Or maybe not, since everyone else in the blogosphere already seems to have a solid handle on how to link and tag and invite and post and download and what not.
But me? I’m still thinking papyrus and birchbark are good ideas. When my computer goes wonky on me, I either shake it like a soda machine or get out the sage smudge stick and try something ceremonial.
So, it’s a red-letter day when I get a little better handle on anything around here. Under the tutelage of folks more technically gifted than I, like the luverly Shannon Lowry, I have figured out how to input aesthetically pleasing links rather than just having folks click on long, ugly, cumbersome url addresses.
It was a post about a week ago that convinced me I better make the leap into deeper waters. It was littered with hightlighted html gobbledy-gook, illegible really, but not now!
Lest you think that I’m going to go back and retroactively clean up all my posts, let me assure you that even I am not that driven to waste time. I just tidied up that one for practice. As my kids would say, “Easy breezy lemon squeezy.”
I’m loathe to say how easy it was, in fact. But it’s like all the other forward motion in our lives — so much possibility there for the taking… whenever we’re ready. Yee haw!
On Friday night I donned black and mingled with the literati at the lovely Leitich Smith home. Greg and Cynthia hosted a launch party for Cyn’s new novel Tantalize and it was a swanky delight, complete with vino, Italian cream cake and a glossy, hardcover copy of the book!
Most gratifying, though, was being in the company of other writers and talkin’ shop in such an easy, intimate way. There was no particular focus but so much good conversation about all things books and blogs, libraries and letters, editors and endings.
I felt like I was brushing elbows with the muse, just being there amongst Mark Mitchell, April Lurie, Brian Anderson, Brian Yansky, Frances Hill, Don Tate, Jeannette Larson, Nancy Jean Okunami and many others. When I left, I knew more than I had when I arrived – about myself, about my work-in-progress and about these amazing and generous talents. I was a good deal fuller on cream cake, too.
The next afternoon, I took off on an overnight retreat with my Goodness gals. This is the Mama-Artist group I wrote about when I launched this blog and let’s face it, I can’t hardly breathe without ‘em anymore.
We settled into a lovely, spacious home loaned to us by a Goodness grandmamma, and ho boy did we settle. We’d brought food enough for a week, and wine and yoga mats and a massage table and journals and markers and music and more. The eggplant was so garlicky, the chocolate so dark, The Hustle so easy to remember after all these years.
(Yes, we danced The Hustle and lemme tell you, we were good.)
In the morning, waking up from deep sleeps with no little folks asking to be fed (except two remarkably satisfied nursing babes), we turned to talk.
We talked and listened for seven hours straight – I kid you not – in our loosey-goosey round-robin way. This equates to nearly an hour devoted to each one of us. An hour – to share our latest projects, tease out worries, weigh suggestions – during which the mutual respect and admiration were thick as goat’s cheese.
Oh, the sense of well-being and privilege and contentment – I cannot do it justice here.
What I can say is that what I got this weekend is what I wish for everyone – a community of people who love me and love my work, and the time and space with which to really, truly appreciate one another.
I wish this for writers who work off-stage, alone with our own thoughts, a few too many hours every day.
I wish this for mothers who work under the blinding lights of judgment and exhaustion and threatened immortality.
I wish this for women and for men, for students and for teachers, for workers and for leaders.
I wish this for my own girls, now and when they grow up to be whoever they’re meant to be.
Which reminds me. When I arrived home from my kinship binge, there were two dirty daughters and their dad – just back from a camping trip to Enchanted Rock where they’d backpacked their gear in, spelunked in the limestone caves and crevasses, and sung under the stars.
They hadn’t missed me, they said, but were glad to see me. They wanted to know what I’d done. Ditto.
At our house we’re equal-opportunity revelers. We throw ourselves into not just Halloween, Christmas and the 4th of July, but Hanukah, Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year and the Hindi ritual for brothers and sisters. Nevermind that we’re not Jewish, Catholic, Chinese or Hindi; we’re not even Louisianan, and the closest thing to brothers around here are our two male cats.
Still, anytime our girls hear a hint of observed merriment out there in the world, they’re compelled to bring it home and embrace it. They wouldn’t dare let so much as a solstice pass without hauling home a stack of appropriate library books, hanging banners on the front door, making cards and gifts for neighbors, and helping us turn dinner into a thematic commemoration of the day at hand.
Some of the appeal, no doubt, lies in the holiday bootie. I mean, who wouldn’t want a big old hunk of King Cake, or a dish of candied almonds, or a thin, red envelope with a crisp dollar bill inside?
And then there’s the equally attractive notion of ritual. There is something so satisfying in gestures, words, food and music that are more symbolic than literal in nature. There’s no logical necessity for ritual, and that’s the beauty of it. It answers to our deeper, more mysterious needs for reverence and recognition of all that we find most exquisite and important in the world. Ritual is poetry off the page.
Kids aren’t immune to this pull. The opposite, in fact. Toddlers often want an almost liturgical refrain running through their days – cuddle, eat, rough-house, read books, cuddle, eat, rough-house, read books, cuddle, eat.
Life itself is so stunning, popping, fresh and new; ritual grounds a kid. Even an ordinary family dinner can accomplish that, so when you add candles, place cards, and a Sanskrit chant or an Indian dessert, you’ve got everyone at the table truly present and connected.
But here’s where it gets interesting at our house. While these ceremonies help settle us into ourselves, they also serve to transport us completely. It’s partly through this holiday smorgasbord buffet that our kids are becoming world travelers. Nothing – outside of real air-miles and books – takes us so completely into other countries, cultures and communities.
This morning, putting away a stack of CDs we’d been using to celebrate African American history month, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if more folks (world leaders, say) truly understood each other’s customs and values and traditions – embodied them, even. Can’t you just see the guys at the G8 summit, singing, snacking and making brotherly bracelets for each other?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go get a good look at March, and her holidays, on the kitchen calendar.
Children’s author Cynthia Leitich Smith is back up and running on Blogger — phew!! — and her new baby Tantalize has hit the shelves!
Visit her and take a peek at the fun interview we did together a couple of weeks ago, too.
The 11th Carnival of Children’s Literature is up at Mother Reader. My January piece on Empty Baskets is included, as is a lot of other rich reading.
Mary Lee, over at A Year in Reading took my utensil post from a few weeks ago and ran with it! She’s got egg slicers, chopsticks and whisks, oh my!
There are also strong posts by both Mary Lee and Franki on the whole Newbery issue. (I especially love, “Teaching is not for sissies!”)
What took my little family so long to plunge into the world of BabyMouse? Elder daughter read this graphic-novel-for-girls three times within the first week, each time with more vivid expression and hilarity!
I’ve never totally understood the format, which probably qualifies me as a square, but my husband is a major TinTin fan and I think I may become a convert now that we’re all up in arms about Felicia Furrypaws over here.
Yesterday, the mail brought a packet of appreciations from 50-some kindergartners I visited with recently. We’d spent a morning reading A Sock is a Pocket and exploring my Writer’s Vest, (a.k.a. khaki fishing vest stuffed with pens, shells, tea bags and other little trappings of the trade).
Each time I share this book, there’s a moment when kids get it, the whole pocket-metaphor thing. And when they do, they practically have to sit on their hands to keep from levitating with ideas.
I love when that happens, partly because that’s how the writing of this manuscript was for me. Once the concept stuck in my craw, I could not look at socks or bowls or caves or breaths in the same old way. Everything became a vessel for something else. I swear to you, it’s an addictive little game, kind of like UNO only you don’t need a deck of cards.
One of the teachers, whose note accompanied the childrens’ yesterday, wrote, “They could not stop thinking about pockets all day!” She added a half-smiley face and a “thank you” tinged with tiredness and the teensiest bit of irony, like I’d introduced them to pure-sugar pixie sticks or something.
But really, there is nothing more gratifying than when kids are at their most uninhibited – both energized and attentive – so completely connected to their experience that you can almost see new synapses being clicked on.
I think it is this wakefulness that we’re most afraid of losing to standardization – and rightly so. Kids need to be players, co-creators, in their own learning. And when they are, they come up with gems like these:
Your body is a pocket for your bones.
A tree is a pocket for a scared cat.
The past is a pocket for a dragon.
Fresh, vivid metaphor. From kindergartners, mind you.
There’s been an awful lot of discussion in this country lately about who are the “deciders.” But it seems to me there is something more fundamental than decision-making. First, there is awareness, perception, taking note. Before any dotted lines are signed or buttons pushed, there is (there should be) a time for absorption, for paying very close attention
I’m making it a habit to ask kids like these kindergartners to be good “noticers,” because I think if they are – if we all are – the decision-making will become a little more organic, a little more intuitive, a little more right.
In a dark cyber-twist on things, KidLit champion Cynthia Leitich Smith has been blocked out of blogger right before the debut of her new novel Tantalize hits the shelves. Is that a bum rap, or what?
For those of you who like to keep up on all her news, views and interviews, she’s currently “guest blogging” at Greg Leitich Smith’s site http://www.greglsblog.blogspot.com/
Today, there’s a good interview up with Marian Hale, author of the new Dark Water Rising (Henry Holt, 2006). I like what she says about the importance of loving what you do, even the revision parts:
“Look at each revision as another chance to bring more clarity, to make some part of your story touch your reader more deeply and hopefully linger long after your book is back on the shelf.”
Makes it all seem like less of a slog when you put it that way, doesn’t it?
This morning I picked up a new jump-rope for my youngest, as a birthday surprise.
She turns six in just a few days, which makes her old enough to skip, hop and jump; count past 100 ; and rhyme in time. All of which makes me trip over the lump in my throat.
There’s just something about six that is so… kid-like. Y’know?
She moves around these days in a mighty body. She plunks her feet on her handlebars and steers her bike downhill. She performs acrobats on her bunkbed ladder. At school, her only disappointment is when a swing isn’t available at recess.
Meanwhile, clever witticisms burst forth like little exhales. Her dad and sister and I are her happy, captive audience and granted, we’re biased, but she’s funny!
Thus, the jump-rope – the perfect synthesis of physical vigor and brainy vim.
Here are a few skipping rope rhymes to get her started. She can make up the rest herself. Sigh.
Red hot pepper
in the pot –
gotta get over
what the leader’s got.
10… 20… 30… 40 …..
Two little dickie birds sittin’ on the wall
One named Peter, one named Paul
Fly away, Peter, fly away, Paul
Don’t you come back ’till your birthday’s called
January…February…March…
Fly away, fly away, fly away all.
Raspberry, strawberry, apple jam tart.
Tell me the name of your sweet heart.
A… B… C…
Ice-cream soda, lemonade punch.
What is the name of your honeybunch?
A… B… C…
I might just have to give that rope a whirl myself. See if I can get all the way to W, in honor of the birthday girl. Happy Birthday, Honeybunch.
Vivid columnist Molly Ivins died last week, too young, after battling breast cancer three long times. I’ve been meaning to write about her for days, but the thing about Molly Ivins dying is that it can render you speechless.
I mean, really, what’s to say about a voice that was so dang good at speaking up for herself, and for all the rest of us? And when I say us, I mean everyone who needed a little hoist up onto the old soapbox. The women and children, the artistic and illiterate, the black and brown, the broke and beaten, the neighbors and nations a long ways away. Us.
Molly Ivins was wicked funny and deeply thoughtful at the same time – a capacity I admire more than any other, I think.
Where plenty of funny folk use humour as an escape ‘chute (and who can blame ‘em), Molly used it to plot a direct path in deeper to whatever pesky, troublesome business was at hand.
And where plenty of deep intellectuals and well-intended political thinkers are solemn (and self-important) enough to shut our receptors down, Molly cracked jokes to keep us on our toes. Hers was a single-handed call-to-action; a plan you wanted in on.
And that’s the thing. Molly Ivins glowed and crackled, not unlike her sister-Texan Ann Richards (whom we also lost to cancer this year). These women politicized other women, they chastised apathetic youth, they shook up the steady center, they triggered movement – and movements. These were voices capable of lighting fires under just about anyone.
I had a grandmother like that – all full of intention and charisma. My husband once said of her, “Mame is the only person I know who makes you feel lucky when she asks you to do her a favor.” If you get a whole family or a whole readership or a whole constituency feeling that way, stuff is gonna get done.
Molly Ivins moved on with that charge in her wake. In her last column, in which she pushes a populist crusade to end the war in Iraq, she says, “Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.” It’s a call to Shakespeare’s fools, to the emperor’s tailors, to us. Hone your rapier wit. Git ‘er done.
