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).

touring in N.Bend

Last week I gave readings, along with other Oregon Book Award winner/nominees, in N Bend and Eugene. The picture above was taken in N. Bend: Ben Saunders, Paul Merchant, myself and Shannon Riggs. The tour was fun. (As fun as something like that can be for an agorophobic like me.) The best part was the other authors and their wives and Susan Denning, who arranged everything.
ps support the arts: buy their books

Today a woman told me that she had borrowed my second novel, Twenty Questions, from the library. She decided to read it on the recommendation of a friend who said it was a "good, light read." Yikes. Oh, thank you, I said.

concerned 4th grader

Feb. 24, 2001
Louise McDonald left a Jehovah Witness pamphlet on my desk today. "For Alison," it said.

ps Of course her name is not really Louise McDonald, don't worry.

Yes, it was sad all right.

I was reading the preschoolers a book called My Dog, Toby when 4 year old Brennan interrupted to say that he had a dog one time but his father threw it out the back door and it died. He said, "That was sad, huh."


ps I don't write about kids who are in my school now. The stories I use when I write about my school are from journals I've kept over the years.

no witches, but food

We went to a town near the volcano called Fuego, which means fire. People say that there are witches in the town. We didn't find any, but we did find a good restaurant.

who would have guessed

I thought I couldn't write here. I thought maybe my writing required a cynical state of mind and I can't feel cynical here, on the Jalisco Coast of Mexico, but today I wrote three pages of my novel, Finding Rhonda Honey.
Last night we went to a drag show here in this little town. The guy from the taco stand was a beautiful woman. Who would have guessed. People brought their children and the kids danced, too.

not a secret

I'm on the Jalisco coast, in a town called La Manzanilla. I used to keep the name a secret, but the town isn't a secret really, so there it is. La Manzanilla.
It's December and I am wearing my flip flops. If I look up, I can see the ocean.

cult following

Denis Johnson's new book, Tree of Smoke, was chosen for the National Book Award. I've been a Denis Johnson fan for years—my friend Laurie knows his sister-in-law and promotes her parties by claiming that he just might show up. I find it hopeful that someone like him, with a cult following but not, from what I can tell, a lot of success otherwise, could be recognized with a National Book Award. My editor told me once that I have a cult following, but they seem to buy one book and pass it around.
If anybody knows Denis Johnson, tell him to go to Laurie's next party, would you.

the unbearable lightness of being

Today I heard on the radio that the people in Burma were happy when, during the recent demonstrations, films were made and broadcast for the world to see. Unfortunately the world saw and very little has happened. And now the junta is using those films, checking them frame by frame, to hunt down protesters.

Avoiding the Appearance of Shameless Self Promotion

Okay, my sister says: what the hell does that mean, left edge suzy? She's from Texas and they are very literal. Also, this is how she said it: wut the hail duz thet me-un?
And here is the answer: I don't want to give the blog my own name because that seems narcissistic, but maybe personal blogs are inherently narcissistic and who am I fooling?
I named it left edge because I live in Oregon and Oregon is the left edge of the map. There used to be, by the way, a great newspaper put out by Billy Hults in Cannon Beach, Oregon, called The Upper Left Edge, but I didn't copy him.
Suzy is the name of the character in the first short story I ever wrote, Suzy Joins the Sex Club. Even though I think Suzy is dead wrong about feelings being the most important thing in the world, I do admire her honest passion and I like her name.

Wordstock, competiton and Margaret Atwood

This past weekend, I taught a writing workshop for teachers and gave a reading at Portland's annual book festival, Wordstock—a big, noisy, raucous event. I was lucky to be chosen to read with Cai Emmons from Eugene.
I've been thinking lately about competition. I've been thinking that the worst thing for me, creatively, is when I set myself up next to others, when I scrutinize myself and second guess my writing, when I begin to wonder, who is better. As if that's ever the point.
Years ago at a workshop Ken Babbs said that we should never begrudge another writer's talent or success. Every piece of good writing, and every acknowledgment of it, is a success for each of us.
I'm reading Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride. I heard her read and lecture thirty years ago and for some reason the only thing I can remember is that she talked about pornography. She described a horrific pornographic photograph and ever afterwards, sorry Margaret, I have not been able to unlink that image from your name. Babbs gets his bit of wisdom, but you get rats in the vagina. Not fair, but that's memory for you. I have two thoughts when I read someone as good at Atwood:
1. I can never be this good
2. look what the written word can do

not our fault

Today I heard an NPR report about US troops shooting and then bombing a group of Iraqis, killing 27 people. They blew up houses. They flew over, shooting people as they ran or cowered behind walls. It turns out that it was all a mistake, although they didn't call it a mistake. It was due to faulty intelligence, but it was a “good shoot,” according to a commanding officer. Well, that’s a relief anyway.