When I was writing a book about women who defy over-the-hill stereotypes I asked friends if they knew any cool women our vintage who were celebrities. Editors often think you should include a few big names to help sell a book.

My friend Ellen Boneparth in Santa Rosa volunteered that she knew Jill Clayburgh. They’d been classmates at the Brearley School, the prestigious girls school in Manhattan.

I responded with something like, “Oh my heart. I love that woman.” I’d first seen her in An Unmarried Woman, the 1978 film in which she plays Erica, whose life is turned upside down when her husband confesses he’s in love with someone else. She was like so many women I knew at the time, including myself – undone by a failed marriage, trying to regain their strength and confidence, realizing they were only partially liberated.

Like Sex and the City would exemplify for women a generation later, An Unmarried Woman offered a pretty valid snapshot of women in their 30s. We could identify with Jill’s Erica even if we didn’t live in New York, hadn’t been comforted by a hunky Alan Bates type and would never look as charming as Jill pirouetting in her skivvies to the music of Swan Lake.

Jill Clayburgh died last week and that ballet scene is the first thing I wanted to see again of her leaping from kitchen to living room, uninhibited in a T-shirt and bikini pants. The scene comes before her husband tells her he’s leaving her, before she breaks and then starts to heal.
See it HERE.

Jill was part of a group of actresses including Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton, Julie Christie, Jacqueline Bisset and Jane Fonda who my generation could relate to, not only in the new style women they often played on screen, but who we imagined would be the same funny brainy people in real life.

Jill Clayburgh once said in an interview that her era’s heroines – determined, vulnerable, quirky – were no longer in fashion. They had an edge of softness then. “Now it’s better to be a superwoman like Angelina Jolie,” she said.

As Jill and the gang got older, we did too. When I talked to Jill she was continuing to do movies, excited about upcoming theater work, proud of her theater actress daughter, Lily Rabe. I just imagined she’d go on as long as we needed her.

Her friend Ellen said that Jill never went Hollywood. Being an actress was important from the time she did Gilbert and Sullivan in school, but family took precedence. She lived in Connecticut with her husband, playwright David Rabe and when we talked I asked her why not Hollywood.

She said she’d feel “like the oldest person there. It’s a really aberrant society,with all the hysteria over looking young. Very distorted.”

Jill looked terrific at any age with those classic good looks that included a nose you knew didn’t come from a surgeon. I asked her about Botox and she said she’d prefer to have a face with expression.
“Give me a Judi Dench face, a Maggie Smith.”

When she was in her late 50s she made the movie Never Again in which she plays a divorced mother whose daughter is leaving the nest, another baffling time for women, and who meets a vulnerable divorced guy played by Jeffrey Tambor. It doesn’t show up towards the top of the most famous films starring Jill Clayburgh but it’s a lot of fun, like hanging out with a girlfriend.

There is one friendly tradition in the book business not yet abandoned by the chaotic upheavals in the industry. Readers still like to meet their favorite writers up close and personal. They want to find out if he talks as funny as he writes. Is she as eccentric as her characters? Is he as swoon-worthy as the photo on the book jacket?

Readers want more from their favorite ones than what they get on Amazon.com which is why personal appearances remain part of a writer’s job which except for the big stars, they do for free.

It is when they get out of their coffee-stained pajamas and go meet their public in cafes and book stores to press the flesh, feed the fans and charm new ones.

This is done in a big collective way at book festivals which leads to my first plug for the Sonoma County Book Festival. (www.socobookfest.org) It’s been an annual event for more than a decade and happens Saturday, Sept. 25 in downtown Santa Rosa.

At one book fest food guru Michael Pollan attracted a swarm of fans that stretched out the library and down the street. Another year Diane Johnson, of Paris and San Francisco, arrived looking very French in an easy non-glamour way. Dorothy Allison drove in from the Russian River to talk about writer’s block.

And this year? There’s doctor-author and literary hottie Abraham Verghese who teaches medicine at Stanford and wrote the novel “Cutting for Stone.” He’s been writing since he was in med school and had his first short story published in the New Yorker.

Joyce Maynard got her first break writing in Seventeen magazine, followed by a piece in the New York Times at age 18, which drew the attention of the much older reclusive author J.D. Salinger. Maynard lives in Mill Valley and has been pumping books and stories out for decades, including one made into a movie, “To Die For” with Nicole Kidman, but people still want to know about the Salinger affair.

Then there’s late bloomer Buzzy Martin of Sebastopol who used to press his self-published book on teaching music at San Quentin to anyone who would stop and listen. Now, thanks to tireless networking and Facebook meet-ups, he’s been discovered by big deal Penguin publishers. Plus there’s a movie – “Soon to be a major motion picture.” It says so right on the cover of his republished book “Don’t Shoot, I’m the Guitar Man.” Buzzy, it is rumored, will be played by Kevin Bacon.

Chester Aaron, a garlic grower in Occidental who taught literature at St. Mary’s College, became the hero of rejected writers when a literary agent told him he was too old for her to waste her time on and he wrote about it in Poets and Writers magazine. That was back in his 70s. Chester, getting the last laugh at age 87, is still writing and publishing.

Afghan-American writer Tamim Ansary first came to the book festival after 9-11 to provide some intelligence on Afghanistan and Islam. Seeing as how we’re still pretty stupid on the subject, his new book “Destiny Interrupted,” a study of Islamic history, could be another timely contribution to world understanding.

Yiyun Li grew up in China, lives in Oakland and this year made the New Yorker list of “20 under 40” young writers. Given her relative youth you’d expect that she would embrace all the new technology. Yet, Li recently wrote in the Sunday Chronicle’s book section that she’s taking a hiatus from the Internet. She’s given up Twitter and Facebook friends in favor of old ones. Like Iris Murdoch and Tolstoy. Seems Li would rather spend her time reading books.

And isn’t that a nice story?

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com

Lacking a calm, rational, civil and willing spokesperson to counter this wave of fear mongering, grandstanding, witch hunting, unapologetic accusations and ugly rage, I looked to some old friends for inspiration and perspective.

What would Scout say? I’m speaking, of course, of Jean Louise Finch, known to you and me as Scout, the smart watchful daughter of Atticus Finch, the lawyer-hero in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Scout looked into the hateful faces of a lynch mob, recognized a father of a schoolmate and said, “Hey, Mr. Cunnigham. I’m Jean Louise Finch. I go to school with Walter; he’s your boy, ain’t he?”

Cunningham, a hard luck farmer, would have lost his land save for Atticus’ help, but that night he joined a lathered-up pack intent on storming the jail and lynching a black prisoner who’d not yet gone to trial. They’d have their way with justice and hang the guy, even if it meant trampling Scout’s father who was sitting outside the jail on watch.

They were as terrifying as any group revved up into a mad rage. Then this curious little kid walks up to the wild-eyed bunch and sees someone she knows, another father. She didn’t think to be afraid of him, just goes on about his son being a really nice boy and would he please tell him “hey” for her.

That sure did halt the blood lust. Mr. Cunningham calmed right down. It was like he remembered who he was – the good part, not the violent, hysterical creature needing to kill someone. Then the whole angry pack turned around and went home. It was over. Later Atticus says in the book:

“So it took an eight year old child to bring ‘em to their senses…That proves something – that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human.”

I’ve never liked the idea of kids being used for political show. Even when it’s a favorite cause of my own, I don’t like seeing young children wearing T-shirts or carrying political signs, especially when they echo a belief or prejudice they can’t begin to understand.

But sometimes the grown-ups get a little out of hand and you might have to agree with Atticus when he says, “Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.”

There’s been a lot of attention on “To Kill a Mockingbird” this year as the American classic marks its 50th anniversary. Published in 1960, the book looked at racism in a small Southern town in the 1930s. It was another time, things were different.

At least that’s what we say when we’re trying to figure out uglier parts of our history. This was during the Depression in the segregated South. Hate and blame came easy to people who felt they had little power in their own bleak lives.

Different, though? Decades later and we’ve got new wannabe mob-makers seeing how many others they can juice up.

Scary people vowing to reclaim the civil rights movement while calling the president a racist, saying he has a deep-seated hatred for white people. Going on about taking our country back – as long as it doesn’t include Muslims, immigrants, gay couples, certain babies born in the U.S. and anyone who looks like they might have crawled over a fence.

Playing loose with the Constitutional right to practice freedom of religion. Yet, don’t dare mess with their Constitutional right to walk around with a gun.

This is when I wish there was someone brave enough to wade in and say “what the Sam Hill are you doing?” Who’s going to be our Scout?