My 1st grader came home yesterday obsessed with Vincent Van Gogh. 
Not surprising, since she is a passionate kid and Vincent was nothing if not passionate.

As the rest of us listened, she ran through all the big and little details of his life:

He painted with such thick globs of oil paint that his paintings were almost, like, 3-D.

And that last one? That’s the one that really got her.
Paint instead of food. 
The one painting he did sell, she said, allowed him to buy a wheel of cheese. 
But on many other dark days, paint instead of food. 

We talked a lot about how he tried other careers but they didn’t work out.
Vincent Van Gogh couldn’t not paint.
Even at the price of paint instead of food.

It gets you to thinking, doesn’t it, about your own calling, your own drive, your own passions?
What would you trade?
What would you give up?
What have you given up?
Has it all been worth it?
Does it matter?

The thing is, it’s my daughters.

They’ve been writing up a storm. 

I’ve been, ummm… revising. 
Muddling about. 
Stop-n-starting.

But they’ve been writing up a storm.

For example:

Creepy The Weird Named Seal

That day she changed her name to Emily and no one ever teased her again!!!

This one’s by my 7-year-old and one of her best chums. 
There are a bunch of a baby harp seal illustrations that go with it.

I do love this story, but I’m thinking we’ve got a little work to do on self realization and empowerment.
18 years later!??!?!?!

Last night we went to a backyard bonfire shabbat, which is kind of funny since we’re not Jewish.
But we were invited and assured we wouldn’t be the only ignorant, confused-looking folk in the corner.
(Though, as a rule, being ignorant or confused doesn’t seem to stop our little family from stepping out.)

So, off we went to be part of a minyan. 
A minyan, it turns out, is a quorum of adult Jews gathered to perform a religious obligation. 
A community.
A village.

And this particular minyan works like this:
Once a month, they gather ’round a backyard bonfire — with a guitar, a little xeroxed prayerbook and some cocktails.
Each month there are returning friends and new members — strangers in name only.
They sing and read and pray in Hebrew and opine and discuss.
And then they eat and drink and go about their merry ways.

Last night, there was discussion of matriarchy — one of the minyan spoke about Rebekah, another touched on Lilith. She pulled up short because of all the sex and violence. Nobody seemed the least bit miffed. I think she could have carried on. 

And then a teenager talked about her own mom and how frustrated they get with each other and how, in the end, she knows her mother is just pushing her to be the best person she can be. Her mother was tucked right next to her, in a broad Adirondak chair at the edge of the circle. I watched them from my perch on a log, tucked right next to my big girl. 

It was a beautiful thing.

And so was the challah.

May we all find the minyans we need to be complete…

 After last week’s find, I decided to do a bit more digging to see what else I’d stashed away.  

It’s overwhelming to me, almost, how many poems and how much time I apparently used to have. 
Or maybe it’s overwhelming how much less time I seem to have now.

Still, reading old work actually puts me in mind of those days — I recall where I worked and what sort of head space I was in. I remember sitting on the floor — all of my work and stamps and submission envelopes spread out before me in some sort of hopeful order. I remember reading many of them aloud at coffee houses and galleries. I remember being jealous beyond measure of other people’s poems — deeper, more evocative, more surprising than my own.

And really, there are plenty of pieces I might oughta burn — I brought a naivete to the page that wasn’t always charming. Or graceful. Or true. 

But there are few in there that I wouldn’t be horrified to share. In reflection. So on that note, I think last week started an informal series of, well, we’ll call ’em Poems from the ’90s. Old stuff. Dotage.

Here’s one:

March Birthday

The house in its dotage crumbles

in on itself

like cake, Friday’s storm

seeping through seams

of tape and sheetrock, the wide window

toward the lake drafty

as a silk blouse – it is winter

cold and stiff and everything

(the kettle, the mother, the boxes

of ill-fitting clothes) everything

wanting

to seem new

doesn’t

— Liz Garton Scanlon, 1999

Just back from a sweet morning school visit.

Lotsa kids sittting criss-cross applesauce on the gym floor, a futzy little portable microphone, 
and me with my book.
Or rather, my book via PowerPoint. 
Which is my read-aloud method when there are too many kids to easily and cozily share the real thing.

So, for the little ones (preK-2nd grade), I like to walk into the book by singing a song together (one that features pockets) and then joyfully and methodically going through the pockets of my ‘writer’s vest’ (aka, fishing vest) and then, drumrolll please, reading the book — A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes.

The kids generally love the warm-up — especially the vest, which is filled with all sorts of intriguing and funny treasures, including a sock. (This one inevitably cracks ’em up. They are always just certain that it is dirty. Go figure.)

Anyway, today there was a wiggly little guy with an orange shirt sitting front and center. 
At some point during the singing or vest adventure, his hand went up and it wasn’t goin’ down until we spoke, guaranteed.
And when I called on him he said, “Can we get reading? I’ve been verrrrrry patient here.”

So we did. I was as ready as he was…

So for those of you who’ve asked or wondered, nope, I am NOT going to the hotly anticipated Democratic Debate here in Austin tomorrow night.

Drat!

Neither my husband nor I won a ticket in the lottery, no matter how many email accounts or false names we employed.

Drat squared!

Who knew that Texas of all places would be a big player in the Democratic race this year???
Gotta say, it’s a little titillating. We’ve been rather, um, red down here for awhile.

So, we didn’t make the cut to hob-nob with the big-wigs, but we’re kinda all about politics around here these days.
And believe me, the kids are part of the fray. 
To wit:

Small one:
“How long until we pick one of these people? Hasn’t this been a kind of long time to have no president?”
(Turns out she thought that George Bush was already, ahem, out…)

Tall one:
“Do the candidates get to vote? I’m sure they all vote for themselves. Do they have to vote last?”

Small one:
“And do they get to vote in every state? That wouldn’t be fair. They shouldn’t get to fly all over the place just because they might be president.”

Tall one:
“I don’t get why all this voting isn’t happening on the same day. It seems like people are just going to take other people’s ideas.”

Small one:
“Will there still have to be peace rallies when we get our new president?”

Tall one:
“I’m sure this year people will really think about things before they vote. Right, Mama?”

Right. Let’s hope, my sweet. Let’s hope…

A psalm is a little song of praise.
Which is a lovely thought — an endeavour hardly anyone could argue with.
Kind of like reciting gratitudes. 

So I’m working on writing one, at the invitation of a grad school poet friend of mine, but I’m positively slopping through irony over here. 

For one, my religious background goes something like this: interfaith Sunday school when it doesn’t interfer with ski team. (I do have fond and visceral memories of my granddad singing the Doxology before Thanksgiving dinner, and I have one intensely spiritual daughter, but still…)

For another thing, I’m currently traveling on a low road and finding it harder than usual to recognize all that there is in the world to praise. It seems as if many of the people I love are suffering and the music I click on and the things that I read make me heartsick and the sunshine is barely strong enough to cut through the chill.

And third, I’m not tone deaf but not exactly musical either. 

So.
Here I sit.
Working on a little song of praise.

Maybe it’s those kinds of ironies that bring us to the blank page most fiercely.

One can hope…

 I’ve always been a sucker for a guy with a guitar.
Good thing I married one.

And guess what he got me for Valentine’s Day?
This soundtrack, currently set to peat and repeat on my iPod.

Have you seen the movie?

You haven’t?

You guys! They didn’t invent Nexflix for nothin’…

I’ve been thinking lately that one of my purposes, in writing for children, is to honor their perspectives — 
wild, varied, inscrutable, sweet.

To empower through recognition.
To notice, to listen, to see.

That’s what I remember wanting as a kid.

Recently I was plowing through piles of my own poems and I found this one, written when my first baby was wee. 
I think this is when this whole idea must’ve started to coalesce for me. 

Don’t you love tracing your own paths backwards sometimes, to find out how you got where you are today?

Perspective

It is nearly impossible  — impossible —

to recognize the difference

between dog and bear

in the transmuting dark

and the long croony whistle of a train

sounds so much like moo

as to be four-legged and lonesome

A sock looks like a hat

but doesn’t fit and isn’t

a pear looks like an apple

apple sounds like happy

and is

Blowing on breakfast

cools it off, blowing

in the bath makes bubbles

and the wind blows

arms into fingered wings

Every man is Daddy

— the Wicked Witch

is Mama and so is the moon

in this afternoon’s sky

milky as the breast

at bedtime when who

will stay to keep things straight

who will name the sounds

that come in the night?

— Liz Garton Scanlon, 1999

This morning, The 2007 Cybils awards were announced and hot dang, you judges did a fine job!
I haven’t read every winner, but I can assure you that I will. 
I can see the rush at the circulation desk now.

As for those I’ve read, a quick little hoo-rah to a few:

Linda Urban’s A Crooked Kind of Perfect took the honors for best middle-grade novel, which, to my mind, is kinda perfect.
Congratulations, Linda!

Back in January, I predicted the winner of the picture book category — The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County — so woot! to Janice Harrington and Shelley Jackson and woot! to me!!!

And finally, the winner of the poetry award: This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness.
Sigh, swoon, sigh. 
I love this book. 
And (I know, I’m gonna hurt my wrist patting myself on the back this morning) I just so happen to be the reader who nominated it! 
Joyce Sidman, you wrote a book of lovely, honest and meaningful poems and I’m awfully glad they’re being celebrated.

OK, now go on you guys. 
Go check out The Cybils for yourself…