words” were a clarion call to action!

If this male agent is correct, do “mainstream publishers” have a clue as to why their industry is on the skids? To state the obvious, there are millions of 60 (and 60+) year old female readers. Baby Boomer marketing is as hot as we are!

The whole agent thing is an approach-avoidance issue with me. I tried to get one in my quest to have AFTER THE AUCTION published in the traditional “mainstream publisher” way. And here and there I take another stab at that route as I work on the next book. My years in business taught me about gatekeepers, and on the path to a conventional book deal agents are the first line of defense. If you interest one in your work, they’re supposed to become advocates. But hooking one is not so easy. Candidly, they usually say my writing fails to impress. Well, okay, I’ve learned to live with far greater rejection than that. Of course, readers way beyond six degrees of separation of family and friends have enjoyed the book. But those who don’t, including agents, well, isn’t that why there are chocolate and…strawberry?

But to say that women of a certain age aren’t interesting to publishers?

Instantly, I remembered an interview in 1980, when I was looking for my first job in the investment business, a major career shift from marketing/PR/journalism at a time when I badly needed a better job. One local office manager at a then prominent (now defunct, like so many others) national firm told me, “No regional manager would ever hire a woman with a six year old child.” Today that would be grounds for a juicy lawsuit. A few weeks later another manager took a chance on me, and the rest is history.

I wasn’t anywhere near 60 then, but it’s all part of the same phenomenon. Discrimination.

Now, I’m not the kind of person who sees Nazis or the Klan or Male Chauvinist Pigs around every corner, but today you’d think at least political correctness would deter statements like the agent made. Or maybe, to be fair and extremely generous, this isn’t what the agent thinks is right, but he was just taking me into his confidence by sharing an ugly truth about publishing industry reality.

This is a time when even Hollywood is managing to find good roles for women of a certain age. Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, Diane Keaton–I rest that case.

Which brings me to the juxtaposition of yesterday’s morning email and the event I attended last night, back here in San Francisco. It was a kickoff event of a conference on women’s economic self-sufficiency sponsored by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, part of an APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit here this week. I tried to get into this conference playing all my political and volunteer cards: HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters, a Hillary/Bill “cause”) USA vice-chair; American Jewish Committee Asia-Pacific Institute board member; NCJW ex-national board member. Contacts with my congressperson, Nancy Pelosi’s, DC office. Nada, no dice. Nothing worked. Until I got an email from A Band of Wives, a women’s networking/action/support group I recently joined after learning about when I went to a political event, and everyone I met there seemed to be a member.

Last night’s sponsor was Friends of the SF Commission on the Status of Women. After presentations by corporate, anti-trafficking and political representatives, we saw the documentary, “Miss Representation,” a powerful look at media treatment of women that reinforces stereotypes about women regarding issues ranging from body image to political power to aging (a stunning actress “encouraged” to have botex injections). The filmmaker is Jennifer Seibel Newsom, wife of our ex-mayor and current California Lt. Governor, Gavin Newsom, herself a stunning blonde, former actress AND Stanford MBA (a credential she was encouraged to leave off her Hollywood resumé).

To say the least, it was like an exclamation point to my reaction to the agent’s statement.

Stay tuned…

Popo is the Chinese word that in Mandarin means the mother-in-law on the husband’s side. I’ve also seen it defined as old woman (ahem!) and grandmother (someday soon, I hope). When I’ve asked my son in Beijing, Jonathan, why there’s a special name for the mother-in-law or grandma from the husband’s side, he said it’s because of the traditional dominance of that side in Chinese marriage customs: the bride would go over to her husband’s family. I’ve also seen a chart of family relationship names, and it seems that all sides have specific words for them.

Tiger Mom Amy Chua missed a terrific cross-culture educational opportunity when she wrote about her Jewish mother-in-law, the late Florence Rubenfeld, an arts journalist and author who sounded like one bright, fun-loving and accomplished woman, even though she didn’t always approve of the über-pressure applied to her Chinese-Jewish granddaughters by their mother. In other words, a normal. loving Jewish grandmother. Grandma Rubenfeld had actually directed that her granddaughters to call her Popo, a point Ms. Chua makes without defining the word. I think Ms. Chua could have cut her Popo some slack and acknowledged Ms. Rubenfeld’s apparent respect for Tiger Mom’s Chinese side of the family.

Panda Dad Alan Paul, the author of a touching book on life in Beijing with his journalist wife and three kids they plucked out of New Jersey (full disclosure: a friend of Jonathan’s whom I’ve met, and Jonathan is mentioned in the book), reacted to Tiger Mom’s parenting methods with points about raising responsible, flexible children with flexibility. This resonated more with me than Tiger Mom’s rants about everything from rigid hours of music practice to no sleepovers. Although I can’t help thinking that Ms. Chua’s most extreme bombast was geared to sell books, a Chinese-American friend here in the Bay Area confirmed that her parents were very demanding and hypercritical, too. The Amy (Chinese name Li Xuebai) in our family, on the other hand, told me that her Chinese parents in China raised her with expectations but a lot of praise, too.

I’m way past the on-site parenting stage, but I take the popo role seriously.  Amy calls me “Ma,” which delights me. The Chinese connection has enriched our family tremendously, and our Jewish family life has done the same for her. For one thing, she’s proud to be (probably) the only member of the Chinese Communist party (more a prestige/politic credential than a true political one these days) who’s also a life member of Hadassah, the nearly 100 year old organization that supports medical and vocational education institutions in Israel. When we as a family visited the main Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem four years ago, I made this point to our tour guide, who wasn’t that impressed. Jonathan also reports that Amy makes a terrific matzah brie, and she’s studying Judaism.

Because of the distance and multiple time zones between us, it’s challenging to be the mother of an expat young “Old China hand,” but being a Jewish popo is one of the benefits.

*婆 = Popo

Xiaoming, a new Chinese friend searching for her Jewish roots.

It’s no secret to blog-readers and everyone I know that I have a family tie to China in my daughter-in-law Li Xuebai, aka Amy Li Ansfield. And readers of my first novel, AFTER THE AUCTION, might recall that Lily, my “main woman,” discovered a Chinese cousin, Ruth, in Israel, while searching for the Seder plate looted by the Nazis. And I’ve already hinted that Ruth and China figure prominently in the next novel. Working title: The Lost Torah of Shanghai.

To use a cliché (which I’ve always maintained are only clichés because they’re true!), truth is stranger than fiction. I’ve recently met  a stunning young Chinese woman in San Francisco who’s seeking her Jewish roots. Of course, fiction allows one to tell the story with the blanks filled in. My new friend, Xiaoming, doesn’t have that luxury–yet. I’m hoping to help her, though.

How did we meet?

Publishing AFTER THE AUCTION has led me to speaking engagements from New York to Beijing. Two weeks ago I spoke at a meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society (SFBAJGS). The audience was small, but intensely engaged and supportive (over 50% bought books!). Xiaoming had read my Tweet advertising the talk.

Xiaoming recently learned that her great-great-grandfather was Jewish.

A Shanghai native who moved to the US when she was nine years old, Xiaoming holds a responsible position in a major financial services firm based in San Francisco. Just turned 30, she’s embarked on a quest to investigate who her great-great-grandfather was, how or why he was Jewish. Family records or memories to which she has access now are vague. But she thinks her great-great-grandfather was involved with William Burke, an American Methodist missionary with significant ties to the Soong family which spawned the famous (and infamous) sisters including Mme. Sun Yat-sen, Mme. Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. H.H. Kung. Burke was so close to that family that he and his family were chaperones asked by Charlie Soong, the patriarch, to accompany young Ailing (later Mme. Kung) on her journey to the US to enter college in Georgia. Unfortunately, Burke’s wife, Addie Gordon, took ill along the way, so the family disembarked in Japan (where Addie died), and Ailing finished the trip on her own.

But that’s an aside from Xiaoming’s story.

She wonders if her great-great-grandfather’s connection to the well-connected Burke will lead to discovering that her Jewish ancestor was a well-known businessman or politician. I wonder if her great-great-grandfather was Jewish because one of his parents was married to a Jew from the Sephardic- or Russian-Jewish communities? The timing and likely life span of her great-great-grandfather probably rules out marriage to a Jew who came to China to escape the Holocaust just before World War II. OR was he perhaps a descendant of the Jews of Kaifeng, the “real” Chinese Jews propagated by Silk Road traders?

Xiaoming has begun her own blog “All of A Sudden Part Jew” (in which she’s blogged about my SFBAJGS talk, my presentation to the AJC board on our recent trip to Asia, AND about last week’s Chinese-Jewish mah jongg party here in San Francisco). As grateful as I am for her connection to me (and her promotion), I’m intrigued and delighted by her interest in and enthusiasm for learning more about Judaism and Jewish people. It’s infectious, and I hope to be able to help her trace her Jewish roots in China.

A real life mystery that relates to my next fictional mystery!

What was loaded and read:

The Cookbook Collector, a novel by Allegra Goodman: pre-and post-9/11 yuppy/Silicon Valley young “masters of the universe”/quasi-Jewish story. Eh…not as good as her previous work.

The Trinity Six, by Charles Cumming: contemporary professor stumbles onto info that could lead to British government secret about a likely sixth Communist spy in the ring that included Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Cambridge pals exposed in the early 1950s. Ending rather disappointing.

A Covert Affair, nonfiction by Jennet Conant: story of Julia and Paul Child and their colleagues who served in the OSS in the Far East during World War II and how some of them fared in the anti-Communist State Department purges afterward. The substance is great, but I can’t believe what survives after editing in a real publishing house.

The Invisible Bridge, novel by Julie Orringer: romantic AND traumatic saga of a family from late 1930s through the Holocaust. Long, but very worthwhile!

The Tiger’s Wife, novel by Téa Obreht, beautifully written, possibly more literary than my usual taste.

The Paris Wife, novel by  Paula McLain, story of Ernest Hemingway’s “starter” wife, Hadley Richardson. A major best-seller now. Writing and dialogue seem very elementary to me, but not in a Hemingway-esque way, just amateur (but who am I to talk?). Given the hype, highly over-rated.

Walking Israel, nonfiction by Martin Fletcher of NBC News: interesting places and characters along the way. I wasn’t able to finish it yet.

Book reading time since returning home has been replaced by magazine (oh, those piled up New Yorkers) and general catchup, including housework. And then there’s getting back to writing MY next book…

If you’ve read any of these books, let me know what you thought. And what are you reading now that you’d recommend?

Alas, poor Noah, of the original 40 day/40 trip (cruise) didn’t have a Kindle (or two). He had to make do talking to the animals. Our 40 days and 40 nights sure included a lot of animals, but conversation was not the point!

Here are some photos from our four days in gorgeous Cape Town.

Atop Table Mountain

With Nobel Prize winners at V&A Waterfront

Cape of Good Hope

Cape Point

Fish kebabs served with individual kebab stands (just like at home)

One variety of protea (national flower of South Africa) at Kirstenboesch Botanical Gardens on magnificent property formerly owned by Cecil Rhodes.

Castle of Good Hope daily key and canon ceremony

With Cousins Merav (Leviten) Bendavid and her husband, Eitan Bendavid, in the courtyard of the Jewish Museum/Holocaust complex--after lunch at café there

Cape Town blog to follow (maybe from the airport tomorrow night? SOOO much to do in this gorgeous city!).

And, by the way, in case you wondered, we DID end up seeing the BIG FIVE: finally caught up to a leopard or two in Botswana. But once it was at night and once well hidden in trees, so our photos weren’t good  (you can’t really tell it’s a leopard) and we will get some from one of the better photographers.