Oh, Studio Ghibli, how I ADORE Totoro and company. This could mean a huge change in wardrobe for me…
Hat tip to The Mary Sue.
{uh-oh. i now need gray tights. and boots. and possibly a gourd flute}
Month: November 2012
{the space between my ears}
One of the best times of the year is when sunbathing requires tights.
Busy! Hello again, just wanted to be in the same room with you for a moment, and wave…
At present, I am WRESTLING with a revision which I’d so, so hoped I would finish before the first of next month… I’m not feeling that happening just now, although, while there’s life, there’s hope. I have three pages of hand-written plotting notes fresh off the press, wherein I change the whodunnit party in my mystery to someone else entirely – which is kind of sad and tragic and much more of a turn-of-the-screw kind of thing, and I have until the 14th to get it to my people for a pre-holiday re-read. I may not make it, but I have to say I’m MUCH HAPPIER with things as they stand now. SO, there’s that.
Meanwhile, I’ve embarked on a memoir project, taking down the life of a nearly-seventy year old Ukrainian man who was born during WWII, and lived in Soviet Russia. He has STORIES, let me just say. AND! Come Sunday will be my very first entry in the re-assembled writing group, now going by the very clever name The Cracked Kettle. I am sort of petrified to write anything, after I nagged everyone about getting back together for so long, but if Maggie and Tessa and Brenna can do it, I must have faith in us…
These days I receive about four books and fifteen notes in my inbox a day, telling me that Christmas is coming — as if I couldn’t tell by the number of Cybils noms piling up on my doorstep. It feels REALLY good to be in the States this year, if only because I can actually get many of the books on the list from the library. Sixty two of them, and only ten more to go from them… the ones with nineteen holds on them I don’t think will work out, though! Of the 205 nominations (the final list wobbled around for a bit there as we shipped some things off to YA Fic, and in turn received some things from them) I have now read 152, I think. I’m enjoying it, even as there’s part of me sort of screeching, “Aaaargh!”
I haven’t taken the Thanksgiving photos from my camera yet, but I’m still gleeful that the first rose from the bushes I whacked back so vigorously in September when we moved in have come back… and we cut our first rose. It smells like peaches and sunshine and it is just a gorgeous peachy-yellow, shading to a deep pink in its center. I have no idea what kind it is, but I am in love with it. I had thought that since some of the roses looked awful, I’d dig them up. Not that one.
I’ve been being interviewed and filling out surveys like crazy lately – a particularly fun and challenging one from the Children’s Book Council – and thanks to all of you bloggers asking for my input on things. ALSO! Before I forget. Thanks to those on the ALA Rainbow Project committee for the vote of confidence in including HAPPY FAMILIES on the 2013 list! That means a lot.
Somewhere there’s a Cybils book and some sunshine calling my name. Gotta jet!
{and science rocks on}
The runners up?
* Carolyn Jons, from Eden Prairie High School in Eden Prairie, Minn., received second place for her innovative packaging method that inhibits mold growth and helps keep food fresh longer.
* Anin Sayana from Bellarmine College Preparatory in Cupertino, Calif., received third place for his innovation that selectively targets chemotherapy-resistant cancer stem cells.
* Anishaa Sivakumar from Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pa., received fourth place for her innovation that would help treat patients suffering from macular degeneration.
People, you make science look good.
{yeah, Goat, i feel you}
Enlarge with a click:
{heart of your matter; matters of your heart}
I don’t remember where I got this, but I love it.
In grad school, my critique partner, J-Dawg (a petite, Caucasian, blue-eyed blonde who named herself thus), commented that every writer writes the same thing. Whilst at Mills, J chaired the first Aphra Behn conference, edited an anthology called “Scandalosissima Scoundrelia:’ A Collection of Critical Essays on Mary Delarivier Manley”, and her graduate thesis was something to do with the voices of 18th century women. I sensed a theme early on. It didn’t matter what class she was in, what paper she was writing, somehow, someway, J’s work ALWAYS came around to the writings of subversive women; or to make you all wince, Chicks Acting Up (Well-behaved women rarely make history, right?). “Every writer has a theme,” J-Dawg told me. I had no idea what mine was.
Fast forward to SAM mentioning once that I wrote like Joyce Carol Oates. “That’s a good thing!” he responded to my stricken silence. “Um… great!” I replied brightly, trying to remember what books I’d read of hers past ORDINARY PEOPLE when I was about ten (did I even finish?). I wondered if today’s teens had even ever heard of her. (Probably. BIG MOUTH & UGLY GIRL and AFTER THE WRECK weren’t that long ago.) I had no idea what my agent meant, and became somewhat obsessed with not fulfilling his prophesy – which is completely counter to what editors and publishing houses infer that you should do. Writers are supposed to have a brand, a market, a niche. A THING they do. I didn’t want to do a THING. I didn’t want to write like Joyce Carol Oates – awesome though she might be. I wanted to be free to do what I wanted. This silly supposition that I was supposed to be able to just write what came into my head is the sort of thing that gives marketing people migraines. And yet: marketing isn’t an exact science, is it? Maybe what I wanted to write next was going to be The Next Big Thing. I felt I was doing myself favors by not having a single thing that I did – I wanted to remain open to the possibility of doing it all.
Yeah. Like that works.
This morning I read a Cynsations interview on that very thing. Instead of calling it a theme, Janet S. Fox calls it a “core emotion.” And she agrees: every writer has one. The trick is finding yours.
Why? Because if you can find your core emotion, you can find your life’s thesis, as it were; your reason for writing. So many of us are utterly inarticulate as to the reasons why we’re doing this. The YA lit field is PACKED, stuffed. Why are we writing? Who needs one more book about, even one not about sparkly, emo vampires or zombies or fallen angels or, or, or — ? How can we justify our need to put ink to paper and scribble to the world if we don’t know exactly what it is we’re dying to say? (Because, as Charles Bukowski reminds us, unless it comes out of our souls like a rocket, and we absolutely cannot not say it, we should not speak.)
So, I looked at every book I’ve ever done – the two which are out of print, the more recent three with Knopf – and found they have a common theme. From summer camps to the ETO to Spring Break, every one of my novels has been about relationships. Tangled ones, romantic ones, familial ones, failed ones. This, I think, is what SAM picked up on – JCO is famous for depicting the fractured family. I can live with that, I thought. However, I read a review of HAPPY FAMILIES this week in Bookslut (thanks, Colleen!) which suddenly brought things into focus. Colleen writes:
“…Ysabel and Justin manage to get their parents to get real. It’s this focus on the damage to the family that makes Happy Families really succeed — Davis sees that with all the questions about what transgender means (and those questions are excellently explored), the real core to this novel is that the children were lied to. This is the essence to all of the novels in this column — in one way or another, the parents have failed their children, and in every instance they have insisted that failure did not take place. While some of them feel very badly — particularly in Happy Families — and while some are just complete asses — see Dora — the drama of each novel all comes around to the teenagers demanding fair and worthy attention from the people who are supposed to love them most. It doesn’t work out for all of these families; some are just too damaged to save, but in each case there are moments of amazing honesty in which the kids realize that they deserve to stand up and be heard; they deserve respect. For Ysabel and Justin, that moment is a good one, a not quite happily-ever-after-one, but at least a moment that shows them the way forward.
People who know me, or who get to know me find out in due time that I am not a liar (not a good one, anyway. I tell outrageous lies for fun, and watch people laugh). I am a storyteller – I believe in the power of fiction instead of lies – but I am also straightforward to the point, at times, of making myself and others uncomfortable. I do not respond well to lies. There is only one person I can think of, off the top of my head, who is still my friend after a lie, and there are extremely extraordinary circumstances involved. I have zero tolerance for liars and lying. It has been that way since I was a child and woke up to the lies I was told. Since then, it has been my personal mission to napalm out of existence all lies told to me… and the lies I have lived.
And within this epiphany, I begin to glimpse a theme… a core story. The lies our families tell (sit venia parentum), the lies with which we grow up, which are written on our bodies and secreted in the folds of our brains; the lies which are within the silence that we keep about the ways we’ve had to live, have had to compromise; the lies that inform our identity and shape us, and leave us rootless when we discover the truth… these are my heart matters, my core emotions. This informs my work: characters struggling to rip their way through what they thought they knew, into a world where what they hold within is ALL that is true.
Now, all I have to do is hold onto my truth, and hold it up, until I truly see it, and… well, then, everything should resolve itself from there.
…this is my hope, anyway; that all I will see is my truth, that all will see my truth. That the rocket will trail a light that rivals the sun.
{katrina. sandy. you.}
Photo by Flickr user Whiteafrican, Erik Hersman. The girls involved in the Urine Powered Generator project are Duro-Aina Adebola (14), Akindele Abiola (14), Faleke Oluwatoyin (14) and Bello Eniola (15).
It sounds like one of those things that comes up after looking at pictures of Burning Man; “Look at that dune bike! I could make stuff like that. We should totally have a Maker Faire!” Actually, Wikipedia knows who came up with the idea first – good old Make Magazine, the very hipster, fun, and addictive DIY magazine to which I was subscribed for years before realizing that I wasn’t a person who was able to lift a hammer without a.) smashing my finger or b.) getting distracted and wandering away. When I get more time (oh, hahahaha) I shall go back to reading them, and actually, you know, make a project once in awhile. I’m sure I’m fully capable.
I discovered that there are the non-magazine related international offshoots of the Maker Faire. A couch on which you can grow a lawn is fab, and kinetic sculpture is groovy, but a Faire which models wind turbines made with old car parts or crop irrigation from surplus screening, and makes a difference in the lives of those on the margins is also very interesting. This is not to say that Maker Faire Africa doesn’t have arts and crafts, toys and games, architecture and computers and all as part of their scope. I’m glad that they do. But what excited me was a practical entry from this year’s Maker Faire Africa, the generator run on … pee.
These ladies are a serendipitous find this post-Sandy morning. I am hearing from friends who have just today gotten power after last week’s storm, so I am thinking a great deal about generators. I am considering bottled water, MREs, camping food, and propane stoves. I am looking at my own life, and understanding the nature of crisis. We’ve been shown repeatedly – and more forcibly since Katrina – that it’s in everyone’s best interests to be prepared. FEMA, while a lovely thing, is not as responsible for me as I am. As we tell each other in writing group, no one will love your manuscript as much as you do. No one will care for your own hide as much as you. In Earthquake Country we don’t get satellite imagery and 72 hour evacuation notices. We get short, hard shakes, aftershocks, dust, and rattled nerves. It’s my job to look after me – and not wait on anyone else. Just like they tell you in the plane – oxygen over your own mouth and nose first, then help your kids, help your neighbors, help the storm-lost puppies – but YOU FIRST.
A trio of teens in faraway Lagos are your reminder today: be prepared. We best help others when we save ourselves.
{discipline punishment details}
Aside from the fact that periodically I fail to dress myself appropriately, let alone make balanced meals, and let’s not mention my basic bone-deep laziness, I know I am not appropriate parenting material. I see the world through some strange angles and I’m not sure I could raise someone to fit well with society. Also, there is discipline. I kind of lack it, and, one of my students informed me years ago, I am also Mean.
When I was teaching, I was known for having a well-ordered, quiet, tidy classroom, because frankly, the times when it was NOT those things, the fangs started itching and the horns started to sprout through my hair. I used to tell my fifth graders that a classroom was a dictatorship, not a democracy, and that I was their Dear Leader for the day. I forced my kids into a semblance of order because I needed order to be able to teach them – and here’s hoping that they benefited from the order, and learned.
I admit that I was probably a little (way?) too strict, though my mother, who terrified her students for twenty-five years, and now her grandchildren (well, none of them were ever really scared, but all the Littles know without a doubt when Teacher/Grandma’s patience is at An End) thinks I was an excellent disciplinarian. I am uneasy with that label, though. My students only obeyed because of my draconian tendencies to take their toys and have them run laps around the building or the playground when they talked and fidgeted, or go a period standing, when they continually tipped back their chairs. I was very quick to bring consequences, I sometimes raised my voice (well, it was fifth grade – sometimes that was the only way to be heard), and sometimes, I was Scary, and did I mention Mean? In all seriousness, I sometimes wonder at the present-day effect of some of my disciplinary tactics from back then.
If you’re wondering what’s brought on this examination of past punishments I have imposed, it’s the case of the woman in Cleveland who drove on the sidewalk. She was in a hurry – every morning, apparently – and, every morning when the school bus stopped to pick up kids, she went around to the sidewalk to avoid stopping when the red lights flashed. The bus driver, aghast, filmed her little trick, and now:
The judge sentenced Hardin to pay $250 in court costs and suspended her license for 30 days and more.
Hardin must also stand at the intersection of E. 38th Street and Payne Avenue wearing a sign next Tuesday and Wednesday that says “Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus.” She has been ordered to wear the sign from 7:45 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. both days.
At first blush, this might seem a success. Everyone sees that Crime Doesn’t Pay. The kids see a person who broke the rules humiliated. The parents, other drivers who didn’t drive on the walk, and the bus driver all feel vindicated. Everybody wins!
Except:
Why the word “idiot?” Doesn’t the English language lend itself to other descriptors which don’t also double as name-calling pejoratives? And, sure, she’s lost her license for what is clearly a violation of the vehicle code, and she’s had a pinch in her wallet, but I’m a little surprised that no one is addressing the real issue: she felt her time and her life was more important than the safety of others. To me, that needs to be looked at. Is this lady just a traffic violator, or a sociopath?
As a deterrent – a threat – the sign probably works. People will think twice before attempting something so stupid. But as a corrective, redemptive device, it fails. Is this lady going to love her fellowman that much better, and place their safety above her own, after weeks of being mocked by school children and their parents? Is she learning more than just loathing for the judge who sentenced her? Is she actually examining how her choices brought her to this sorry pass? How is calling someone an idiot rehabilitative?
Do you see why I don’t have kids (and am not in the legal profession)? I’d be on the floor, every day, trying to figure out how on earth I was supposed to civilize the random impulses we all have to be idiots every day.
I hope this lady gets therapy, sensitivity training, anger management. I have a feeling she’s going to need all three.
{why i vote: the irrational season}
Thursday, the downstairs sink flooded, twice. The plumbers – two men with big boots – tromped gunk on the stair carpet, which needs to be cleaned. Today, Maya Thompson, to use her Starbucks name, is coming by to stay until Monday. We still don’t have a washer (next week!) so I must schlepp loads of soaked towels to Mom’s; the last four Fuji apples are going slightly soft, which means they need to be diced and turned into a quick apple cake which is okay for the both the vegans and the omnivores, and there are four gigantic boxes yet in the garage to unpack, my fabric remnants – victims of the downstairs flood – to unbox and wash before they mildew. This is not to mention the other weekend chores of chiropractic appointments, choir rehearsal, raking the front, making an altar arrangement for church, and bringing cans to the food drive.
This is also not to mention the 143 books only read by one person on the Cybils list, plus the 95 books read by no one yet at all, plus my revision, on which I am slightly stuck, which I really need to finish by the 17th, latest. Which, with the aforementioned reading stack, I may not do. Which annoys me.
Oh. My. Gosh. I do NOT have time to sit down and decipher all of the electoral paperwork. I don’t have time to read the doublespeak and triple takes, and the dubious linguistic looping of proposition amendments and the perky bios on various district representatives, eager for my vote. I don’t have things to do. I don’t have time to vote. And, why should I? Psychologists tell us that voting is completely irrational. Statistically, an individual vote makes very little difference – and it’s personally time-consuming to register and do all of the rigamarole to get the right paperwork or the right polling place. I’m over-scheduled and grumpy, and I don’t have time…but I will make the time. Why? Well, I’ve given that some thought, and come up with roughly four reasons:
- I vote, because…I can read. My literacy is an immense gift; in a state where once upon a time public school was the ideal so that everyone could learn, today there are so many impediments toward people getting to school that 14% of my community is lacking in basic prose skills. I didn’t receive my education in a public school setting, but I support the right and privilege of those who do. I also support libraries as bastions of public knowledge. My votes protect these things,
- I vote, because…I can disagree with the way my country is run. I hate some of what is done, in the name of big, glad-handing, we’re-number-one, jingoistic American interests. We are the world’s scariest friends, the world’s worst bullies, the world’s nosiest neighbors (and if you tell me to take my opinion and go back to the UK, so help me). I have some very harsh opinions, I’m DEEPLY cynical and suspicious and judgmental and yet, I have the right to these opinions and judgements, because This. Is. My. Country. And it’s my right to love it enough to hope that it changes, and to speak up, and MAKE IT change in the best way I can. And I support your right to do so, too,
- I vote, because…I can embrace our differences, knowing that we hold some truths that are the same. We The People are from various walks and ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds and ages – and thus we come at fact or falsehood or a piece of legislation (sometimes the same thing) from different directions. Our greatness is in shared perception, and shared participation. We are a unique voice because of the powerful societal norms which push us out of our comfort zones and into the arena of sometimes harmonious, other times fraught and dissonant opinion. Our very inability to walk in lock-step is what makes us a uniquely and intriguingly special group. It also makes us exasperating, obstreperous, faithful, thoughtful, dangerous, mouthy, brilliant, eager, impatient, and really, really emo. I see this now more than ever, having lived abroad for five years and been regarded as a crazy person for much of that time. We are a bunch of loose cannons pointed in sixty-million different directions, and yet we can live together without killing each other too often. Participation really does make democracy work – and Americans are all about getting in there, and getting our hands onto something, even if it’s the completely wrong end of a thing.
- I vote, because…I can. Yes. I can. Voting is both privilege and gift, and obligation, for someone whose ancestors were slaves and Native peoples, and whose chattel status prevented them from being thought of even as human. It is a right that is too often taken for granted in my age group, and in my country. Somewhere, people have sent out the wrong dates and times or polling information, to communities filled with first generation Americans, because they don’t want their voices. Somewhere, those who haven’t paid their child support or back taxes are frightened into believing that their voices aren’t worthy to be heard. Elsewhere, women are silenced; in other nations, disputed religions or tribal affiliations are an impediment to voting polls, and in some places, there is simply dictatorship, and no choice. But here, in this country, we have the right to our speech, our choice, and our mistakes, and these amendments are written into law. Here we’re going to celebrate our Four Freedoms, and add eight more. It’s our privilege! But, more than that, it’s our right. Let’s step up and take our chances.
Perhaps these aren’t as patriotic of reasons, or as coherent of reasons as you would choose for voting. In many ways, democracy – politics – you name it – is both incoherent and unpatriotic – full of greed and bad intentions. However, in many ways, it comes down to that same irrational response psychologists warn us about – I just want to do my bit to change my world, to do my part to support truth and righteousness — which is a big laugh, putting those words in the same sentence as politics. But then, je suis American. Maybe irrational is as good as it gets.
This is a non-partisan party; others will be pondering and posting about this today. Colleen’s got the round-up @ Chasing Ray. Don’t miss Justin’s piece @ babble comics, which make me both snort-laugh and wince; also, Mr. Elzey is talking about the one time he didn’t vote, which takes a lot of courage, in a way – talking about it, I mean. Not voting is bone-headed, and he agrees. Anyway, more links as power outages and people’s thought processes make them available. Happy Friday; remember to vote.