it used to be someone's home

Henry is in Sadar City. He says it looks like the set of post-apocolyptic movie.

Victoria Secrets and the Singing Chick

Today I was reading the kids (I'm a school librarian, remember?) one of my favorite books, The Singing Chick. The author of the book is a woman named Victoria Stenmark, I said, pointing to her name. Alexandra, in the front row, called out, "There is a real place called Victoria Secrets, you know."

Burying Angel O'Malley

I didn't know Annalise very well, but when she died, I went to her service. She lived in Beaver Creek, and she grew garlic. I have a picture of her surrounded by long stalks of garlic, with flowers in her hair.
When she died I went to her house and cleaned it. Margie from down the road showed up with her tractor and mowed the field that was Annalise's yard. A few days later, the service was held there. I took my camera.
Annalise was cremated and her sister poured her ashes into our hands and we sprinkled them on her property and in the creek and in the garden.
Back then, I always had my camera with me. I took pictures of everything, all the time and that day, as always, I took pictures. I took a picture of Annalise's sister. They had come here together back in the 60s, young hippie girls, sisters, best friends. They wanted to have an all girl rock band. They married and built houses in the woods. They lived up Beaver Creek surrounded by forests that were sprayed with 245D, a diluted form of Agent Orange, and Annalise died of cancer when she was 32. I took a picture of her house and her dahlias and her nephew and her niece and all her friends. I took a picture of Roy, playing his guitar, and Rita setting off bottle rockets. I took all those pictures that day. When I got them back, I was ashamed. I hated to think of myself there, with my camera, putting a frame around things, looking for the best shot. I felt like a voyeur. I felt like I had taken something precious and deeply personal and turned it into something hateful. I put all the pictures -even the best ones- in an envelope and gave them to Annalise's sister and told her I was sorry for taking them.
A few days ago a short story I wrote came out in The Sun. It's called Burying Angel O'Malley. It's a story about the burial of a little girl. In fact, it's Annalise's service and my friend Tom's burial and the death of a ten year old girl all put together into a story I call fiction. Why is that different than taking photographs? Why do I feel like I've honored their deaths when I write about them? Am I fooling myself?

Gardner's rule of point of view

One of the problems with being self-educated is that when people question me about my writing, sometimes I'm not sure of myself. I mean if they question some specific aspect of it. (Say, point of view, for example.) My first thought is that I missed something.

My editor is questioning my use of point of view in my latest manuscript. So I've been on a pov mission lately. Reading everything I can about it (which isn't much.) This is what John Gardner says about point of view : you can do anything, just as long as it works.

Second guessing

I've been editing my new book, The Secret Bible Club, which isn't really about the Bible. I tell the kids that when they write they should make the conscious mind shut up. They should tell it to go away. Later on it can come in and tell them they sound dumb or they forgot a comma or hey, you can't do that. I'm having a hard time taking my own advice. I'm second guessing this story too much.

Twenty Questions and the kids at my school

(a question from the blog, Book Lovers Online Guide, courtesy of the Roseville, California Library)
The descriptions of the innocence and tenderness of the school children struck me deeply, made me think of my own young children. Is this feeling coming out of your own experience working at a school?

For the last ten years, I’ve worked in the library of an elementary school. The school where I work is a Title 1 school. About 90% of the kids are on free or reduced lunch, which in school language means they’re poor kids. Many of them have problems associated with poverty---their parents struggle to support them, some are in foster homes, some have parents in jail, some are homeless, some are drug or alcohol-affected. Some of the parents are in Iraq. The kids are often naughty, but they are also funny and insightful and philosophical.
At my school we spend a lot of time talking to the kids about using words to solve problems, being respectful, listening to the other guy, not blaming, taking responsibility. But the bigger world tells them that the bully wins. We don’t need anybody. It’s not our fault.
How do we counter that? How do we teach kindness and humanity in a culture that glorifies violence and rationalizes war?
I’ve wanted to write about the children for a long time and found, finally, that I could tell the truth about them, or get as close to the truth as possible, through fiction. I wanted my readers to meet the kids on their own terms, with their own observations, their own words. So, even though none of the characters in my book is taken from a specific child, almost everything a child says in the book is from something a child has said to me.
I don’t think most people understand how many of our children live in very difficult situations.
I don’t know what to do about these things but at least, as a writer, I can write about them.

Veterans Against Torture

I've been looking for an email address for Salem, Oregon poet, Geronimo Tagatac, so that I could ask permission to publish one of his poems here. Geronimo Tagatac is a poet with more to offer than simply the best name I've ever heard.
I didn't find an address for him, but I did find a petition that he signed for a group called Veterans Against Torture. If you're a veteran, maybe you'd like to sign it.

strip show

When I was a kid in South Carolina we used to go to the fair, and there was a dead baby stand, with fetuses floating upside down in formaldehyde, and freak shows and there were strip show booths. There were strippers standing right out in front, urging people to come inside. One time my friend Donna Rafferty and I went into one of the strip show booths. We were two 12 year old Catholic girls, and we went inside and sat on metal folding chairs surrounded by sailors. But then a man came out on the stage and announced that the electricity had gone off, so they couldn’t have a strip show just then. He did, however, have pieces of paper for sale and if you put them in water, he said, you’d see something. Donna and I bought one of these and took it home, but when we put it in water we didn’t see anything.

on the other side of our bombs

I didn’t want to write anything about 911 because I hate the fact that horror over the deaths of so many innocent people became the rationale for more deaths of more innocent people. I hate it that I’m supposed to feel horrified not because so many people died that day but because the people who died were Americans. I hate it that people acted like it came out of the blue, as if there was no context, and that now I have to explain that I know there was no excuse— there was no excuse, but there was a context. I hate it that people acted as if a tragedy of this magnitude had never happened to anyone else, that suffering was ours alone.
When I saw what happened on 911, I thought: this is what it looks like on the other side of our bombs.
Yesterday I was stopped at the light on 9th Street behind a car with three bumper stickers: an Army bumpersticker, a bumpersticker of a prayer, beginning, Dear Jesus, and a bumpersticker that said, Attack Iraq.
I don’t understand how we can care so much about one group of people, but not another.

Listening to the torture debate

Today I said to my son that it’s surprising someone hasn’t gotten hold of a nuclear bomb yet and blown us all up. I don’t know why I talk like this in front of my children. It’s no wonder they’re full of anxiety.

not a trashy novel

Tracy told me apologetically that she read my first book, and she could hardly put it down. She said she didn't usually read trashy novels.

I beg your pardon.

Well, in the first place, you never have to apologize to a writer for not being able to put her book down.............but is she right? Is my book a trashy novel? When people ask about it, I say it's a story about character and place. It's about families and about what people want or think they want. It's about bigotry and small towns, about desire and love and figuring out what matters, it's about what happens to someone whose desires are at odds with her own self interest, someone whose most authentic act is infidelity.

(My mother, bless her heart, tells people that my publisher made me put the sex in there, so the book would sell.)

I sit on the porch in the hot sun and, instead of feeling closed off, my skin feels like it's an open thing. Like in the night somebody peeled it back so all the nerves inside me are laid open on the skin. I sit like that for I don't know how long. It's like I'm somebody who has no mind anymore to notice the passing of time. It's like all of who I am has got pressed into the body I've got and I'm alive like an animal is alive with just its skin and its legs and its face.

at the beach

Two kindergarten boys were playing with plastic animals: porpoises, whales, little elephants. One of the boys was telling me about the beach. I saw a whale at the beach. I saw a humpback whale. I saw a porpoise at the beach. I saw a dead seal at the beach. The other boy interrupted. I saw a little elephant at the beach.

Leave the kids alone

I was never encouraged to read as a child. I never heard of Caldecutt or Newbery. I never saw a reading list. I read randomly. I read classics and trashy novels. I read plays and books of cartoons. I read science fiction before I knew there was such a thing as genre. I read biographies and history books and (with great confusion) Naked Lunch.
I work now as a librarian in an elementary school. We have reading contests and prizes for whoever reads the most, as if reading has to be rewarded. And we have lists of books recommended for children, as if reading is anybody’s but the reader’s own business.
I think reading is deeply personal. I think whatever happens when someone reads, whatever goes on between the reader and the book, is nobody’s business.
A woman once told me that her daughter only wanted to read Babysitter’s Club books, and she had told the girls’ school not to let her do it anymore. The girl needed something more challenging. She needed something of better quality, her mother thought. Sometimes kids have bad taste and, while it’s natural to give our opinions, or to suggest books they might like, I think basically we have to leave them alone. I thought of my friend’s daughter a few years later when a girl in my school spent the whole year reading only Babysitter Club books. The girl’s father was in jail, her parents in the middle of a divorce, and then one day her uncle had murdered his family. For a while, I made gentle suggestions of other titles she might like, but one day it occurred to me that maybe she needed the calm predictability of The Babysitter’s Club. Maybe she needed to inhabit, if only for a little while, a wholesome world of natural consequences and small, solvable predicaments.
I thought of those girls with their Babysitter Club books after the last election, when I found myself reading only mysteries. Mysteries—stories driven by the pursuit of truth and justice. In mysteries, the good guys almost always win. In mysteries, the world is set straight for a moment.
My humble opinion: Recommend books to children, just as you’d recommend them to a friend, but then get out of the way.

Lydia's Not Poem

Today is the first day of school and, in honor of that, I'm going to publish a poem written by a 4th grader named Lydia. I taught a poetry workshop to her class a few years ago, using Kenneth Koch's lesson plans on teaching poetry to kids. This poem is what he calls a "not poem:"

Not Poem

I am Lydia
I am not a baseball bat
I am not a tuna sandwich
I am not a green candy heart
I am Lydia

I am not an insurance agent
I am not a manufactured house
I am not a magnolia
I am Lydia
I am good at poetry

I am not good at jumping as high as the Grand Canyon
I am not good at talking Japanese
I am not good at flying across the ocean
I am good at poetry.

The Waffle House

I hardly knew Chuck when he came to the bar where I worked and gave me a copy of Ivan Illich's book, Deschooling Society. I read it and dropped out of college. Illich, in case you don't know, argues that education isn't really about learning but about maintaining class structure. He argues against experts mediating and defining our experience.
I learned what I know about writing by the act of writing itself and by reading. I used to joke that people shouldn't go to school for MFAs, they should go instead to The Waffle House and listen to people talk. That's kind of a smart ass thing to say, as my friend Sara Backer, a writer and English teacher, pointed out, and I've stopped saying it, although the point it still valid--one of the most important things for a writer to understand is how to pay attention, how to observe, how to listen to people talk.

Sister Agatha and the Danger of Reading

I wonder sometimes if my old Sister Agatha didn't serve me well by warning me against reading too much--- you know what can happen if you read too much of the wrong thing? You could get pregnant. You could drop out of the church and become a communist. Wow. Talk about enticing a young girl to read!

End of government not fun

I've been painting walls and listening to the radio, Air America. Yesterday it was all about Katrina and the Gulf Coast. I was thinking about when I was in the Northridge Earthquake with my family and right away there was help. Anyone who was hurt was cared for and anyone who was killed was taken away and immediately there were systems in place for us alI. I took it for granted. That's the way things work here. But in George Bush's America, that's not the way things work. When I was a young anarchist, I imagined that the collapse of government would be a lot more fun than it actually is.......

Yoga

I've started doing yoga again, after a summer of sitting in a chair. After three months of no practice, why am I surprised to find myself less flexible and weaker? When I practice for three months, I expect results. Why am I surprised that my no-practice also has results? Why do I expect to have it both ways? And anyway, I'm not supposed to be so result-driven. Nasim Hikmet says to live like a squirrel, without looking for something beyond, but I'm not sure this is what he meant. He meant being alive is enough. And when you practice yoga, I mean when you are doing it, that should be enough. Last night it occurred to me that so much is going on with each pose, if you notice you'll see. There are so many sensations. My teacher loves the practice. She is so joyful about it. She walks among us, whispering: gorgeous, gorgeous.

Demi

from my work journal (I'm a school librarian, remember?) Dec. 16

I’ve been reading the kids Demi’s new book, The Greatest Thing in the World, which is, according to Demi, life itself. Weapons are not the greatest thing. Beauty is not the greatest thing. Technology is not, money is not. In the book a little girl, observing the lotus plant, realizes that life itself is the greatest thing. I was afraid the kids would think I was being preachy. There is nothing they hate as much at that. Or that they would be bored. They love exciting stories and funny stories, but it seemed to me the right book for now, before Christmas. I was surprised to find class after class listening intently, even the bad boys, hanging on each word, and then, at the end of the story, bursting into applause.
We underestimate them. Children are naturally philosophical. And children, I think, if given the chance, move instinctively towards authenticity and beauty.
Thank you, Demi, for another beautiful and authentic book.

Q: You once worked as a waitress, as did June in your latest novel, Twenty Questions. What anecdotes about your restaurant days can you share with readers?

Don't get me started on waitress stories! Restaurants, as June says, are passionate places, full of unpredictability and eccentricity. And they are full of stories. I'll just tell you one. . . .

One night when I was working I had a customer who was eating alone, a handsome fellow, and, as he ate his meal -- a good meal: grilled salmon and wine -- he was writing on a pad of paper. I always wanted to know what my customers were up to, and pretty soon I could see that, among other things, he'd written the name of a friend of mine. I had to admit to him that I was a nosey waitress, and I asked why he'd written my friend's name. The customer was Kevin Krajick, a writer, and he'd come here to the Oregon coast from New York to work on an article about the forest. He was looking for a man named Chuck Willer, because he hoped to interview him. Chuck was an environmentalist. "Oh," I told him, "I can get you an interview with Chuck. He's my husband."

On Living by Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet

My friend, Bob, sent me a poem today....... I'm posting the last stanza.


This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet-
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space ...
You must grieve for this right now
-you have to feel this sorrow now-
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say ``I lived'' ...


Nazim Hikmet
February, 1948
Trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk - 1993

Sister Agatha and Flannery O'Connor

I went to Sacred Heart Elementary School in Savannah, Georgia, which is the same school that Flannery O'Connor attended. Sister Agatha was my fifth grade teacher, and I like to imagine that she once taught Flannery as well. Sister Agatha told us vivid stories about the torments of Hell. She terrified us, especially Shirley who was Protestant and, even though she was still in elementary school, had a boyfriend who was a sailor. Sister liked to describe the flames of Hell, the horror of dismemberment, an eternity of suffering. I like to think that from moments like these, a person might later construct great literature.

The Self Absorbed Writer

My day job is at an elementary school library. I say I'm a librarian because functionally that's what I am, but I'm not a real, honest- to- God librarian with a degree in library science. The schools don't hire librarians like that because then they'd have to pay them a regular, middle-class wage.

I read books and I write them. I don't write children's books although a reviewer suggested (in a rather mean- spirited way, I must say) that I might try it. Writing about children is not at all the same as writing for children. First of all. Also, I'm interested in adult relationships, adult problems, and adult flaws. I'm interested in the way that good and evil set side by side. This blog is not going to be all about me. I told Chuck that there is no one more self-absorbed than a writer with a newly published book. I asked him if I'm talking about myself too much and he said no, but he'd tell me if I started to.