Eleanor got a bit of facebook "flair" on Friday that said
"July 9? Why not just cancel Christmas?"
I was glad to know that there are other people out there who had been looking forward to seeing the new Harry Potter movie at Thanksgiving. But now the release date has been moved to July. Who wants to see Harry Potter in July? The atmosphere of the book (this one is the Half-Blood Prince) is just right for late November, not for a bright, American summer.
I also liked the way the flair was worded, because I'm pretty sure it's a conscious echo of the actor who plays Snape (Alan Rickman) at his villainous worst as the Sheriff of Nottingham, snapping "and cancel Christmas" as he stomps out of the room. Yes, it was in that Robin Hood version with Kevin Costner. What do I care if Kevin didn't do an English accent? Go pick on the studio that did the story with animals.
Or better yet, send your letters of outrage to the Harry Potter studio, Warner Brothers.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Little Things
I just found a poem that illuminates, for me, one of the pleasures of reading Jane Austen novels that Ron doesn't enjoy--how, for a woman, concentrating on the details of getting through the day can conceal her emotions and keep her from being overwhelmed by the building crisis of her existence. Or something like that.
By driving our kids to school in the mornings, Ron has just saved me from multi-tasking overload. I reach a point where I can't keep any more of other peoples' details in my brain. It's kind of like when my friend Ben makes a shopping list; he says that when a list reaches three items, he has to begin writing it down. And please don't suggest any supermom listing strategies for me. While I hate to see a kid go without lunch, it's ultimately that kid's job to remember to take it. And if I could list all the things I have to do on any given morning, I'd have done it the night before. Sometimes, in fact, I wake up at 3 am and scrawl whatever I've forgotten on a pad I keep by my bed for that purpose.
But the little things in this poem are the person-shattering kind. They're the pattern you trace on the ER curtains, the way vacuuming the rug makes a design in the nap inside an empty house, the stranger who gets out a pair of sunglasses just like his. The poem is by Shoshauna Shy, and it's entitled Bringing My Son to the Police Station to be Fingerprinted:
My lemon-colored
whisper-weight blouse
with keyhole closure
and sweetheart neckline is tucked
into a pastel silhouette skirt
with side-slit vents
and triplicate pleats
when I realize in the sunlight
through the windshield
that the cool yellow of this blouse clashes
with the buttermilk heather in my skirt
which makes me slightly queasy
however
the periwinkle in the pattern on the sash
is sufficiently echoed by the twill uppers
of my buckle-snug sandals
while the accents on my purse
pick up the pink
in the button stitches
and then as we pass
through Weapons Check
it's reassuring to note
how the yellows momentarily mesh
and make an overall pleasing
composite
When I got to the end of this poem the first time, I was startled. I looked at the page for more. That's it. And that's when the tears rose, because that's all. Anything else would mean drama, action, a mother making a scene. It's the absence of the scene that's the heroic effort.
By driving our kids to school in the mornings, Ron has just saved me from multi-tasking overload. I reach a point where I can't keep any more of other peoples' details in my brain. It's kind of like when my friend Ben makes a shopping list; he says that when a list reaches three items, he has to begin writing it down. And please don't suggest any supermom listing strategies for me. While I hate to see a kid go without lunch, it's ultimately that kid's job to remember to take it. And if I could list all the things I have to do on any given morning, I'd have done it the night before. Sometimes, in fact, I wake up at 3 am and scrawl whatever I've forgotten on a pad I keep by my bed for that purpose.
But the little things in this poem are the person-shattering kind. They're the pattern you trace on the ER curtains, the way vacuuming the rug makes a design in the nap inside an empty house, the stranger who gets out a pair of sunglasses just like his. The poem is by Shoshauna Shy, and it's entitled Bringing My Son to the Police Station to be Fingerprinted:
My lemon-colored
whisper-weight blouse
with keyhole closure
and sweetheart neckline is tucked
into a pastel silhouette skirt
with side-slit vents
and triplicate pleats
when I realize in the sunlight
through the windshield
that the cool yellow of this blouse clashes
with the buttermilk heather in my skirt
which makes me slightly queasy
however
the periwinkle in the pattern on the sash
is sufficiently echoed by the twill uppers
of my buckle-snug sandals
while the accents on my purse
pick up the pink
in the button stitches
and then as we pass
through Weapons Check
it's reassuring to note
how the yellows momentarily mesh
and make an overall pleasing
composite
When I got to the end of this poem the first time, I was startled. I looked at the page for more. That's it. And that's when the tears rose, because that's all. Anything else would mean drama, action, a mother making a scene. It's the absence of the scene that's the heroic effort.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Not Tired of Summer
We've had an almost unprecedented string of warm, sunny days in Ohio lately. The forecast says we're due to get some Fay rain (say that ten times fast and you'll think of a big monkey), but right now the sun is streaming through the leaves of a nearby tree and it's making me think of the delightful indolence of this poem, one of my perennial favorites, James Wright's Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota:
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and come on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
Isn't the resonance of that last line wonderful? I read it as ironic, because the poem is not full of regret.
The end of August can be a season for regret, especially if you didn't spend enough time lying in hammocks. Personally, I didn't spend nearly enough time floating on an air mattress on the lake. But what if I did spend enough time doing that? Then I'd be tired of it. The speaker is not tired of lying in the hammock. Maybe the word "waste" comes from someone else, someone who wants him to get up and have supper and take out the trash and sort the laundry so there can be something clean to wear to school tomorrow.
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and come on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
Isn't the resonance of that last line wonderful? I read it as ironic, because the poem is not full of regret.
The end of August can be a season for regret, especially if you didn't spend enough time lying in hammocks. Personally, I didn't spend nearly enough time floating on an air mattress on the lake. But what if I did spend enough time doing that? Then I'd be tired of it. The speaker is not tired of lying in the hammock. Maybe the word "waste" comes from someone else, someone who wants him to get up and have supper and take out the trash and sort the laundry so there can be something clean to wear to school tomorrow.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Entertaining Aliens
Do you know the old science fiction quandry? That it's hard to come up with an alien who doesn't have something that humans also require, like a mouth? One of the ways to get around that is to base the aliens on different kinds of animal life. For entertaining aliens, I like to read a Stardoc novel, by S.L. Viehl. She has a blog with writing advice called Paperback Writer.
I've told you about my car books before--the ones that come from my friend Amy's mother that I keep in the car so I'm never without a book when I have to wait for a kid. Originally, Amy was passing on these books to me because we were both home with preschoolers and there were months it was hard to get to the library; these were easy reading, even for a sleep-deprived mother of two asthmatic preschoolers. Now she passes along only the best of them, and occasionally I find one I like enough to bring in the house. One of these was one of the first three Stardoc novels, by S.L. Viehl. I don't remember which one it was; often books in a series come out of order from Amy's mom. But after the first one or two, I started searching for more of them on my own and trying to read them in order so some of the continuing plot elements would make more sense to me. This is roughly the order in which I ended up arranging them:
The interesting part of these novels, as I've said, is the variety of alien species and the way the Stardoc relates to them. There's a great romance/scifi mix in Omega Games where Jarn puts on some kind of virtual reality goggles that belong to a humanoid woman and is treated to a recording of foreplay from the woman's tentacled husband, an Omorr: "Prehensile gildrells slid around my throat and into my hair like a bunch of long white snakes, while three muscular pink arms tugged me back against an equally hard body." That's something you just don't get in many other scifi novels--interspecies sexual attraction.
To add to previous descriptions of the lizard-like aliens called the Hsktskt is a being who takes over the body of a Hsktskt while retaining her own identity as a shape-shifter, an Odnallak. The Hsktskt-shaped Odnallak helps Jarn and Reever defeat a "parasitic life-form that invades a host body with its embryonic form" called a Sovant. They also have help from a man with one arm and no legs who has built himself a custom battle drone to fit around his body, and a cooperative and powerful pink slime alien who can never be allowed to reach the next stage of its development because then it would be "virtually indestructible...the gigantic, vicious, mindless, planet-eating bogeyworm of myth."
Also, my favorite alien species in the Stardoc novels is the sentient cat called a Chakacat, although unfortunately none of them say anything nearly as bloodthirsty and self-involved as what I would imagine if a cat could speak!
I've told you about my car books before--the ones that come from my friend Amy's mother that I keep in the car so I'm never without a book when I have to wait for a kid. Originally, Amy was passing on these books to me because we were both home with preschoolers and there were months it was hard to get to the library; these were easy reading, even for a sleep-deprived mother of two asthmatic preschoolers. Now she passes along only the best of them, and occasionally I find one I like enough to bring in the house. One of these was one of the first three Stardoc novels, by S.L. Viehl. I don't remember which one it was; often books in a series come out of order from Amy's mom. But after the first one or two, I started searching for more of them on my own and trying to read them in order so some of the continuing plot elements would make more sense to me. This is roughly the order in which I ended up arranging them:
- Stardoc (2000)
- Beyond Varallan (2000)
- Endurance (2001)
- Shockball (2001)
- Eternity Row (2002)
- Rebel Ice (2006)
- Plague of Memory (2007)(previously Clanson)
- Omega Games (2008)
The interesting part of these novels, as I've said, is the variety of alien species and the way the Stardoc relates to them. There's a great romance/scifi mix in Omega Games where Jarn puts on some kind of virtual reality goggles that belong to a humanoid woman and is treated to a recording of foreplay from the woman's tentacled husband, an Omorr: "Prehensile gildrells slid around my throat and into my hair like a bunch of long white snakes, while three muscular pink arms tugged me back against an equally hard body." That's something you just don't get in many other scifi novels--interspecies sexual attraction.
To add to previous descriptions of the lizard-like aliens called the Hsktskt is a being who takes over the body of a Hsktskt while retaining her own identity as a shape-shifter, an Odnallak. The Hsktskt-shaped Odnallak helps Jarn and Reever defeat a "parasitic life-form that invades a host body with its embryonic form" called a Sovant. They also have help from a man with one arm and no legs who has built himself a custom battle drone to fit around his body, and a cooperative and powerful pink slime alien who can never be allowed to reach the next stage of its development because then it would be "virtually indestructible...the gigantic, vicious, mindless, planet-eating bogeyworm of myth."
Also, my favorite alien species in the Stardoc novels is the sentient cat called a Chakacat, although unfortunately none of them say anything nearly as bloodthirsty and self-involved as what I would imagine if a cat could speak!
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Turning Fifteen
My first baby was born fifteen years ago today, and what a long, strange trip it's been! As her party guests gather for the obligatory sleepover, I'm thinking of previous parties; ones where I filled up the wading pools and we had a backyard waterslide, and more recent ones for which my major role was to provide chips, pizza, soda, cake, and ice cream. It's no longer acceptable to order pizza. The fifteen-year-olds in Eleanor's social circle now prefer chinese food, and I have brewed three jars full of various kinds of tea for today's ten guests.
The biggest change I've had to get used to in my career as mother of a teenager is that she now gets almost all of my jokes, even the sly, quiet ones. I think this started about the time we were in one of those butterfly gardens where the butterflies can fly around you, and we saw one lying quiescent on a leaf. "It's sleeping" I said, with an exaggerated expression. Eleanor's face immediately registered recognition--it's what I've always said to her about those quiescent butterflies, but she suddenly understood that I meant the big sleep. And she enjoyed the joke on her former self.
I used to always put money in those mechanical horses and wait for Eleanor to ride at the end of a grocery or "mart" shopping trip. It always seemed to me the least I could do for a toddler who had put up with all the shopping that had to be done. But I exaggerated other dangers (like germs on the handle of the shopping cart and the mechanical horse) quite as much as the mother in this poem, Outside the Mainway Market, by Catherine Doty:
Every day, our mother says,
kids die on those goddamned things,
and she nods at the lone yellow horse
with the red vinyl bridle
and four black, shining hooves
like police hat brims.
Not only do we stop our five-part
begging, we walk wide around the beast,
though Mary brushes the coin box
with her sleeve.
Rigid in flight, the great horse's legs
flange out toward us. Not one of us argues.
We hold onto our mother's coat, cross
several streets, touch the dog we always touch
when we walk home, fingering
his freckled snout. Then we scream
and run in the yard while supper cooks,
and the sky shudders pale for some seconds
before it darkens, as if in that lavender moment,
three blocks away, a child drops
the reins and gasps as his shoes fly off,
and plumes of smoke rise
from the crown of his hand-knit hat.
What is charming about having a fifteen-year-old like mine is that even though I can no longer exaggerate dangers, she's internalized most of what I'd warn her about, anyway, so the manner of old warnings becomes an inside joke. I'm becoming the mother voice inside her head, and so will never really die. BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!
The biggest change I've had to get used to in my career as mother of a teenager is that she now gets almost all of my jokes, even the sly, quiet ones. I think this started about the time we were in one of those butterfly gardens where the butterflies can fly around you, and we saw one lying quiescent on a leaf. "It's sleeping" I said, with an exaggerated expression. Eleanor's face immediately registered recognition--it's what I've always said to her about those quiescent butterflies, but she suddenly understood that I meant the big sleep. And she enjoyed the joke on her former self.
I used to always put money in those mechanical horses and wait for Eleanor to ride at the end of a grocery or "mart" shopping trip. It always seemed to me the least I could do for a toddler who had put up with all the shopping that had to be done. But I exaggerated other dangers (like germs on the handle of the shopping cart and the mechanical horse) quite as much as the mother in this poem, Outside the Mainway Market, by Catherine Doty:
Every day, our mother says,
kids die on those goddamned things,
and she nods at the lone yellow horse
with the red vinyl bridle
and four black, shining hooves
like police hat brims.
Not only do we stop our five-part
begging, we walk wide around the beast,
though Mary brushes the coin box
with her sleeve.
Rigid in flight, the great horse's legs
flange out toward us. Not one of us argues.
We hold onto our mother's coat, cross
several streets, touch the dog we always touch
when we walk home, fingering
his freckled snout. Then we scream
and run in the yard while supper cooks,
and the sky shudders pale for some seconds
before it darkens, as if in that lavender moment,
three blocks away, a child drops
the reins and gasps as his shoes fly off,
and plumes of smoke rise
from the crown of his hand-knit hat.
What is charming about having a fifteen-year-old like mine is that even though I can no longer exaggerate dangers, she's internalized most of what I'd warn her about, anyway, so the manner of old warnings becomes an inside joke. I'm becoming the mother voice inside her head, and so will never really die. BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!
Friday, August 22, 2008
Books For Frittering Away Your Time
The dust is settling at my house today because there are no kids here to stir it up. They're back in school. We all got up before sunrise to get them there (and I discovered that I have a sore throat and a cold). The cats are drifting around confused, and the birds are squawking that it's too quiet for their taste.
As we frittered away the last of summer, Eleanor and I read the latest Georgia Nicolson book, Stop In the Name of Pants, by Louise Rennison. I found it no better or worse than any of the previous ones, although the neologisms are fewer on the ground (necessarily, if the language is to remain even nominally British English). These are the previous ones, in order:
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God
Knocked Out by my Nunga-Nungas
Dancing in my Nuddy-Pants
Away Laughing on a Fast Camel
Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers
Startled by His Furry Shorts
Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
If you're a cat lover, you'll be glad to know that despite the build-up, Angus does not die in this book, and in fact survives to literally bite the hand that feeds him. If you're a mother, you'll be amused at the following teenage girl perspective:
"I can't go, though.
I'd like to because I haven't seen another human being for days. But I can't bear to leave Angus when he is so poorly.
I said that to Mum earlier on, I said 'Oh, I wish I had some human company while I nurse Angus.'
She said 'I've been here all the time as well.'
I said 'As I said, I wish I had some human company.'
And she had stropped off to have a bath. That was about two hours ago and she is still in there...I don't know what she does in there for so long, it's vair selfish."
If you've ever known a teenage girl, you'll be amused by this book. So far we don't let the men in our house read them, but on her site, Rennison has some comments from men who also like reading about Georgia and the Ace Gang.
Book bloggers appreciation week is coming up. (Thanks to SFP at Pages Turned for spreading the word.)
As we frittered away the last of summer, Eleanor and I read the latest Georgia Nicolson book, Stop In the Name of Pants, by Louise Rennison. I found it no better or worse than any of the previous ones, although the neologisms are fewer on the ground (necessarily, if the language is to remain even nominally British English). These are the previous ones, in order:
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God
Knocked Out by my Nunga-Nungas
Dancing in my Nuddy-Pants
Away Laughing on a Fast Camel
Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers
Startled by His Furry Shorts
Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
If you're a cat lover, you'll be glad to know that despite the build-up, Angus does not die in this book, and in fact survives to literally bite the hand that feeds him. If you're a mother, you'll be amused at the following teenage girl perspective:
"I can't go, though.
I'd like to because I haven't seen another human being for days. But I can't bear to leave Angus when he is so poorly.
I said that to Mum earlier on, I said 'Oh, I wish I had some human company while I nurse Angus.'
She said 'I've been here all the time as well.'
I said 'As I said, I wish I had some human company.'
And she had stropped off to have a bath. That was about two hours ago and she is still in there...I don't know what she does in there for so long, it's vair selfish."
If you've ever known a teenage girl, you'll be amused by this book. So far we don't let the men in our house read them, but on her site, Rennison has some comments from men who also like reading about Georgia and the Ace Gang.
Book bloggers appreciation week is coming up. (Thanks to SFP at Pages Turned for spreading the word.)
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Dust
No, not the Phillip Pullman kind.
I've been thinking about dust since I got it all over my rental car (the one I'm driving until my minivan is repaired) on a gravel road this weekend. It was on the way back from the Peter Pan reunion picnic, when the cast and crew got together to put the songs back into each other's heads (I'd just gotten the "Wendy" song out of there, and now it's back in again). As I followed the car ahead of me, watching the dust rise and settle, I thought what an unusual sight that is in Ohio. It's always green and wet here. You don't see much dust, even in August.
It made me think of this W.S. Merwin poem, To the Dust of the Road, which I liked when I first read it because it reminds me of places that aren't as green and wet as the place I'm living now:
To the Dust of the Road
And in the morning you are up again
with the way leading through you for a while
longer if the wind is motionless when
the cars reach where the asphalt ends a mile
or so below the main road and the wave
you rise into is different every time
and you are one with it until you have
made your way up to the top of your climb
and brightened in that moment of that day
and then you turn as when you rose before
in fire or wind from the ends of the earth
to pause here and you seem to drift away
on into nothing to lie down once more
until another breath brings you to birth
I've been in places where shade actually makes a difference--parts of Texas come to mind--and the image of wind stirring the dust like this reminds me of being there, far away from all the responsibilities that are about to come crashing down on all of us. The college where Ron and I work is about to start the semester, and Eleanor and Walker go back to school on Friday. We need another few days of drifting, but instead we seem to be rushing around trying to get everything in before our free time is all gone.
I've been thinking about dust since I got it all over my rental car (the one I'm driving until my minivan is repaired) on a gravel road this weekend. It was on the way back from the Peter Pan reunion picnic, when the cast and crew got together to put the songs back into each other's heads (I'd just gotten the "Wendy" song out of there, and now it's back in again). As I followed the car ahead of me, watching the dust rise and settle, I thought what an unusual sight that is in Ohio. It's always green and wet here. You don't see much dust, even in August.
It made me think of this W.S. Merwin poem, To the Dust of the Road, which I liked when I first read it because it reminds me of places that aren't as green and wet as the place I'm living now:
To the Dust of the Road
And in the morning you are up again
with the way leading through you for a while
longer if the wind is motionless when
the cars reach where the asphalt ends a mile
or so below the main road and the wave
you rise into is different every time
and you are one with it until you have
made your way up to the top of your climb
and brightened in that moment of that day
and then you turn as when you rose before
in fire or wind from the ends of the earth
to pause here and you seem to drift away
on into nothing to lie down once more
until another breath brings you to birth
I've been in places where shade actually makes a difference--parts of Texas come to mind--and the image of wind stirring the dust like this reminds me of being there, far away from all the responsibilities that are about to come crashing down on all of us. The college where Ron and I work is about to start the semester, and Eleanor and Walker go back to school on Friday. We need another few days of drifting, but instead we seem to be rushing around trying to get everything in before our free time is all gone.
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