leftedge suzy

suzy has moved!

2011-07-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Faithful Readers,

I've moved my blog to Wordpress. Please follow me! Just click on "MY BLOG" and then, once you're there,
click on the little rectangle that says "sign me up." It's easy.I hope I see you all again.

My newest post is "Everything is not going to Hell, or going to Mass with my mother."

~Alison ( my name is not really Suzy)

mission statement from a public school employee

2011-06-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

One day Beth commented that the point of education is to nourish the brain. A little comment that immediately became the way I look at and measure what we do, my own little personal mission statement. Are we nourishing the brain? Is it possible within the context of school? Sometimes the answer is yes.

adorno is wrong

2011-06-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

Adorna said that art, because of its association with class and because it objectifies, is inherently fascist. Did he really mean this or was he simply being provocative?

Paul Celan

2011-06-04T15:42:00.001-07:00

Why did I awake lonely
Among the sleepers?

another word for hell

2011-06-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

I was reading Night and helping plan a fundraiser for an elementary school in Gaza. I was reading Night and writing a novel that includes the Kabbalah, which is a form of mystical Judaism. The Kabbalah is also called The Tree of Life, and included in this Tree is its shadow, which is known at Qliphoth. Qlipoth is the place where all the half- formed things of creation go, the mistakes, the monsters. When you read Night, it’s easy to imagine that the landscape is Qlipoth, which is another word for Hell.

My husband’s paternal grandfather is German, but when a genealogist discovered that he was Jewish, his great aunt stopped the research. When I read Night I thought about the Palestinians and I thought the worst thing that can happen is for the victim to take on characteristics of the oppressor.

do we have to talk about it all the time?

2011-05-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

The men at the next table are talking about their weight. They are average-sized, middle-age men, drinking coffee. They are talking about the calories in various foods, about gaining a pound but then losing it again, about the best time to weigh yourself. My word. I thought only women had to have conversations like this.

too cool to care

2011-03-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

The two hip girl bartenders at the brew pub in Eukia hadn’t heard about the nuclear plants melting down in Japan. They shrugged when we told them. Why should they pay attention to something like that? We can’t do anything about it anyway, they said.

why he's not in college and I am

2011-02-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

My 24 yr old son saw me working on an essay for poetry class this morning. That’s not hard, he said. All you need to do is bullshit.

white devil

2011-02-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

Reading Amiri Baraka for my poetry class. A poem written after the murder of Malcolm X: Poem for Black Hearts.

For all of him, and all of yourself, look up,
black man, quit stuttering and shuffling, look up
black man

I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X when I was a high school student in Beardstown, Illinois. I was at the county fair a while later with my friend Sue Hye. A couple black guys from Chicago were flirting with us. I asked mine what he thought he was doing. Didn’t he know that I was the white devil? He looked at me confusedly and then turned to his friend, “Yo! Raymond, come hear this white girl talk.”

charging their phones in Egypt

2011-02-05T11:22:00.000-08:00

digg and helping

2011-01-29T14:13:00.000-08:00

This is a test because I'm messing around with Digg, which I can't for the life of me get to work. What I really want is to show you a picture from a birthing clinic in Haiti. I told Chuck I want to go there and help. I said probably if I really wanted to help I'd just get a second job and send the money, but that doesn't sound fun. Do I really want to help or not?

guns

2011-01-26T17:12:00.000-08:00

--has it really come to this, that it would be a huge uphill battle to ban something that has no purpose except to kill up to thirty-three people before anyone can stop you?

Katha Pollitt The Nation 1/31/2011

but then he killed himself

2010-12-14T06:52:00.000-08:00

"Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss."
~~Paul Celan

metaphor

2010-12-12T15:37:00.001-08:00

Are fears really fears or are they metaphors? Does everything have to stand for something it's not?

the unconscious mind reveals itself

2010-12-04T17:25:00.000-08:00

When I was eleven, I developed a phobia about being buried alive. Freud said that the fear of being buried alive is a distorted desire to return to the womb, but my friend Louise who was schitzophrenic said that obviously it’s the fear of being out of anyone’s reach and beyond their concern.

instead of candles

2010-11-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

Tonight we went to a vigil to show support for the Muslim community. It was a candlelight vigil, but I didn’t take a candle. I said to Chuck, candles make me feel weak, and he said he knew. Instead of candles, he said, it seemed like we should hold flares.

Mosque

2010-11-28T21:05:00.000-08:00

Last night someone set a fire in the mosque near my house. Just to show that we can target innocent people too, I guess.

Oregon in the winter

2010-11-27T10:57:00.000-08:00

My mother is in Hawaii and my kids are packing for Mexico. Here the winter sky is gray almost every day. It's gray and bleak and we live like people buried beneath plastic, like someone has stretched a plastic tarp over our heads and all we can do is wait for it to stop. My kids don’t mind the weather, but they are packing for Mexico. They are buying shorts and swim suits.

don't be a hater

2010-10-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

Today I was using the Google to look for an old friend named Amos Zook but instead found an account of that massacre of Amish school girls—remember? Little girls were lined up at their blackboard and executed by a man they knew, a man who delivered milk to their families. How could I have forgotten that? How could such a crime be absorbed and then set aside?

yes, I'm a hyprocrite.

2010-10-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

At the co-op today four people were talking about their droids, which are phones, in case you don’t know, and what their droids could do and their droids and their droids and their droids. I was getting peppercorns for Chicken Abodbo, which I’m going to make this afternoon, and I thought all people ever talk about is their stuff. They fill their conversations and their imaginations and thoughts with all the stuff they have and all the stuff they want. And then I walked away, passing a woman with one of those Haiku purses that I’ve wanted for so long, over a year now, ever since my friend Laurie got one and I thought, I wonder where I can find one are they online as soon as I get home I’m going to do a Google search.

leave the kids alone

2010-09-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

I was in a coffee shop today, reading a chapter about Camus, for my class. I was wondering how I missed the fact that The Plague is an allegory for Fascism, when I noticed a woman and her daughter getting their drinks from the counter. The little girl was 2 or 3 years old. What do you say? asked the mother.
thank you
They walked past me. What do you say?
excuse me
The mother saw a friend. What do you say?
Hello.
Turn around when you talk to someone.
Minutes later I heard the mother pointing out a woman and child crossing the street. They looked both ways. He held her hand. We always look both ways. We always hold hands.
And it seemed to me there was some slippery similarity between this well- meaning mother’s moment by moment intrusion into her daughter’s experience and the fascist denial of personal autonomy.

which is it?

2010-09-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

A grim rainy day, harbinger of winter, everyone quiet and morose. Maybe my kids would have a different impression of this day- I spent it in the library, but they were at a tailgating party.

not exactly Pinochet, but you know what I mean

2010-09-14T17:41:00.000-07:00

The photographs of Chileans celebrating in the streets after Allende was elected remind me a little of the pictures of people here, after Obama’s election night. For a moment, goodness triumphed. And then it changed again. And then it was worse, more stupid and more cruel, than anyone could have imagined.

and then she became a Communist

2010-09-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

At a reading at Eastern Oregon University, someone in the audience asked what books I read as a child, but I wouldn’t answer. I could only think: Gone with the Wind, three times, and how could I explain that? I read Gone with the Wind and I read, accidentally, what I think must have been Naked Lunch, which I found on my older sister’s book shelf.. I read The Group and then had to hide it from my friend Kathy Walsh, who wanted to read the sex part over and over again. I loved fairy tales. I read plays out loud, pretending I was an actress. I read about Bonnie and Clyde. I read a book by a priest who had left the church and Sr. Agatha told me she once knew a girl who thought she could read anything she wanted and she ended up becoming a Communist. During one particularly religious period, I read the Bible every night. I read trashy books and I read The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Scarlet Letter. I read Pearl Buck and I read comic books. I loved Archie and Veronica.

not a popularity contest

2010-09-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Today on the radio a woman from some book club organization talked about how important it is for writers to have a presence and to be good speakers. To be likable. Yikes!

Alma not representative of all Swedes

2010-08-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

A cool summer, but my heirloom Glaciers have been ripe for weeks. They are a Swedish tomato. I like to imagine someone gathering their tiny seeds and bringing them all the way here to grow in my little garden on 13th Street and to feed my family, who are part Swedish, too. Using Chuck's grandmother, Alma, as my representative Swede, I always assumed that they were relaxed, uncomplicated, easily- pleased people but after a summer of Bergman films, I’ve changed my mind.

And some are heroes

2010-08-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

When a woman risked her life to rescue Deogratias from a banana grove full of corpses during the genocide in Burundi, she told him Hutu or Tutsi didn't matter to her. I’m a mother, she said. That’s my ethnicity.

pretty old

2010-08-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a man was killed on the same road we took to the coast. Last night we passed by the place where it happened, and I thought of his family. Today I read an article about the accident. So sad, but at least he wasn't young, I told myself. He was pretty old. Oh, he was my age.

then I have to confess

2010-08-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe my last post was a little disingenuous, considering the fact that I’ve just finished writing a young adult novel.

why aren't you someone else?

2010-08-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

At a reading a man asked why I don’t write YA books and I said that I couldn’t because kids scrutinize you and I wasn’t up to it. Which was so phony. I had read that someplace. Really I didn’t know what to say. I was vaguely aware that he was being sarcastic, and told him the first thing that came to me. Why don't you write YA books? It was like being asked why don't you write westerns or why aren't you a poet. If you see what I mean.

Leeann

2010-05-24T22:01:00.000-07:00

When we were in 9^th grade Leeann and I wanted to run away from home, so we bought a car for $10. It didn’t have any tires and it was up on blocks in someone’s yard, out on the highway.

my Afro-American club membership

2010-05-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

I was in 5^th grade when our schools were integrated. I was in 9^th grade, when the black kids started an AfroAmerican club at our high school, Garrett High, in Charleston, SC. The adult sponsor of the club looked like Angela Davis. My friend Leeann and I went to the first meeting, two little white girls. When the other members elected us president and vice president of the club, I looked at Angela Davis’ face and realized that she thought this was a pretty shitty idea.

in a nutshell

2010-05-24T21:45:00.001-07:00

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Three pieces of mail yesterday: a statement about my loan for college, a notice reminding me that the State Farm check had bounced and a letter from AARP.

flowers from little girls

2010-05-09T21:13:00.000-07:00

The little girls next door are selling flowers and when a man in a red van responds to their calls by stopping, I slow down and note his license plate number, just in case, and one of their mothers comes outside to stand on the porch, pretending to have business there. I feel sorry for men and I feel sorry for mothers and for children and all of us, living in a world where a man can’t simply stop to buy a flower from a little girl.

14

2010-05-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

Sandy posted a picture on Facebook of me as a 14 year old. I wanted to go back and say no, don’t! I work in a public school, so I don't think I can be more specific than that. No, don’t do those things.

willy

2010-04-28T21:05:00.001-07:00

I picked up a copy of Willamette Week at a taco shop in Portland and what was my first thought when I saw Willy Vlautin on the cover? Was it way to go, Willy! Nope. Was it can’t wait to read your new book! Or Yay for the Willamette Week for promoting writing! No, no, no. I thought, I want to be on the cover of Willamette Week. I want the excerpt of my new novel in Willamette Week. I want it to be me. Wah, wah wah. Like a little baby. I hate this about myself.

getting mad

2010-04-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

I heard about this on The Thom Hartmann show this morning. It's from Rosie O'Donnell's blog (can that be right?)

We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, Now you get mad!?

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and
appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate
energy policy.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans...oh hell no.

__________________

homeless

2010-03-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

Today the homeless advocate visited our school. She said homelessness includes substandard housing which means we were homeless when we lived in the woods without a bathroom, closets, or electricity.I don't think that's right.

ruined by nuns

2010-02-28T21:26:00.000-08:00

Someone in the audience pointed out that I have a theme of shame in my novels. Do I? My readers are sometimes much more observant than me. Well. I do think shame and guilt are underrated. The nuns gave them a bad name.

and then the Mediterranean

2010-01-31T20:31:00.000-08:00

from last summer, 10 July
on the train
I was wrong to pay attention to Rick Bragg's disdain for wheels on suitcases.
new goals:
learn about: Lorca, Catalan cooking, the Spanish Civil War, the art of O'rsay. Study my Spanish.

Although I pretended not to, I was able to understand a man who followed me along the waterfront in Barcelona. What is your name? What is your name? Do you want to eat? Where are you from? And then either he said right now or he called me a whore. I couldn't tell.
Much graffiti in Barcelona. Old train. German boys, Asian girls, elderly black couple with French accents and large suitcases, English boy with headphones on. I wonder which train station blew up, and how people could do such a thing. Brick apartment buildings with balconies, big dry hills, small trees, a woman in an orange construction vest washing a big black dog, overcast sky- gray, black, and violet.

2009-08-14T08:26:00.001-07:00

I did begin to admire Picasso, after his museum in Paris. I could see that he was trying to show the inside of things, or even sometimes (it seemed to me) the nature of form itself. I hated the displays in The Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona though. Aside from one piece about Fascism and another inspired by Guy Dubord, they seemed purposefully obscure, self referential, pretentious. Hey, I'm an American--my ignorance does not prevent strong opinions.

tourist in Barcelona

2009-08-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

9 July
Fighting my way through The Rambla crowd (Lorca once said this was one street he wished would never end, but surely it was different during Lorca's time) to the subway, on my way to #1 must see tourist attraction: Goudi's Church of La Familia, when I turned back and found my way, finally, to this small cafe where I sit now, at a table by the window, drinking a glass of wine and listening to the other patrons talk. I do think there is something sweet about tourists, fascinated by places, examining maps, photographing each other next to beautiful buildings. I want to go home and be a tourist in Oregon, as George says Béatrice is, in Paris. Nonetheless, I truly cannot go to one more tourist attraction, no matter how attractive. Four people sit at the bar, young, European, mostly English, talking to the bartendar. They are quizzing each other in their knowledge of Catalan. Now talking about a bullfighter who was killed by a bull. Whether this was a good or bad thing, they disagree. Janis Joplin on the stereo.

not a very good tourist

2009-07-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

3 July, Paris

People have very small cars here, if they have a car at all. Late afternoon, men ride bicycles home, long loaves of bread tucked under their arms.

I have unsuccessfully tried to figure out if a machine near my hotel is a money machine or if it a ticket or a stamp machine.

Today I am going to the park, Parc' des Buttes, to read. I found a book in English, at a used bookstore down the block, although I'm not sure I've figured out the price.

I'm not a very good tourist. I don't like going to many places, only a few. I like sitting and feeling things.

Now I will try to buy that book, The Constant Gardener, by John Le Carré.

full of beauty

2009-07-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

2 July

You can walk around a corner in Paris and see an ancient Roman bathhouse, a gorgeous building or monument, a garden, a plaque that says Manet was born here.

I'm in the La Villotte neighbourhood. Parc' des Buttes Chaumont is nearby, with a cave and waterfalls. Our room is too small for the two us, but right now I'm downstairs in the garden where it is pretty and fresh. Four round tables, orange tableclothes, pink hydrangas, phlox. From here, I can see the windows of apartments and balconies. Birds land near my feet, eating crumbs the receptionist has thrown out. Rachel is afraid of birds, but I can't see why.

private property

2009-07-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

In England you can cut right through a farmer's field, or go right up someone's driveway to a path beyond it, and no one bats an eye.

Lewes

2009-07-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

24 June from Portland Airport

You'd think I was awaiting execution, instead of the dream trip of my life, for all the worrying I've done. My naturopath says that anxiety and feelings of dread are not necessarily normal, which is news to me.

28 June on the ferry between Newhaven and Dieppe
I guess I had imagined an open air boat, windy and crowded, huddling around cars, but the ferry across the English Channel is dignified, big, and comfortable. I'm sitting on what seems to be the 6th floor, by a window. I can see two boats in the distance. Two young English children sit behind me, with their boisterous voices and sweet British accents. When I feel braver, I'll get a cup of coffee.
I've been visiting friends in Lewes, England, former home of Thomas Paine, taking walks by the River Ouse with my friend Rachel and her dog. Rachel is the great granddaughter of Roger Fry, but when we went on a tour of the Bloomsbury Estate, she would not let me say it.

not irreplaceable

2009-07-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

12 June 2009

Yesterday was my last day of work at my school, after 13 years, which was more odd than sad. I will miss sitting in my rocking chair reading Bark, George; How Squirrel Got his Stripes; Pete, Smartypants at School; The Lorax; The Viper; The Greatest Power; Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears.

My hardest moment came when Robbie came to say goodbye. See you next year! he said and I lied. See you! I've had him since Head Start. Mother gone and father in jail. He learned to read sitting on the floor with me, sounding out words. Hi, Fly Guy; A Friend for Dragon; Nate the Great. The thing is: we are not irreplaceable. Someone else will have these feelings and do these things. That is both the good part and the sad part of it.

Billy Hults

2009-06-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

My friend Billy died on Friday. He was a rascal. He was wild and irreverent and generous and funny. I'll miss him.

my question about the Iranian election

2009-06-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

Today BBC had a program discussing Iran's election. I sent this question and they read it on the air..........

How can we have a discussion about the stolen election in Iran without mentioning the two stolen elections in the US? The primary difference seems to be that the Iranian people are more serious about democracy than we Americans.

the day I fell in love and lost all hope of earning a living wage

2009-06-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

I hardly knew Chuck when he came to the bar where I worked years ago 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. More broadly, he argues against experts mediating and defining our experience.
Chuck says that if he had his way no employer would be able to discriminate based on educational background.

chekhov and twitter

2009-06-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

I signed up for Twitter once, and, although I never got past creating an account, I get messages that people are following me on it. Really? I think Chekhov, if he were alive, might be a Twitter fan.
"I have developed a mania for brevity. No matter what I read —my own or others' writing—everything strikes me as too long." ~Anton Chekhov

the self-absorbed traveler

2009-06-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that there is, after all, something more self-absorbed than a writer with a newly published book, and that is me, getting ready for a trip.

end of the school year librarian question

2009-06-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

How can the kids figure out how to take care of the world we're leaving them if they can't take care of their dang library books? This is one of the philosophical questions I wrestle with.

Watching Rhonda Honey

2009-04-17T22:23:00.000-07:00

My agent asked me to write a summary of my new novel and here it is:

Watching Rhonda Honey is about a woman who, as a foster child, saw her hopes of becoming part of a family crushed by her would-be sister’s lies. Years later, an accidental encounter offers her a chance for revenge, but only if she’s willing to risk her own chance for love. It's a psychological novel and love story.

true for me, too

2009-04-09T16:07:00.000-07:00

Yolanda forgot to return her library books, so she couldn't check out the one on polar bears. "I'm sorry," I called after her. Her friend, turned to me. "Don't worry. In a minute she'll start thinking of something else and then she'll be happy again."

on the other hand

2009-03-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

Cold and rainy, cold and rainy.
But in my front yard the plum tree blooms.

Pabla and the agate

2009-03-17T20:29:00.000-07:00

Someone objected to my statement that I have been fired, when really I'm only being moved out of my school and into a different one. Okay, fine. I am overly dramatic.

I am sad about leaving the school where I've worked for 13 years. Today ten year old Pabla gave me an agate and a note that said, Happy St. Patrick's Day, and then she skipped away with her long black braid flying out behind her. I remember when her big sister was a baby. I knew her family before she was born. Her big brother loved my dinosaur books.

schools

2009-03-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

Chuck says I can't blog about sex or drugs, even if it's from thirty year old material, because I work at a school and they'll fire me. I'm not sure that's true.

diary 1980 vegetarian in Antigua

2009-03-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

In 1980 Chuck went to Antigua to help members of the Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement set up a printing press, after the right wing government destroyed the one they were using. We were in Antigua for three months.

February 1980

Antigua

Saturday is market day and the day we go to JP Market, crowded with people from the countryside. In some of the towns men will set up a table to sell a newly slaughtered cow or pig by the side of the road. On the tables are piles of red flesh. chop chop chop goes the cleaver. The intestines are hung in a string from a nearby tree. Last Saturday the pig's head sat on the table, its ears sticking out.

1980 Seashell Beach

2009-03-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

January 28, 1980

(from St. Barts)

The beach is an ideal setting for lsd: restful and rhythmic and safe. Blue water white sand. We played in the water nearly all day turning red in the Caribbean sun. Our friend from Dominica, Mantoo, came by to visit. Annalise from Vermont and Leif from Sweden stopped to talk. The French children have gym class yards from our tent. We explore sea life and social life in the cosmopolitan setting that is our living room.

diary 1980

2009-03-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

Today I found a book I created for Chuck, using excerpts from diaries I've written over the years.

August 10, 1980

Dear Diary,

Why am I compelled to keep journals and write compulsively about myself?

what happens when you have a small house

2009-02-22T21:41:00.000-08:00

I'm at a coffee house here in Corvallis, writing, because my house is 750 square feet and Chuck is home. I am trying to write a chapter in which my character, Tree, foreshadows the arrival of Jimmy while she and Mavis drink coffee (hey, where did I get that idea?) beside the Salmon Street water fountain in Portland, but mostly I am spying on other customers. Not that they are that interesting, but I can't help it.

suzy joins the sex club

2009-02-16T20:46:00.000-08:00

The Sun magazine just published an anthology, The Mysterious Life of the Heart, and one of my stories is in it. My story is called Suzy Joins the Sex Club, written before I realized that sometimes people actually read what I write.

bourgeois rule about money

2009-02-14T19:51:00.000-08:00

You're not supposed to say how much money you make, but why not? The bosses don't want us to know. The people with the big paychecks don't want us to know. It is some kind of bourgeois rule. My new insurance premiums kicked in and my last paycheck was $527. For one month, 30 hours a week. Less than $5 an hour. I work in a school library, as an "assistant," although, functionally, I'm the librarian. Yikes!

Aid Worker Diary

2009-01-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7802295.stm

Gaza on a Sunday

2009-01-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

I'm writing the end of a Young Adut novel, a ghost/mystery/Tarot story. A break from my regular writing. Fun! I'm sitting on my red couch in front of a big window. Every now and then, I google Gaza, to try to find out what's happening.

Musee des Beaux Arts

~W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

from Gaza

2009-01-03T14:17:00.000-08:00

http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com

the deadline

2009-01-01T20:35:00.001-08:00

I decide that I want my protagonist's wrapping paper to be designed with some detail from the Fool card in the Tarot. I google Fool card and get an image of the card. I mess around with the image, trying to make the little circles on the fool's shirt bigger. They would make a good design for wrapping paper: circles, with something inside them. But what is inside them? Are those stars? I decide maybe Wikipedia will tell me if they are stars.
But when I google Wikipedia, I see an article saying that the Wikipedia guy's appeal for money has worked. Wikipedia has been raking in donations. I read the reader's comments about the donation article. I get pissed off because some asshole complains about Wikipedia's entry concerning global warming. I start to get my debit card out to make a donation. Wait! First I should write a comment, telling the guy to stop being a jerk. Oh, a lot of people have already done that for me. I read through their comments. Most them agree. Shut up. Wikipedia is cool. We love it. Our kids love it.

Stop! I'm on a deadline. The first draft of the novel needs to be finished by Monday. Four days. My protagonist is still standing in the doorway with her present. I think they are little stars, little stars set inside circles. Just make the wrapping paper yellow and get on with it.

But first I want to go blog about all the things that pull at us, when really we just want to write a little scene.

easy to be mean

2008-12-31T15:39:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Anne Lamott's book about grace. I've resisted reading her books because everyone I know says they are great and I will love them, and I hate people telling me what I will love. I finished it last night and went to Good Reads to write a little review, now that I am such a big Anne Lamott fan and want to be her best friend, and I was stunned by the shitty reviews people gave her book. Shitty and mean spirited. Yes, it is much easier to be clever and funny when you are being mean. This is not fair, but it is true. It's something we need to understand and to resist.

I was tempted to begin a new blog which would consist only of the most ignorant online book reviews I can find— but I already have one website and THREE blogs (this blog, a library lesson plan blog, and a pit bull blog.) I'm like the character in The Golden Notebook who keeps many notebooks, one for each aspect of herself, until finally she combines all the notebooks into one, the golden notebook, and that means she's integrated. I'm not going to combine my library and dog blogs with this one, but I will include this Good Reads review (by Robin) of Catcher in the Rye.

"Is there a theme to this book at all? Is there any point to the story?"

For crying out loud! (My editorial comment.)

Jane Eyre

2008-12-24T06:28:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Jane Eyre. The version illustrated by Dame Darcy. Yes, I have lived all my life and somehow never read Jane Eyre before now. This is what I thought: What a modern character! What contemporary concerns! (except for the part about not being able to divorce the wife, which was hard to fathom) What complex and intelligent writing! My next thought: Are we becoming dumber?

Also, regarding Dame Darcy's occasional illustrations—just a few days ago, Chuck was telling me that books will be replaced by Kindles before we know it. I showed him this book to prove, if he needed proof, that, aside from their function, books are wonderful in their physicality. If that's a word.

Blanca

2008-12-07T20:29:00.000-08:00

Blanca has come to the library almost every morning this week asking for me to give her tag board from the supply room. She is in 3rd grade. Her teacher is new and she must not realize we aren't supposed to give a child tag board every day, but I don't care. Blanca is a girl who always knows what she is doing. One day she needed it for picture she wanted to draw. The second day it was Saul's birthday and she wanted to make a birthday card. On the third day, she asked me if I had heard about the woman at Winco who got arrested because she didn't have her papers. Blanca needed tag board to make a sign. I asked what she was going to write on her sign, and she said, Stop discrimination, or something like that.

close but not quite

2008-11-25T19:51:00.001-08:00

Today in the library, a 3rd grade boy named Brock Green was having an argument with some of the other boys. He was saying that Barrack Obama's name is Brock Obama, but the other boys were saying, No.

drown them in a bathtub

2008-11-16T11:26:00.000-08:00

We are happy, happy, happy about Obama. We can hardly believe it's true. We are not used to an election that allows our side to win. Are those neo-cons small enough yet to be drowned in a bathtub?

my swarthy ethnic niece

2008-11-10T18:17:00.000-08:00

My niece showed me a blog in which someone accuses her of being a "Swarthy Ethnic." She is pretending to be white, the blogger says. He includes the photograph above, my niece in an ad for Powell's Books, saying, "Note above, at first you see the long blond tresses and think Swedish Girl! Nope! look closer, she is olive skinned, brown-eyed and belongs to the new group of Fake Blonds. It is not an accident Powell's has a hispanic or polynesian with fake blond hair on the front page. I find it interesting that as White people are shut out by the Media and Corporate American, the Swarthy Ethnics have co-opted our exclusive hair color of blond."

Brother! My niece is a blue-eyed pale-skinned German/Irish and, yes, Swedish girl. Although, really: so what?

perfect: the enemy of the good

2008-10-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

I got this in my email today, from the "no war" listserv, "Granted, Obama has far more charisma- but so did Ted Bundy! Oregon is a true-blue state, therefore safe to vote your ideals. Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader are both on the ballot."

As if my ideals are ego-mania and self-defeating political correctness.

why do we know more than those guys?

2008-10-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

Greenspan said he is shocked by the current financial crisis. Hey, Chuck predicted it a few years ago. What's up with that?

PS We also knew there were no weapons of mass destruction.

humanizing evil

2008-10-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

We went to see W. Okay, so I don't buy all the Oedipal stuff and, yes, Thom Hartmann, they left out the stolen election part, but a great movie anyway, in my humble opinion. Thank you again, Oliver Stone.

literary merit

2008-10-11T19:58:00.000-07:00

I’m reading the five Oregon Book Award nominees before the winner is announced next month. The books are judged according to “literary merit.” That is the sole criteria. But what does it mean? Which has more literary merit: a book with finely crafted sentences, rich sensual detail, carefully drawn characters---or a more simply told story with a strong narrative thrust, a compelling voice, characters, who despite being sparsely drawn, are complete and full? I don't see how anyone can tell.

do a google search

2008-10-10T17:39:00.000-07:00

I've been watching newscasts of McCain rallies. People are saying that Obama is a terrorist. Whatever that means. He is Muslim. He is an Arab. Who are these people? Don't they know how to find information? Don't they know how to do a Google search?

Britney Spears of politics

2008-09-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

My daughter says that Palin is the Britney Spears of politics, the train wreck that people can't stop watching.

might as well be a Moonie

2008-09-09T17:20:00.000-07:00

Last week I ate lunch in the staff room with the teachers, and one of them said she just loved the way Sarah Palin’s eyes sparkled. They are torturing people. They are holding innocent people in solitary confinement for years at a time, driving them mad. Tell me you are a Republican and you might as well say you are Pinochet. You might as well be a Moonie, as far as I’m concerned.

not the Mormon girls' fault

2008-09-09T16:57:00.000-07:00

I could hardly look at the Mormon girls, when they came to my door on their Mission. I know they will vote for John McCain because, even if he ditched his wife for a younger model, had an affair with a beer heiress, and another affair with a lobbyist, he is the Christian vote, the moral, family values vote, and that’s what they want, these earnest girls at my door with the Book of Mormon in their hands. I know it’s not right to blame them for 100,000 Iraqis dead, for water boarding, for the end of our democracy, the destruction of our natural world, the extinction of polar bears, wolves being shot from helicopters, people abandoned and dead in New Orleans, thousands of dead American soldiers, the wedding party massacres in Afghanistan and all the rest of it. My daughter says it’s not their fault.

Sarah Palin

2008-09-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

McCain during Katrina

2008-08-31T14:21:00.001-07:00

don't let him fool you now.

hand wringing at CNN

2008-08-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

FOX is in charge of filming the Democratic Convention, and so you can understand why there are an inordinate number of shots of people yawning, not paying attention, or looking just plain silly. That's what we expect from FOX. But what's the deal wtih CNN? It seems to be an endless stream of criticism, whining and hand wringing. Every time I turn it on, I hear that someone hasn't hit it out of the park, Hillary's people aren't happy, the Democrats seem too liberal, the Democrats have missed an opportunity, yes the governor of VA balanced his budget but he raised taxes, yes Hillary gave a great speech about unity but maybe that means she should have been the candidate, etc. For this I got cable? Geesh.

If you want to complain write to http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form6a.html?3
It's the CNN address to use for reporting errors. I guess that includes judgement errors.

counting on the unconscious

2008-07-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a new novel and struggling to get everyone where I want them by the time I get to the end of the book. I'm hoping that if I just set everything in motion some unconscious part of my brain will take care of the rest.

obscene

2008-07-28T20:19:00.001-07:00

Why did Janet Jackson's breast create an uproar, while at the same time she was surrounded by dancers simulating sex and nobody mentioned that?

a respectable job

2008-07-09T17:04:00.000-07:00

When I get credit cards offers in the mail, I return the application form in its prepaid return envelope with a note to the employee who opens the mail: Watch the movie, Maxed Out, and get yourself a respectable job.
Chuck calls credit cards "time bombs, waiting for us to screw up."

apologists for torture

2008-06-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

While I wait for the last season of The Wire to make it to dvd, I've been watching The Shield. Yesterday I told Chuck that I can't figure out if it's a reactionary program, designed to illustrate the efficacy of torture--- show after show, the cops get to the big bad guys by torturing the little bad guys until they tell what they know (and we are glad they're doing it)--- or if the theme is anti-torture, because, when you think about it, the cops who torture (Vic, mostly) lose everything. They lose their families, their jobs are in danger, they lose their friendships and their self respect. So which is it? A rationalization for forture or anti-torture?
Chuck said that the guys who design programs understand how to appeal to both sides of the spectrum. We watch the show and read into it whatever we already believe. And he said anyway any program that works from the perspective of authority, particularly police authority, especially when applied to oppressed people, cities or landscapes is reactionary. So there you go.

Bill gives a speech at our school

2008-05-29T20:34:00.000-07:00

Clinton was late. We stood waiting for him in the school gym for over two hours, and then he showed up and decided to give his speech outside instead. We had been in the front, adults and kids, hot and crowded, waiting all that time. The custodian had spent the day scrubbing the gym. It was decorated with signs the kids made and, of course, set up with a podium and flag draped curtains and the whole nine yards. Clinton decided to be spontaneous and ditched it. Meanwhile the disabled people who had been seated carefully, close to the stage, were thrown in with the rest of the crowd, hobbling, some of them confused and frightened. It was very chaotic. It was just like everything that happens at my school, which seriously calls into question the feng shui of the place, if you ask me. I was too annoyed to be charmed by Bill. When I found myself joining the teenage heckler shouting OBAMA, I knew it was time for me to leave.

buried treasure part worked

2008-05-29T20:24:00.001-07:00

One of my library volunteers told me today that she read my blog about the library walls. Did I really write about such a stupid thing? I thought. I do have a rule, which I follow carefully: never blog when drinking. Should I also have a rule about blogging when I'm mad at my boss? I do like the part about buried treasure though.

x marks the spot

2008-05-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

My boss is building walls in the library. I will only say this: many things need doing right now at our school and building a windowless room in our beautiful, open library is not one of them. We're having a fight. A fight that I, because of my subordinate position, am doomed to lose.
The builders have come and put xs on the floor to show where the walls will be built. Look, a 6 year old named Carlos said to his friend, touching an x with the tip of his shoe, this is where the treasure is.

obliterate them

2008-05-01T20:49:00.001-07:00

I got an email from Gloria Steinham telling me that, as a feminist, I should vote for Clinton. The other day Clinton said that if Iran harmed Israel, and she was president, she'd obliterate them. What's feminist about that?

library helpers

2008-04-30T22:10:00.000-07:00

Alberto and Juanita were my helpers today which means they stamp the due date in the book. One hands the other the book and the other stamps. They seemed to be playing store. Thank you for shopping at Lincoln Library, they said each time they handed a book to a child. They took all the bookmarks and created a display on the counter so each kid could choose the one they wanted: the dog one, the cat one, the Garfield- in Spanish- telling- you -to read one.

a school librarian thinks about Earth Day

2008-04-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

How can the kids figure out how to take care of the world we're leaving them if they can't take care of their dang library books? This is one of the philosophical questions I wrestle with. Eventually I work my way into a big guilt trip for kids who lose or destroy books, but when they are little, when they are five years old, I go easy.

internalizing repression

2008-04-12T20:21:00.000-07:00

Today I posted the first page of my new manuscript, Watching Rhonda Honey, on my website. The first page is about being raised Catholic. I'm glad I was raised Catholic, let me say that right now. It did three things that I like. It made me psychologically complicated, which is useful for a writer. It gave me a sense of shame, which is not a bad thing, I realize now as I've gotten older. And, best of all, the Catholic church taught me that, when you strip everything else away, at heart it's all a big mystery.
Along with the first page of the novel, I posted a photograph I took in a Catholic Church in Mexico. It's a picture of Jesus' bloody, nailed feet. I think it's a sign of the repressive times we live in, and the way in which we've internalized that repression, that I hesitated: would someone be offended? Was it in bad taste? Was I being disrespectful? ---I hesitated, even though I knew that it it was right image, that if I could take a picture of what it felt like to be a little Catholic girl, it would be that picture.

Trying Not to Preach

2008-04-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

April is Poetry Month so yesterday I read poems to the third graders: Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams. I read the Red Wheel Barrow poem and I read the beginning of Sharon Creech's novel, Love That Dog, about a boy who is forced to read the wheel barrow poem. Sometimes I look at the kids, sitting on the floor around me, and I think of the world we are giving them-- how can it not break your heart? So much depends on a red wheel barrow and so much depends on them. I shut the book and talked about poetry and the importance of words. I told them that maybe, because we have so many books, it's easy to forget that they are important. I talked about the fact that it used to be illegal to teach slaves to read, and that's because reading makes us powerful. I talked about a country (the old Soviet Union) where, when a new book of poetry came out, people stood in lines that reached down the block to get a copy. I told them that there a country where, when a poet published a new book of poems, the government had an emergency meeting, in order to decide what to do about it. That poet was Marmoud Darwish. Usually I try not to preach to the kids. Much of the time, I read them funny books—they especially like Dav Pilkey and Jon Scieszka— but sometimes I can't help myself.
I was glad to see that when it was time to check out books, some of them chose poetry.

Three Cups of Tea

2008-04-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

When it was first published a couple years ago, I heard David Oliver Relin talk about his book, Three Cups of Tea. Three Cups of Tea, if somehow you haven't heard, is the true story of David and his friend, Greg Mortenson, building schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I thought it was the kind of important book that gets overlooked, that falls to the wayside, that publishers don't think to promote, that reviewers ignore, that stores don't stock. I thought I'd never hear another word about it. Was I ever wrong. Yesterday it hit #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list. Congratulations, David Oliver Relin.

willing to feel sad

2008-03-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that people who are giving their private online reviews of books (everybody is a reviewer now) will often give a bad review because the book made them feel sad. The book was a bummer. So it's a bad book. geesh.

eavesdropping on 5th graders

2008-02-29T20:28:00.000-08:00

We never get to read. We only get to talk about reading.

~Kristi, age 10