Express Yourself: a Literary Luncheon

When I first saw this week's Express Yourself topic was "What Author Would You Like to Have Lunch With?" my initial thought was that I would have to hold the meal on Día de Muertos, since almost all the writers I admire, even the ones who lived into my own lifetime, have all died; including Joseph Campbell, J R R Tolkien, Rex Stout, Ray Harryhausen, Arthur C Clarke, Robert Bolt, Ngaio Marsh, Robert Graves, Seamus Heaney, and more.

But there are two writers who are alive, whom I admire greatly, who are still alive, still writing, still in fact relatively early on in their careers, who have given many hours of entertainment to both my children and myself, and provided us with rich fantasy worlds to enjoy together. So I would have my luncheon party with J. K. Rowling and Rick Riordan. 

Most people know Ms Rowling's story and the Harry Potter saga, so I won't repeat it all here, just suffice to say from everything I have read she is just the sort of person you hope would become a millionaire authoress and I'd love to have her to tea. Like every other Harry Potter fan, there are a few unresolved questions I would like to ask.

People may not be as familiar with Rick Riordan so I'll briefly restate: Mr Riordan was a junior high school teacher, and also the father of two boys, one of whom has dyslexia and struggled with reading and with schoolwork. One thing he did love was mythology, so his father started telling him tales of modern demigods living in our world, who were possessed of powers that reflected their divine parentage, but with disadvantages. Two of these disadvantages are that demigods are dyslexic because their brains are hard wired for Ancient Greek, and most have ADHD because there's just too much energy in their brains and bodies for them to focus. Eventually he wrote the stories  down and published them, and the resulting 8 best sellers involving Percy Jackson and his fellow demigods have been hugely successful. (The 9th is due out next month, a much anticipated event around here.) What I love about these books is the cleverness, and the way Mr Riordan re-imagines the Greek Myths in the modern world, so that Mt Olympus is now at the top of the Empire State Building, and young demigods in training learn their stuff at a summer camp called Camp Half-Blood. The more recent books have even gotten into the subtle differences between Greek and Roman mythology, not something that often gets covered in literary classroom discussions of myth, let alone in works of fiction geared to middle school students.  He also has a second set of books revolving around Egyptian Mythology, also good.  He is to be credited to some extent with a revival of interest in these subjects with young people.

As a writer I have learned a lot from both authors.  Write what you know, tell a good story, trust your readers, don't underestimate or belittle them. Kids aren't spooked by epic tales of life and death, they are encouraged and enthralled by them.  For all their supposed obsessions with video games and DVDs, kids will respond to a well told story, and read through till they get to the end. Both writers often place their characters in positions of peril, yet no matter how desperate their situation, the characters always have hope to hold onto.

I'd love to pick up a few hints of upcoming literary events over lunch, but more importantly I'd like to have them both to lunch just to say thank you.  Thank you for writing such amazing stories. Thank you for all the years of pleasure you have given to me and my children that we have shared these adventures together. To Ms Rowling especially, thank you for books that read so wonderfully well aloud, reading your books to first one child and then the other is among the fondest memories I have with them.

And a writing tip or two would not go unappreciated.

This post is part of Express Yourself Weekly Meme, a group of bloggers writing on the same topic each week.Click here to see other bloggers' ideas for literary lunches.

A Belated Feast

A couple of months ago my husband and I marked our 25th wedding anniversary. We were on vacation and by the time we got back my mom was on vacation. So with one thing and another it was more than a month before we saw each other again. When we did get together though, she had a card and a check for me.  "Usually" she said, "I would get a restaurant card.  But I figured your husband would rather cook for you both,  so go buy something that's a real treat and happy anniversary."

Well my spouse/personal chef embraced the challenge . He went to the local fresh produce market and loaded up on veggies. He caught a seafood sale at another local grocery store. Any extra assistance he needed was provided by the Girl, as I was not permitted to know what was going on.

The final result was extraordinarily decadent. Shrimp cooked 5 different ways. (You only see 4 on the plate? That's because there is shrimp salad wrapped in the lettuce leaves.) Since shrimp is kind of a treat anyway, to have it in so many different ways in one meal was amazing.

Sadly the Girl is not fond of shrimp, not even the lovely garlic shrimp, so we were forced to eat it all ourselves. (Can you tell we were crushed?)

When I was a child and Christmas gifts would come late, or we wouldn't get to exchange presents with relatives till some other time of the year, my mother would always tell us that we were making Christmas last a little longer.  This year it was our anniversary that lasted a little longer, which was kind of nice too.

Good things are always worth waiting for.

Well folks it's Monday again whether we like it or not (and who does?) but at least that means I can hook up to the I Don't Like Mondays

Blog Hop at Elleroy Was Here.  New blogs and old, she

links them all. Go check it out. 

 



Medals of Contention

Every parent knows how it is, we sweat blood and tears over something on the home front and no one even notices.

After I saw that this week's Finish The Sentence Friday, "I deserve a medal for the time...." I thought long and hard about the topic. Do we deserve awards for doing what should our jobs as parents? If do deserve medals, what do we deserve them for? Personally as I kid I never got the achievement trophies for everything, though I got a lot of attagirls for good work ethic and sportsmanship.

Here are some of the things I have been told by others that  I deserve a medal for:

I deserve a medal for: coaching my son through sophomore English. It was a teacher conflict. She felt they were ready for a college level English course and they were 15. We spent hours every night working through his homework, but we survived, with a little tears and swearing. (Its a shame tear (as in crying) and swear don't rhyme, cause oh the poems a mom could write,) He went from an F to a B in less than a semester.

I deserve a medal for teaching my kids to take the bus...in city and between cities.  Also I taught my kids to travel light in a budget. "Everything in a backpack" I'd say,"we're not paying extra to check baggage, nor are we fighting with a bunch of bags when we change buses."  And to amuse themselves during long layovers in bus depots.  And to never waste a visit to a town without checking the local, however quirky, historical landmarks.  One of my kids will probably get a "Go Greyhound" tattoo some day.  But if they ever have to live in a really big city where no one uses their car unless they are going out of town, they will thank me.

I deserve a medal for 20plus years answering 911 calls, Now admittedly I haven't gone completely unrecognized in this area, but my co workers deserve that medal too. And all the other 911 operators.

I deserve a medal for all the time spent sitting in scout meetings, not for dealing with kids but parents. And all those arts and crafts projects that the decidedly not artsy and crafty Meg came up with for the kids.

I deserve a medal for putting up with a legendary parade of animals through our house: fish, dogs, cats. birds, spiders, snakes (and the mice to feed them), geckos, turtles (to be fair the turtles were all mine, except one) iguanas and so on.

I deserve a medal for the hundreds of hours spent sitting in the dance studio, and on bleachers at ball games. (But why? I had fun.)

But you know what? I don't feel like I deserve a medal. To me these are all things a parent does. accommodating their family to the best of their abilities and the limits of their budget.(Though I freely admit that not everyone has my comfort level with the spiders and snakes so maybe something small and tasteful would be in order there. )

I guess part of my reluctance is that medals signal the end of the event and I am still a long way from there, even after the younger one ships to college in 4 more years.

And medals, to me, are for superlatives. People who go above and beyond.
I know moms who deserve medals. They deal with an assortment of family crisis, sick and special needs children, untimely deaths, true poverty, and keep on dealing.   Compared to them, getting through the normal wear and tear of family life seems simple.

But I'll take that sportsmanship trophy. That I deserve.


This post is part of Finish the Sentence Friday, a group of blogger all posting on the same topic. To how other writers finished this week's sentence, click here.

"If You Have the Words"

"Does any human being ever realize life as they live it, every, every minute"

"Saints and poets maybe, they do some"

                                            Thornton Wilder

                                            Our Town
 

 What draws us to like, or not like poetry, let alone write it?  I know extremely literate people who just don't care for poetry, who find it artificial. They don't like seeing sentences forced into meter and rhyme perhaps. And some people find that the feelings  expressed in poetry are just too raw, too emotional, too personal.

I think that for those of us who are drawn to poetry, it is for those moments when we feel we have achieved this realization that Thornton Wilder speaks of in Our Town. For at least one glorious moment, we get it.  And when I read poetry, it is exactly what I am looking for as well.

The morning of August 30th, as we were packing my son to go to college, a CNN text informed me that Seamus Heaney had died.  I even remember saying something about it and my son saying "Mom, you're always saying somebody died," (Its true. He only cares when its a ballplayer) There wasn't time just then, but when I got back home I looked up my volumes of his poetry.

Seamus Heaney is my favorite modern poet. (I define modern poet as someone who lived and wrote into my lifetime, which means the 60's on). The only other poet who would come close (and he died when I was quite young) would be Robert Frost, whom Mr Heaney had a lot in common with, since both writers always leave a feeling of the earth beneath one's feet.

More experienced people than myself can analyze his poetry and say what makes it important and special, and why people said he was the best Irish poet since Yeats.  I can only say what his work meant to me.   Over the last week or so I have gone back and read all those poems again.   They still resonate in a way that few other writers have done.  They are filled with images of love, a sense of history, and of Ireland.

  I first discovered the poetry of Seamus Heaney when I was in college, taking modern British and Irish Poetry. I liked the poems in the class anthology, so when we had to write a paper on a 20th century poet I chose him. 
 

  One of the books I studied for my paper was about the people of the bog burials that have been found in Ireland and elsewhere. Much of his work was informed by the long sad history of Northern Ireland, where he was born. When he wrote of the subtle ways one could tell Orange from Green in Belfast, it felt true.

 

I got a good grade on the paper, and I found a new favorite poet.  Probably some of the best tuition money I ever spent.

A few years after that I wrote that paper, I was listening to some tapes my dad had made for me of Mom's Irish music.  And when I heard the poem Tommy Makem recite "Requiem for the Croppies"  at the beginning of "Four Green Fields" I recognized the words, and  I realized that I had found Seamus Heaney even before that Modern Poetry Class.

People who read poetry regularly know how hard it can be to track down works by the poets they like.  They just aren't front and center at the local mega bookstore.  But the Christmas after Mr Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I asked my husband for a book of his poems.  I knew that even the mega stores usually promote the works of big prize winners.  The bookstore clerk at the mall was clueless, but the fine folks at Borders had a whole table full of his works sitting out and my husband had no difficulty finding me a set of selected poems, one of my most treasured gifts both for the contents and the quest involved.

I kept reading his work as it came out. He wrote a play called The Cure at Troy, that was based on a Greek Tragedy, but set in Northern Ireland.  He also did an amazing translation of Beowulf that for me restores the feeling of sitting around the fire listening to the storytellers recite this great epic.

I hate to quote specific passages because his work reads better in context (and quoting whole poems would be copyright infringement), but here's a clip of Heaney himself reading from one of his most famous poems , "Whatever you say, say nothing"

Seamus Heaney once said "If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way."  I think that's a wonderful summary of what writing is all about. So a toast to one who always found the words and the
way.

Be sure to check out the other writers posting on Yeah Write's weekend moonshine grid.

Finish the Sentence Friday-- My Best Summer Memory was.....

This summer has of course been all about memories. With one child heading to college and the other starting high school, we have had a summer full of firsts and lasts, and I have written about most of them. So I decided to focus instead about a simple lovely night we had last month.

I should first explain that we have in downtown Akron, a beautiful little baseball stadium. It was designed by the same architects who did Camden Yards in Baltimore, and it has that same gritty, red brick feel.  The AA farm team of the Cleveland Indians play there and over the years the kids and I have seen a lot of up and coming stars play a lot of really good baseball at the won't break the bank to take the whole family price of 10.00 a ticket.

For years the  Boy has been trying to align schedules with his uncle, himself a high school ballplayer, so they could go to a ballgame together. On a Saturday night just before the Boy left for college everything fell into place and we made the trip downtown.

A local hero, gold medalist Butch Reynolds'
threw out the first pitch.

Each of the players had a youth ballplayer on the
field with them for the National Anthem

The game was exciting, and the home team won in the end.  The Boy never left his seat, which he admitted was the first time he had been to a game and not headed to the concession stand,

After the game we had fireworks.  And not just any fireworks, but a Beatles themed fireworks show,

Beatles and baseball, how great is that?

If it's the last game I get to go to with the boy for a while it was a perfectly satisfying one, and a great way to end our summer.

This post is part of "Finish the Sentence Friday." To read about more summer memories click here.

Express Yourself--Why I Scrapbook

This week's Express Yourself Weekly Meme asks about our creative hobbies.  I have never been a very artsy crafty kind of girl, unlike my 2 sisters, one who could draw well, while the other was (and is) good at all sorts of creative endeavors. 

When I was in the 8th grade I made a little ceramic bunny that actually turned out well.  In a house full of my siblings' artistic accomplishment, my mother treasured that bunny rabbit.  Whenever guests praised (deservedly) my sisters' artworks, my mother would get the bunny out. "And Peggy (they called me Peggy then) made this bunny."

But even when I was young, there was one art form I was good at, and that was photography. Only cost kept me from delving more seriously into the hobby than I did, but the work I produced was often praised and when the digital revolution arrived and digital cameras became affordable my hobby really took off.

To this day, if you come in my house, once you got past the books, the next thing you would notice is all the framed pictures on display.

Shortly after my son was born I started scrapbooking.  Scrapbooking is a wonderful hobby because it adapts well to the individual.  Within a few basic guidelines (don't just paste the pictures in but write about them, use acid free papers, glue and pens, and so forth) it is a hobby adaptable to any budget and creativity level.  For example, although some of my albums are of the fancy custom variety, like the kids' scout books, others are plain ones I simply made covers for, and even more are simply loose leaf notebooks decorated with appropriate stickers.  (One advantage of loose leaf notebooks, besides the fact that its easy to re-arrange your photos, is that you can bulk buy page protectors at the local office warehouse. I stock up on the notebooks during back to school sales.)

Most of the kids books are organized by topic. There are scouting books and dance books and ballet books and books for grade school, middle school and high school.  I also have genealogy scrapbooks (thus merging 2 hobbies) that are sorted down by the branches of the family trees.

I am careful about archival quality paper and stickers because i want things to last. But I'm not into spending hours on a single page...getting a lot done in short periods of time is more important than getting it perfect. 

Over the years I have found several good reasons to scrapbook.

If I didn't scrapbook, everything would be in shoe boxes (or sitting on the computer) It motivates me to print and display at least the best of my photos.

Scrapbooking motivates me to organize my photos, at least on computer. All you have to do is compare my photo files, where everything is in a labeled folder by event or date, to my documents folder where everything is more randomly saved.

It was really cool when the Boy graduated from high school and I was able to display his grade school, middle school, high school and baseball albums, none of which needed last minute updating except the high school book.

You don't always have to have pictures, by the way. I have done pages for places and events that the camera wasn't permitted at, or that a brochure and post cards told the story so I saved my pictures for other sites (especially in the film era).

Except for the occasional vacation album, most of my scrapbooks are works in progress. I store topic paper and stickers in the proper book, scouting paper in the scout books, ballet paper in the dance book. Another nice thing about loose leaf notebooks is that they usually have pockets in the covers that I can stick school papers and the like in till I have a chance to do the pages.

Scrapbooking led me to a second hobby, card making.  The cool thing about making cards is that except for the blank card stock, all the materials are the same.

I would like someday to get a program that would allow me to do some of my scrapbooking on the computer, and then print whole pages.  It would be especially useful for gift albums, and it would cut down on all the paper slivers scattered around from trimming photos.

I would also like a dedicated scrapbooking corner someday, or at least a drop leaf desk I can hide things in. 

Another nice thing about scrapbooking is that I share the hobby with my mother.  My mom is more into special event scrapbooks for special birthday and weddings and so forth, but she also does an album for every year. She finds that as she gets older scrapbooking is nice because it doesn't require the fine motor skills that other craft hobbies done.

After the pictures are taken though, the most important thing about a scrapbook is what is written in it.  The stories that are told, the captions that are written, combine with the pictures to create memories.

Here is where scrapbooking ties in with blogging, at least for me.  Both are attempts to preserve our thoughts and memories for a larger audience, a little bit of immortality.  And that is well worth doing.

This post is part of  Express Yourself Weekly Meme. If you would like to read about more bloggers and their creative hobbies click here.

Back to School

     Here we are again, another school year beginning. We have been following this ritual for many years now, since the fall of 2000 to be precise, but this year was a little different as our younger child started high school, while the elder headed off to college.

     Because the Girl got into a performing arts program she is attending a different school than her brother. For the first time she has teachers who did not know him. Since most of his teachers have loved him over the years, this has both its upside and its downside.  On the one hand she doesn't have to live up to his prior good performances. On the flip side, she doesn't have the residual good will he built up either.

The new music program did produce a few panicked moments as when after 3 plus weeks of camping trips with various family members, she picked up her viola to practice and came back downstairs 5 minutes later in tears, announcing that she had forgotten everything she had ever learned about viola (she's played for 4 years!) and would never be able to play again. The next day things were  fine again.

     She started back first, the Wednesday before Labor Day.  Of course she changed her mind a dozen times as to what she would be wearing.  Eventually she settled up her favorite pair of boot cut jeans, a shirt with a screen printed tiger on it, and a new pair of short black boots.  I heard no complaints about it when she came home so it was apparently successful.
She met up  with two old friends from summer programs, and made a new one before the day was out. She also had a senior boy speak to her in French II.

What, you expected pictures? Not in high school they don't. Besides I leave for work about the same time her alarm goes off in the morning. 
    
Because the Girl started school on Wednesday, she wasn't able to go with us on Friday to take her brother to college. She was not happy about this. Her brother rode along in the car to take her to school, then came back to finish loading the car.

The trip to the college, 3 hrs away, was uneventful, until we got to the college and dealt with a small town's network of one way streets. After considerable driving around in circles we found a spot near the dorms, and a group of enthusiastic upperclassmen descended on the car to help unload. (They were disappointed to learn that the girl scout cookie boxes contained school supplies and not bribes.)

After we unloaded we went to lunch in the dining hall, went back to the dorm to unpack, then attended his matriculation ceremony. We dropped the Boy back at his dorm (so we would be headed in the right direction on the Map Quest), and he walked off, having done "last hugs" before we got into the car.

The trip home was a nightmare. What should have taken 2 1/2 hours took an hour longer. About an hour into our trip we came to a spot where highway crews were constructing a new on ramp. The old ramp had been closed, traffic was down to one lane, and that lane was a total standstill.  In an hour we moved 5 miles. At least half an hour of that time we were sitting still.  To the simple stress of being stuck in stress was the added problem of the slow draining of our gas tank.  Fortunately we cleared the jam in time to find a gas station, and made it home in plenty of time for the Girl to enjoy her first night of being an "only child".

Friends had warned me that I would cry, repeatedly, as I left my "baby boy" behind. But I didn't, partly because my husband kept passing me notes with suggestions as to how the ceremony could be sped up.  I was smiling too much to cry. And on the way home I was too preoccupied with the traffic snarls (and the needle on the gas tank) to brood much about what had just happened.  But more importantly, I found the moment to be a happy one.  This was what we had raised him for.  He was in just the sort of college we had wanted for him. He was off to school and off to life.

When I sat down that night to watch the baseball game alone--that was another story.


I am hooking up today to the I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop at Elleroy Was Here along with a lot of other great bloggers. Check it out

Facebook--The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

     When I told my husband that this week's Theme Thursday was on Facebook, his response was "Facebook is like the opening lines of  A Tale of Two Cities."  So before I begin I want to acknowledge my gratitude to him for the title, and the inspiration.

      Facebook certainly has its annoying aspects. As our Hostess Jenn pointed out the other day, Facebook is home to endless urban legends that a 12yr old could disprove, yet which spread like crabgrass or rabbits in Australia.  It is a repository of rants from people whom you don't really like, but you friend anyway just so you know when they are ranting about you. I subjects one to obnoxious political posts from both ends of the spectrum.  It clutters up way too much of my message box and email with notifications.

     But it also has improved my life.  It has put me in consistent touch with friends in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. It allows me to easily share information and pictures with large numbers of family members. It helps me know what's going on with my children and their friends too. It allows urgent news to be passed to many people at one time. Until relatively recently I didn't have access to texting, and Facebook was my best way to chat with many of my friends. I know there are other ways to do these things, but none are as simple or available as Facebook is.

     Some people find Facebook isolating, a reminder that everyone else is having a better time than they are.  I am often humbled to read of friends and acquaintances who are dealing with far greater problems than I am with graciousness, courage and humor.  And far from feeling isolated, I actually feel much more connected to my world as a whole when I use Facebook.  There are other people out there who think in the way I do. In times of crisis it is good to log on and see what others think. Moreover, I can write in my time zone at my convenience and they can read what I wrote at their convenience.

    Plus there's all those cute animal pictures...

     This post is part of Theme Thursday, a group of bloggers writing on the same topic. To see what other bloggers think of Facebook click on the icon.

We'll Have These Moments to Remember (We Just Won't Have Pictures)

      I had only been a mom  a few months when I acquired my first scrap booking kit.  It contained a one inch loose leaf notebook, plastic sleeves, paper and stickers. It was a great place to start chronicling the early events of our children's lives. Of course the original note book was outgrown quickly, eventually swelling to a 5 inch binder. It was about that time that I decided to start breaking things down by subject, so that I now have books for each child for grade school, middle school and high school, plus dance albums, baseball albums, birthday books, scouting scrapbooks and albums of vacation photos.

    As I looked back through these photos,  I discovered that although I took some great photos, and displayed them nicely, I wasn't having much luck getting those absolute never to be forgotten  moments, especially where the Boy was concerned. For example, it took me about 8 years of baseball to get a simple shot of a ball coming off the bat.

      And speaking of baseball, when he was in high school they got to play one game each season at the minor league ball park in our city.  One year I missed due to work. Twice the camera died before he ever got to back.  Finally this year,  his senior year, I got a decent shot.

      My track record at school ceremonies is even worse.

      When he "graduated" from the 5th grade, I videotaped the actual crossing the stage moment, which meant that this was as close as I got in the photo album:

He's in there somewhere, I promise.

      At his middle school recognition ceremony someone stood up to take a picture of their kid, who was right before my child so naturally I missed the big moment.  All I got was a picture of him walking away:

      At this point I began to feel that either my son or the camera gods were conspiring against me.

When High School graduation arrived the school announced that no photos were permitted. This was about as successful as a similar note about no applause.  We were seated in the back though, and this is the picture of the Boy getting his diploma.

At least no one stood up in front of me this time,

In general, I've had somewhat better luck with the Girl, here's the picture of her 8th grade recognition:

  The blur in the middle is the trophy they handed her.

Last week we took the Boy to college.  They had a lovely Matriculation ceremony, at which the kids were officially made students at the school.  They even had large video screens set up so we could see the kids as they went up to the stage, introduced themselves, and received school pins.
I actually got a picture of the Boy waiting his turn at the mic:

However when he actually got to the podium the guy in front of me leaned forward at just the wrong moment, leaving me with this picture of my son introducing himself to the world:

 

    

     Life goes by in a blur, especially where kids are concerned.  One of the reasons I scrapbook is to freeze some of those moments for later enjoyment. To stop and say "Oh look, how small/cute/silly/amazing that was". But some memories will just have to remain in our hearts and heads only and not on paper. But that's OK too. It's where they are supposed to be in the first place.