20,000+ Hits ...

... but judging from Sitemeter data, at least half of those are from Bulgarian ABBA fans, who all come to my site because I once posted a photo of ABBA. Rock on!

Steep Learning Curve

I just got home from my graduate course: Information Architecture. Information Architecture, you ask? What is that? Well, it's basically writing the code for building the underlying structure of large web sites. I had my first class last week, and left feeling seriously nervous after the professor said, "This is an 800 level graduate course, and I expect you to get into the lab and know how to blah blah blah ..."

Tonight we met in the lab, and there I was surrounded by young, computer savvy pups. The professor talked us through writing XHTML mark-up to put up a simple web page, and you know what? I got it! I had to ask the young woman next to me for help a few times but she had to ask me for help too. It was such a good feeling.

There are 3 of us women in the class, all about the same age, who are at the same level of inexpertise on the computer. We had a good laugh together last week when the computer geek professor shared that he has a new baby, his first. Now there's a steep learning curve! He shared that he expected to be back to normal in a month or so. Ha! I'll have XHTML down in a month. If anything, he'll be more sleep deprived!

I can't believe how excited I am about this course. I was doing the reading assignments for this week, and it made sense. I realized that being a knitter really comes in handy, because I'm so used to reading knitting patterns. Mark up is not much different. I follow a series of stitches and - voila! - beautiful lace socks. I use a series of letters and symbols and - voila! - a web site. I feel so capable.

I did have a bone to pick with the authors of one of my books. They were talking about information architects, and what professions naturally do that kind of chunking of information with usability and accessibility in mind (not necessarily on computers, but just in general) -- and they totally overlooked teachers!!!! I had to rant at Mr. Ether for a good 15 minutes about that. I mean, what do teachers do, if not organize information into chunks to make it accessible to users -- i.e. students? And the younger your students, the more you do it! Oy vey ... being in a profession which is so discounted in general (and probably more often by MIT graduates) is my cross to bear!

Stay tuned for the ongoing transformation of Luminiferous Ether into a computer geek (one who wears beautiful lace socks.)

Book Review: "The Tenderness of Wolves" by Stef Penney

I am not going to cross-post this one at the winter reading challenge. Why? Because it was reviewed there by someone else, who gave it a very good review. I read it on her advice, and I didn't like it at all, and I don't want to hurt her feelings or sound like a snob.

I wanted to like The Tenderness of Wolves, I really did. It won Britain's prestigious Costa Book Award (although how prestigious can it be, when they changed the name from the Whitbread Literary Award to the name of a corporate sponsor?) Set in 1867 in the Hudson Bay area of Canada, it encompasses history, romance, suspense, adventure ... all the ingredients of a fun novel to read.

Except for the one essential ingredient: good writing. Call me a literary snob -- that's OK, I can take it. I don't pretend that I could do better, or even half as well at writing fiction, but I have an emotional response to poor writing that makes it hard for me to enjoy a story even if it is interesting in other ways. (Conversely, I can finish a novel that is ridiculously bad if it is well written.)

The Tenderness of Wolves started out well enough, setting up the plot. We meet the main character, Mrs. Ross, a Scottish immigrant with a dark past. But she has redeemed herself and made a life in this rugged part of Canada, a life which includes a somewhat distant husband, a child who died, and an adopted teen-aged son. There is a murder, around which the story revolves. There are side stories too: Two young girls who disappeared years before, a Utopian Norwegian settlement, a carved bone tablet. (Scotland, Norway, Canada ... my three favorite places in the world. See why I wanted to like this book?)

The writing? It was little things at first. Repetition of phrases: "Her tea had gone stone cold." (Why couldn't it go "ice cold" or just "cold" by the second or third reference?) Unexplained shifts in characters' personalities. Predictability: Donald is in love with Susannah, so why is he only able to conjure up Maria's face in his imagination? Gee, I wonder ... I dislike it when authors use stupidity of characters as a literary device.

Then there was the cartoon-like characterization of the Native people, as "noble savages." One of the central themes of Tenderness is an idea which is credited to "the Chippewa" -- the sickness of long thinking -- or as one of the characters explains, "You cannot tame a wild animal, because it will alway remember where it is from, and yearn to go back." I don't know for sure, but I can't help but wonder whether that is authentic or is something the author made up, just because it sounds Native and spiritual. (Now I'm being cynical.)

There was at least one instance of just plain sloppy historical research. In one scene a character is reading the book Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain. The problem is, this story takes place in 1867 and Pudd'nhead Wilson wasn't published until 1894! The Guardian, in a review, finds it "impressive" that the author could write this book without ever having visited Canada. I think it's obvious from her writing that she never visited Canada!

True confessions: I didn't finish the book. I reached a point where something of a sexual nature was about to be revealed and I quit. I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but there have been too many times when I've been reading a perfectly enjoyable book, and suddenly I run into what I call "the throbbing member." (Eeeeuuuwwwww.) Frankly, I hate the way so many authors write about sex. It's the kiss of death for me when I'm reading a book -- and it's not the presence of sex, it's the way the author writes it. (Because I love Diana Gabaldon's books!) Anyway, I could sense that The Tenderness of Wolves was straying dangerously close to throbbing members, and given that I was already highly critical of so many other aspects of the book, I decided that my time would be better spent reading something else.

Now I'm reading the novel Dawn Land by Joseph Bruchac. I'll give you a full report when I'm finished.

Windchill -26˚ ...

... and that means NO SCHOOL!

As usual, I was out the door and on my way to work when I found out. My district is so stingy with calling school off for the weather, that I don't even bother to check anymore. There have been too many instances where literally every other school district in the area has canceled, and we still have to go.

Wisconsin weather is weird. Yesterday we had a high in the mid-forties. When school got out at 2:32 (yes, 2:32, we cover a lot of ground in that extra 2 minutes a day!) it was raining. Half an hour later we were experiencing a shower of Dippin' Dots™ (an absurd and overpriced frozen confection that young children pester their parents to buy at carnivals) and the temperature had dropped almost 50˚!

I can't end this post without talking about that day in early February, almost 12 years ago, when my youngest child was born: the real temperature (not the windchill) was -27˚ and I made Mr. Ether and my friend Fay take me outside for a pre-dawn walk during labor, twice. And they still love me.

One Day = 720 Million Dollars

A Life Writ Large

Today I received an email from a long-time, dear friend telling me that his father had died a week ago. Art Rybeck was not famous. He was not a celebrity ... or was he? If you have some time, watch the videos here -- an award winning documentary made by his daughter-in-law, to find out the measure of this man.





Martin Luther King Day often leads me (and other like-minded people) to wonder, "Where are today's leaders?" The lives of people like Art Rybeck, people whose moral compasses point true North, are one answer to that question. The role models are right here, among us. You don't have to be an orator or command an army. A significant difference is made every day at the grass roots level.

(I am also grateful to Art for his role in producing the incredible Rybeck clan, whom I have loved for so many years!)

FOLK BALL!!!!

I don't care how far away you live! All roads lead to the fabulous city on 3 (or 4, or 5, depending on who's doing the reckoning) lakes this weekend, to Great Hall in the Memorial Union for this year's Folk Ball. Dance and singing workshops during the day, and fabulous parties on Friday and Saturday night, all live music, and all admission is FREE (donations welcome.)

Mr. Ether will be playing both evenings: Friday, 9 p.m., with the all acoustic Veseliyka (village-style Balkan band -- does that make them Village People? Just wondering.) Then if you really want to rock, stay up late Saturday night for the Reptile Palace Orchestra at 11 p.m. And many other good bands too.

This is one of my favorite events of the year. I've divulged before that I was a folk dancer in a previous life. I don't dance much anymore, but Folk Ball is fun and exciting. For one thing, hundreds of people come, dancers and otherwise, the fun is infectious, and by the time Mr. Ether & the Reptiles play all the curious onlookers have become dancers and it is a veritable folk dancing mosh pit! It is also very family friendly, and there are lots of little kids. My own kids have been going since Sparkly Sea Cow was a babe in arms. (Cinderbelle will have to miss it this year. She may be in the hometown of the Tamburitzins, but I don't think they have anything like this!)

In my opinion, people don't dance enough anymore, not this kind of social, intergenerational dancing. Mr. Ether and I were incredibly lucky to have been involved in it as teenagers, and actually folk dancing was a popular pastime at our hippy dippy alternative high school. It was one of the ways that Mr. Ether and I courted (although I pretended not to know that's what we were doing at the time.) The occasional time that we go to recreational folk dancing these days, there are very few young people. They don't know what they're missing, truly.

On the other end of the generational spectrum, I can't leave this without commenting on my favorite local dancers, Lou and Fran, who are a dancing couple in their eighties! I absolutely love watching them!

So, if you're in the area, maybe I'll see you on Friday or Saturday.

(This is the large print version of my blog post. Sometimes blogger is such a pain!)

The Prophet Reconsidered

The Martin Luther King holiday. As a teacher, I struggle with it every year. How do I teach about this man in a way that doesn't reduce who he was to being a statue, frozen in time? How do I teach about what he gave his life for, without boiling it down to meaningless words like "freedom" or the obligatory writing "I have a dream that ..."? How do I (to crib a phrase from Teaching Tolerance, a publication you should know about if you don't) put the movement back into teaching about the Civil Rights Movement? And make it appropriate for kindergartners?

Today the War Times sent me a link to this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Prophet Reconsidered, by Christopher Phelps. This is exactly what I've been seeking, a clear eyed look at the activist King was becoming at the time of his death.

We forget so much. We forget that he was hanging by a thread in 1968 at the time of his death, whose 40th anniversary we will mark in April. We forget that his moral authority had frayed, leaving his fund raising in free fall. We forget that in his final years, he faced not only a rising "white backlash" — the media term for white obduracy in the suburbs and working-class neighborhoods, North as well as South — but resentment from establishment liberals who thought he had executed too radical a turn by opposing a Democratic president and the Vietnam War. We forget that although blacks still looked to him more than any other leader, he was increasingly viewed with cynicism by young militants who derided him as "De Lawd" and thought his nonviolence too tepid for the times. We forget that police agencies from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to military intelligence viewed him as a dangerous subversive, listened in on his conversations, and spread both true and false rumors about him in a concerted campaign to discredit him. We forget that between major addresses he was prone to depression, afflicted by insomnia so severe that he slept only a few hours each night, even when popping sleeping pills. We forget that his close associates were concerned by his anxiety and fatigue, and taken aback by his fixation on his own mortality. We forget the critics who accused him of harboring a "Messiah complex."

By all rights, though, we ought to remember. We are surrounded by constant reminders of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Statues, monuments, and postage stamps bear his likeness, highways and boulevards his name. He has become a national icon. Television ads sample his voice. Presidential candidates invoke the "fierce urgency of now." Ubiquity has come, however, at a price. The nonviolent revolutionary who upended conventional society and sought to induce tension has become an anodyne symbol of progress. The disappointed prophet who spoke toward the end of his life of America as a nightmare is remembered only for his 1963 dream. Once widely reviled, King has become an almost obligatory object of reverence. Even conservatives genuflect before his memory. While dismantling affirmative action, a policy King advocated, they cite King's aspiration that Americans be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. King is a totem: safe, universal, unobjectionable. He is as remote and mythical to schoolchildren as any other figure in the national pantheon stretching back to the founding fathers. His inner turmoil, his public failures, his vocal critics, left and right, have all faded from view, replaced by a fable in which a nation awakens gently to his self-evident dream.

This pattern is not wholly lamentable. It may even be necessary. Had the long campaign waged by Coretta Scott King after his murder not succeeded, had she and her husband's closest associates not surmounted strong resistance and achieved a national day named for him, there might be no annual federal commemoration of the life of any African-American. There might be no occasion for the nation to reflect upon the merit of the dismantling of overt racism in law, public accommodations, and education, as well as the securing of voting rights for all citizens, regardless of race. These accomplishments — understood by King himself as gigantic steps forward — merit our commemoration.

But the ceremonial gloss now overlaid upon Martin Luther King Jr. causes problems. By rendering him immaculate and incontrovertible, sanctification has, paradoxically, left him vulnerable. Cynicism is too easily the reaction when revelations occur about, say, King's sexual escapades or collegiate plagiarism. But King's heroism and place in history never depended on a halo of saintly purity. Brilliant, flawed, controversial, talented, King — as he was first to observe — was always a sinner.

I am inspired to seek out the books Phelps cites in his essay. And I remind myself, that it is not as important how I celebrate this one day with my students, but what I model for them each and every day.

Just One More Year! Good Riddance to George W. Bush

That is the headline of an op ed piece from Britain's fantastic newspaper, The Independent. The author of the piece, Rupert Cornwall, writes:

Today is a sombre milestone, marking the start of the last of Mr Bush's eight years in the White House. This being a leap year, exactly 366 days remain until 20 January 2009, when his successor will be sworn into office. It is a time when incumbents look to their legacies. And for this President the view could scarcely be bleaker.

Is he the worst President in US history? Mr Bush faces stiff competition from the likes of James Buchanan, who watched as America slipped towards civil war, or Warren Harding with his corrupt administration, or Herbert Hoover, who failed to halt the slide into the Great Depression, or, more recently, Richard Nixon, the only President to be forced to resign. But in terms of dogmatism, incompetence, ignorance and divisiveness, Mr Bush surely compares with any of the above. (Read it in its entirety here.)

I think he sums up the whole sorry situation very well, although I disagree with him on some points. He believes that Bush cannot be held responsible for the looming recession. I say, look at the man's record! He has turned every venture he has ever touched into dreck (although he and his buddies always seem to make out like bandits. Imagine that.)

I also take issue with this: "Belatedly, the President has learned the virtues of diplomacy, and his troop surge has at least reduced the violence in Iraq." Has he learned the virtues of diplomacy? I still believe that he will find a way to bomb Iran before his term is over. And ask a citizen of Iraq whether the troop surge has reduced the violence.

I don't have a lot of faith that U.S. regime change is going to change our path anytime soon. What I do know is that we at the grassroots have to keep on working for the common good, sowing the seeds of nonviolence and of stewardship regardless of what we predict as an outcome. And I, for one, am looking forward to that day 366 days from now.

2˚Fahrenheit!

It's a veritable heat wave, up from the subzero temps yesterday and this morning. I took Molly to the dog park. She wore a silly red doggy coat that's too big for her, so she looks a little like Super Dog! (I never thought I'd have a dog who needed a doggy coat.) I wore moosehide mukluks, jeans, long johns, long sleeved shirt, wool sweater, polar fleece gator, wool hat, polar fleece mittens, coat and topped it all off with a felted wool poncho. By the third circuit of the park, I was actually working up a little bit of a sweat in the sun! I love this weather!

Why I Teach

This is a scan of a letter I was given today, from a first grader in the classroom next to mine. She spends a bit of time "helping" in my room. There are a lot of things about teaching that are damned hard: it requires a tremendous amount of energy, you're "on" all the time, there are unrealistic expectations of these kids, it's a thankless profession, etc. etc. ... and then a child gives me one of these. This is why I teach, this is why I will continue to teach as long as I can.
Notice how the children are falling over backwards in astonishment at my achingly accurate recitation of the ABCs. The critics are raving!

Is voter suppression now the norm?

I just read this article at Alternet about tactics that the Clinton campaign is allegedly using to block Obama supporters from voting. If this is true, it is disgusting and clinches it for me: I will not vote for Hillary Clinton.

The headlines say the latest schism among the top Democratic presidential candidates is over gender and race. But on the ground in the presidential season's opening states, there is a darker narrative: that Hillary Clinton will not just fight hard, but fight dirty, to win. And her tactic of choice is attempting to suppress the votes of her rival's supporters.

The latest example is from Nevada, where the Nevada State Education Association is widely seen as filing a suit on Clinton's behalf to stop Las Vegas' most powerful union, Culinary Workers Local 226, from caucusing inside downtown casinos after the union endorsed Barack Obama. The tactic foments a split along racial and class lines in arguably the strongest union city in America.

"It's horrible," said one longtime Nevada activist, who didn't want his name used. "It will cause fights and damage that will last for years."

But the Clinton campaign has made similar moves in New Hampshire and Iowa.

We have had 2 stolen national elections and too many years of the dirtiest of politics. I won't pretend that anyone else is squeaky clean, but I think this shows her hunger for power and her contempt for the American people. Enough is enough.

Book Review: Bowman's Store, A Journey to Myself by Joseph Bruchac

I'm a reading monster! I have to get my fun reading done in the next week, before my library class starts.

Bowman's Store is Abenaki author/storyteller Joseph Bruchac's memoir of his childhood. Bruchac is well know among educators for having collected Native American stories in an excellent series of books, Keepers of the Earth, Keepers of the Animals and Keepers of the Night, as well as many other works of fiction and nonfiction.

Some readers may remember a book from a number of years back, The Education of Little Tree. It became a bestseller and purported to be the author's memoir of growing up with his Cherokee grandparents. It later caused a stir in literary circles when, not only was much of it revealed to be a work of fiction, but the author, Forrest Carter, was alleged to be something of a white supremacist.

Bowman's Store is the real thing. Joseph Bruchac grew up in the Adirondack Mountains of New York state, reared by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother had defied her parents' wishes, to marry their dark-skinned "French Canadian" hired hand, Jesse Bowman. They had a daughter, and when she married an abusive man, they agreed to raise little Joseph (or Sonny) in their home. What they kept secret from Sonny, indeed what seemed to be a regional secret, was that the people called "French Canadians" were really Abenaki Indians, New England's First People. As a people, many of them denied their culture as a self-preservation technique through years of systematic prejudice and persecution.

Bruchac grew up in what was, by his account, an incredibly loving home. His grandparents ran a small store and gas station. Their economic situation was always marginal, in part because his grandfather had a deep-seated belief that you share what you have with others less fortunate. From his grandfather, who was essentially functionally illiterate, he also learned to "read" and love the natural world. He was an awkward, bookish child, but his grandmother constantly reassured him that his time would come. It wasn't until he was in college in the sixties that Bruchac started to piece together, and then embrace, his Abenaki heritage.

The blurb on the dust jacket of Bowman's Store calls it "compelling, lyrical, and deeply moving", and I agree. This is very much a love story to Bruchac's grandparents, especially his grandfather Jesse Bowman, in which he gives him back his Indian identity. Lovely reading.

(Cross-posted at Winter Reading Challenge)

A New Broom Sweeps Clean

I caved in this afternoon and tackled my youngest child's bedroom. I am relatively certain that she never reads my blog, so I can talk about it somewhat freely here.

Oh. My. God. That's pretty much my response every time I decide that enough is enough, and try to make inroads. This is a tiny room, mind you, and a kid who saves everything. She had a small library's-worth of books under her bed, beanie babies, plastic trinkets, craft projects that were started and forgotten about ... but what strikes me most every time I do this, is the amount stuff that is, quite literally, trash.

Of course it begs the question "Why doesn't she just throw it in the waste basket right there at the time?" but there is a larger question about the amount of trash we, as a society, generate. Practically every single thing that we buy generates trash. It is impossible to buy even a pair of socks that doesn't necessitate the throwing away of at least two pieces of garbage, one of them non-degradable plastic.

There is almost no getting away from it. Sometimes I joke that the human race is going to die under a mountain of those obnoxious cellophane straw-wrappers that come with juice boxes. I challenge you to walk through a park where children's soccer games are held and not find a juice box straw-wrapper!

Ah well, I tackled the bed and dresser, next comes the closet. God only knows how many pounds of wrappers from the ghost of Halloweens past I'm going to find.

Help. Me. Spock.

There's no place to check off "life."
Even Martha has failed me.

Welcome to the Saturday Morning from You Know Where

Don't read any further if you don't want to get sucked in to the chaos that sometimes is my life. Alright, I warned you.

I slept in a little this morning. Since Georgia died, I no longer have to be up at 6 on the dot or find a puddle on the floor ... although I actually like to be up and done with my morning yoga before the sun comes up. I'm weird that way.

Early Saturday morning is my favorite part of the whole week because it is so filled with promise ... and then reality sets in, as it so often does.

It started with a phone call. My friend was calling to cancel the tentative dinner plan we had for tonight (which was OK, because I had forgotten I had dinner plans for tonight. I would have remembered when I checked the calendar.) Made my tea. Gave in to the siren call of the computer ("I just have to check my email, and by the way, did a certain vice president die during the night? Hope springs eternal ...) when the doorbell rang. "Who could that be at 8:30 in the morning?" I muttered to myself.

Opened the door to ... OH SHIT! My mother-in-law. I completely forgot that we were taking care of her dog this weekend, and here she was dropping Angel off! I tried to cover up my shock, but I don't think I did a very good job. Luckily she attributed it to the fact that we hadn't listened to a phone message which she left last night, not to the fact that we had simply forgotten.

Angel is a good dog, but big, and we haven't cared for her here before. She did stop by to visit once a few months ago and sneaked down to the basement and did a little woodworking [she made a stool, haha, weak attempt at humor.] So I'm a little freaked out about having her here, but aside from another brief foray to the basement, she's fine, exploring the house. Molly was desperately trying to get her to play, which was cute.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ether gets up earlier than usual because he has a haircut appointment. He too expresses surprise at seeing Angel here. (This is why we are so compatible, except when the Packers are playing, as you will soon see.) After a couple of false starts, leaving the house, coming back for something, he leaves for his appointment. The house is quiet again. Wait a minute ... it's too quiet! I go upstairs to see what the dogs are doing. Molly has gone back to bed in Sparkly Seacow's room, but where is ANGEL? I look in all three bedrooms upstairs. I look downstairs. I look in the basement (but the door had been shut. Can she walk through solid wood?) I look upstairs again. I look in the bathtub. I look behind and underneath the furniture. I am starting to panic. For pete's sake, our house is less than 1200 square feet and she is a good-sized dog!!

It is during this time that I make the mistake of looking into Sparkly Seacow's closet. BIG MISTAKE. My blood pressure skyrockets, and I am momentarily distracted enough from dog searching panic to yell at her that today she has GOT to clean her room and I mean it!

Ding-dong. It's the doorbell. It is my neighbor Charlie dropping off a house key because we agreed to let his dog out today while he and his wife go to the Packers game in Green Bay. For the record, I did remember that commitment. But I must have looked a sight, because I was in the middle of near hysteria. At that point I was thinking that a) Angel was either able to curl herself up very small and had gotten into someplace I just hadn't thought of yet or b) (and yes, this thought was seriously going through my mind) that I had imagined the previous hour with my mother-in-law's visit and the dropping off of Angel. In short, I thought there was a good chance I was losing my mind.

Then it dawns on me: Mr. Ether went out, came in, and went out again. At some point during that 90 seconds or less, Angel must have pushed the unlatched storm door open and gotten out. She could be anywhere!

I was still in my pajamas (they have a vintage Dick & Jane motif on them, just in case you want to know.) I called Mr. Ether's cell phone and screamed incoherently at the voice mail, threw on some clothes, and ran to the hair salon, which luckily is only less than half a block away, to scream at Mr. Ether there, and headed back home calling, "Angel! Angel!" And I'm here to tell you that there is a god, because there's Angel trotting up the street toward me.

I came back inside, with Angel, to find the phone ringing. It's my neighbor, Charlie. Maybe he had noticed that I was a little unhinged and was calling to tell me that they had decided not to go after all, so I start babbling out the story to him. He says, "Oh, I saw a big dog running around out there when I stopped to drop the key off. I just didn't know it belonged to you."

Oy vey. Now it is no longer morning and the day has degenerated -- like all Saturdays do. This is what I take anti-depressants for. Mr. Ether is going off to watch the Packer game on TV this afternoon, which always puts me in a great mood. [sarcasm alert]

Feel free to cheer me up.

Yet ANOTHER Book Review: Winterdance by Gary Paulsen

Subtitled The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod, this book chronicles Paulsen's first go at the 1150 mile Iditarod. (He has run it twice.) I had a hard time putting Winterdance down, not because the story was especially suspenseful -- although at times it was -- but because Paulsen is a damned fine writer, and I gobble it up. From the first germ of an idea that he might do the race, through all of the training, to the race itself, the narrative moves seamlessly back and forth between gutbusting humor and nailbiting tension.

Self-deprecating almost to a fault, he tells about incident after incident in which, due to his own arrogance or stupidity, he should have died. However, he finished the race, a fact which he attributes entirely to his team of dogs. Gary Paulsen loves dogs, which is perhaps what led him to the Iditarod in the first place.

If you too love dogs, or you love real-life adventure stories, or you just love good writing, I recommend this book. And then look for Paulsen's other writing. The bulk of his work is written for young adults, and it is very good. I have also read a memoir by Paulsen which I loved, Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass, about life on a Minnesota farm.

My copy of Winterdance has a sticker on the cover that says "The true story that inspired the mjor motion picture Snow Dogs." A word of warning: Don't see Snow Dogs! It starred Cuba Gooding, Jr. doing an embarrassingly bad acting job and had less than nothing to do with this book. Paulsen must have been hard up for cash when he sold Disney the rights to this very fine book.

(Cross-posted at Winter Reading Challenge.)

A Little Too Close to the Truth

The Onion is frequently very funny (my favorite headline: "Jenna Bush's Wetlands Now Open for Public Drilling") but sometimes they hit the nail squarely on the head, as with this week's top story: BUSH BEGINS PREPARATIONS FOR NATION'S FINAL YEAR.

WASHINGTON—As his last term in office winds to a close, President Bush has directed White House aids and Cabinet staff to begin preparing for 2008, the nation's 232nd and final year in existence ...

The president held a special America Wrap-Up press conference with members of the international press earlier today, where he spoke frankly with reporters and gave out long, heartfelt hugs. Bush also took time from his hectic schedule of staring blankly into the gaping maw of absolute dissolution to reflect on the country's past and look forward to its 281-day future.

"Our great nation will be a shining, then blinking, then slowly fading beacon to the world," Bush said. "As our time as a sovereign country with borders and currency comes to a close, let us hope we will be remembered for all the great things we accomplished, and not for the 1960s."

Read it all here.

When I saw it on the newstand yesterday, I just about lost it. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Oy, these times we're living in.

Book Review: Here Lies the Librarian

(cross-posted at Winter Reading Challenge)

This is one of the books that has been sitting next to my bed for over a year, and I finally took the time to read it. Well ... I hate to say it, but I was disappointed. Richard Peck is a young adult author who is usually very funny, and there were moments in this book that made me laugh. The high point for me was the epitaph on the librarian's headstone, from which the book's title came: "ELECTRA DIETZ, 1851-1912, SHH, HERE LIES THE LIBRARIAN, After years of service, tried and true, Heaven stamped her -- OVERDUE." But mostly the story -- about the coming of age of a young girl in rural Indiana and her brother's quest to win a local stock car race -- seemed kind of disjointed and half-baked.

If you'd care to read some books by Richard Peck, A Long Way from Chicago (a Newbery honor book,) A Year Down Yonder (which won the 2000 Newbery award,) or The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy In Three Parts are all a lot of fun. He also wrote The River Between Us, a poignant mystery set during the Civil War.

Hollywood Heartthrobs for Kucinich

Yay for Aragorn, a.k.a. Viggo Mortensen!

He flew into New Hampshire to campaign for Dennis Kucinich, gave Sean Hannity what for, and spoke out for impeachment.

At the height of LOTR madness, I thought maybe I could win points with my teen-aged daughter with the impressive revelation that I had seen Viggo Mortensen's unborn child. We had gone to a club to see the band X, fronted by Exene, who was quite pregnant with ... Viggo's child! Cinderbelle was unimpressed. (Kids! I don't know what's wrong with these kids today.)

Temp Dog Gets Permanent Contract

Molly, the Dalmation-mix, is joining our family permanently. Her New Zealand family made the difficult decision not to put her through the rigors of the flight and subsequent quarantine at her age (11.) She is a lovely dog in all ways*, and we feel honored to be trusted with such a beloved companion. I am a dyed-in-the-wool Corgi fan, but Molly has won my heart!

*except for the noxious gaseous emissions

George McGovern Speaks Out

I worked on the McGovern campaign when I was a middle schooler. I stuffed and licked envelopes, helped silkscreen yard signs, canvassed. The McGovern campaign headquarters was my social scene for a while, probably because I was tagging along with my best friend, Anne, and her mom was a big time Democrat in this city. She was even a delegate to the 1972 Democratic Convention and I remember watching her on t.v.

McGovern's loss was my first taste of electoral heartbreak.

As I said in my last post, they don't make politicians like they used to. Since 1972, George McGovern has shown himself to be more than worthy of the title "elder statesman" and today's Democrats would do well to pay attention and learn from him. In an op ed piece in today's Washington Post, he calls for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, saying,

Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot. (And so much more. Read it here.)

Cool buttons up at the top, eh? Mr. Ether found them in one of his boxes in the basement.

Farewell, LSD ...

... or former Wisconsin governor Lee Sherman Dreyfuss, to the uninitiated. He was the dark horse Republican candidate for governor in 1978, starting his campaign with a grand total of $17,000 in the bank -- and he won! He was a unique politician in that he was an educator, and he understood the value of education. He ran a populist campaign much like Paul Wellstone's, crisscrossing the state in an old school bus, wearing a signature red vest, and shaking hands with people.

He was the kind of Republican that perhaps people mean today when they say, "I'm not a Bush Republican." He was very progressive on social issues, and signed into law landmark legislation protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. Just last year he publicly opposed a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions in Wisconsin. I believe he was also pro-choice. Both he and his wife were huge supporters of funding for the arts.

He had a few moments of infamy. He signed a law decriminalizing oral sex between consenting adults, with some comment about how everyone does it so it shouldn't be illegal. I remember my brother saying, "Governor Dreyfuss is a muff diver" at which we both laughed hysterically. He also took a record surplus and gave it back to Wisconsin citizens in the form of a check in the mail, a move which later caused an economic crisis when the next recession hit. But I still have a print on my wall that I bought at an art fair using my LSD refund. His wife, Joyce, infuriated Wisconsin beekeepers when she made the comment that when she was a little girl she thought that honey was "bee poop."

I don't remember when the Bee Gees came to town, but it must have been when they were riding the disco wave. It's hard to tell in a black and white photo, but LSD has a shiny Bee Gees jacket and the Gibb brothers are wearing red vests.

This is all to say that they don't make Republicans -- and indeed, politicians of any stripe -- like they used to. That's a loss for all of us.

(Read more about LSD here.)

Twelve Years

That's how long it has been since my dad died suddenly of a massive heart attack, Jan. 3rd, 1996. I wrote one of my first blog posts about him last year. I last saw him about twelve hours before he died. Strangely enough, we were at a reception following a memorial service for a family friend who had died the week before. My dad was a very shy and unassuming man, but that afternoon he beckoned me over to sit by him and proceeded to initiate the most intimate conversation we had ever had. It was wonderful. When he got up to leave, I remember taking note of how frail he looked. Then in the middle of the night I got a phone call from my brother, saying that he had died.

I often wonder if he knew his time was short. At any rate, that afternoon was a priceless gift. I had lost my infant daughter less than two years earlier, and I was a month away from giving birth to my youngest child. I was emotionally fragile, but I also think that the veil that separates the world we live in from that which we cannot see was pretty thin for me at that time, and perhaps he sensed that.

Tonight, to remember him, I read my daughter two short stories by James Thurber that my dad used to read to me for bedtime stories -- The Dog That Bit People and The Night the Ghost Got In. (He had an interesting idea of what constituted a good bedtime story.)

I miss him.

Sometimes I Want To Scream

Common Dreams today has a headline story reprinted from The Salem-News in Oregon, Move to Impeach Cheney Gains Support in Congress. "Oh, goody," I think. "It's about time." But on reading it, I find it is about Wexler, Baldwin, and Gutierrez who signed onto Kucinich's H.R. 799 what, at least a month ago? So why, oh why is it headline news in Salem, OR and on Common Dreams today?

If my blood wasn't boiling enough, I read down to the following statement:

The White House, in a statement, said Democrats were shirking responsibilities on issues such as childrens’ [sic] health insurance “and yet they find time to waste an afternoon on an impeachment vote against the vice president. … This is why Americans shake their head in wonder about the priorities of this Congress.”

Oh my sweet Lord, CAN'T WE GET RID OF THESE PEOPLE? This is like when they blamed Saddam Hussein for kicking out the U.N. weapons inspectors or when they blamed news reporters for bringing about the invasion of Iraq with their relentless "March to war, march to war." Those were the very words of Preznit Jo-ji!

I'M shaking my head in wonder at the priorities of this Congress, because THEY HAVEN'T FOLLOWED THE RULE OF LAW as set out in the U.S. Constitution and IMPEACHED THESE LYING, THIEVING DESPOTS! (Whew, my keyboard is smoking!)

Yet Another Travesty

If Marion Jones returned her Olympic medals after admitting to using steroids, shouldn't George Tenet return his Presidential Medal of Freedom after this?

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations. Read the rest here.

Heckuva job, Georgie. My God, will we ever see any accountability?

(With apologies to all pigs and their admirers)

Book Review: Lois Lenski, Journey Into Childhood

One of my first, and enduring, passions is children’s literature. When I was in high school, I thought that I would become an author/illustrator, but I chose the teaching route instead. (Julia Cameron might call me a “shadow artist.”) Never has there been more of a market for children’s books, and I try to keep somewhat current, but I also love many older books, and I often obtain copies of them when they are “weeded” from library collections.

For a child of the sixties, the books of Lois Lenski were ubiquitous. Strawberry Girl, Cotton in My Sack, the Mr. Small series were all fixtures in the school library. Nowadays they are frequently overlooked or discarded for being outdated. I remember one of my children’s literature professors, in a thick New Hampshire accent, dismissing Mr. Small for its gender stereotyping!

My interest in Lois Lenski was aroused this winter when I received the latest issue of Quaker Action, the bulletin from the American Friends’ Service Committee and this sentence caught my eye: “And the juvenile fiction writer Lois Lenski Covey included AFSC in her trust, and the organization receives quarterly donatons as a result.” Wow! All of a sudden she was no longer a long-ago author of quaint, slightly sexist books, but perhaps something of an activist, and I wanted to find out more.

Google ... my virtual hero. There is actually quite a bit of information available on Lenski. I found that she had published an autobiography, Journey Into Childhood, which was in our local library system, so I read it. What a life! From a near-idyllic childhood as a minister’s daughter in turn-of-the-century rural Ohio to scraping by as an art student in New York City to marriage to distinguished twentieth-century muralist Arthur Covey to recognition as an author/illustrator who pioneered a realistic portrayal of childhood in America, it was quite the journey.

What touched me most is her obvious love of children, and her concern for their physical, emotional, spiritual, and creative wellbeing. It was that concern which led her to being a writer (and she used that term, “being led” which this Quaker finds interesting.) Her books, far from being quaintly old-fashioned, were an expression of a very gritty concern for the poor and downtrodden -- especially children -- in this country, very much on a par with the works of Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck or Dorothea Lange.

A few years ago I read a biography of another icon of children’s literature, Margaret Wise Brown (author of Goodnight Moon,) who was very involved with the Bank Street School of Education and wrote quite self-consciously in a style that was "scientifically proven" to be “good” for children. Lenski’s pedagogy was based on what she knew in her heart to be good for children, first the children in her own life and later, the children she met through her writing. She was the quintessential teacher. And it was easy to understand her gift to the AFSC.

Lenski’s life may not speak to you in the same way it did to me, but if you like memoirs or you want a view of America in the last century, seek out this book.

This review is cross-posted at the Winter Reading Challenge.

Happy Hogamany!

2008 is upon us. I hope you all celebrated, and celebrated safely. Mr. Ether and I went to the home of dear long-time friends. It was weird to remember New Year's parties of years past with some of these same people, when we all had little kids. Last night we were the only couple there with a school-age child, and she's quickly rocketing through her childhood years. She didn't want to come to the party with us and be the only kid!

Highlights of last night: incredibly delicious food, including a seemingly bottomless pot of gumbo made by our hosts; playing "speed Scrabble" for the first time; meeting a gentleman who had been in the very first wave of Peace Corps volunteers; sharing our New Year's tradition, "snapdragons": you spread a layer of raisins in a pan, pour warmed brandy over them, and light them on fire. Then you try to grab a flaming raisin and pop it into your mouth before it goes out. If you are successful, you'll have good luck in the coming year. (And only a smidgeon of a burn on your tongue, really. Try it. It's fun.)

I am not one for making fancy schmancy resolutions. I do have some wishes for the coming year:

*I dearly wish to see George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and Alberto Gonzales tried and convicted for war crimes.
*I wish for a presidential election that is not rigged.
*I wish for the nonsensical and dangerous debate about whether climate change is real to stop, and a concerted effort made in the upper echelons of power, as well as the level of individuals like us, to mitigate and even reverse the harm that continues to be done.
*I wish for economic justice for the lower income residents of New Orleans.
*I wish for WalMart to go out of business, to be replaced with sustainable employment for all.
*I wish to see the number of unionized workers start to increase in this country.
* I wish to see legal and economic justice, and an end to profiling, for immigrants in this country.
*I wish to see a complete repeal of the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) bill.
* I wish to see not one more luxury condo project approved in my city, that all development be required to be affordable housing and practical for families.
*I wish for Mr. Ether to find work that he enjoys and that will keep our family afloat.
*I wish for a nice fat scholarship for me, so I can quit worrying about how I'm going to pay for each and every graduate course I take.
*I wish to finish my library student teaching, become certified to be a school library media specialist, and get the library position at my current school.
* I wish for my loved ones -- family and friends -- to be healthy, and to live with intention and joy.
*I wish to get it together to have just one music night at our house, and just one knitting party.
*I wish to get my bathroom ceiling repaired and painted.
*I wish that Martha Stewart would quit stealing my ideas, darn it!
*This almost goes without saying, except that it needs to be said and said often: I wish for the troops to be pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. I wish for a world without war, where violence is never considered, either as a first or a last resort. War is over, if we want it.

Best wishes for 2008!