tourist in Barcelona

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pabla and the agate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaza on a Sunday

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

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

the deadline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McCain during Katrina

don't let him fool you now.

hand wringing at CNN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~Kristi, age 10

Coetzee and being American

"A few days ago I heard a performance of the Sibelius fifth symphony. As the closing bars approached, I experienced exactly the large, swelling emotion that the music was written to elicit. What would it have been like, I wondered, to be a Finn in the audience at the first performance of the symphony in Helsinki nearly a century ago, and feel that swell overtake one? The answer: one would have felt proud, proud that one of us could put together such sounds, proud that out of nothing we human beings can make such stuff. Contrast with that one´s feelings of shame that we, our people, have made Guantanamo. Musical creation on the one hand, a machine for inflicting pain and humiliation on the other: the best and the worst that human beings are capable of."
J.M. Coetzee: Diary of a Bad Year (2007).