We are new parents this month. One scrappy terrier and two chicks later, we roost cozily together with our two cats and three children most nights.
Most nights, that is, until someone turns the heat lamp off in the chicks boudoir and they cheep furiously, chirping for the orange metal mother ship that has disconnected, not unlike Jilly, our five year old, yelling for me when she can't find her purse/blanket/cheese stick/whatever.
The cats hiss at the dog when it walks by and jump onto the highest point they can find. Only occasionally does the dog seem surprised. She came from the pound, where we found her 12 pound body in a cage next to a cage with a 100 pound titan named Hercules who barked interminably during our stay. She is unfazed by the chicks, the cats and even Jilly, who picks her up and squeezes her like a pillow uttering words of endearment loudly in her ear such as "Peppa I wuv you".
I tucked Claire and the dog into bed last night. The dog put it's head on the pillow, under the covers, and looked up at me. I didn't even think of the doggy smell on the sheets because she was just so obnoxiously cute.
Animals, like humans, don't really need much more than food, water, shelter and attention. Life really doesn't have to be so complicated. Maybe I should just stick to the basics more often, seek more heat lamps and warm beds, and let life be sweet and fuzzy like a soft chick next to my son's cheek.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Finding the Umm in Summer - Kelly
Sure feels like summer here: the first mosquito bites of the season, the first grass burr under(bare)foot, the car's AC breaking on the first 90 degree afternoon.
You need to know that summer is my least favorite time of year. I despise heat.
For five of the last seven years, I’ve escaped to my favorite home away from home, Ashland, Oregon. There I revel in cool mornings and evenings. I also get to hang with my friends in the Lithia Writers Collective.
What’s not to love?
Will I go this year? I don’t know yet, but I’m steeling myself for another Texas summer, just in case.
To psych myself up for that dreadful possibility and to make up for the first paragraph’s glum trinity, I’m determined to conjure some positive things about summer in my native state.
• Friday mornings around my friend V’s pool. She’s gracious enough to extend a standing invitation to the women of First Amendment Friday (i.e. our wine and conversation group), kids and all.
• Consumption of the year’s summer beverage with friends and family (in moderation, of course). Our standard Pinot Grigio (from Target! In a box! Go get some!) will likely, this summer be supplanted by a vodka concoction. The current contenders are sweet tea vodka, mixed with either water or lemonade; fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and plain vodka, with or without a salted rim; and blood orange Italian soda with vodka. My sister-in-law plans something that involves soaking pineapple chunks in vodka, too. Vote now for your favorite.
• Enjoying (in the morning, early afternoon, or at night) the patio furniture I finally talked The Man into purchasing at the end of last summer thanks to a ridiculous combination of discounts. Our patio is on the west side of our house, and if you sit there from 3-7 p.m., without shade, you will not be enjoying anything.
That’s three….do you have any to add?
You need to know that summer is my least favorite time of year. I despise heat.
For five of the last seven years, I’ve escaped to my favorite home away from home, Ashland, Oregon. There I revel in cool mornings and evenings. I also get to hang with my friends in the Lithia Writers Collective.
What’s not to love?
Will I go this year? I don’t know yet, but I’m steeling myself for another Texas summer, just in case.
To psych myself up for that dreadful possibility and to make up for the first paragraph’s glum trinity, I’m determined to conjure some positive things about summer in my native state.
• Friday mornings around my friend V’s pool. She’s gracious enough to extend a standing invitation to the women of First Amendment Friday (i.e. our wine and conversation group), kids and all.
• Consumption of the year’s summer beverage with friends and family (in moderation, of course). Our standard Pinot Grigio (from Target! In a box! Go get some!) will likely, this summer be supplanted by a vodka concoction. The current contenders are sweet tea vodka, mixed with either water or lemonade; fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and plain vodka, with or without a salted rim; and blood orange Italian soda with vodka. My sister-in-law plans something that involves soaking pineapple chunks in vodka, too. Vote now for your favorite.
• Enjoying (in the morning, early afternoon, or at night) the patio furniture I finally talked The Man into purchasing at the end of last summer thanks to a ridiculous combination of discounts. Our patio is on the west side of our house, and if you sit there from 3-7 p.m., without shade, you will not be enjoying anything.
That’s three….do you have any to add?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Mad Scientist, Secret Lab, Clones! Creepy Creeperson, M.D. is Back.
Did you guys read the latest from Dr. Zavos, the mad scientist hell bent on making cloned children? Yesterday he claimed he’s already cloned 14 human embryos and put 11 of them into the wombs of four women who wanted to give birth to cloned babies! The cells? Yeah, culled from dead children. Apparently grieving parents are desperate enough to do almost anything. This is total movie material, including the fact that he’s operating out of a secret lab, suspected to be in the Middle East where there’s no ban on cloning.Why would a parent want a developmentally challenged version of a previous child to the tune of more than $45,000? Why not just have another child naturally? It seems the easiest way for Dr. Zavos to get test-cases is to prey upon parents who cannot get beyond their grief. Is this ethical?
One of my favorite freelance clients is the Women’s Bioethics Project, a think tank in Seattle that focuses on making sure women don’t get hosed in the policy making process. Let’s face it; almost all biotechnology issues have to do with women yet the majority of the people making laws about biotechnology are olde white guys but. Having hair sprouting from your ears does not necessarily make you wise, sometimes it just make you crotchety, shortsighted, and misogynistic. (Color me jaded.) Anyway, if you are interested in women’s rights with regard to medicine and biotechnology, check out the Women’s Bioethics Project. Interesting stuff.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Plaster girls in bonnets--Marcia
Today, the kindergarten literacy aids were sent into the streets of Medford with door hangers, announcing the upcoming Kindergarten Round-up.
We need to boost enrollment. Next year is going to be a hard sell. We will be moving out of our shared housing at Hoover and back into our brand new school in the middle of the year. (YEAH!!!)
The three other aids and I showed up in our mobile-trailer library with our prerequisite coffee cups and water bottles. I dressed Kindergarten-y--floral skirt, white blouse, and black Mary Janes. The other aids dressed for battle: sneakers, running pants, and sleeveless shirts. I was impressed.
We decided to hit the financially challenged neighborhoods first, as a group. This is always a good eye-opener. The HUD apartments are immaculate. Everything is swept and tidy. No beat up Barbie cars or sun-dyed Big Wheels strewn about. There is nothing to tell you about the people that live within. Order and quiet force us to keep our voices down. Where moments ago we'd been joking about ditching our propaganda in a nearby dumpster and heading to Donut Country we're serious now. We fan out. I am the leader and direct my comrades left, right, and center.
We move swiftly trying not to jostle doorknobs or rustle our fliers, we don't really want to have anyone come out. There is a sense of people behind doors. But nothing moves.
We pack up and head back out for the circa 1970s Woodlawn Apartments. I used to think there were maybe 24 apartments at the Woodlawn. But the lot is really deep and wide, and there turns out to be over 100. At first I am not sure they are all part of Woodlawn, I check to see if all the street lamps have that big white ball and that all the window trim is forest green. We divise a plan and attack. Here the doorknobs are a little grottier, the stairwells a tad more like the projects. I pass a bicycle with a sticker on it that says Suck My Dick. Seriously. Are there people that say "OK!"
I start to worry about blond, blue-eyed April. She looks like she's 23, and her knickers are the tightest. What if some meth freak drags her into his apartment. How would I find her?
I climb a cement staircase. There is a jug of bleach by one door and a can full of cigarette butts by the other. I wonder about the bleach. Do people bleach their feet before entering? Is he/she bleaching the stoop? Is it for recycling hypodermics?
We decide to do the apartments across the street and move forward with great vigor. I can't keep up with these ladies. My whole family had the 24-hour flu, only staggered. So I've either been cleaning up barf since Sunday, or adding to the mess for three days. I'm not in top shape for the mission.
The sign says "Something Estates" and in small letters "living opportunity--Equal Housing Something". We wonder if this is a place only for the elderly or for the disabled.
We start hanging our little yellow papers. "Oh goody" I think, there's a rolled up diaper and an empty Huggies carton, "Ages 3 and up" out front of this one. That means Kids!!!!!
At the same time we spot a shoeless little boy up the driveway. "There's one!" We say, confidant that we will find Roosevelt converts here.
Knowing my population I can't help but wonder if the boy has been sent outside while mommy "works" or takes her "medicine". But I'm wrong. He follows us silently up the sidewalks. An older hispanic woman pokes her head out and shouts at him to come back in, to get his shoes on. But he doesn't listen. He smiles and follows us until we are finished.
Our next stop is East Medford's drug den. A lovely old neighborhood with broad sidewallks, old Elm trees, porches and camelias that must have been planted in the early 1900s. But unlike Bend's Westside and Ashland's Railroad District, few are gentrifying down here. Craftsman bungalows are decomposing before our eyes.
What is amazing though, is that even at the lowliest hell hole, people try to make the space their own. Despite a derelict house, a hibachi in a flower pot, curtains that are water stained, someone has planted a few zinnias by the stoop.
Another porch is made cool and welcoming with a handmade broom propped in a corner and a cute iron table with matching vinyl covered chairs. I hang my flier on the stoller handle as I duck under the pine boughs that arc over the pathway.
On one porch I go to hang my doo-hickey, registering, porch, stoller, plush couch, ashtray and then ahhh . . . Where others have put plaster statues of frogs fishing or doing a jig, sun-bonnetted girls, myriad aryan angels, bleach bottles, or cans for butts by their door, this person has propped a romantic painting of a flaxen-haired woman either in the process of buttoning or unbottoning her bloozy white blouse. She just neglected to put one globular rosy-tipped breast away or forgot to air out the other. It is unclear. Different, however, from the cross-legged frog and windchime crew.
What do people think when they come to my door? I think I better run home and put away the scooters, basketballs, shoes, gatorade bottles, and Shark Men, that litter my front door. I think about people's need, no matter the circumstances, for a little beauty or humor, or something to call their own. I see how at the Stevens Street Apartments where people are being given a fresh start, they are following rules, keeping things tidy, being proud of their little patch of a chance. At the others, they are maybe at their last chance, and things are not so pretty. Some don't even have real front doors just sliding glass doors hung with sheets and a worn out rubber mat from Bi-Mart. These are the only places that make me want to wash my hands. The stripped bike and heavy chain, the reek of so many cigarettes is depresssing. No Cat Crossing sign here, just an abandoned Dora the Explorer backpack and a cardboard carton with a stray chile in the bottom.
Then the little houses, however hard the life, however many children, there is the stab at expression.
We finish off in the neighborhoods that have stopped sending their kids to Roosevelt. The families that have opted to send their kids off to private or Christian schools, or transfer into the wealthier districts like Lone Pine or Hoover.
Here the driveways and borders have had their dose of Round-Up, the tulips and jonquils are still in bloom, lawns are mowed, dogwoods are in bloom and only one house has a plaster statue and a hibachi. I know who lives at this one, and she does send her kids to Roosevelt. She's one of the most active parents in the PTA.
All of us noticed how all but the meanest situations flowered with this desire for a spot of beauty, the will to express. It leaves me today, with this great desire to take care of what is mine. Remember how lucky I am, and to show my gratitude on occasion.
We need to boost enrollment. Next year is going to be a hard sell. We will be moving out of our shared housing at Hoover and back into our brand new school in the middle of the year. (YEAH!!!)
The three other aids and I showed up in our mobile-trailer library with our prerequisite coffee cups and water bottles. I dressed Kindergarten-y--floral skirt, white blouse, and black Mary Janes. The other aids dressed for battle: sneakers, running pants, and sleeveless shirts. I was impressed.
We decided to hit the financially challenged neighborhoods first, as a group. This is always a good eye-opener. The HUD apartments are immaculate. Everything is swept and tidy. No beat up Barbie cars or sun-dyed Big Wheels strewn about. There is nothing to tell you about the people that live within. Order and quiet force us to keep our voices down. Where moments ago we'd been joking about ditching our propaganda in a nearby dumpster and heading to Donut Country we're serious now. We fan out. I am the leader and direct my comrades left, right, and center.
We move swiftly trying not to jostle doorknobs or rustle our fliers, we don't really want to have anyone come out. There is a sense of people behind doors. But nothing moves.
We pack up and head back out for the circa 1970s Woodlawn Apartments. I used to think there were maybe 24 apartments at the Woodlawn. But the lot is really deep and wide, and there turns out to be over 100. At first I am not sure they are all part of Woodlawn, I check to see if all the street lamps have that big white ball and that all the window trim is forest green. We divise a plan and attack. Here the doorknobs are a little grottier, the stairwells a tad more like the projects. I pass a bicycle with a sticker on it that says Suck My Dick. Seriously. Are there people that say "OK!"
I start to worry about blond, blue-eyed April. She looks like she's 23, and her knickers are the tightest. What if some meth freak drags her into his apartment. How would I find her?
I climb a cement staircase. There is a jug of bleach by one door and a can full of cigarette butts by the other. I wonder about the bleach. Do people bleach their feet before entering? Is he/she bleaching the stoop? Is it for recycling hypodermics?
We decide to do the apartments across the street and move forward with great vigor. I can't keep up with these ladies. My whole family had the 24-hour flu, only staggered. So I've either been cleaning up barf since Sunday, or adding to the mess for three days. I'm not in top shape for the mission.
The sign says "Something Estates" and in small letters "living opportunity--Equal Housing Something". We wonder if this is a place only for the elderly or for the disabled.
We start hanging our little yellow papers. "Oh goody" I think, there's a rolled up diaper and an empty Huggies carton, "Ages 3 and up" out front of this one. That means Kids!!!!!
At the same time we spot a shoeless little boy up the driveway. "There's one!" We say, confidant that we will find Roosevelt converts here.
Knowing my population I can't help but wonder if the boy has been sent outside while mommy "works" or takes her "medicine". But I'm wrong. He follows us silently up the sidewalks. An older hispanic woman pokes her head out and shouts at him to come back in, to get his shoes on. But he doesn't listen. He smiles and follows us until we are finished.
Our next stop is East Medford's drug den. A lovely old neighborhood with broad sidewallks, old Elm trees, porches and camelias that must have been planted in the early 1900s. But unlike Bend's Westside and Ashland's Railroad District, few are gentrifying down here. Craftsman bungalows are decomposing before our eyes.
What is amazing though, is that even at the lowliest hell hole, people try to make the space their own. Despite a derelict house, a hibachi in a flower pot, curtains that are water stained, someone has planted a few zinnias by the stoop.
Another porch is made cool and welcoming with a handmade broom propped in a corner and a cute iron table with matching vinyl covered chairs. I hang my flier on the stoller handle as I duck under the pine boughs that arc over the pathway.
On one porch I go to hang my doo-hickey, registering, porch, stoller, plush couch, ashtray and then ahhh . . . Where others have put plaster statues of frogs fishing or doing a jig, sun-bonnetted girls, myriad aryan angels, bleach bottles, or cans for butts by their door, this person has propped a romantic painting of a flaxen-haired woman either in the process of buttoning or unbottoning her bloozy white blouse. She just neglected to put one globular rosy-tipped breast away or forgot to air out the other. It is unclear. Different, however, from the cross-legged frog and windchime crew.
What do people think when they come to my door? I think I better run home and put away the scooters, basketballs, shoes, gatorade bottles, and Shark Men, that litter my front door. I think about people's need, no matter the circumstances, for a little beauty or humor, or something to call their own. I see how at the Stevens Street Apartments where people are being given a fresh start, they are following rules, keeping things tidy, being proud of their little patch of a chance. At the others, they are maybe at their last chance, and things are not so pretty. Some don't even have real front doors just sliding glass doors hung with sheets and a worn out rubber mat from Bi-Mart. These are the only places that make me want to wash my hands. The stripped bike and heavy chain, the reek of so many cigarettes is depresssing. No Cat Crossing sign here, just an abandoned Dora the Explorer backpack and a cardboard carton with a stray chile in the bottom.
Then the little houses, however hard the life, however many children, there is the stab at expression.
We finish off in the neighborhoods that have stopped sending their kids to Roosevelt. The families that have opted to send their kids off to private or Christian schools, or transfer into the wealthier districts like Lone Pine or Hoover.
Here the driveways and borders have had their dose of Round-Up, the tulips and jonquils are still in bloom, lawns are mowed, dogwoods are in bloom and only one house has a plaster statue and a hibachi. I know who lives at this one, and she does send her kids to Roosevelt. She's one of the most active parents in the PTA.
All of us noticed how all but the meanest situations flowered with this desire for a spot of beauty, the will to express. It leaves me today, with this great desire to take care of what is mine. Remember how lucky I am, and to show my gratitude on occasion.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Studying Kids Studying Bugs -- Jennie
Hey readers!
While I figure out how to transfer my own blog onto the Lithia site, please sneak a peek here.
Enjoy!
While I figure out how to transfer my own blog onto the Lithia site, please sneak a peek here.
Enjoy!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Piece Work - backstitching a freelance job--Marcia
I miss my blog.
I woke up this morning craving a little time with her. She is a place where I can write whatever I want. I can be as good or bad, short or long, irrelevant or irreverent as I want.
I don't think anybody reads this. I certainly don't get paid. And maybe that's the beauty of it all. Maybe that's what I'm hankering for right now.
I've been in the writing trenches for over a month, and left my little bloggie alone to whither and die. I missed her, every Wednesday I'd think about crawling into her clean white space and filling it with fragments from my life.
Wednesday would come and go, I'd make a mental note of things i wanted to talk about: the birth of the Princess and Captain Morgan's baby Dutch, our foiled spring vacation, our neighborhood Easter, Erma Bombeck, teaching kids to read . . . But I knew I could not look up from my research, could not afford whatever time away from the manuscript I was working on, to play with my blog.
So many bitter thoughts went through my head. As time wore on with the museum job, I made less and less money. And yet, I couldn't stop. Facts needed to be checked, hypothesis iron-clad, writing pristine. There were nights it got later and later and later until it was morning and time to make coffee and wake the kids for school. All I wanted to do was cry, or quit.
I missed the day James' training wheels came off. I missed tennis practice, I missed baseball games, I missed hockey matches, I missed family dinners and bedtimes. Spring break was a grind, keeping my children at bay, trying to buy time, trying to work.
My family proved that they could do it. They could give me the time and space I needed to write. They were wonderful. James cried. He missed me. He wanted me to stop. But he didn't interrupt. My husband manned the dinner hour and helped occasionally by putting out clothes for school.
As the writing wore on and on, it started to make sense. Truths that I thought might be hidden in the quilts and needlework turned out to be so, it just took a while to prove it. I finally loved the quilts, loved the women who made them, and was impressed with the time they lived in. They taught me to shut up. Our lives are so easy. Our freedoms vast.
In the late 18th or early 19th Century I would have been a spinster who probably got burned at the stake. There is no way I could have kept my mouth shut, my corset cinched and my mind and body supine.
I am trying to be grateful for the schooling I've just been given--on so many levels. The most obvious: I learned a bucket load about how our country was founded, about women and their role in supporting our country, and about quilts. What do you want to know? I can tell you.
About writing? I learned that I am prone to wedding cakes instead of Hot Pockets. I am a rich detail girl not a pop-it in the micro fake meatball and cheeser. All I needed for this job was a Hot Pocket. I could not deliver. I had to make the four-tiered thing first and then scale it back down. Not good. Not cost effective--especially for my soul.
The money offered was less than an entry level school teacher makes in a week--it took me eight. And now they're holding the check. Do I feel insulted? Yes. Welcome to writing.
I have to look on the bright side. I did finish something. I was proud of it for a short period of time. I learned a ton. I got to work in a world-class museum. And, I have a really good manuscript in my hands. I do something with it, or I don't. It's all on me.
I woke up this morning craving a little time with her. She is a place where I can write whatever I want. I can be as good or bad, short or long, irrelevant or irreverent as I want.
I don't think anybody reads this. I certainly don't get paid. And maybe that's the beauty of it all. Maybe that's what I'm hankering for right now.
I've been in the writing trenches for over a month, and left my little bloggie alone to whither and die. I missed her, every Wednesday I'd think about crawling into her clean white space and filling it with fragments from my life.
Wednesday would come and go, I'd make a mental note of things i wanted to talk about: the birth of the Princess and Captain Morgan's baby Dutch, our foiled spring vacation, our neighborhood Easter, Erma Bombeck, teaching kids to read . . . But I knew I could not look up from my research, could not afford whatever time away from the manuscript I was working on, to play with my blog.
So many bitter thoughts went through my head. As time wore on with the museum job, I made less and less money. And yet, I couldn't stop. Facts needed to be checked, hypothesis iron-clad, writing pristine. There were nights it got later and later and later until it was morning and time to make coffee and wake the kids for school. All I wanted to do was cry, or quit.
I missed the day James' training wheels came off. I missed tennis practice, I missed baseball games, I missed hockey matches, I missed family dinners and bedtimes. Spring break was a grind, keeping my children at bay, trying to buy time, trying to work.
My family proved that they could do it. They could give me the time and space I needed to write. They were wonderful. James cried. He missed me. He wanted me to stop. But he didn't interrupt. My husband manned the dinner hour and helped occasionally by putting out clothes for school.
As the writing wore on and on, it started to make sense. Truths that I thought might be hidden in the quilts and needlework turned out to be so, it just took a while to prove it. I finally loved the quilts, loved the women who made them, and was impressed with the time they lived in. They taught me to shut up. Our lives are so easy. Our freedoms vast.
In the late 18th or early 19th Century I would have been a spinster who probably got burned at the stake. There is no way I could have kept my mouth shut, my corset cinched and my mind and body supine.
I am trying to be grateful for the schooling I've just been given--on so many levels. The most obvious: I learned a bucket load about how our country was founded, about women and their role in supporting our country, and about quilts. What do you want to know? I can tell you.
About writing? I learned that I am prone to wedding cakes instead of Hot Pockets. I am a rich detail girl not a pop-it in the micro fake meatball and cheeser. All I needed for this job was a Hot Pocket. I could not deliver. I had to make the four-tiered thing first and then scale it back down. Not good. Not cost effective--especially for my soul.
The money offered was less than an entry level school teacher makes in a week--it took me eight. And now they're holding the check. Do I feel insulted? Yes. Welcome to writing.
I have to look on the bright side. I did finish something. I was proud of it for a short period of time. I learned a ton. I got to work in a world-class museum. And, I have a really good manuscript in my hands. I do something with it, or I don't. It's all on me.
Friday, April 10, 2009
The True 3G Network
Two to Three Weeks.That's how much longer the oncologist thinks I will have a mother.
I realized yesterday that my daughter hadn't seen her grandmother in weeks, and that each needed time with the other. So, last night, Anna accompanied me when I went over to put Mother to bed.
I've never felt more like a fulcrum.
I held two hands: one gnarled and cool, the other smooth and warm.
I stoked two heads: one bald, the other covered in thick, lustrous curls.
I rested my head on two shoulders: one bony and brittle, the other round and strong.
This is the true 3Generation network.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Pondering the Miracle of Life--Kerry
Spring has sprung.
After the harshest winter in forty years, I stare out the window lost in sensory wonder.
Pink cherry blossoms.
Yellow daffodils.
Children skipping.
The smell of barbecues and lawnmower gas. (That one's for you Christy).
There might be a haiku somewhere there...
"If you find yourself out of the race, so far behind the pack that you can hardly see its dust-if the odds weigh against you, the odds against happiness returning to fill your days with joy, the seemingly overwhelming odds that you will never recover from whatever is beating you down- take a moment and consider life's cosmic odds and how you're already beaten them," writes Forrest Church in Utne Reader about the miracle of our just being born in the first place.
Spring reminds me of miracles.
After the harshest winter in forty years, I stare out the window lost in sensory wonder.
Pink cherry blossoms.
Yellow daffodils.
Children skipping.
The smell of barbecues and lawnmower gas. (That one's for you Christy).
There might be a haiku somewhere there...
"If you find yourself out of the race, so far behind the pack that you can hardly see its dust-if the odds weigh against you, the odds against happiness returning to fill your days with joy, the seemingly overwhelming odds that you will never recover from whatever is beating you down- take a moment and consider life's cosmic odds and how you're already beaten them," writes Forrest Church in Utne Reader about the miracle of our just being born in the first place.
Spring reminds me of miracles.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Project Buenos Aires!
Envy has been dripping from my pores ever since I heard about the gaggle of YA authors who planned a writing retreat in a castle in Ireland. In my head I've been planning my own writer's getaway. We can dream, no? While castles in the British Isles do have a certain allure, I'd also like a place that has really really great food and wine. And nice weather. And an excellent bookstore. So when I saw this site that shows photos of the most interesting bookstores in the world, I knew it would be Argentina. Just look at this photo!
Isn't it the most exquisite site in the world? Acres of book! Acres!
Plus, Buenos Aires, known as the Paris of South America, figures prominently in Book Two of my series, so I figure it's meant to be. We can rent Jardin Escondito, Francis Ford Coppola's villa in Bueno Aires.
We'll write like fiends all day (with breaks for dips in the pool and tapas, natch) and then talk books and writing over scrumptious food and great local wines.
Who's in? Say 2011-ish when we're all wildly successful? Vaminos!
Isn't it the most exquisite site in the world? Acres of book! Acres!Plus, Buenos Aires, known as the Paris of South America, figures prominently in Book Two of my series, so I figure it's meant to be. We can rent Jardin Escondito, Francis Ford Coppola's villa in Bueno Aires.
We'll write like fiends all day (with breaks for dips in the pool and tapas, natch) and then talk books and writing over scrumptious food and great local wines.Who's in? Say 2011-ish when we're all wildly successful? Vaminos!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Ditch Digger, Flower Farmer --Kerry
My mother cranked the steering wheel in her bright red 1972 Mercedes into the ditch on purpose if she saw even a bit of flora and fauna that looked delectable for flower arranging. Most indigenous Oregon plants didn't' stand a chance; cattails innocently waving in the breeze, daffodils blooming, they all were prey to my mother's observant eye.
I'd slink down in the back of the car as she maneuvered us onto yet another shoulder of the road and grabbed her pruning shears out of the car in hot pursuit of another plant for her Japanese flower arranging obsession, Ikebana.
I'd fear the worst: "What if someone actually owns that cattail? What if this is private property?"
So far her only violations have been from a few people honking the horn and a brush with three feet of mud, in which she completely lost one of her plastic rubber boots and had to walk to her car in muddy socks. I don't know which was worse sensory overload, the smelly mud or the scotch broom that was jammed in over my head.
Completely unrepentant, she claimed that the only thing that bothered her about the incident was the sucking sound of the boot as it went under.
So without trepidation I pulled the car over the other day - a beautiful, crisp, lush Oregon Spring day and tried to avoid taking furtive glances over my shoulder. I had spotted a Magnolia, in what I deemed was a "public property" ditch. I wrenched it from the branch as best I could without pruning shears. I realized I too had joined the club.
Anyone else a club member of "ditch pilferers anonymous?"
I'd slink down in the back of the car as she maneuvered us onto yet another shoulder of the road and grabbed her pruning shears out of the car in hot pursuit of another plant for her Japanese flower arranging obsession, Ikebana.
I'd fear the worst: "What if someone actually owns that cattail? What if this is private property?"
So far her only violations have been from a few people honking the horn and a brush with three feet of mud, in which she completely lost one of her plastic rubber boots and had to walk to her car in muddy socks. I don't know which was worse sensory overload, the smelly mud or the scotch broom that was jammed in over my head.
Completely unrepentant, she claimed that the only thing that bothered her about the incident was the sucking sound of the boot as it went under.
So without trepidation I pulled the car over the other day - a beautiful, crisp, lush Oregon Spring day and tried to avoid taking furtive glances over my shoulder. I had spotted a Magnolia, in what I deemed was a "public property" ditch. I wrenched it from the branch as best I could without pruning shears. I realized I too had joined the club.
Anyone else a club member of "ditch pilferers anonymous?"
Friday, March 27, 2009
Jargon Riff Two -- Kelly
I suspect the reason I'm so miffed about jargon right now is my need - with so much serious illness and upheaval in my life - to pare things down to the bone.I've always been fond of sparse, precise prose. "Be precise," I say, over and over and over again, to my writing students. In fact, my own precision hang-up is the number one driver of my on-going writer's block.
Sigh.
So imagine my miffed-ness when I looked up at coffee shop television (blessedly muted) and saw the following bullet point:
Fear of Risk Aversion
Just what does that mean? Am I supposed to be afraid of "risk aversion" or am I supposed to be averse to "fear of risk"?
Literally, both form a kind of emotional double negative and connote bravery in the face of risk.
When I googled the phrase, however, I found the following quote:
Can GM overcome the fear of risk aversion so many American consumers have about its brand, regardless of the actual reliability and competitiveness of its cars and trucks? That's a hard question to answer, and one only the consumer, over time, will be able to answer.
This poses another interpretation, in which "fear of risk" modifies "aversion" (i.e. What kind of aversion? The kind that fears risk, of course!). Such sloppy modification drives me nuts.
But this version, posing perception against reality, offers a lesson far removed from current economic crises.
What is depression (both economic and personal) if not fear of risk? Of change? What is it if not paralysis of courage?
I want to be clear: I do not see depression as cowardice or even as something that can be alleviated by a change in perception; neurotransmitters don't respond to will, after all. Clinical depression is a medical issue, and it's not what I'm about in this post.
A "fear of risk" aversion - just like "process management" - keeps us from living fully and authentically.
Here's hoping all of us can put such aversion aside and stride out into the messy chaos of life.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Jargon Riff -- Kelly
I'm doing my best, these worrisome days, just to be: enjoy what the day brings, and be mindful of my good fortune.
And thank the universe that I'm not part of the jargon-filled world that surrounds me.
My understanding of the need to sit with my life crystallized this week when, making my daily drive past various plants and office buildings, I happened to glimpse - literally - the writing on the wall.
A little googling alerted me to the "true" meaning of that word duo (PM even has its own international journal), and I slapped right up against what I miss the least from my days in university administration: jargon. I flashed back to those horrid meetings - program evaluation, task forces, assessment reports, and mission statement creation. I can feel my pulse rate increasing as I type those words.
As a writer, I was constantly frustrated with the clunky diction and obfuscation such gatherings generated. I'd take my pen in hand and eviscerate cumbersome paragraphs, peeling them down to their essence; sometimes I'd prevail, but often others clung to catchphrases or worried that a pared down version didn't sound "smart enough." Insert graphic of me virtually banging my head against the wall. Why couldn't we just stop and go back to our work with students? Back to true process, which tended to manage itself on its own timetable?
But back to the present.
What are our lives if not process? What are our days if not process?
All around, I see pain and difficulty as people try to manage their process down to the last tiny detail and attempt to control events and individuals.
Granted, some planning is necessary. But isn't the joy of life to be found in its unfolding? Its unfolding, not our attempts to shape circumstances to fit our needs.
Every time I drive by that building, proudly broadcasting its commitment to total control, I pledge to remind myself to let go. To just be.
Stepping away can be the best process management tool I know.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Dream to Novel: A Peeve Story --Christy
Pet peeves. I’ve got lots of them. I guess I’m just a peevish person. But numero uno pet peeve relating to writing is this phrase, “I was having this amazing dream so I woke up and wrote it down and it turned into a novel!” I know of several people for whom a dream turned into a six-figure book deal.
Because this peeve usually comes from the mouths of urban fantasy/romance writers, I’d sort of chalked it up to genre thing, but then recently I read that Josh Berk’s The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, started as a dream. Because I know and respect Josh, I wasn’t immediately peeved; I was intrigued. His book is not urban fantasy and it’s being published by Knopf, most likely on high-quality deckle edged paper.
So I’ve been thinking: What is it about books that start as dreams? I always remember my dreams and have an incredibly rich dream life, but I never wake up and think, This would make a killer novel! Usually I think, Wow, trippy dream! Shouldn’t have has so many Thin Mints before bed.
I think the reason books from dreams become so popular is because for the most part we dream in archetypes—primal, inherited patterns of thought. Look how Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, the perfect example of dream to novel, has become a worldwide phenomenon. That’s some straight-up anima/animus + shadow archetypes mixed with some Mormon doctrine (or at least that’s how I interpret the old man/Edward & young girl/Bella relationship, as well as Edward’s parents/The Church, who gave him everlasting life by “saving him” from dying in 1918, the same year Joseph Smith died. But that’s just me.).
Tapping into the archetypes of the collective unconscious is like hooking your pipes up to city water instead of pumping from a well; you’re tapping into a steady flow of ideas that we all share. These have nothing to do with personal experience, but rather inherited thought buried deep in the primal brain. Sadly, I think I’m a writer who continues to work a deep, drying well. I need to get hooked up to the flow. Come to me, oh six-figure archetype dream! I’m waiting with open arms…
Has anyone out there had the dream-to-novel experience?
Because this peeve usually comes from the mouths of urban fantasy/romance writers, I’d sort of chalked it up to genre thing, but then recently I read that Josh Berk’s The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, started as a dream. Because I know and respect Josh, I wasn’t immediately peeved; I was intrigued. His book is not urban fantasy and it’s being published by Knopf, most likely on high-quality deckle edged paper.
So I’ve been thinking: What is it about books that start as dreams? I always remember my dreams and have an incredibly rich dream life, but I never wake up and think, This would make a killer novel! Usually I think, Wow, trippy dream! Shouldn’t have has so many Thin Mints before bed.
I think the reason books from dreams become so popular is because for the most part we dream in archetypes—primal, inherited patterns of thought. Look how Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, the perfect example of dream to novel, has become a worldwide phenomenon. That’s some straight-up anima/animus + shadow archetypes mixed with some Mormon doctrine (or at least that’s how I interpret the old man/Edward & young girl/Bella relationship, as well as Edward’s parents/The Church, who gave him everlasting life by “saving him” from dying in 1918, the same year Joseph Smith died. But that’s just me.).
Tapping into the archetypes of the collective unconscious is like hooking your pipes up to city water instead of pumping from a well; you’re tapping into a steady flow of ideas that we all share. These have nothing to do with personal experience, but rather inherited thought buried deep in the primal brain. Sadly, I think I’m a writer who continues to work a deep, drying well. I need to get hooked up to the flow. Come to me, oh six-figure archetype dream! I’m waiting with open arms…
Has anyone out there had the dream-to-novel experience?
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Write on --Kerry
My husband is going to be a lawyer at a different place now, whenever he finds that position, without putting too much drama into it. Hence the short blog. It's been a tough week during his resignation process but tough = resilience doesn't it?
I am more emphathetic now, to those who have gone before me. This is a scary place.
Luckily I know that a job cannot take away dreams and love. For that I am grateful.
And losing a job can't take away my ability to write either, and express myself.
So write on everyone, because we still can.
Right on.
I am more emphathetic now, to those who have gone before me. This is a scary place.
Luckily I know that a job cannot take away dreams and love. For that I am grateful.
And losing a job can't take away my ability to write either, and express myself.
So write on everyone, because we still can.
Right on.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Real Magic -- Jennie
As my kids count the days (6) until our trip to Disneyland, I remember my own anticipation before visiting the Happiest Place on Earth as a seven year-old. Amy, my younger sister, and I had side-by-side twin beds with Betsy Clark quilts. Every night after our mom read us a chapter of Little House on the Prairie, Amy and I stayed up for hours, whispering about the Disneyland rides we had heard about, the characters we might see, and the treats our organic mom might let us have.Like my kids, I had my suitcase packed weeks ahead, but with Dolphin shorts, and Saltwater sandals. Though it was late fall in northern California, it was still warm in the southern half, something else to look forward to.
Amy and I loved each other but bickered a lot over everything, especially who made the mess, and having to wear matching outfits. Plus, I had been having sleep issues, and dreaded the clock’s creeping toward bedtime. But in the mystical days before our Disneyland trip, I couldn’t wait to crawl under the quilt, get past the reading, then enter the world my sister and I had created. We had no idea how big the park was, or what was in it, or what it would look like, but we were delighted to imagine it all.
Finally, it came: the last night before the big trip. Amy thrashed around excitedly in her bed, but I was surprisingly sad. The late-night whispering would be over. So would the trip. And what if the Disneyland we had made up wasn’t as good in reality?
When our parents picked us up from school and drove the long eight hours to the Howard Johnson Hotel, I was nervous. But that all disappeared inside the gates, with its charming Main Street. When Goofy swaggered up to us in his big hat and big shoes, I was enchanted. Each moment was better than the last: the Country Bear Jamboree, the Mickey Mouse pancakes, the Electrical Parade, the Small World mermaids.
Even the scary things were thrilling: the Haunted House and the Pirates of the Caribbean. During the old Journey Through Inner Space, I was equally horrified and ecstatic to be shrunk to the size of an atom.
With the one dollar our dad had given us, Amy and I bought matching name plates: Mickey Mouse, with his arms behind his back, and our names in square letters. When we got home, I stuck mine on my headboard.
For years, even after our mom had finished the entire Little House series, I would stare at that glowing name plate. But instead of remembering the pirates, the pancakes, or the parade, I remembered the real magic: how it felt while I was waiting to go.
Friday, March 13, 2009
All around me, trees welcome spring. Normally I love to watch this process, but this year is different.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you know of my mother’s amazing cancer journey and how it is drawing to a close. You may not know that my oldest sister died, at 55, of ovarian cancer in 2000. And now my remaining sister has discovered suspicious lumps; her doctor biopsied a lymph node and removed a fist-sized breast mass yesterday; pathology should be in by Monday.
I, thankfully, remain healthy.
Back to those trees. I’m stuck in a metaphor loop.
Dark branches against the sky are lungs. Bronchi. Bronchioles. Alveoli. All reaching toward the sky in a gasp for air.
Dark branches against the sky are the blue veins visible under the milky white skin of a breast.
Dark branches against the sky are the circulatory system.
Dark branches against the sky are the lymphatic conduits that run throughout our bodies.
Dark branches against the sky take the shape of a brain, tracing the folds and valleys, mimicking the neuron. Axon. Soma. Dendrite.
The tangled nests of squirrels are tumors. The small nests of birds are tumors. Fruit trees bloom with disease. The green buds are tumors, coursing their way though lymph, blood, and tissue.
The process of spring, which should mean growth and blooming and change, has become malignant.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
This Concerns Me --Christy
While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. At the same time, draw the number 6 in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction and there's nothing you can do about it.
This bothers me far more than I want it to.
This bothers me far more than I want it to.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Reason #1 Why I Might Write--Marcia
In working on a quilt exhibit for the High Desert Museum, I have inadvertently become immersed in American History. In entering it through the world of needlework and fabric choice I am finding history far more interesting than I did through the worlds of the Revolution and the Civil War. The quilts I'm investigating bracket those two seismic events and yet, like a sharp needle, stitch around the edges and reveal a world reflective of its times: wealthy, industrious, patriotic, religious, philanthropic, and artistically talented.
In less than a hundred years, one person's lifetime, America went from a new nation of 13 colonies to an industrial nation in the midst of a Civil War . . . And in the middle of it, women were stitching their hearts out expressing their love of Liberty, their president, The North, The South, the 12 apostles, or "gun boats". Yes, they made quilts to raffle off to buy gun boats. Some just loved fabric--really expensive fabric, challis and calico, block printed and hand painted in India and imported to England and then to America into the hands of the women of Charleston Harbor and beyond.
Fortunes rose and fell. Ways of life collapsed and were reborn.
Due to an embargo on textiles and textile workers in the early stages of our country, all fabric in America was handwoven until well into the 19th century. Colonists made their own fabric, thread, and dye. I can barely get my laundry done, I can't imagine actually making my own 3-ply thread, linen, and dye out of crushed beetles and pee, and then making my own chemise. No way, Jose. Where's my Lean Cuisine and Wife Swap, I can't handle all this industriousness.
I have read many a great quote from those swearing that a woman is only as fine as her needlework and mastering it as essential to good breeding as speaking French, to quilting being the "primary symbol of a woman's unpaid subjection . . . " oh, those Suffragettes!
One of the most amazing stories I have discovered is that of Eliza Lucas Pinkney. Eliza's mother died young. Eliza was educated in Europe, her father was British and lived in Antigua. At 15 she arrived in the colonies and, when her father returned to Antiqua with the British Military, almost immediately wound up in charge of three plantations just outside Charleston.
At 16, while reading Virgil, Eliza got to thinking South Carolina was mighty similar to Virgil's Indigo-growing Italy (!?). Eliza loved botany. Women loved fabric. Women loved blue. It was very, very expensive and had to be imported from India. It took 100 pounds of plant to produce 4 ounces of dye.
She found her own niche market. The young botanist decided to tinker around in her spare time with growing Indigo. Four or five years later, at 21, she had her first successful Indigo crop. She exported it to England, shared the seeds with her other plantation pals and Indigo became South Carolina's most profitable export.
"Indigo proved more really beneficial to Carolina than the mines of Mexico or Peru were to Spain.... The source of this great wealth ... was a result of an experiment by a mere girl."
--Edward McCrady, historian of colonial South Carolina
Eliza amassed a great fortune, and from all accounts worked really hard for it, and considered herself a patriot. During the Revolution, however, her plantations were destroyed and her life left in ruins. She lies in an unmarked grave somewhere in the south, but there is a stone commemorating her as the mother of two sons of the Revolution. Hmmmm.
Something about Eliza's pluck, acumen, determination and demise is stirring, haunting, and disturbing. Indigo is my favorite color. Charleston is a fabulous city . . . Do I have an historical novel in me? Has somebody already done it? It certainly can't be as hard as handweaving flax.
In less than a hundred years, one person's lifetime, America went from a new nation of 13 colonies to an industrial nation in the midst of a Civil War . . . And in the middle of it, women were stitching their hearts out expressing their love of Liberty, their president, The North, The South, the 12 apostles, or "gun boats". Yes, they made quilts to raffle off to buy gun boats. Some just loved fabric--really expensive fabric, challis and calico, block printed and hand painted in India and imported to England and then to America into the hands of the women of Charleston Harbor and beyond.
Fortunes rose and fell. Ways of life collapsed and were reborn.
Due to an embargo on textiles and textile workers in the early stages of our country, all fabric in America was handwoven until well into the 19th century. Colonists made their own fabric, thread, and dye. I can barely get my laundry done, I can't imagine actually making my own 3-ply thread, linen, and dye out of crushed beetles and pee, and then making my own chemise. No way, Jose. Where's my Lean Cuisine and Wife Swap, I can't handle all this industriousness.
I have read many a great quote from those swearing that a woman is only as fine as her needlework and mastering it as essential to good breeding as speaking French, to quilting being the "primary symbol of a woman's unpaid subjection . . . " oh, those Suffragettes!
One of the most amazing stories I have discovered is that of Eliza Lucas Pinkney. Eliza's mother died young. Eliza was educated in Europe, her father was British and lived in Antigua. At 15 she arrived in the colonies and, when her father returned to Antiqua with the British Military, almost immediately wound up in charge of three plantations just outside Charleston.
At 16, while reading Virgil, Eliza got to thinking South Carolina was mighty similar to Virgil's Indigo-growing Italy (!?). Eliza loved botany. Women loved fabric. Women loved blue. It was very, very expensive and had to be imported from India. It took 100 pounds of plant to produce 4 ounces of dye.
She found her own niche market. The young botanist decided to tinker around in her spare time with growing Indigo. Four or five years later, at 21, she had her first successful Indigo crop. She exported it to England, shared the seeds with her other plantation pals and Indigo became South Carolina's most profitable export.
"Indigo proved more really beneficial to Carolina than the mines of Mexico or Peru were to Spain.... The source of this great wealth ... was a result of an experiment by a mere girl."
--Edward McCrady, historian of colonial South Carolina
Eliza amassed a great fortune, and from all accounts worked really hard for it, and considered herself a patriot. During the Revolution, however, her plantations were destroyed and her life left in ruins. She lies in an unmarked grave somewhere in the south, but there is a stone commemorating her as the mother of two sons of the Revolution. Hmmmm.
Something about Eliza's pluck, acumen, determination and demise is stirring, haunting, and disturbing. Indigo is my favorite color. Charleston is a fabulous city . . . Do I have an historical novel in me? Has somebody already done it? It certainly can't be as hard as handweaving flax.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Online Mothers--Kerry
Horrors! I turned on, gasp, daytime t.v. this morning and watched the "Today Show" pundits. Normally I get my news from an NPR webcast, but today my husband was home, so I can blame the t.v. indulgence on him, can't I?
I did learn something actually relevant to blogging, mothers and life in general. (Amazing! My i.q. did not actually fall when I watched the tube). An advertising exec from an agency called Razorfish was being interviewed for a segment called "The Big Business of Online Mothers." She explained that websites such as Cafe Mama http://www.cafemama.com/ (started by former editor of Hip Mama and Portland resident) and other online websites designed by mothers were rapidly proliferating and influencing the advertising demographic, including, yes, the blogosphere, in many areas of life including environmental issues in the case of Cafemama. Advertisers were giving away products to online journalist mothers, in hopes that they will influence their demographic to buy a particular deodorant or diaper. Yes writer mamas, apparently there is hope for us yet in the land of free stuff even if we don't get paid to blog.
So if we diligently post our blogs and wait patiently, is free stuff going to start arriving on our doorstep? I'm still waiting, but at least it's given some meaning to turning the t.v. off and blogging.
I did learn something actually relevant to blogging, mothers and life in general. (Amazing! My i.q. did not actually fall when I watched the tube). An advertising exec from an agency called Razorfish was being interviewed for a segment called "The Big Business of Online Mothers." She explained that websites such as Cafe Mama http://www.cafemama.com/ (started by former editor of Hip Mama and Portland resident) and other online websites designed by mothers were rapidly proliferating and influencing the advertising demographic, including, yes, the blogosphere, in many areas of life including environmental issues in the case of Cafemama. Advertisers were giving away products to online journalist mothers, in hopes that they will influence their demographic to buy a particular deodorant or diaper. Yes writer mamas, apparently there is hope for us yet in the land of free stuff even if we don't get paid to blog.
So if we diligently post our blogs and wait patiently, is free stuff going to start arriving on our doorstep? I'm still waiting, but at least it's given some meaning to turning the t.v. off and blogging.
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