MSW's Blog Archives
January - June 2007On Books, Writing, Politics, Gardening, and Family
Lake Buel Rainbow, June 2007More photos at pictures
Joel's Graduation!
Christmas 2006
Andy's Honoring Gala
My 2006 blog at http://www.blogarchives2006one.html
and http://www.blogarchives2006two.html
Newsletter #96
June 29, 2007Let me begin with two happy items of personal news: My article “How To Get a Novel Started” has just come out in the July issue of THE WRITER (Volume 120, Number 7). THE WRITER has been around a long time, and if you read a couple of their issues, you can quickly pick up a sense of the general vocabulary related to writing. They also pay their contributors, no small thing in this present publishing atmosphere. My second news is that my most recent children’s novel, BILLIE OF FISH HOUSE LANE, has been chosen as the Two Towns One Children’s Book Read in Maplewood and South Orange, New Jersey.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how so many people write, and why they keep writing, usually with no promise of financial recompense. One of my theories is that we are talking back to the books that have moved us. In my own case, I think sometimes I write because I developed the habit when I was about seven and have always had enough personal satisfaction from it to keep going, however badly fame, glory, and financial gain were progressing. Please email me with your thoughts on the subject.
This Newsletter takes a look at writing and reading in our schools. First, I have some notes from fifth grade teacher Matthew Young about the redoubtable Lucy Calkins and her method of teaching writing, used in many classrooms around the country. Matthew talks about why it works for him. Calkins, Matthew explains, has broken down the steps of writing to make it less of a mystery and more of a teachable subject, so even if you like to think in terms of inspiration and the Muse, it is still of interest, in my humble opinion, how we can in a practical way, make strong writers of our students.
Next comes a transcript of an email discussion started by Phyllis Moore and enriched by several of her regular correspondents on the so-called “issue” fiction for young adults: how rough does reading for young people get these days? Finally, this issue ends with recommendations for your reading and announcements.
–Meredith Sue Willis
MATTHEW YOUNG ON THE WRITING PROCESS
Matthew Young, a 5th Grade Teacher in Ossining, New York, used to teach 4th grade at P.S. 75 in New York City, the school where Phillip Lopate led a team of us back in the nineteen-seventies in working with kids on writing and making movies and even comix. Matthew praises Calkins for making writing and the teaching of writing work better for thousands of teachers and children.
“One give-away that Calkin’s writing process is going on [in a classroom],” says Matthew, “is the presence of Writer’s Notebooks. Also, charts or other prominent displays helping students keep track of where they are in the process, e.g., drafting, conferring, revising, publishing, etc. Then look for chart paper hanging from clotheslines with shared writing pieces or other examples of writing strategies written in the teacher’s hand, plainly visible for all to see. Look for ‘Mentor Texts.’ Writing centers and places for students to confer with each other are not uncommon. Students may be actively engaged in conferences with the teacher and with each other. Some may be writing in ‘writing nooks,’ places in the classroom that are not their desks. Further, teachers who do this are generally very happy to talk about it and will volunteer the information when asked (and sometimes when not asked).
“At conferences I’ve heard from Lucy and from her colleagues that the Process, ,which is in a continual state of revision, derives from careful consultation with professional writers about how they do what they do. The ‘writer’s notebook’ is a very useful tool for gathering and developing ideas for writing (fiction, non-fiction, drama, or poetry). Naturally, many professional writers do not use an actual notebook, but most do have a way of recording and keeping track of ideas as they occur (e.g., a laptop computer, or scraps of paper in pockets that then go into a file at the end of the week). But for kids, an actual notebook is very useful and manageable. Furthermore, most professional writers likely do not keep a chart in their home offices with a clothespin to indicate which stage of the process they are in—obviously, mature writers are constantly in flux between drafting, revising, conferring, in no particular order and often simultaneously. One goal of the Writing Process is to help children understand this. But most children will not do this naturally, and need explicit instruction on how it is done.
“Another goal of the Process is to cultivate an understanding and appreciation of structure. For example, non-narrative writing can also be described as ‘idea-based’ writing; that is, a non-narrative piece (article, essay) is organized by idea: controlling ideas and subordinate ideas. Narrative writing (memoir, fiction) is controlled by time (a story moves through time, and there is a focus on “traditional European story structure”). Students read and write literature through those lenses.
“The most powerful teaching technique I have used from Calkins and her colleagues happens during revision. You write your piece, and then take a particular writing strategy for consideration. Some writing strategies include dialogue, sensory details, setting details, metaphoric language, flashback, flash-forward, foreshadowing, and so on (you have to admire the rigor). So, let’s say for the sake of argument I want my students to learn how to use setting details in their writing. Mini-lessons and mentor-text studies will ensue during which we study setting details. We read for them, we conduct guided reading groups on them, we notice them in our read-alouds. Meanwhile, in Writing Workshop, as you re-read your piece, you look for opportunities to insert setting details. You mark up your draft with them (professionals do this, no?). Then, for your next draft, you work them in. Then do the same with another strategy.
“As we get older we are able to hold and work with many strategies in our heads at once. With early- and middle-childhood students, we teach strategies discretely, adding tools to their tool boxes. This methodology has been successful for my students because...
...it’s highly engaging;
...it’s rigorous;
...it’s manageable for the children;
...it builds their independence (‘Teach the writer, not the writing;’ ‘give a man a fish...’)
...it’s at heart a flexible framework that can accommodate a visiting artist, and his or her vision of writing, quite well.”
PHYLLIS MOORE STARTS A DISCUSSION ABOUT YOUNG ADULT ISSUE NOVELS
Phyllis writes: “For several years I've been a judge for Letters About Literature, a West Virginia Library Commission contest for WV students. The students read any book/s they choose and write letters to authors about how a work impacted their life. Up till last year, I'd often read the books: LORD OF THE FLIES, OF MICE AND MEN, HEART OF DARKNESS, MISSING MAY, THE DEVILS ARITHMETIC, etc.
“Now the titles are less familiar to me but the letters are just as compelling. Intrigued by the letters, after the contest ends, I spend some time reading the ‘new to me’ books. The topics are so 2007: high school kids planning when to lose their virginity and to whom, rapes occurring in school and at other places, sexual abuse by parents and others, anorexia, cutting, drug and alcohol abuse, fractured families, bullying, poverty, teens ‘coming out,’ gay sex, AIDS, ‘pharming,’ etc. One of the letters this year was to Gail Giles, the author of SHATTERING GLASS. In the novel a senior named Simon Glass is beaten to death by classmates in a room at the high school.”
Carol Del Col responded : “The list of topics...is chilling. Signs of the times, indeed, but just exactly what kind of signs is not clear to me. I really have no answers, only questions. Are these books reflecting the
reality of 21st-century American adolescents? Or are they exploiting the headlines to provide the kind of sensationalism teens often crave? Do they contribute to a growing desensitization of our young people to violence? Or do they teach our young people compassion for those who suffer or are different? Are the books the result of a tendency to eschew escapism in literature? Or are they instead a form of escapism, a way to take teens out of what they perceive as their boring, sane lives in which nothing headline-producing ever happens?
“I'd like to think the books are exploitative rather than a reflection of reality; it is simply too dreadful to think that American adolescents are inhabiting--or even perceive themselves as inhabiting--such a reality. But here's another interesting question to consider: the classic literature traditionally read by high school students includes ROMEO AND JULIET (teen suicide), JULIUS CAESAR and MACBETH (betrayal, murder, violence), HEART OF DARKNESS (primal evil), OLIVER TWIST (cruelty to and exploitation of children), etc., etc. I believe there is a difference between these themes and the topics of the adolescent literature you describe, but can we articulate this difference? As I said, questions, no answers. But I must tell you I long for the days of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden! Innocence lost, indeed.”
To which Phyllis replied: “Yes, the books of the past cover some of the same topics. A SEPARATE PEACE and the death of a young boy, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA and the death of a young girl, GOODBYE, CHICKEN LITTLE and a drunken uncle. Somehow it seem today's Y. A. books are more in-depth-nasty. Having taught in a high school, I know kids face all these nasty situations and sexual issues. I do think they speak to the issues that are of concern to them and I do think the present generation's life is more difficult than mine was.”
Phyllis went on to say: “In 1994, I did a voluntary program of my own invention, dubbed ‘Read to Win,’ in a local technical school serving high school students from three WV counties. Two of the counties are quite rural. For the contest, the students chose something to read from a specified genre each week. They wrote comments about what they read and turned their work in for a chance to select prizes such as a fishing pool and reel, makeup kits, basketball, game, calculator, etc. The weekly winners were photographed and featured in a news article in the local paper. The program ran for six weeks and over 600 reports were turned in By and large the kids chose to read ‘issues’ fiction. The most popular topics were pregnancy while in high school, drunken relatives, sexual situations, grandparents in nursing homes, and divorced families. For the contest, I had books and magazines available by Appalachian authors with a heavy emphasis on WV authors but students could choose any books or topics. The favorite novel was GOOD-BYE CHICKEN LITTLE by Betsy Byars. It has an Elkins-like setting and features a low income family. The father was killed in the mines, the mother didn't know how to drive, a favorite alcoholic Uncle accepts a dangerous dare (to walk on an icy river) and ends up dead, and a grandparent is placed in a nursing home. In poetry the students really liked the poems about low-income kids or abused kids. A favorite poem featured a girl having a baby on the school bus.”
Other comments: June Berkley wrote, “This is disconcerting, to say the least. ....The trend is sad. I can recall when Judy Bloom (with whom I participated in a censorship film, by the way, in Atlanta under ALA sponsorship ….) had such a shocking effect by even approaching a sexual theme on the more obvious level, nothing explicit or sordid, just real….What have we come to! “
Brenda Seabrook said, “I think this trend in YA lit started with Robert Cormier's last book & has continued. There is probably still room for books that don't go into all those problems but the genre became more elastic to encompass the reality of life.”
And Carol De Col added, “Yes, I think the current trend in adolescent literature did begin in the 1970's, and Cormier may well have been one who led the way. I had heard of his books--they came out about the time I was taking some post-graduate work in curriculum and instruction. There was controversy even then about the teenage ‘problem’ novel. Cormier's work probably looks pretty tame today.”
AND SOME RECOMMENDATIONS FOR YOUR (ADULT!) READING PLEASURE
Ardian Gill wrote to say: “I just finished two depressing and brilliant books: Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, and JM Coetzee's THE LIFE OF MICHAEL K. Both deal with a journey in a difficult place, McCarthy in an imagined landscape of a devastated, ash covered planet, a man and his son trying to survive and to reach a place where they can live, though they have no information that such exists. The purpose is in the journey itself. The language is spare and poetic, often the poetry of repetition Similarly, MICHAEL K deals with a wanderer in apartheid South Africa, also trying to find a safe haven in a hostile environment. And, too, both have a parent/child relationship, at the heart of it in McCarthy's case, though the protector and protected roles are reversed. Coetzee's language is lean and also poetic, and he introduces a first person narrator in the middle of the book, returning to third person for the final act. Both books end sadly with yet a note of hope.”
Eva Kollisch said, “I read something that everybody else has probably read
years ago, BEL CANTO, by Ann Patchett, a lovely, musical, subtly radical book. I also read something, having been put to shame by my grandson, which everybody else probably read when they were in high school--TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.– a fine, courageous, sweet story.”
GOOD NEWS!! GOOD BOOKS!!
Kevin Stewart’s new book, THE WAY THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN HERE is just out from WVU PRESS:
READ IT ONLINE!
THE PEDESTAL # 40 is now online (http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/) .
More of Carole Rosenthal’s memoir in the current issue of THE PERSIMMON TREE!
MEMOIR WORKSHOP
There are still a few spots available in the women's memoir workshop Anndee Hochman is leading in Mexico in November.: HEART AND CRAFT: A MEMOIR WORKSHOP FOR WOMEN, in La Barra de Potosi, Mexico, November 3-9, 2007. It’s for beginning and experienced writers. Learn about Anndee Hochman or e-mail her at aehoch@aol.com for details and application.
June 27, 2007
Well, we'rre having the real thing with the weather. Up here in my office, even with the fan directly on me, it is pretty hot and sticky, miserable may be the operative word here.
I had a note from Chiaki Achiwa to say they are back in Japan and have an apartment now. She says it is extremely humid in Tokyo. I wrote back about how we had about days of beautiful sunny crystalline weather, but now everything looks
smudged and ominous. Or is the ominous only how I feel about the coming discomfort. Well, we apparently have some more of the nice weather coming next week– it’s a typical sequence here in the great Northeast, miserably greasy greenish yellow days followed by the ones that are as brilliant as jewels, usually with some thunder storms to mark the changeover.
I think it’s the way weather should be! And don’t understand why people want to live in stupid old perfect California anyhow.
This would be about how I feel about Joel moving out there. He’s going to be working for Sun Microsystems for a year and then going to Berkeley for a Ph.D. At least that’s the plan. And I’m having a rough week while he packs and meets with movers and then on Sunday, he and Sarah start their road trip across the U.S. of A. I'm feeling pretty smudgey myself about this.
June 23
I had a meeting at the Newark Museum yesterday and enjoyed thoroughly a quick look at their present exhibit of contemporary Chinese art. In particular, I was struck by the work of Lu Shengzhong which uses a strange little frog-like human figure cut out of red tissue paper to make enormously elaborate designs-- and he has a huge metal version out in their garden. If you live in the New York/New Jersey area, be sure and take a look!
June 22
THE WRITING PROCESS
Matthew Young, a 5th Grade Teacher in Ossining, New York wrote about Lucy Calkins’ popular Writing Process on the Teachers & Writers Listserv. Matthew, (who used to teach 4th grade at P.S. 75 in New York City, the school where Phillip Lopate led a team of us young artists to work with kids writing and making movies and even comix), praises the Process , is a system of teaching writing to school kids. I used to have mixed feelings about her work, which systematizes (and is sometimes overly rigid about) things that many writers prefer to have left mysterious. But of course what Calkins does is make writing and the teaching of writing work better for thousands of teachers and children. Also, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less impressed with the Romance of Art and more impressed with things that actually work. Anyhow, Matthew explains the Calkins’ Process and how it looks in a classroom in a way that it seems to me suggests some ideas both for teachers and for writers, especially those who go into classrooms:
Matthew says: “One give-away that Calkin’s writing process writing process is going on [in a classroom] is the presence of Writer’s Notebooks. Also, charts or other prominent displays helping students keep track of where they are in the process, e.g., drafting, conferring, revising, publishing, etc. Then look for chart paper hanging from clotheslines with shared writing pieces or other examples of writing strategies written in the teacher’s hand, plainly visible for all to see. Look for ‘Mentor Texts.’ Writing centers and places for students to confer with each other are not uncommon. Students may be actively engaged in conferences with the teacher and with each other. Some may be writing in ‘writing nooks,’ places in the classroom that are not their desks. Further, teachers who do this are generally very happy to talk about it and will volunteer the information when asked (and sometimes when not asked).
“At conferences I’ve heard from Lucy and from her colleagues that the Process (which is in a continual state of revision) derives from careful consultation with professional writers about how they do what they do. The ‘writer’s notebook’ is a very useful tool for gathering and developing ideas for writing (fiction, non-fiction, drama, or poetry). Naturally, many professional writers do not use an actual notebook, but most do have a way of recording and keeping track of ideas as they occur (e.g., a laptop computer, or scraps of paper in pockets that then go into a file at the end of the week). But for kids, an actual notebook is very useful and manageable. Furthermore, most professional writers likely do not keep a chart in their home offices with a clothespin to indicate which stage of the process they are in—obviously, mature writers are constantly in flux between drafting, revising, conferring, in no particular order and often simultaneously. One goal of the Writing Process is to help children understand this. But most children will not do this naturally, and need explicit instruction on how it is done.
“Another goal of the Process is to cultivate an understanding and appreciation of structure. For example, non-narrative writing can also be described as ‘idea-based’ writing; that is, a non-narrative piece (article, essay) is organized by idea: controlling ideas and subordinate ideas. Narrative writing (memoir, fiction) is controlled by time (a story moves through time, and there is a focus on “traditional European story structure”). Students read and write literature through those lenses.
“The most powerful teaching technique I have used from Calkins and her colleagues happens during revision. You write your piece, and then take a particular writing strategy for consideration. Some writing strategies include dialogue, sensory details, setting details, metaphoric language, flashback, flash-forward, foreshadowing, and so on (you have to admire the rigor). So, let’s say for the sake of argument I want my students to learn how to use setting details in their writing. Mini-lessons and mentor-text studies will ensue during which we study setting details. We read for them, we conduct guided reading groups on them, we notice them in our read-alouds. Meanwhile, in Writing Workshop, as you re-read your piece, you look for opportunities to insert setting details. You mark up your draft with them (professionals do this, no?). Then, for your next draft, you work them in. Then do the same with another strategy.
“As we get older we are able to hold and work with many strategies in our heads at once. With early- and middle-childhood students, we teach strategies discretely, adding tools to their tool boxes. This methodology has been successful for my students because...
...it’s highly engaging;
...it’s rigorous;
...it’s manageable for the children;
...it builds their independence (‘Teach the writer, not the writing;’ ‘give a man a fish...’)
...it’s at heart a flexible framework that can accommodate a visiting artist, and his or her vision of writing, quite well.”I don’t know the Calkins’ terminology all that well, but assume “mentor texts” are books and articles for the kids to read. I especially like the distinction between the kinds of writing organized by idea (an essay) and those organized by time (narrative). Obviously a good feature article probably includes some narratives, and the best novels are full of ideas and may even be organized around an idea rather than a story, but for teaching purposes and thinking purposes, these are nice distinctions
June 20
My novel for kids, Billie of Fish House Lane, has just been announced as the South Orange Maplewood Two Towns One Book for Children Selection. This is a great pleasure to me, as I always think fondly of my experience in writing Billie.
June 17
Week-end at the lake. My mom, Andy's sister Ellen, me, Andy, Joel, and Sarah. A big grill, water skiing, rowboat, sun on water, thunderstorm and rainbow. Hammock. Relaxes everything.
June 14
It has been nonstop busy these weeks: my dinner, Joel’s graduation and all the friends there, Joel to California, Joel back from California (and pick up from a delayed plane at 2 a.m.). Then Joel to Norway to present his paper at the computer science conference and Joel back from Norway, groggy from time changes and having been in a place with no night. Then, immediately, my mother arrives from West Virginia, ALSO in a delayed plane, at 1:00 a.m. or thereabouts. And I’m still teaching, to earn a little money, both online and at NYU and with pr
ivate manuscripts. Tonight is the last writers’ peer group. It’s been cool and gray, so at least we’re not all staying awake and sweating. A good time, rich with people doing things people do– for the moment everyone alive and in fair health. Why aren’t we just calm and thankful instead of excited and greedy for more?
Here’s a Utube winner that Joel’s Sarah sent to us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
Pretty amazing how nature just keeps on keeping on.
I've been trying out iambic heptamer on my walks. When I was running, all I could manager were haiku. Maybe better poems, over all, though!
Around me brilliant wash of whiteness, rarest day of June!
The hours of light when hope’s the norm– rose petals over strewn,
And overhead a velvet blue– old Optimism’s tune:
The fanfare of new green leaves that cry “We're Coming Soon!”
(I'm disappointed: the "What is so rare as a day in June" quote isn't from some Elizabethan swordsman but from James Russell Lowel in something I've never read called "The Vision of Sir Launfal.")
June 10
Newsletter # 95
June 10, 2007
I’ve just finished an excellent best selling nonfiction book, COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond. The last third was a little harder to get through– maybe it was that I prefer the collapse of ancient societies to learning about present day declining fisheries, bleached coral reefs, poisoned streams, and clear-cut rainforests. But the message was like a blast of antihistamine for a stuffed nose: the collapse of societies has happened before, due to many factors almost always including destruction of resources, and we’re facing possible collapse now on a world-wide scale unless we change our ways. This is not new news in 2007, but Diamond’s clearly reasoned delineation is excellent.It somehow reassures me that human beings have been causing environmental change, both neutral and catastrophic, for tens of thousands of years. It isn’t that the earth was pristine or people kind to the soil and air and plant life up until fifty years ago. The Norse Greenlanders, for example, despoiled their little corner of the world in the 1300's in a multitude of ways, and failed to learn lessons that might have saved them from another group of immigrants, the Inuit. The Easter Islanders, immediately after the high point of their statue building and complex religious cults, cut down the last of their trees, and their population dropped to almost nothing with an extremely low standard of living. Diamond also discusses the fall of the Mayans and the Anasazi in the Southwestern U.S. Often what he records is how political hubris (especially the ambitions of the warrior classes trumping the interests of farmers) has often been destructive.
There are, however, lessons to learn and models for changing our ways. There have been positive reversals of destruction that came both from grassroots efforts and from above. In Tokugawa Japan, the shogun saved the forests by decree; in the New Guinea highlands, the people 1200 years ago saw their land deforested, and, individually and in small groups, collected plants, experimented, and reforested. China is an environmental mess, but a sign of possible hope is how the government did stop population growth. Individualistic Montanans are beginning to see they need government regulation to save their land and their life style. Excellent book.
And, for something completely different– I read my first Harry Potter! For my birthday, my son Joel gave me HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (which had a title with much more sense of history in the UK: HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE). HARRY was, as Joel said, an incredibly easy, fast, and fun read. One of the things that strikes me about wildly popular books and movies and games is that they usually have a lot of delightful surface innovation and spectacle but a dependable, conventional heart. And, of course they have skillful storytelling. The plot here includes the ever-dependable oppressed childhood followed by spunky new kid at school, complete with mean girls, or in this case, mean wizards. There are supportive friends and a nemesis plus mentors and guides for the hero’s quest. All of this is totally obvious, which is to take nothing away from it, because it all works together and is clever without being jokey. Also, as my son pointed out, Rowling is great on names: Draco Malfoy indeed! A monstrous guard dog called Fluffy.
Finally, I want to mention a memoir that has been getting good reviews in the New York media, THICK AS THIEVES. It is by a former student of mine, Steve Geng, and I was delighted to have a walk-on in the final pages. Steve writes about a difficult life and serious illness in a way that is raw and sharp. He has lived on the edge, hustling, stealing, selling and doing a lot of drugs. The special hook of the story is that while he was living a hustler’s life in New York City, his much-admired older sister was in the same city writing for THE NEW YORKER magazine. Their relationship is sustaining but difficult, and the story of his reconciliation with his retired-military father is touching. The real strength of the book, though, is how directly and energetically, but without romanticizing, he shares the highs and lows of his life. Part of his honesty is a grand joie de vivre even after all he’s been through: and he does not deny the pleasure of jazz, sex, drugs– all of his experiences. He manages to show a life that he is not proud of, but that was lived with gusto. Had he not contracted AIDS, had he not hurt people, inevitably lost the bounce-back of youth, you wonder if he might not have continued boosting and shooting up for the rest of his life. The description of his big fall after eight or nine years of sobriety is excellent and believable. As one reviewer remarked, Geng knows that under the same circumstances he would likely have done it all again. I wonder of the rest of us are ever so honest.
– Meredith Sue Willis
A RESPONSE TO ALICE ROBINSON-GILMAN’S “NOTES ON BOOKS AND READING”
“The place of reading in my life,” says Shelley Ettinger, “ ... you have no idea .... it's a sickness, really, because it's not just the constant reading but the obsessive, panicky compulsion to have enough books on my to-read shelf. I'm like someone who grew up poor hoarding canned food – but I grew up in a house full of books and readers so I don't have the excuse of early deprivation. One evening last week as I was falling asleep I realized that I'd been to every single one of the libraries (four) and bookstores (five) that I frequent in the past two days. Some more than once. Oy.”
RECOMMENDATIONS
Ingrid Hughes writes: “Myra Shapiro's memoir, FOUR SUBLETS: BECOMING A POET IN NEW YORK, is about a woman who moves to New York in middle age from her home in Chattanooga to study poetry and make a life as a poet for herself in the city she's longed for, and about how her marriage makes this transition with her. It's a good depiction of contemporary attitudes– the celebration of individual growth, the delight in its nuances. The best single scene was the death of her sister-in-law.”
Margarethe Laurenzi’s book group discussed THE KEEP by Jennifer Egan. She says, “THE KEEP is really good. It is great fodder for writers, because it weaves a tale between the story being told about a castle and some cousins, a writer (who is writing the castle/cousins story) from jail, and his teacher, who goes to the jail to give 'writing classes' to selected prisoners. There are quite a few twists and turns in the story, which ultimately weaves together, and we had a great time discussing it.”
And, another from Margarethe’s group: “My book group is batting 1000 this year in picks: WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, by Sara Gruen, tells the story of a young man, Jacob, who leaves college in crisis in the early 1930s and joins the circus. The book tells the story of his 3 month stint with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, and weaves back and forth between that time of his life and his present day circumstance as a 93-year-old man in a nursing home, recalling the story. It's beautifully done. It has all the vivid, coarse, seamy side of traveling circus life, along with some well-formed characters who reaffirm that even alongside evil there is humanity and decency. I read it in two nights. Couldn't put it down, and while I am not usually a fan of the tacking back and forth between two stories (and time frames and casts of characters), I thought that Gruen used this writer's technique successfully and even nimbly.”
Phyllis Moore writes to say, “I'm reading the memoir WARM SPRINGS: TRACES OF A CHILDHOOD AT FDR'S POLIO HAVEN by Susan Richards Shreve. It is painfully honest, no pun intended. Her childhood memories start at about 1 ½ years of age. Pearl Buck had infancy memories. So do I. (That is the only similarity between Buck and me.) Both [my husband] Jim and I have early childhood recollections too. Do some people have a special ability to recall childhood or infancy? I think scientific studies rules out much memory recall from before the age of three. But science isn't my cup of tea. What do you think? George Ella Lyon's DON'T YOU REMEMBER? is just out. My copy hasn't arrived yet but it will go to the top of my ‘to read’ stack when it does.”
Norman Julian, in one of his always worthwhile columns in the Morgantown, West Virginia DOMINION-POST recommends STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS, by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert.
PAGE 99
Well, here’s a new way to judge a book. Take a look at this interesting experiment of using an idea from Ford Maddox Ford about judging a book by its page 99.
NEED PUBLICITY??
Leora Skolkin-Smith says, “I wanted to tell you...about Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Carolyn has written a treasure of a book called THE FRUGAL PROMOTER. Carolyn is also quite miraculous when it comes to advising literary writers how to survive this climate which too often is more based on promotion than quality, and I highly recommend checking out her web site, book, and advice column. The link to her blog is www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com , and she has a web page called How To Do It Frugally. Just wanted to write and tell you, in hopes of helping other authors who were as in the dark about publicity, etc as I was (and still am). Right now, publicists are charging is thousands of dollars and Carolyn is a teacher at UCLA who focuses on how to understand and thereby manage one's own publicity, sparing the innocent.”
GOOD NEWS!! GOOD BOOKS!!
LEADS by Rochelle Ratner is now out. “The germs of this book began in 1977,” says Ratner, “when I visited friends in London. As a child, I’d been told I had a speech impediment, but I vehemently refused voice lessons. Then, in a London pub, talking with a friend from the Lancashire/Yorkshire border, it was almost as if I fitted in at last. Without realizing it, I’d probably inherited aspects of my grandmother’s accent. And I’d never missed her as much as I did at that moment. That was when I began planning a trip to Leeds, where my grandmother was born and spent her childhood. I knew I had to write about it, and began a series of poems as the journey took shape. Once there, I copied from books and records I’d found in the Leeds library. I began writing down what people said. What I hadn’t expected was that, as I later tried to shape the materials, I would find other peoples’ words more powerful than my own. Poem? Journal? Memoir? Found text? Think of Olson’s Maximus or Paul Metcalf’s writings." See www.rochelleratner.com .
The audio version of Richard Currey’s LOST HIGHWAY from Mountain Whispers aired on XM on Memorial Day. http://richardcurrey.com/events.html. MountainWhispers Audio will go out to, well, more than a few listeners on that day. And those listeners will be everywhere on the planet. It should subsequently air two more times after Memorial Day, although XM is still working out how they want to do it, but probably in daily "chapters" over a week, or possibly 2-3 nights back-to-back. So check XM.
Red Hen Press will be publishing a collection of 21 short stories by Greg Sanders in spring 2008. Keep an eye on his web site www.gregorysanders.com and his MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/greg_nyc.
Hanging Loose Press has been publishing for more than thirty years. Look at their web site at http://www.hangingloosepress.com . 2007- 2008 catalog includes books by Joan Larkin, Charles North, Hettie Jones, Paul Violi, Terence Winch, Sherman Alexie, Bill Zavatsky, Steve Schrader and many more.
Paola Corso’s GIOVANNA’S 86 CIRCLES was a finalist in the John Gardner Fiction Book Award cntest. Learn more at http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/2932.htm .
Chris Grabenstein’s award winning murder mystery series continues with WHACK A MOLE. An innocent discovery on the beach in Sea Haven leads to a string of gruesome clues and one chilling conclusion: a long dormant serial killer is poised to strike again! LIBRARY JOURNAL said "Whack A Mole is as engaging and enjoyable as the debut Tilt-a-Whirl. Certainly more fun when read as part of a series, this title nevertheless stands on its own as a well-written mystery, complete with humor, humanity, a fast-moving plot, and memorable characters. Highly recommended."
Ellen Bass’s new book, THE HUMAN LINE, has just been published by Copper Canyon Press. It's available at your local bookstore or online. Look at some sample poems at http://www.ellenbass.com .
MORE NEWS
Thad Rutkowski has a lot of new work coming out: "Learning Curve," story, in Dislocate, No. 3, Spring 2007 (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis) (http://www.dislocate.org ) ; "Beautiful Youth," spoken word, on Family Affairs CD (recorded at Eureka Joe cafe, 1995), now with audio samples at: http://cdbaby.com/cd/familyaffairs; "The Speech of Cretans," prose poem, Barbaric Yawp, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2007 (BoneWorld Publishing, 3700 County Route 24, Russell, NY 13684). For more, see his website at http://www.thaddeusrutkowski.com .
RESOURCES FOR WRITERS
Margarethe Laurenzi recommends what looks like a stellar site for writers, Erika Dreifus’s THE PRACTICING WRITER at http://www.practicing-writer.com/ For more sites for writers, see my resources page at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/resources.html#links.
READ IT ONLINE!
There is a small but wonderful selection from Carole Rosenthal’s new memoir, CLOSE FINISHES on the HUFFINGTON POST.
Also on THE HUFFINGTON POST is a lovely poem by Suzanne McConnell .
Download for free a copy of Halvard Johnson's TANGO BOUQUET (and other books) at Anny Ballardini's Poets' Corner:
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content
Cat Pleska has a good piece about visiting Loretta Lynn’s homeplace on her blog: http://www.rednecromancer.typepad.com/mouth_of_the_holler/
MOORE AND ANDERSON AT ELDERHOSTEL
Belinda Anderson and Phyllis Moore are part of a West Virginia Book Festival presentation through Elderhostel this fall!
SUBMIT
Ep;phany– Call for Manuscripts for the Print Issue Fall 2007! Fiction – Poetry – Non-Fiction – Photographs Complete information http://www.epiphanyzine.com .
Big City Lit is once again accepting submissions again– see http://www.nycbigcitylit.com/ .
The Appalachian Writers Guild (AWG) is a non-profit organization of writers, established for the purpose of advancing the creation and dissemination of literature and history relating to the Appalachian region. AWG is currently preparing a themed anthology of Appalachian literature and welcomes submissions from authors at this time. AWG is seeking short fiction, poetry, biography, novellas, and creative non-fiction, including memoirs, opinion pieces and historical sketches. Submissions should be made by Email: poetry to AWGeditor3@gmail.com and all others to AWGeditor2@gmail.com in standard Word (.doc or .rft) format. The first AWG anthology was released in 2007 and is available at regional bookstores. Deadline is Sept. 30, 2007.
Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) will award the 2007 Bechtel Prize in recognition of an exemplary article or essay related to Creative writing education, Literary studies, and/or the profession of writing. The winning essay will appear in Teachers & Writers magazine and on the T&W Web site, and the author will receive a $3,500 honorarium. Entries selected as finalists for the Bechtel Prize may also be published in Teachers & Writers. The authors of finalist essays selected for publication in the magazine receive a small honorarium. Please review the submission guidelines and read previous winners of the Bechtel Prize at www.twc.org/bechtel_prize-archive.htm . Deadline for receipt of entries for 2007 Bechtel Prize submissions is 5:00 PM (Eastern), Friday, June 29, 2007. Submissions will not be accepted after the deadline. If you have any questions after you review the guidelines, please write to editors@twc.org or call 212-691-6590.
June 2
It's so nice to be here on this hot night with Joel working in his room and Andy in his and me down in the living room under the ceiling fan. This is only a moment, highly appreciated, us three back in the house, in summer, no explanations to make, no demands at this moment, everyone within reach, safe, if only for this moment.
May 28
What a week-end-- actually, what a month. We are exhausted from moving Joel's stuff back from Providence in a U-Haul truck! That is, Andy and I drove (me too!) with Joel's worldly goods in the truck. Joel and Sarah are still driving back in the Subaru. It was a great week-end: dinner Friday with Ellen and Jon and Greg and Bethany and us and Joel and Sarah;
then the big dance where we saw Ethan Schreiber and his friend Vanessa; Ken Scheiber, Andy's medical school room mate, and Linda came the next day too as did our old Brooklyn and Berkshire friends Harvey and Adrianne Robins. There was the Phi Beta Kappa presentation on Saturday and the Baccalaureate speech; receptions, dinner cooked by Joel, Seb, Melanie and Sarah for the families. Joel bakedpies with his own crust!
Sunday was all graduation all day with Chiaki and Tak joining us for a few hours and the thrill of Joel surprising us by geting to walk up on the stage! They had one student representing each group --one to represent the Bachelors of Arts, one for Bachelors of Science, etc., and Joel got to "walk" representing people who got both a Bachelor of Science AND a Masters! He also got interviewed in the Providence newspaper.Such a beautiful day, 1200 undergraduate students, so thousands of family members and well-wishers, plus masters and ph.d.s and alums! B.B. King got an honorary and sang a cappella-- how delightful and touching. Dinner that night with Ken, Linda, and Ethan and Vanessa and us (us being Andy, me, Joel, and Sarah). Lots of photos (see a sample at graduation pictures). Very exciting and exhausting.
And today-- up early renting truck, hours of packing and carrying things downstairs, then driving, and now waiting for Joel and Sarah to get here--and they are off tomorrow, she to D.C., he to a conference in CA!
May 26
We're heading off to Providence for Joel's graduation from college!
May 21
They honored me Saturday night at Ethical Culture (Actually, at Cryan's Irish pub's party room in South Orange). It was pretty terrific, to have people stand up one after the other and say nice things. See some pictures here. There was some stress, of course, with all the people who mean something to you there to talk with, but over all, what a high!
May 19
I just booked a flight for my mother from Newark to Cleveland. It cost @$200 and I booked it using orbitz, and that's all fine, but now it gets weird. This flight is a round trip! It cost over $400, twice as much, to go one way.
Is Capitalism crazy or what?
I booked the required return flight from Cleveland to Newark in late July in case she happens to be back in Cleveland (my cousin takes her by car sometimes). Then, if she happens to be there, she can fly to Newark and I'll take her back to WV on my way to the Appalachian Writers Workshop. Otherwise, we'll just forget the second half of the round trip. Andy's brother David, who flies all the time, says this is very typical.
I started reading back in 1984 diaries looking for the beginning of Joel, as he is graduating college next week, and came across early thoughts about writing on the computer. We’d already had one for close to a year, the famous Zorba. I wrote on July 25, 1984, and I was all into “the agony of writing.”
I was at that time doing galleys on Only Great Changes and also working on the novel that became Trespassers, the final Blair Morgan, and not published for more than ten years. This was at the very beginning of the publisher shake up, Scribner's would be dropping me in about a year. It was the heart of Reagonomics.
We were at the lake and I was deep into trying to get pregnant and also Being a Writer. “Do I have too many threads here?” I wrote, with an eye no doubt to the imaginary graduate student someday studying my journals for clues to the source of my brilliance, “Too much to handle at once? Maybe I have to leave out the hospital, but I really do want to finish with Blair in this book. None of this speculation, though, is the agony of writing. This is all just chewing it over: it will take care of itself later. I might, for example, separate out the Porter Otis stuff altogether, let it stand as a novella. Or turn it into a many-viewpointed piece like ‘The Birds That Stay.’”
This surprised me, that I had already at least drafted “The Birds That Stay.” Also that Porter Otis (which became the story “Evenings with Dotson”) was apparently part of what became Trespassers. Boy, you forget the details.
I go on, rather dramatically: “There is some discomfort in speculation–the pain of uncertainty. But the real agony is the blank page syndrome. Dark screen now. How to fill it with light, the page with words.” And then I went off on writing on the computer, how it seemed to encourage less linearity, and this is still true, for drafting. I think in fact the digital age encourages a lot of linear maundering in bloggers.
I commented that “there is much more freedom to stop in the middle and go in different directions. The several dimensioned flowering seems paramount instead of the linear narration. A problem of computer writing I have solved is how to make changes in hard copy. I turn to the place in the hard copy, located in on disk, wrote and rewrote the new part, then printed up (via a file called ‘Type’) and inserted it into the manuscript. The problem had been keeping hard copy and disk material equally updated. Little changes will still have to be done twice, I guess, but this larger changing will work well. The most practical effect of Zorba on my writing (and teaching and business letter writing and resume updating) is of course the ease of using drafts again. Another practical effect related, is the relatively late state of drafts that are finally printed out."
This was printed out and pasted into the journal book. The next entries were handwritten in ink, with little sketches I really like, dreams, all my agonizing over getting pregnant. As time goes on, there are increasing numbers of pasted in typed passages. I seemed to have started doing journals on the computer and saving them around the summer of 1986. Gain and loss, of course, the loss is off the flow of ink and the sketches of my dreams.
All that speculation about writing is so interesting to me to read now. I had no idea of what was ahead-- the world wide web, the incredible amount of information in each computer. David Weinberger as philosopher of the Internet, my son who I had not even met yet majoring in computer science in college. Only 22 or 23 years.
May 17, 2007
Last night Carol and Mila and I went down to Atlantic City to receive an award for the Coalition. It was a real adventure getting down there--an hour to go ten miles because of a downed wire on the Garden State Parkway, and then through the recently reopened section of the Parkway where the sky was still full of yellow smoke and your eyes smarted, and you could see the backfires still burning from the big forest fire in the Pine Barrens, started by National Guard flares dropped from a plane. Very spooky, smoke, blackened grass.
I enjoyed the ride down and the dinner, but especially the ride back, late, Mila driving, Carol riding shotgun, me napping in the back seat with their voices going on, two hours of a golden nostalgic glow in the dark for me, Carol’s familiar deep chuckle, Mila’s lighter voice. Telling stories, talking about how to help kids who need scholarships. I felt relaxed and safe as I used to on the ten hour drives to my grandmother's while my dad and mother talked endlessly in the front seat.
Chiaki Achiwa at Ethical Culture on
May 13, 2007, Mother's Day
May 13, 2007
Another beautiful performance by our friend Chiaki Achiwa at Ethical Culture today, accompanied by our neighbor Jim Harrington. Chiaki and Takeshi came in from New York last evening with a Junior's cheesecake, and Chiaki went across the street to rehearse with Jim, and then the Harringtons came over for dinner-- Lienne after softball tryouts. Cara-An did some amazing knife work making tiny slices of some grapes, and we all enjoyed being together. Then today, Mother's Day, Chiaki sang two songs, including a lovely Japanese piece called "The Red Dragonfly." There was group sharing of music, poems, and thoughts about mothers and nurturing. Andy took along to share the photo of his father and mother in a restraurant in New Orleans. Beautiful weather.
What's On Tap at Brown 2007
More pix at pictures
May 7
We're back from a whirlwind visit to Brown where Joel had his final dance performance, and Andy decided we should buy flowers for Joel-- all the nineteen years of him dancing, and all the little girls in tutus who got flowers-- and we never gave any to him till last night! Sarah gave some to him a year ago, and the dance team gave some to the seniors, but these were Joel's first from his parents.
He danced very well, and the show was extremely well choreographed and organized this year with funny bits of patter between routines while they changed clothes-- including Joel changing behind a sheet onstage!
Some of the girls were really super, Camela on the front row left above and Meg on the top far right plus Sarah F. on her right in a blue tee. All of them really, but it was the wholeness of the show that stood out for me. A really nice turn out too, lots of Joel's CS friends, including an important professor in his life, Shriram, who (they tell us) shouted Take it Off or something like that from the back row when Joel was changing clothes.
Oh, and Joel shaved off his moustache in the middle of the show-- offstage that. And one number was called "Billy Joel Weinberger!" And Meg and Sarah F. did "Moses Supposes" again with Meg's dad onstage as the benighted elocution professor. And and and.
Not even counting a great breakfast at Rue de l'Espoir and late lunch at Not Just Snacks. That was two meals on Hope Street, but as the famous Brown U. Comic goes, "The Rich people live on Power Street, but most of us live off Hope..."
Fun to have time with Sarah, too, riding up, riding back. She just left to drive to D.C. today, straight to work. Joel has projects, one final, has finished classes. "It kind of sneaked up on me," he said.
Well, lots to say good-bye to, but this was a lot of fun and I'm working on my upper lip stiffness quotient.
May 3
I went to two demonstrations last evening– the usual one with the Military Families in South Orange, and then I went to Maplewood and caught the tail end of the South Mountain Peace Action/ MoveOn rally against Bush’s veto of the spending bill with the deadline for beginning to leave Iraq
I was struck by how I don’t appreciate the fine points of ideology– ideology interests me and informs me, but doens't grip me the way art grips me. Yes Bush is a disaster, and yes I love to wave a sign that says “Bush lied they died,” but it’s the lies and the deaths that move me, not whether the Democrats should be castigated or praised for their efforts at a deadline rather than an immediate pullout.
I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I were Emperor of the World or the Demiurge (if the Demiurge gets to change what already happened). I’d certainly stop the invasion of Iraq. Or maybe I’d make sure the winner of the majority of presidential votes in 2000 actually became the president. Or I’d go back to the end of WW I and make better arrangements in the Middle East. Or...
But I guess that’s the point. What I see is what has happened and what might happen, all extremely complicated, and I don’t think in terms of policy, or rather, I see clearly certain general directions, and I have a few clear policy preferences: elect someone who will make better choices for the Supreme Court. Find a way to extend Medicare to everyone. Get rid of the Death Penalty. Get the heck out of Iraq. I react with a strong sense of what is right and wrong, which is admittedly often simplistic, but isn’t right and wrong always?
One reason I stand with the Military Families Against is that I am glad when someone takes the farther left position, which ultimately, I believe, moves things that way. I also vote for the Democrat for president because I believe that small practical improvements count. I'd rather vote for a Socialist, of course.
One great success of the Reaganites was the creation of a culture of greediness. The even greater success of the Right has been to move the discourse so far in their preferred direction that people laugh nervously if you say you’re a democratic socialist.
May 1
Dogwood pink and white,
Maroon tulips, cherry blooms,
Fragrance? Wild onion!
April 24
Spring Sonnet, already a little out-of-date, as today we are greener than yesterday and white and pink blossoms all over the place. So this was last week, just before it all busted out:
Come puffs of wind from all sides & above
Come sun on eyelids breathing glowing green
Come buds not yet burst out in summer love
And father-robin breasts all orange sheen.I’m lying on our lichen covered bench
Tickled by air and life on exposed skin,
Yearning to stay out here, not have to wrench
Myself away to busy tasks within.So rarely do I pause and steep in sun–
My days bereft of time to see and hear
Like this, to let the to-do list be done:
My life my body centered fully here,While Chaucer’s little fowls make melody
In April, I, aware awake, in stillness free.
April 22
I too my long drive today, listening to Ross Ballard's MountainWhispers.com CD version of Lee Maynard's Crum, one of my all time favorite books. Ross Ballard, is the voice actor and producer with a mastery of regional dialect and the age-old art of fine storytellng. Crum makes a terrific audiobook. Its episodic quality and rambling series of incidents totally engrossed me--You trust the storyteller (that's Lee channelled by Ross) to twist and snake around all those characters and funny and tragic incidents and then return to its stated themes of escape and extremelly reluctant celebration of a time and place. If you haven't read Crum, do, but even if you have, enjoy it again this way. No one ever forgets forget Ruby's apple slice or the Great Meat Robbery. And a lot of other things.
April 19
I drove over the mountains today-- leaves coming out in Maryland around Hagerstown, and then up on Big Savage Mountain-- snow-- not groundcover, but strips and patches and a few piles. And over here, in Shinnston, it looks about like New Jersey: very green on the hillsides but trees a passage of gray, barely pink at the tips, so close to bursting out! Aside from visiting and checking on my mother, my big job here is to get her computing, and I'm writing this on her Lenovo, which is a nice little machine, square faces, which I probably like better than my laptop, which is just back from the shop.
Things are good here now, although I’ve been totally embarrassed by not being able to get the dial-up to work, and finally discovering, after calling AOL, that I had the phone wire plugged into the wrong place–the ethernet, I guess, instead of the lineout. I have worked so hard to get this up for my mother–the computer functioning in a way she can learn. So far, she has actually done better than I expected. I think she wants to learn. At 88. Very exciting, really. Also, a diversion when she’s alone.
April 15, 2007
Alice Robinson-Gilman and I did one of our interactive member platforms at Ethical Culture this morning. It was raining hard already, but we had an intrepid twenty people or so, mostly circled, and Alice did a great job of speaking about her personal deep relationship with reading. I had some amusing quotes from people like Ambrose Bierce (“The covers of this book are too far apart.”) and Frank Zappa (“I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy”) and Dorothy Parker (“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force”) as well as the famous Groucho Marx one (“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”)
So Alice provided the passion and I provided some amusement and serious comments as well– I got to read a page from Higher Ground where Blair Ellen reads Crime and Punishment and walks around through the Christmas holidays feeling like Raskolnikov. Then we had a good twenty or twenty-five minutes of discussion about all kinds of good stuff– Jill didn’t become a reader till adulthood; Terri sent Essex County Community College students off to read the Great Books, etc. etc. Very satisfying.
April 8, 2007
I finished my anti-deer garden web!
You can't tell too well, because it was getting late when I took the photo on this cold Easter, spitting snow, but the view is to the northwest, the corner of the carriage house plus the home of the Misses Magliaro. If you look closely you can see the shadows of the netting, a fine net that even heavy wind goes right through. It totally tents the garden. My objective this year was to make it so I could actually stand everywhere in the garden--last year I was always stooping and lurching, but this time, with two more of the posts from the swing set planted in the ground, and with sunbrellas (like the ones over wintered over vegetables on the ground in the picture)-- but old ones with the plastic torn off, dropped into the posts and used for slinging the net-- well, all I can say is, I really hope that *&@@!! Darling Bambi gets the message and doesn't eat my vegetables.
It's Easter, which was never my favoritechildhood holiday. The chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeprs were nice, but my mother had extremely mixed feelings about the candy and new clothing being in conflict with the Easter message. Should we really be trading jelly beans when the day commemorates the triumph over Death? A very heavy holiday in a lot of ways, scary too: the crucifixion, the betrayal with a kiss, the rock rolled away and the creepy empty tomb. There is so much more theology attached to Easter than to, say, Christmas, where the myths and traditions are all somehow lower key: it's a celebration, not the feverish praise of Death Having No Sting No More Hallelujah!
My favorite holiday in childhood was Halloween, which for low church protestants had no religious significance left at all. Halloween was dressing up and walking around after dark in crisp October air knocking on the neighbors' doors; Christmas had some pressure involved, but was mostly magical. But Easter was all about Don't eat the whole two pound chocolate bunny, you'll get sick and besides, you're supposed to be thinking about how Jesus died for your many, many sins and is now arisen and watching you!
Easter is about a theological conumdrum: that Jesus the teacher and man became or always was Christ who is also God.
What I like about Easter a lot is some rousing songs ("Up from the Grave He Arose! With a Mighty Triumph O'er His Foes!"-- on Friday, Lennie Lopate played terrific Easter gospel numbers on his radio show). I also am moved by the various versions of the story itself, the narrative of the popular new leader being arrested and deserted by the people as well as by his closest friends, then executed brutally and in a way reserved for the lowest of society. One of the great strengths of the Jesus story has always been the uplifting of the poor and humble and normally sinful. And then, whether you take it literally or not, there are the women discovering the empty tomb and the subsequent rise of an enormous religious and social movement. Fascinating stuff, however you slice it.
Today's New Jersey Star-Ledger has an interesting oipinion piece about the meaning of Easter for non-believers. The writer John Farmer emphasizes the message of love that Jesus said trumped everything else. I've always seen the drama of the Easter story as a story about Hope in the face of despair.
Hope and charity, then, even for those who aren't literal-minded Christians. Which leaves Faith, and I guess that anyone who can love and have hope without explicit guarantees of a prize at the end probably has to have more faith than the ones who believe Death will be followed immediately by a big reunion with family and friends and pets with no dog hair on the couch and no arguments with the family.
Happy Easter to All of Us!
April 7, 2007
I get so much pleasure out of this silly little fleck of yellow-green life with the blue cere and blue patches on his jowls. He is all about musicality, listening intently to jazz on the radio, to my whistling. He makes love to anything that is shiny or clicks, including dishes in
the drainer, the radio, the hanging lamp, the plug on the toaster over, my fingernails, the zipper on Andy's jacket. He just chortles and sings and, like the guy who drank Love Potion Number Nine, kisses everything in sight. What is not to like? Well, I wish he would pose a little better for his pictures, as he insists on coming closer and closer to the camera, sitting on it if he can. Thus, always in-your-face-and-out-of-focus.
April 3, 2007
Farewell, bare branches.
Now, the moment before green--
Look!-- touches of red!
We had a very nice Seder last night, even without Andy’s family. The Graveses came, and Boe Meyerson and Betty Levin and Mary Sciaino! It has become a fairly routine even for me, especially when we have eight or less people, and there are enough of everything and I don’t have to clear out the dining room plants. In spite of all the shabbiness here at the manor, the chandelier in the dining room glitters, and Sherry’s Acapulco colorful plates and her cobalt blue Mexican glasses (and of course it’s her brisket recipe). But my parsnips in the vegetable roast, and my salad from the garden–the entire salad this time, as the lettuce has begun to make its rosettes
after shivering under the plastic for the winter. It is an endless delight to me to know that the mâche and the Winter Marvel lettuce and the radicchio and some bok choi and red giant mustard and a little kale have wintered over and are beginning to grow– even faster than the weeds around them!
Andy’s Seders are always short, without the half after the Festive Meal. He emphasizes the fact that it’s about ending slavery, and that he likes to know we’re doing part of a world wide tradition: David and Ann have Jennie home, and they’re at the Gellers; Joel and Sarah are at her aunt’s house.
Our quirk is that we often have more gentiles than Jews: last night we actually had more Jews! Although Lorraine Graves, who is a Jewish-humanist, had to leave for a while to go over to Our Lady of Sorrows (Mary Sciaino’s church) for choir practice, as she sings in the choir and last night was a big rehearsal for Sunday’s Easter singing! It’s all good.
March 30
This has been a wild week, how everything comes in clumps for me. A presentation and a training session with the Coalition on our new Speaker’s Bureau, NYU, a day with fourth graders at Butler and yesterday was another wild one, Park Ridge High School, then home long enough to pack up my laptop to go to New York for repair as our local CompUSAs are closing. Off to NYC, tired and back hurting by the time I got the thing into the remaining CompUSA on Fifth Avenue and 37th Street. Then off looking for a bottle of wine, no liquor stores on Sixth Avenue or 23rd Street, finally down Seventh avenue to that one I’ve been to before, just west of 7th on 21st, I believe. Another Australian brand with a different kangaroo. Then to Suzanne’s for writing group where Carol E. read the latest version of a nicely revised story about the old lady whose feet tingle predicting (she believes) a disaster and walks west with her cat. I read the galleys of my piece for Maggie A’s anthology of prose writings about schools and schooling, and I’m pretty happy with it.
Last night started reading around on the web about another Blog tempest, this time about bullying and general nastiness (See Kathy Sierra's blog).
Anyhow, I’m home today, to write for maybe ten minutes, then shop for the small Seder we’re doing on Monday and do Coalition work and probably even some housework, which is almost always a-way down on my list of priorities.
And here come the daffodils!
Crocus Early Spring 2007
March 24
We have snow melting fast, crocuses and snow drops both out in force (the snow drops have been around for weeks, under snow, out from under snow). I saw a few daffodils when I was out doing my Nordic walking, and a two week cold seems on the run. The other sign of spring is that Andy took a bike ride, all dolled up in red and blue high tech socks and shirt. Well, fairly high tech. I've ordered a computer for my mother, which I intend to set up here and have ready to run, complete with a dial-up connection and a word processor. I'm going to go down and visit her for a day sometime in the next two months and try to ease her into using the thing. She says she doesn't want it, but knows she needs it...
March 18
It's four years of this war now. More than 3000 American soldiers dead, and we don't seem to keep count of the tens of thousands of others. I'm sure you can find people in Iraq, perhaps especially some of those in Kurdistan or the relatively peaceful southern Shiite regions where some are glad the Americans blasted their way in.
But if you ask the rest-- the ones who have lost family members and friends, who have had to desert their homes, who have no jobs, no functioning infrastructure, not even a modicum of a sense of safety in their daily lives-- let alone if you could ask the ones dead from American bombs and bullets, from insurgent and terrorist bombs and bullets-- if it was worth it, do you really think they would say yes? Does anyone really think those people are glad about this war our leaders chose to force us into?
There are many events around the country today and tomorrow and all week commemorating the U.S.'s foolish, brutal war. Where I live, there is a walk at 6:00 p.m. tomorrow from South Orange Town Hall to Maplewood town hall.
March 16
Wow! I got some angry comments on my March 11 post that talked about The Spencers, the illustionists who performed at SOPAC on Saturday night. I also got a comment on the Spencer blog itself (Spencer March 14), and Mr. Spencer was a lot nicer than his fans. I'm having a lot of reactions to this micro-mini tempest-in-a-teapot.
First there is my ambivalence about blogs: I have been journalling for years, often writing pretty intense things, and my blogs are far more gregarious affairs. They are unlike my journals, and also unlike the blogs that Brother-in-law Internet Guru David Weinberger interacts with-- his blogs are mostly deep into things like internet neutrality and the meaning of blogging or straightup political stuff, with an occasional bit about the family, which is what I mostly read for.
So I began blogging experimentally, something along the lines of the journals I wrote when Joel was a baby that were aimed at public consumption, namely my mother. The only people I'm aware of who regularly read my blogs now are family and friends, and I'm certainly aware that I have readers, and to some small degree write accordingly. My friend Phyllis Moore actually turned a paragraph of one of my blogs into a poem! And Mary Sciaino sometimes sends me emails in reponse to things I blog (most recently our feelings about our kids flying in planes!). Recently, when I mentioned I went to an anti-war vigil, the excellent blogger Sherry Chandler wrote a supportive note.
What I haven't experienced before is this business of offending people I never even thought would notice. I admit I wasn't thinking about the feelings of The Spencers when I wrote that blog! I was mostly just musing over my reactions to a performance in an area that is a favorite of my husband Andy's, not mine. When I comment on illusions, it's like a reader who only reads thrillers reading one of my books and asking why I don't have more action in them.
That's more or less the kind of audience I am for an illusionist. I focused on what I enjoyed: friends in the audience, little kids' responses, trying to figure out an illusion, the performance style of Mr. Spencer. Which I praised, although I did use the phrase "full of himself." That was imprecise, a falling back into personal shorthand, the sort of thing I write in my personal journals but try to keep out of the blog.
I was thinking about how you can't be a performer without a fullness of self. I know when I give talks, or even teach creative writing classes to fourth graders as I did yesterday, I am full of a kind of spirit, an energy that is like I am taking in the appreciation of the audience and somehow magnifying it.
Performing-- the relationship between a performer and audience-- interests me a lot. We went to see a performance of Shakespeare's King John the afternoon after the Spencers, and I felt it there to, me as audience member being part of the event, that wonderful magic (real magic to me) of a performance where audience and performers do it together, make it happen. And I really do think Mr. Spencer has a lot of that kind of magic.
He also seems to have some really protective fans...
March 15
I've got a really bad cough now--I'm into my second week of this, and now it's the coughing getting me down--I don't feel particularly bad except my forehead is just short of aching from the cough and my throat likewise. Still, I got through the morning with the fourth graders at the Aaron Decker School, in Butler, New Jersey. I had to apologize to each class and tell them that they were going to hear some ugly coughing, but I was really okay. And, indeed, I'm pretty sure I AM okay. They had fifty kids absent yesterday in a relatively small school. I always enjoy so much being up there. The teachers seem glad to have me some and do workshops and, in fact, the lead fourth grade teacher has made the arrangements herself for several years running. Most of my best relationships with schools are in the ones where the teachers truly buy in-- I've been in a fair number of schools where it's the PTA's who bring in another perk for the kids (along with performers and trips and riding lessons) and the teachers can feel it's just a waste of their time to have in one more special. The school in Mendham where I was earlier this year could have fallen into that category-- it was certainly a wealthy enough district-- but in that case, the language arts supervisor knew me and brought me in for a specific project with her teachers. She had begun a new writing program, and the teachers, very professional, viewed me as a good supplement to their work. So lots of things are good, as long as the teachers want the program.
March 11
I’m not feeling well today–the cough that started directly into my bronchial tubes a week and a half ago seems finally to be doing more than making me cough: I’m a little light headed and grumpy over coming into Daylight Savings so early. WHY do they make us do this? Why can't we be encouraged to get our bodies into rhythm with the world instead of trying to remake the universe to fit our commercial imperatives?
We have Anja Moen speaking at Ethical this morning, and then we’re going to Jersey City to see Michael Basile in KING JOHN and then I have to hurry to whatever is left of the Executive Committee meeting.
Last night Andy had a last minute urge to go see the illusionists at SOPAC– The Spencers. I don’t care so much for illusionists, but I did want to see SOPAC, and it is a very pleasant size, and last night's crowd was of of kids and adults, and we saw some people we knew, Ariel Green's parents, the Anzalone-Newman adults. The show was the usual sawed in half ladies and escaping from a can of water, and a great deal of talk in between–the main guy’s engaging personality carrying it, just chatting away. This morning I discovered he has a blog, and he blogged South Orange last night-- http://www.spencersmagic.com/blog/
That’s a real sign of the times– the performer performing then telling the public about his performance, or rather, it was mostly about how much the audience loved them. I'd say I liked/was interested in them, especially his style, smallish guy with a very neat body, bleached and spiked hair, self-deprecating, but of course very full of himself-- a performer. Anyhow, I liked being there, but I guess I don’t really get the point of illusions– the disappearances etc. I figured out one trick all by myself (Andy did separately – the one where he reads minds and writes down the singer/place/card the person is thinking of). I know in general how the Houdini-in-a-bottle ones work and the sawed off ladies, so I’m actually more amazed by up close and personal stuff, the card tricks and sleight of hand. Well, it was fun to be out, and I'm always interested in Performers. Vaudeville acts, if not vaudeville, still live, I guess. I wonder what kind of a living these people make– four people who show up on stage and at least one driver for the semi they travel in.
March 9, 2007
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In the New York Times today is an obituary for Ruffina Amaya, who survived the massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador in 1981. She heard her children’s death screams. Husband beheaded. The US was supporting the side the killers were on,so we denied there had been a massacre. It took this woman and others speaking out, over and over, to tell the story. This was at the beginning of the Reagan years. So many times the U.S. has supported thugs if they claim to be for a handy sound bite called Freedom.
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March 8, 2007
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Well, I got an email from Phyllis Moore today, and there was a poem in it. I thought, How nice, Phyllis is sending around one of her poems! But she had made a poem out of my March 6 blog entry-- she gave it the title. I was touched-- someone responding to my words so directly. Thank you, Phyllis!
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Closest to the Burgeoning Time
by Meredith Sue Willis
I’m feeling light this morning.
It’s very cold
again
and extremely bright.
The white tops of bare branches.
Where the colors are saturated,
the bark is a light orange.
Light blue sky.
The season of absolutely no leaves.
This seaon closest to the burgeoning time.
March 6, 2007
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We’re on a roller coaster with Joel’s Ph.D. acceptances. He found out at Princeton that they don’t do deferments (you have to go back in the pool and start over), but now he's sent out an email saying that Carnegie Mellon does do deferments . Well, it’s all up and down, where he’ll be, the loss I feel at his not being in the house anymore (which is nothing compared to my friend's infinitely greater loss of her son). Or my other friend's final survey of the gray flat universe and her choice of darkness for herself.
But I’m feeling light this morning, even though I just spend the last hour on Coalition business rather than writing.
It’s very cold again and extremely bright, with the white tops of bare branches and the bark a sort of light orange where the colors are saturated. Light blue sky. The season of absolutely no leaves that is closest to the burgeoning time.
March 4, 2007
Lisa Novemsky sent out a link to a song by Tom Chapin about testing kids, called "It's Not on the Test," at LISTEN . There's something about lilting message ballads that makes me all nostalgic-- as if listening to an anti-highstakes testing song and sending it on to a few people actually made change. Does it? Even a little? What does work, nowadays, in the way of direct action? I've been using most of my political energey for the last ten years on the Community Coalition, which has meant lots of low level detail work and not much in the way of big rallies and inspiring marches.
Andy and I watched a DVD two nights ago,V for Vendetta, in which there is the usual outlaw in the vanguard of political change (in this case a rather insane but brilliant and anguished murderer). There is a scene at the end when The People rise up all wearing identical masks and capes and fill the streets. So mass action remains a sort of vague ideal, at least as a good visual, in Hollywood.
A lot of people find more action on the Internet, signing on with MoveOn, etc. But protest ballads still get to me.
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2-24-07
Back from Providence: Joel, Sarah, Al Forno, Modern Diner (again). Kiowa baby carriers. We went to the Haffenreffer Museum– Brown’s anthropology museum out in Bristol, Rhode Island. I was very moved by the Kiowa-Comanche beaded-boarded baby carriers. The Kiowas are also the ones who did the art work in the ledgers when they were in captivity, beautifully colored line drawings in old ledger books, usually figures and horses, maybe some hills and tipis. I'm pleased that the baby carriers are by the same people who did the ledger books (I saw an exhibit in Cooperstown, I believe, five or six years ago: same time maybe I saw the Gee's Creek quilts? Odd how those colorful objects come back again).
Friday night, after our grilled pizza and other deliciousness, we went back to Joel’s apartment where the Friday night potluck was in process– a few dozen of Joel, Seb, and Melany’s closest friends all bring food, mostly beer and brownies, as far as I can tell, so they end up sending out for pizza. Something touching about their home made parties, too, although the detritus seems to last for days afterward and Joel, who loves it, says the clean up really sucks.
February 21, 2007
I met this afternoon about Coalition activities, and then spent an hour on South Orange Avenue protesting the war. It was cool, after a bright, mild day, but very satisfying to be standing out there holding a sign-- and mirabile dictu we got a LOT of cars honking support. This goes on every Wednesday, co-sponsored by the South Orange-Maplewood Committee to Stop the War and Military Families Speak Out. Anyone can join for the full hour and a half or just ten minutes.
February 17
It’s Saturday, and I made French toast for me and Andy for breakfast. Now I’m getting rid of that broken rolling file that was a bad purchase from the beginning, replaced with also cheap but at least so far unbroken ones, clear, so you can see in them. Such a sense of accomplishment to straighten up the piles of Coalition and Ethcial Culture Social Action files. Oh my. I’m going to take a long walk later, andmaybe finish my seed orders and make soup.
And read more of Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, which is a remarkable
enormous book, feels more like a whole since I have the good translation by Tina Nunnally in a single volume. Enormous. Rambling, Omniscient. Feminist scholars apparently ignore th book, for its too religious, too woman-in-conventional-role quality-- it’s set in the middle ages, and you really feel the weight of convention and culture and also nature. Kristin is about as healthy and wealthy as a woman of her time could be, with a fair amount of freedom, and a culture that appears to give at least some respect to the women’s realm of work and responsibilities. And yet she is caught by rules about sexuality, by child bearing, by the deaths of people she loves, etc. etc.
February 13
I had a lot of fun last night discussing “The Death of Ivan Ilych” in my Making Your Novel Happen class. I don't usually run discussions of classics in class, but this group was prepared and full of responses, mostly positive, except some found it depressing. One man quoted so I didn't have to : “Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”
I didn’t have to make many of my discussion points– they did it for me. I concentrated on the structure of the novella (we all know I.I. is dead, the bulk of the story is how he lived and mainly how he died) and my favorite aspect which is the religious question. I got say that I think Tolstoy was “smarter” as a writer than as a philosopher thinker. Anyhow, really good fun for me. I really love this particular kind of conversation.
Then I came home and found a link to a video of brother-in-law/Internet philospher David Weinberger being interviewed by some Germans, and the German part is pretty funny, (reminds me of one of the Cooking Show guys who pretends to be edgy but is really doing something akin to what the old kidshow t.v. guys used to do–Alton Brown).
I just looked up Alton on the Information Highway, which is David, insists, only the smallest part of what the Internet does. David talked about the way we use metaphors to try and talk about the Internet (thus the "information highway"), and his favorite appears to be from his book The Cluetrain Manifesto, which is that this new thing, the web, is all about conversations, markets are conversation, but buying and selling is just one of the types of conversation. DW's big concern at this point is the takeover big business/government allies are trying to pull right now, to label us for commercial purposes and political control, to give privilege to some messages over others (professional Hollywood movies over homemade movies), etc.
See David's blog at http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/ .
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February 10
The phone rang after we'd gone to sleep last night-- one of those horrible sounds when you're deep under, and I always associate such calls with terrible disasters or at least with someone sick when Andy's on call. Andy answered, and souned confused but not unhappy, and then passed me the phone, and it was Joel--he'd just been accepted into Stanford University's Ph.D. in Computer Science program! He was extremely excited--this is apparently something wonderful (albeit still in California). Also Joel has accepted a job already, signed a contract etc. Well, it must have felt very good to him-- always a pleasure to hear good things about your kid. And to have a call in the night that isn't death and disaster.
And I've been invited to teach the Nonfiction workshop at Hindman this summer-- always a delight to be there, hear the voices, smell the air.
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February 5, 2007
I'll be leaving soon for New York-- my first NYU class of the semester. I had two scheduled, and one didn't run, and I was suddenly very eager to make sure this one goes-- Making Your Novel Happen. It makes you appreciate a thing, when it doesn't happen: for me, the appreciation was for napping on the train, calling Andy on the cell phone from the train, the cheap sushi place I go near Sixth Avenue, Washington Square Park, the interesting people who are writing novels.
I do wonder sometimes why there are so many of them.
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February 1, 2007
These young people! I hear from her mother that Laurel Schwartz is thinking about teaching in China or doing Teach America before possibly going to professional school. Molly Gilman is in a children’s play called Pinkalicious that is actually on Broadway, albeit Upper Broadway and she isn’t in Equity yet (but got a good review for her singing-- called "strong-voiced and charismatic!" ). Meanwhile, Sarah is down there doing health delivery contracts for Rand Corporation, and Joel is set to go live in San Franciso and work at a really excellent job as a software engineer, probably getting a deferral on graduate school.And I’m still amazed that he can keep a check book.
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January 26
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Reading a biography/commentary on Michel de Montaigne
by Donald Frame with a goodly dollop of M’s own words: that this life is natural, that pleasure is natural, including the delight when a pain is over (a kidney stone passes in his case). I am eager for the balance of my life to be full of the kind of pleasure Montaigne writes about-- not sitting on a beach sipping piña colladas, although if I could get over my airplane-o-phobia that would be a possible part of it. I want a change of attitude: I want less of the sense of standing on promontory with dark clouds around me and a sense of doom on all sides. I want to feel I’ve done good things each day, and to recognize the things I’ve not done so well, accept them, try to do better, but not to focus on my failures and my jerkiness.
January 23
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This is my mother and dad's anniversary. She is in California with my sister, and I called by cell from the car (Andy and I had been to Famous Dave's for barbecue sandwiches) to say I was thinking of her. This is her second one alone. They got married in 1942.
I was wiped out after a day at Hillside School in Mendham plus a teacher workshop-- all going nicely with teachers working hard on a realistic fiction unit and me adding ideas, things to put into the stories, even having conferences with the kids-- that's a real luxury for me, to be able to put in some one-on-one time with kids.
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January 19
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We had snow! Not a lot, but enough to count! Yay! The fourth graders at Hilltop School in Mendham were thrilled to see a couple of flakes drift down. Meanwhile, I've got my first full unscheduled day at home in what seems like six weeks-- don't know if it's precisely true. Andy took off for a day in the country, because he loves to drive and have a change of scenery.
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Here’s an interesting factoid–that we all use the phrase “more honored in the breach than in the observance” wrong– we use it to refer to rules that are given lip service to, but that people usuall break. But it was used by Hamlet to mean the King’s rules were so bad they were better broken! See the note here:http://www.cjr.org/tools/lc/honored.asp .
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January 17, 2007
Well, I’m back from taking Joel to Providence, and it’s cold at last, a clear bright day driving and here and in Rhode Island. We went up last night after I taught the fourth graders in Mendham, had some heavy traffic getting out of East Orange, more heavy traffic over around Darien or Stamford or somewhere, but nothing to speak of from then on, not even in New Haven. Joel took over driving and we got better and better at talking together, me drifting off sleepy, him talking a lot about his visits with his friend J., the newly-fundamentalist Jew now living in Jerusalem and studying in a special Yeshiva for English speaking men returning to Israel and religious studies. This had been interesting and difficult for Joel, and for me mostly interesting, the comparison between a newly fundamentalist Jew and the fundamentalist Christians I know a little better.We got to Waterman Street and found parking across the street from his apartment, said hi to his roommates Seb and Melanie. Everything so quiet, amazing. Joel said it was like 4:30 in the morning. Then-- and this was like some big symbolic moment for me, a new stop on the Motherhood journey-- he bought me a drink at the Graduate Center bar (where I was carded! That's a story I'll keep telling-- I think they're required to card everyone, but still...) We played darts, he visited with Computer Science friends, hung out, reasonably priced drinks, a wall of random maps, Africa next to Providence next to the U.S. very small. In the main room, a wall with big original posters of the famous Providence posters in old True Love Stories Style: "The Rich Live on Power Street" and "The Rest of Us Live Off Hope," referring to street names in Providence.
Anyhow, I had a very nice time for an hour, and then we went home and I camped out in their living room in a sleeping bag from home on their futon, woke early, read my biography of Montaigne until Joel got up, and then we went out to Modern Diner for breakfast
(The First Diner to be listed on the National Registry!) where I had a great eggplant sundried tomato mozzarella omelette with home fries and rye toast (dripping with butter) and Joel had French toast with custard and a huge mound of fruit and pecans. My stomach hasn’t quite recovered, but it was really good. Then we got him some groceries and I took off. Very satisfying visit.
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January 12, 2007
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Looking gray and louring today. We had a whole debacle yesterday with Joel's old baby sitter (when she was a Seton Hall student) Charlene's phone number. She called to find out if a "little treat" from her to us had come, and I had to say no. She got off, called someone, called me back and said it was on the truck. We talked a little bit, she talked with Joel. Then, UPS arrived with a huge styrofoam box from Omaha steaks! She had sent us four steaks, a few burgers, a box of stuffed sole, stuffed baked potatoes, a chocolate cake and a set of knives! I suppose it was some kind of special, but extraordinarily generous! Joel was excited about the knives, and about the steak. He's probably taking the knives back to his apartment with him. Then came the debacle: I no longer have her phone number! I know she wanted to know if this thing arrived, too, but all I had was a disconnected number and a mailing address. Well, I've whipped off a note to her, but she's probably sitting around wondering what happened. So I feel bad, but she's unlisted, and seems to have given up her land line. So I can't even be properly grateful!
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January 6, 2007
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A few days ago a New Jersey five star panel recommended that the state abolish the death penalty. New Jersey hasn't executed anyone for decades, but an official end to the death penalty would have a lot of moral weight with other states to do the same thing.
Except Texas. Someone there seems to like the smell of frying flesh.
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January 5, 2007
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Every night I hit a wall, or come to a stop. I know it's just tiredness, but it surprises me every time: I'm still thinking of all the things I want to do, and suddenly, the day's good momentum is gone, and it's like my feet are stuck in blocks of wood. Did this always happen to me? I turn a corner and that's it, I'm finished for the day. I can still read and fool around with Web pages, but I have to focus on just one thing instead of six. I'm back to teaching: my online class and fourth graders in Mendham. NYU starts next month.
January 1, 2007
Joel accepted the job by email last night for next year in San Francisco. This is the small group research and development job. At least I know now, and can begin to get adjusted. He doesn't really think he wants to be in California for the rest of his life, but he may be just being nice to me. It's Sarah's home state, of course. Each stage of parenting has been like this: I didn't think I could bear it when the baby stopped nursing. I didn't think I could bear the kid not sitting on my lap. I didn't think I could bear Joel going to college. Of course we do bear it, we live on. We live with great satisfaction, in fact. And part of the fabric of life becomes the loss.
We're very philosphical today. Resolution: to focus on the present day and to read more slowly.
This period off from teaching and Coalition work (mostly) with lots of family has been enriching, I think, perhaps make me more able to do the slow and focus. I'm very close to having a final draft of Love Palace done. I had felt that there was something wrong with the end, and I made a pretty serious rearrangement which works (as always I wonder why I didn't figure it out sooner).
We had dinner with Sciainos, Dalbeys, and McNamaras yesterday, plus Joel, Sarah, Ryan. Good stories, good food, the McNamaras are grandparents courtesy of Erin.
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