Day 2

springsong
april 2, 2009

raindrops dance
on the tip of my tongue

scraps of music cling
to the heel of my shoe

flecks of grey sing
in your eyes’ blue skies

and the Conductor hides
in the whistling breeze

Here We Go Again

An Old Record Drives Me to Work
April 1, 2009

It’s been a decade,
maybe more,
since this tombstone shadow
stepped across my path,
but I still know
every lick,
every groove,
every riff and jive
as surely as I know
this long, gray
drive to work.

These pinched blue notes
tickle my fingertips,
itchy against the
steering wheel,
and coil themselves
deep in the bayous
of abandoned synapses –

Suddenly I am sixteen again,
lovesick, forlorn,
and dreaming of
an open road.

When I'm not furious with her, I am endlessly charmed and amazed by my daughter. Does that continue always, I wonder? Or are teenagers never charming?

Anyway, we had a blank board book and a baby shower coming up so Wrigley wrote and illustrated this book. Baby Springer almost missed out. Ed really didn't want to part with this book, but I told him I'd photograph it for him.

Seasonality

A couple of years ago when I did Project 364, I discovered that taking a picture a day really does improve my photography immensely. It also means I get a nifty little record of simple happenings in our lives. Last year I loved being able to go back to the photo from the same day of the previous year and see what was goin' on. The project also exhausted me. While I can click away like mad and take 150 photos in 1/2 an hour (you don't think those where-is-the-natural-light-horseback photos were obtained in just 6 clicks do you? oh no. 150), I do not enjoy sorting and processing the photos (just about all the photos get the at least the gray digital haze washed away in photoshop. My interest in photoshop is limited, so I don't actually do a whole lot, but still, it is an immense time drain). Last year I practically only took photos when we left the house to do something interesting (camping, hiking, beaching, mostly). Then it might take me months to put any pictures up on flickr. I was tired. And the backlog of material was dispiriting enough that I left the camera home a lot.

But, last month, I finally cleared out all the photos in my pending file. My camera felt light and free again (it actually isn't light at all. It weighs just shy of a ton). So I'm taking pictures. I plan to go again for a photo day, but this time in shorter bursts, 4 weeks each season. It might turn out that I have something to say about each one.



So check in every few days and see how our season is going.
Seasons each in 28 days (Click each photo to see it larger and for my narration)
Main Flickr page, because I'll be taking my camera everywhere and you wouldn't want to miss shots of the grocery store.

2008 Book Recommendations

I read 55 books last year (including 2 I abandoned. Life is too short to stick with books that aren’t engaging). 4 of these were classics, 4 non-fiction, 22 young adult, and 4 kid lit (that I didn’t read aloud).

The notes below are notes from right now. Notes from when I read the book and the rest of the books I read this year are all at Good Reads. The links below are clickable.

The 5 Stars:

Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories Strout, Elizabeth – This is my big recommendation. Excellent excellent character development, and I have never before so much loved reading such a disagreeable character. Three cheers for fantastic writing.

The Hearts of Horses Gloss, Molly, More excellent writing here. Molly Gloss is an Oregon writing who Ed and I both quickly snatch up as soon as she puts out a new book. I must admit I hate the title. Don’t let that stop you from reading this one.

The Pesthouse Crace, Jim – I have a soft spot in my heart for apocalyptic novels and it seems I read a bunch of them this year, but The Pesthouse stands out. I liked it better than The Road which I also read this year and I also liked.

Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal Peet, Mal Tamar

is categorized as Young Adult, but I don’t know that it belongs there. The narrative is setup as a teenager on a quest or a bit of a wild goose chase for details regarding her grandparents' histories in WWII. Chapters alternate between a page turning WWII Dutch spy story and the modern day unfolding of the consequences of that spy story. Well put together.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret Selznick, Brian. Kid-Lit. This story won some awards, and also received some serious criticism for being a little thin on substance. Okay, maybe it was a bit thin, but it is a heck of a good tale laid out in narrative and pictures in a way I’ve never experienced before.

Some 4 Stars:

The House at Sugar Beach: A Memoir Cooper, Helene –African memoir. Cooper comes to some great conclusions about her privileged (for a time at least) childhood. And it is now fun coming across her byline in the NY Times every so often.

The Sparrow Russell, Mary Doria – Science Fiction isn’t exactly my thing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like some of it. This is fantastic and thoughtful. I also read the sequel, which is also pretty good.

The Senator's Wife Miller, Sue I don’t remember the Senator’s Wife’s name, but I liked her.

Astrid and Veronika (Let me sing you gentle songs) Olsson, Linda - The tales of two women who shut themselves away from society and find friendship in each other. (okay, sounds a little lame, but it’s good).

Cowboy: The Legend of Colton H. Bryant Fuller, Alexandra –(non-fiction) As it turns out I love Fuller’s writing. Here is a story about a guy I would normally have zero interest in, and her attention to his life and what happens to him makes for a great book. Ed had some quibbles with this guy as a sympathetic character, and I guess he’s right, but it’s still a great story.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia Gilbert, Elizabeth – (non-fiction) I know lots of people who read this book and usually thay all hate a section, but love the rest of the book. They all hate different sections, mind you, so I guess it is a book with something for everyone.

Blankets Thompson, Craig – On the recommendation of a friend of one of Ed’s coworkers, I decided to dip a toe into a new genre - graphic novels. This was pretty good, but I haven’t pick up any more. I am now able to understand, though, what people are talking about when they discuss graphic novels and how they tell a story differently than other books. If you have any interest in checking out graphic novels here seems to be a good place to start.

Young Adult:

Sweethearts Zarr, Sara Here is a case where I read an author’s first book and I say to myself, hey, that was pretty good, I’ll bet the next one is even better. This is an excellent 2^nd book.

Chains Anderson, Laurie Halse – This just won an award for YA historical fiction. A far more accessible, female version of Octavian Nothing. Both are New England revolutionary slave fiction. They center on the oxymoron that all men are created equal except for black people. Very good.

Paper Towns Green, John

While the central female teenage character is a bit of a cliché, Green has interesting things to say about shallow lives. Also, the book begins and ends with great road trips.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Alexie, Sherman Won last year’s Printz Award (? I can’t remember which awards, and I’m not going to look it up). Excellent and funny and hard all at the some time.

Ghost Boy Lawrence, Iain – What happens when an ostracized albino teenager in the 1950’s joins a failing circus. By the way, he doesn’t join as a freak show feature.

1.20.09

... whew ...

Canned Food You Can Believe In

This morning, our family went out and about in southeast Portland, gathering cans for the Oregon Food Bank. This was not my idea. Or Christie's. Or Wrig's. We were invited by our neighbor who organized an Obama Service Event in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

So we served.



First, let me give you the narrative: The sun shone brightly - as it ought to on a day of national service - but it was nasty cold; we are in the midst of our annual two week stretch of bitter east wind. We gathered at a local elementary school with about 125 adults and kids, where we heard poetry and mumbled through a couple of folk songs. We bumped into our friends Abigail, Asher, and Ezra, and their friends Sara and Isaac. After we apologized for bumping into them, we joined forces, grit our teeth against the wind, and started knocking on doors.



It felt very much like a daytime version of Trick or Treat. The kids raced ahead, banging on doors, waiting a fraction of a second for people to not answer, then racing on ahead again. Lots of people weren't home (vacation? brunch? gathering cans for the food bank?) but we managed to gather two full bags of food (in addition to the bag of broth and beans we brought with us). The kids did the lion's share of the work. As soon as the door would open, Asher would shout out "Give us food!" Wrig, in her calm, quiet way, would say "We're ... um ... gathering cans for ... the Oregon Food Bank" and Asher would then chip in "So that the whole city can have food!" They were very persuasive and we received far more donations than rejections.



I'm trying to wrap my brain around the fact that my kid, who has trouble looking my colleagues in the eye when they say hello to her, fearlessly solicited two bags of groceries from total strangers. Go figure.






By the end of the day, the group of 125 or so adults and kids collected 125 or so bags of food. We filled a Subaru (of course) and a big ol' gas guzzling suburban with groceries. Not bad for a couple of hours work.



My parents - who constitute roughly 33% of the readership of this blog - have doubts about our newly elected fearless leader. Me too. I can only think of one elected official I've ever trusted (and she constitutes another 33% of our readership), but unlike Clinton - who only asked to feel my pain - and Bush - who asked me to go shopping - Obama has asked me to do better. My students, who are currently revising essays about society's obligation to the poor, have asked me to do better.



So today we served.

Some Sunshine

The sun has been showing it's face every afternoon all week. It is refreshing. I weeded earlier this week, and I've decided to plant some beets and carrots this weekend. My Gardening by the Moon Calendar tells me it is a good weekend to plant things that we grow for their roots. One can always hope that we packed all of winter into two weeks in December, and it'll be spring like from here on out. I like the gardening by the moon, because it gives me a to do date for my gardening. I utterly fail to have any clue about the theory, nor do I manage to follow up with fertilizing and other plant care except for mostly consistent watering, but my garden and I get along just fine.

We've been getting a few more visitors than usual after the YIR letter, and this year we didn't include the link for my Flickr site where most of the updating action really is, so here the link is. Christie's photographs.