It has seemed lately that my family owes some sort of karmic debt to the dog world.

A couple of weeks ago, my eldest daughter was bitten on the ankle by a friend’s anxious canine.

A couple of days ago, my very elderly and submissive pup was attacked by a neighbor’s pooch who jumped the fence.

And yesterday, our Arts in Education committee up at school was asked to revisit a mural because the depicted dogs were "off leash". (As my Small One said when I told her the story, "Seriously, Mom. It’s a mural!")

I’m mindful of the fact that we’ve got it good.
During the years when my sister lived in East Africa, we discovered that my mom
has some past life business to sort out with elephants.
For real.
They charge her.

So, dog shmog.
Except for this:

I really like dogs.
Actually, I love them.

I loved growing up with Sage and Smoky .
I loved lounging around with Piney in college.
And when those three dogs all died in their time, I cried and cried and cried.

And now I love Boca.

I love that we got her as a fearful baby and raised her up happy.
I love that she always slept under the girls’ cribs to keep them safe.
I love that she swims like a queen.
I love that she still barks for walks.
I love that she wears silent-film-star-eyeliner.
I love that she loves the cats.
I love that she loves us.

Got that, dog gods?
I’m fond of your kind!
Give me a break here!

Let’s settle this issue once and for all.
Here’s an old slipper.
Here’s a soft bed.
Milk bones all around.
 

Dog Music

by Paul Zimmer

(Read the rest of this gorgeous, gorgeous poem here…)

Aaarf. And namaste.

Would you like to know a little bit more about Beach Lane Books,
home to All the World and its ingenious editor? 

Here ya go….

Lucky, lucky me…

Ten-year-old Texans spend their fourth-grade year studying the state.
Texas geography.
Texas history.
Famous Texans.

My daughter reported on one of the early Mexican explorers, made an iMovie about the mountain region, and is working on a piece about Barbara Jordan. Yesterday, this immersion in all that is huge and mythic culminated in a class trip to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.

It’s all a little dizzy-making for a Colorado-Wisconsin hybrid girl like me.

See, here’s the thing about about Texas.
Before it was a state, it was a nation.
And it has not forgotten that.
The battles, the oil, the cotton, the hurricanes.
The cowboys, the cities, the politicians.
Texas has a big, fat, ol’ story to tell.

Seriously. And that’s before we even mention the snakes…

Read the rest here…

"I do now let loose my opinion,
hold it no longer…"

— The Tempest, Wm. Shakespeare

Today I watched my eldest in the first of two Shakespeare performances.
This was a scene from The Tempest; next week it’s Much Ado about Nothing.

The outreach program responsible for all this literary mayhem is the University of Texas’ Shakespeare at Winedale Program. In just a couple of months, coordinator and genius Clayton Stromberger has these kids (from 3rd-5th grade) eating out of old Will’s hand. He throws open the windows on Shakespeare’s humor, his confounding mix-ups, his fools…

Too much for elementary school?
Are you kidding? 
This is the stuff of a ten-year-old’s dream!

This morning there was a good piece on NPR about the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
400 years.
The guy has some staying power, to be sure.

But when you hear him on the outdoor stage behind a sweet little school on a bright Wednesday morning, I promise you it feels brand new.

"Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!" — Much Ado about Nothing, Wm. Shakespeare

One of the reasons I rarely post pictures on my blog is I don’t want to show the piles around my desk.

Lately, they’ve been epic.
Peaks worthy of pick axes and crampons.
Topo-maps gone missing.

But I am here to say that I’ve just completed all there is to do for one of two classes I taught this semester.

I’ve critiqued the manuscripts.
Written the editorial letters.
Submitted the grades.

And I’m pretty confident that I’ll be done with the second batch by Thursday.

How am I scaling the summits?

Working outdoors. (It is bright blue and 73 here today…)
A little Peter Tosh on the ipod dock.
Chocolate-and-toffee covered peanuts and a smoothie.
Bare feet.

And the familiar tug of a work-in-progress I really, really, really want to get back to.

What?
You work sitting up straight wearing sensible shoes and a glass of ice-water at your elbow? 

I am not tech savvy.
At all.

I don’t know how many people come to my blog or web site, or where they came from.
My posts aren’t tagged.
I don’t tweet.

But one of my wiser friends told me I need to set up some Google alerts so that I get word when my books are blogged about or I’m mentioned somewhere on the web.

(Does that sound like an adolescent nightmare, or what??? Everytime someone talks about you, we’ll let you know!!! Bwaaahaaaa…)

Anyway, she assured me it wasn’t that bad and it was so easy, even I could do it.

But here are some of the alerts I’ve gotten in regards to my next book title —  All the World:

The College All-Star World Series (about Ohio baseball)
All’s Fair on the World’s Stage (about Israelis and Palestinians)
The best all-around meal the world over (about the Food Network)
Out of all the speeches, I’m wondering how in the world… (about college commencement)
All the world’s a stage (about role playing and the World of Warcraft)

Nothing against the aforementioned topics, but I’ve got plenty of reading material already.
I haven’t even gotten through yesterday’s New York Times.

So.
Don’t tell my friend, but I’m thinking that even Google Alerts aren’t for me.

Retreating back into my cave…
Ta-ta…

Mama, today I studied the guy who invented popsicles.

A few years ago, when my sweet Grammy was negotiating the maze of Alzheimer’s Disease, I wrote a whole series of poems about it and about her. I didn’t do anything with them because, although they were written with bald and unflinching love, I thought they might hurt my grandfather. Just the simplicity of them on the page when nothing felt simple at all.

Now, both my grandparents are gone, and one of those poems has seen the light of day in an anthology from Kent State University Press called Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose About Alzheimer’s Disease. It is a rather lovely and tender book, filled with heartbreak and humor and all sorts of amazing writing by folks you’ve never heard of and folks you have. It turns out Alzheimer’s Disease is kind of like cancer. Everybody knows somebody…

My poem in the anthology is called The Suitcase Propped Open, and it’s about helping my grandmother pack for a summer at their cottage on Lake Michigan. The one I’m going to share today is another from the same series, later in the progression of the disease.

The Slow and the Sudden

   December 26, 1999

Breakfast is a quiet, subtle meal –

last night’s fatty lamb still rich in the air –

and yet, the simple textures of soft boiled egg,

of plain toast on her tongue are excruciating.

The melony walls, everyday china, her own

daughter’s voice – everything glares unfamiliar

and threatening as a foreign alphabet.

The shift to this moment is invisible – newspaper

on the table, coffee milky and warm, a single

cardinal keeping chickadees from the suet near the glass.

And then, an ordinary exhale and she is on her feet,

loud and panicked. “Somebody help,” she calls, moving

quickly through the kitchen and into the garage.

“Somebody help. They’ve got me in here.”

Yelling again and again into the hollow air

and out the open door into the snow – her husband,

daughter and son-in-law trying to catch up, to reassure

her they are kin and are where they should be.

But with a sibyl’s insistence she keeps on, her voice box

divining what nobody else yet knows: she will leave today,

fighting and terrified in the back seat,

 and won’t call this place home again.

Yesterday I spent some fabulous hours with a vivid, wiggley, eager, slew of kindergartners.

Here are some of my favorite moments.

"We are authors, too. All of us!"

"How about ‘a tree is a pocket for a cat?’ Shouldn’t that be in your book?"

"So every book was written by somebody like YOU?"

Yep. Pretty much…

I’m celebrating Children’s Book Week by doing a library visit tomorrow, a school visit on Wednesday and… oh, heck… buying some new books. In particular, I’m on the lookout for Linda Urban’s Mouse Was Mad, Kristy Dempsey’s Me With You and Francisco X. Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World.

This also happens to be the last week of the semester at Austin Community College, which means wrapping up both of my classes, reading portfolios and, in my Advanced Children’s Writing class, hosting an awesome panel discussion with these very talented and generous local authors: April Lurie, Joanne Whittemore, Debbie Gonzales, Jessica Lee Anderson and PJ Hoover. Thanks, guys!

My friend Sara let me know about today’s online Haiku Festival — especially appealing to me since I just finished up a month straight of writing daily haiku. There are lots of lovely links here for  you like-minded fans…

My next picture book has been given an official release date of September 8th (which just so happens to be exactly one day after my eldest daughter’s 11th birthday). All the World is out there on the virtual bookshelves already… here and here and here. There was also a lovely ad that ran on Shelf Awareness for a week.

As you know, yesterday was Mother’s Day. From Tall One I got an acrostic poem that included all of my names (some of which are lengthy). A few of my favorite descriptives? Loving, Intelligent, Bendable, Radiant, Ommmmm and Nobody-like-Mama. Oh, also, apparently I’m a "Nice-y-ater". That’s good, right? From Small One, another one of her woven-with-love potholders and a darling little book in which she declared that I am "nice to animals, a good cook and pretty." Also that I "like" her and her sister. So. At least we’re all clear on that.

We spent the day on the Lampasas River, with hawks and snakes and wet ol’ dogs. It was lovely.
Getting outside is always, always a good idea.

slipping down slick bank
landing right where I want to;
floating like a fish

— Liz Garton Scanlon
    5/11/09