Reading Update

Book #21 of this year was All is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir, by Brennan Manning. I haven't read much of Manning's work, but I know that he has written extensively on being a ragamuffin, a sinner saved by grace and not by any of his own merit. In this book he is painfully open about the flaws and sins of his life, including his alcoholic binges during a time when God was using him enormously in ministry. My favorite part of this book was the letters from his friends included at the end, where they testified to the difference his friendship made in their lives. Here's a quote from the book:

"My life is a witness to vulgar grace - a grace that amazes as it offends. A grace that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same wages as the grinning drunk who shows up at ten till five. A grace that hikes up the robe and runs breakneck towards the prodigal reeking of sin and wraps him up and decides to throw a party no ifs, ands, or buts. A grace that raises bloodshot eyes to a dying thief's request - 'Please, remember me' - and assures him, 'You bet!' A grace that is the pleasure of the Father, fleshed out in the carpenter Messiah, Jesus the Christ, who left His Father's side not for heaven's sake but for our sakes, yours and mine. This vulgar grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without asking anything of us. It's not cheap. It's free, and as such will always be a banana peel for the orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility. Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot cover. Grace is enough. He is enough. Jesus is enough."

Book #22 was Unfinished Desires, by Gail Godwin. I've read all or most of Godwin's other books but hadn't seen this one, which came out in 2010, yet. It's very much like her others, filled with a deep spiritual sensibility and an awareness of the imperfections of human beings. I appreciated the character development and the focus on the inward drama of seeking God.

Book #23 was Anne Lamott's latest book, Some Assembly Required. I enjoyed Lamott's memoir of her son's first year, Operating Instructions. In that book, Lamott chronicles her life as a single mom to baby Sam. In Some Assembly Required, Sam is all grown up and now a father himself, at 19. Lamott is learning to be a grandmother, and trying not to interfere too much in the life of baby Jax, whom she adores, but whose parent she is not. Lamott bugs me (and herself) sometimes, but I like her authenticity. A couple of observations: first, in Lamott's writing, seventh grade is always the objective correlative for misery. Here she is on her baby grandson:

"For Jax, at nearly a month, nothing is wrecked. His skin is so ethereal and smooth, and he is not required to do anything or make decisions, so he doesn't have a history of screwing up yet, and all of his needs and desires are fulfilled, almost immediately : wet to dry, empty to full, edgy to relaxed, rocked asleep and then awake. You'd almost want to be Jax, if you didn't know what he was in store for - namely, a fully flawed human life. Stubbed toes, seventh grade, acne, broken hearts."

And later she writes, "I said to Karen that you're instantly in a bind once you arrive here on earth, of need, of self-will, a body and a separate personality, even before the crippling self-consciousness kicks in, even before seventh grade." Second, it was a strange experience to read about Lamott's reaction to the earthquake in Haiti, since that passage threw me into my own memory and sent me to the exact day she was talking about. I had just arrived in the US on January 18th, 2010, having just been evacuated from Haiti. Lamott, on the other hand, was getting ready for a trip to India.

"January 18. I got cold feet at the airport. It was only days after the earthquake in Haiti. I was reeling with the global unimaginable tragedy of that one, and I knew I was about to fly into the heart of another. So I called Bonnie. 'Where is God in Haiti? Where will God be in the slums of Delhi?'

She said that in Haiti, as a result of the devastation, we've seen the care with which people treat people in trouble, with which we attend to our families and others, in chaos or sorrow. And I would get to see that in India."

I have to admit that I don't know what to think about "our earthquake" being co-opted to teach a lesson, even though the lesson she learned is one that I learned too. Of course I don't expect her "reeling" to be as extensive as my own, and certainly her reflections are just the sort of thing I often do myself in response to something I'm following in the news. It was just strange to read. I'll leave it at that.

Book #24 was The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman. I enjoyed the characters and relationships (and the bookstore and cookbook details) in this book and would read more by Goodman. The September 11th connection, which I saw coming from the very beginning of the book, had a similar effect to the Haiti earthquake connection in Lamott's book. An event like September 11th, which everyone remembers clearly, is tricky to handle in a novel. It's still so close to us.

Book #25 was recommended to me by my daughter, who sobbed her way through it. I read it in the car on our most recent roadtrip, and sobbed a lot too. The book, The Fault in Our Stars, is written by John Green, one of my daughter's favorite people. He and his brother are The Vlog Brothers, founders of the Nerdfighters. (That is, not fighting against nerds, but an army of nerds fighting "worldsuck" and increasing awesomeness.) Given how goofy all of this sounds (and believe me, I have heard a lot about this whole Nerdfighter thing from my Nerdfighter daughter), this book was not at all what I expected. It's about kids with cancer, and Hazel and Augustus are incredibly real, incredibly affecting characters. There's not a single ounce of sentimentality in the book. These kids are tough, brilliant, and compassionate, and there's a lot more to them than that they have cancer. The blurb on the cover says, "John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love." I can't do better than that.

Books #26 and #27 were Brian Selznick titles. I recently saw the movie Hugo, which I loved. I hadn't yet read the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, on which the movie is based. The book is told in words and pictures, so although it is 550 pages long, it's a quick read. The pictures are amazing, full of loving details which the movie replicates. Selznick got the Caldecott medal for this in 2008. I'm glad I finally read it. After I put it down I immediately picked up Selznick's next book, Wonderstruck. I didn't love that one quite as much as Hugo's story, but it was another amazing book. Again, the pictures are very important, but in this book, there are two separate stories, one told in words and one in pictures. The two collide by the end.

Somewhere in the middle of all these, I started reading Middlemarch, by George Eliot. This is a chunk of a book, but I'm not sure how long it is, since I'm reading it on my Kindle (the lack of pagination is one of the things I don't like about e-reading). All I know is that I read and read and read and the percentage at the bottom of my screen doesn't change! The only Eliot I've read before is Silas Marner, and I'm enjoying this one so far. It may take me a while to finish it, though, since I keep reading other things between chapters.

I wanted to read at least 52 books this year, and I don't know if I'm going to make it. But I have been enjoying my summer reading!

A Love Letter to my Body

This letter is part of the SheLoves magazine synchroblog here.

Dear Body,

So, the assignment is to write you a love letter. I'm not sure I can do it. Perhaps the best I can manage is a grudging acceptance letter. But here goes.

For a long time now, probably since my teens, I've dealt with insecurities about how you look by thinking of you in purely functional terms. You're healthy and strong, you can eat anything, you get me where I need to go, you can do a 5K (walking, not running, but still). So I have a "not appealing to look at, but useful" paradigm. My hands may not look like the perfectly manicured visions of loveliness my students' moms (or my students themselves) carry around, but mine can use chopsticks and type extremely fast and make a perfect cup of tea. You can extrapolate from that hands example to how I see some of my less public body parts.

Sometimes I wonder why God chose to put these beautiful souls of ours into bodies. They (you, all of you bodies) complicate matters so much. No offense, Body, but it's true. You get tired. You have hormones, which affect behavior more than I'd like. And there's all that business about how to clothe and adorn you, finding the impossible balance between being attractive enough and drawing too much attention to oneself, thus becoming a source of temptation. I remember a friend sharing with me that her husband had told her that some women caused temptation not only by how they dressed, but even by the way they did their hair. That's a lot of responsibility for a body, isn't it? And different Christian communities I've been a part of in my life hold different views of what is and is not acceptable. We have to think about what to feed you, too, so you don't get too fat or too thin or too unhealthy. And no matter how well we maintain you, you get sick. You get old. You die. You, Body of mine, will die some day.

But then I remember that Jesus took on flesh. He had a body. He didn't have a woman's body, but He was born of one; He had a placenta and a belly button and He nursed at His mother's breasts. He wasn't some ethereal spirit alone, not just a beautiful soul, but fully human, with a respiratory system and a blood type and hair and fingernails that grew and had to be cut. He had appetites.

But I'm avoiding the topic here, Body, because it's easier to talk in general terms and philosophize than it is to talk about us, you and me, the particularities of our love/hate relationship. I have to admit that when I think about you, there are many negative images that come to mind, times you've let me down, embarrassed me, shamed me. Years of P.E. classes, when I was awkward and uncoordinated and couldn't do any of the things that it seemed everyone else did effortlessly. Puberty. Acne. Dressing to hide you. Bathing suits. Your clumsiness that caused me accidents and injuries. And, I hate to bring this up, because I know it technically isn't your fault, but I guess I do blame you for the loss of my second child, who died at eight weeks gestation. You failed me. You didn't hold on to that tiny daughter (even though I don't even know she was a daughter), whom I already loved.

There are positives too, though, Body. It helps that I have a husband who's been appreciating you a lot for almost 23 years now. He doesn't care that you're getting older and saggier, either; He seems to like you more now than when I was 21.

And oh, Body, here's where I can use the word Love, capitalized, with hearts and flowers: you carried my babies, my beautiful children. Even though you were sick and miserable through those pregnancies, you carried them, and you birthed them without drugs, and you were amazing. Truly amazing. That husband I just mentioned was completely in awe of you, of us, and what we did, body and soul. And then you nourished those babies, you made them fat on your milk and nurtured them for - well, let's just say for longer than the average American baby breastfeeds. You were a miracle.

For those kids, Body, I'll forgive you a multitude of sins. The parts that are too big, too jiggly, too stretch-marked, the galumphing, the fall down the stairs that broke my leg (and by the way, that leg still hurts quite often, thank you, more than fifteen years later). Your whiteness - yes, I've always used the image of a creature who's been living under a rock to describe how pale you seem to me, compared with the beautiful dark skin of those I grew up with and those I now live among, as a child in Africa and now as an adult in Haiti. I've always wanted to be black, like them.

Body, you're the one I've got, for better or worse. I know what size you are, give or take. I know what styles you can't ever wear. I know how careful you have to be to wear the right shoes, to avoid pain. I know your patterns and cycles. I know you can't see without glasses, and even though the optometrist got my hopes up years ago about how you might get to stop wearing glasses in your forties as you got more far-sighted, I know now that's not ever going to happen. I know you'll react to a TB skin test, because you had that BCG vaccination in England as a teenager, and I know how health care providers in the US freak out at that. You've had dengue fever and you've been anemic and you've downed years worth of antimalarials. You've done a long bike trip and you've hiked many miles and you've survived an earthquake, although you still react independently of me to noises and movement, and you still catch me off guard every time.

And let's face it, Body, now's the time. If I don't appreciate you now, as I didn't when I was younger, what am I going to do when you age even more? We've passed forty, you know; it's all probably downhill from here.

Can I say that I love you? It feels a little embarrassing, doesn't it? And yet, I'm at home with you now, more than I used to be. I enjoy good food, and sunshine on my shoulders (yep, it makes me happy), and the feel of people I love in my arms. I couldn't experience any of those things without you. And I have a daughter now who looks just like me, and she's beautiful, so I can't insult you the way I used to.

OK then, I'll say it. I love you. I do. Thanks for everything. Hope we have many, many more years together.

Love,
Ruth

Poetry Friday: How Would You Live Then?

A little Mary Oliver. Click on the photo to read a larger version.

How would you live then? I wish I could live all of life the way I live these summer days...

Here's today's roundup.

Poetry Friday: Glow-Worms

The Mower to the Glow-Worms
by Andrew Marvell

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the summer night,
Her matchless songs does meditate;

Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor prince’s funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grass’s fall;

Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
To wand’ring mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim,
And after foolish fires do stray;

Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since Juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displac’d
That I shall never find my home.

I love this sleepy summer poem, and the "country comets" that feel no need for a high purpose: it's enough for them to shine while they can, since summer will soon be over. The mower isn't paying any attention anyway; Juliana has "displac'd" his brain and he's wandering literally and metaphorically.

It's going to be a hot day where I am, even hotter than in Haiti. Maybe it will cool off enough this evening to chase some glow-worms.

Here's today's roundup.

Photo Credit: www.firefly.org

Poetry Friday: Tintern Abbey

As we sat on the porch of the cabin, looking out over the woods, my husband said, "This reminds me of Tintern Abbey." He read the poem aloud to us. From now on whenever I hear or read it, I'll think of our friend P. killing bugs in a kind of rhythmic counterpoint.

Here's the whole thing. Some excerpts:

LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY
William Wordsworth

...

Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

...

And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.

...



Our vacation provided much "life and food for future years." I wish you the same, this summer.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Missed Poetry Friday

I was away from the internet for Poetry Friday but here's the roundup. And I'd just like to report I had a wonderful day, in spite of missing the poems.

Poetry Friday: Two Places

I'm traveling today, going between the place where I live most of the year and the place where I spend several weeks traveling in the summer. The first place, Haiti, the place I'm leaving, is where I've spent 15 years of my life and two-thirds of my married life, given birth twice, experienced some of the most beautiful and definitely the most terrible moments of my life. The other place, the United States, my destination, is printed on my passport, and it's the home of many of the people I love most in the world.

These two places are not even the only ones that have made me who I am - I'm leaving out my African childhood, my British high school years, my summer in France. But for today, two places are enough.


where we are (for edward field)
by Gerald Locklin.

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland.

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope.

I posted this poem once before back in 2008.

The Poetry Friday roundup is here today.

Reading Update

Book #9 of this year was The List, by Siobhan Vivian. This book came out at the beginning of April and by the time I heard the author speak at the IRA conference at the end of the month, it was in its third printing. The book has hit a nerve, with its portrayal of life and judgement in an American high school. The story takes place in a school where, for years, a list has come out annually, the week before Homecoming. There are eight names on the list: the prettiest, and the ugliest, girl in each class. This book is about how we let others define us, and how we define ourselves, based on physical appearance. While this book contains themes that are too mature for many of my middle schoolers, it would be fascinating to discuss with older teenagers.

Book #10 was The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler. I heard Jay Asher speak at the IRA conference, too. Emma and Josh use an AOL CD/ROM to get on the internet, and suddenly they can see their future Facebook pages, even though of course Facebook won't be invented for years. This was a lot of fun, although I would imagine that much of the AOL humor would be lost on people who don't remember 1996 as clearly as I do. It also includes some interesting ideas about how what we do right now affects our future.

Book #11, Thirteen Reasons Why, is also by Jay Asher, and also makes use of outmoded technology.  

A few days after a girl from school, Hannah Baker, commits suicide, Clay Jensen receives a box of cassette tapes in the mail. Each one was recorded by Hannah and explains her reasons for choosing to take her own life. Asher read us emails from readers of this book, many of whom found it helped them to feel empathy for others and to realize that their actions, and they way they treated people, had consequences.

Book #12 was Heidegger's Glasses, by Thaisa Frank. This was a strange and somewhat confusing book about Nazi Germany. It's not entirely clear to me how much of the premise is invented and how much is historical, but the story is about a group of people spared from concentration camps because of their linguistic abilities. They are required to answer letters from dead people. Apparently, before being murdered, many inmates of concentration camps were forced to write letters to people back home. The Heidegger's Glasses of the title refers to a pair of glasses made for the philosopher. Heidegger's letter about his glasses comes into the compound, with serious consequences. I loved the end of this book but I found many stretches of it hard to follow.

Book #13 was Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of his Trip to Heaven and Back. It seems clear that Colton Burpo had some kind of experience when he was clinically dead for a few minutes. He went somewhere and saw something. However, I'd be hesitant to draw many conclusions from his story about what Heaven is like. Time changes and distorts our memories, and many of the "revelations" Colton shared were years after he had experienced them. I also thought this book was rather stretched out, as though it would have made a nice article, but was turned into a book. It's a quick, easy read, and the Burpos seem like a very sincere, sweet family.

Book #14 was Three Black Swans, by Caroline Cooney. I used this as a read-aloud with my eighth graders, and it didn't hold their attention the way other books by Cooney have. That could just be because it was the end of the school year! Many of the students did say that they found the premise interesting. Missy and Claire are cousins and they look a lot alike. Missy decides to perpetrate a hoax, pretending that she and Claire are actually twins. A fellow student posts a video of the two girls on YouTube and suddenly they begin to find out that their lives are full of secrets.

Book #15 was Carl Hiaasen's latest, Chomp. Hiaasen's books are sure-fire winners with my seventh graders, who have enjoyed Flush and Scat. This one didn't disappoint, with its crazy characters, its focus on ecology, and its Florida setting.

Book #16 was Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan. I always enjoy Tan's books, and this one was very entertaining. It's about a group of tourists who travel to Myanmar/Burma and have a bit more of a cross-cultural experience than they had bargained for, and it's narrated by a woman who is recently dead, but whose spirit is still hanging around.

Book #17 was Not That Kind of Girl, another one by Siobhan Vivian. This has some of the same themes as The List. Male/female interaction, stereotyping, power and control. I didn't enjoy this one as much, though. It isn't easy to be a teenager today, that's for sure, and while adolescence wasn't ever easy, I think the choices and expectations facing teenage girls today, particularly with regard to their sexuality, are daunting. Again, this one is too mature for my middle schoolers.

Book #18 was yet another Siobhan Vivian title. This one, Same Difference, is about a girl who loves art and is just learning that she has a talent. Emily goes to a summer art program and finds a world very different from her suburban origins. She's trying to figure out who she is, and whether she can create a new identity that includes both her past and the art that is opening her mind. Her old best friend, Meg, and her new best friend, Fiona, pull her in different directions. Frankly, both worlds seemed a little stifling to me, and like many of the books in this post, this one made me so thankful that I'm no longer a teenager.

Book #19 was Look Again, by Lisa Scottoline. Ellen Gleeson has adopted her son, but when she gets a "Have You Seen this Child?" mailing, she sees the photo of a child who looks just like hers. Was her adoption legal? Why are people around her dying? Why does she run off to Florida to collect DNA samples? I didn't find this book believable or compelling at all.

Book #20, Love and Other Perishable Items, by Laura Buzo, is set in Australia. The American edition won't be out until December (the Australian title is Good Oil), but I got an ARC at the IRA conference. Amelia is fifteen and works in a grocery store, where she has developed a crush on Chris, her trainer. This book is an example of how reading can pull you into a completely different word from your own. I won't be sharing this one with my middle schoolers either, largely because of all the drinking, drug use, liberal use of the f-word, and other assorted bad behavior, but Buzo has created a world that I could see, hear, and smell. The book is saturated with sheer longing. I thought about the Roddy Doyle books as I read this; how did an author fill me with so much sympathy for characters who spend large amounts of their time drunk? I have no idea, but Buzo, like Doyle, knows how.

Safety

This semester, the maintenance people bolted my bookcases to the wall. It's needed to happen for a long time. One of the bookcases, particularly, was wobbly, and I tried not to think about what it would do in an earthquake. In the earthquake in 2010, the only bookcase in my classroom that actually fell was the blue one in the first photo. The others were facing in the other direction. So only those extremely old anthologies fell.



We know, of course, that we could have another earthquake. I don't think about it every day any more, but I do think about it. The brackets wouldn't stop books from falling on our heads, but they would stop the furniture itself from crashing over. There's only so much you can do. These powers are stronger than we are.


I must admit that I see bookcases very differently now. Before, they looked entirely friendly to me. Now, sadly, there's an element of deathtrap to them. Maybe that's one reason I have embraced my Kindle so thoroughly.

Poetry Friday: A Hot Day

It's supposed to be 99 degrees today here in Port-au-Prince. Everything is coated with dust, and the poinciana trees are in bloom. It's completely, 100% summer. Sadly, though, I have to go to two meetings today and finish draping dustcloths over everything in my classroom. So make that 99% summer.

I was thinking about this poem, which I've loved since high school, and was happy to find that I had it written down, in my careful 16-year-old handwriting, with my lower case a self-consciously ... I had to pause here and look up the way to say that, and I didn't really find any way to say it except that the way I made my a was with "an upper terminal over the bowl." People, there is a whole page here about the letter A. How amazing is the internet?

Anyway, what was I saying?

Oh yes, it's hot. And this poem expresses that so evocatively, except that the hot here is not Haiti hot, but England hot, "what is so rare as a day in June" hot, bringing back all kinds of lovely memories of hanging out on the tennis court in my summer school uniform. Well, actually, my summer school uniform was hideously unflattering and I hated it, and I didn't like playing tennis, either, though I liked watching it, and even went to Wimbledon once.

But enough. Let's get to the poem.

A Hot Day
by A.S.J. Tessimond

Cottonwool clouds loiter.
A lawnmower, very far,
Birrs. Then a bee comes
To a crimson rose and softly,
Defly and fatly crams
A velvet body in.

A tree, June-lazy, makes
A tent of dim green light.
Sunlight weaves in the leaves,
Honey-light laced with leaf-light,
Green interleaved with gold.
Sunlight gathers its rays
In sheaves, which the wind unweaves
And then reweaves - the wind
That puffs a smell of grass
Through the heat-heavy, trembling
Summer pool of air.


I like Tessimond's poems (here are some more of them and here's a favorite I posted back in 2006.) I imagine there will be lots of fabulous poems today in the Poetry Friday roundup, and since Jama is hosting, there is bound to be plenty of delicious food served. Head on over!

Last Day

Today we had our eighth grade graduation, and then sent the eighth graders home. (Actually I heard rumors they were all getting together at a restaurant for lunch.) We occupied the seventh graders with a movie for the rest of the morning until the DVD player quit working and we ushered them all out onto the preschool playground for the last half hour before dismissal. I heard not one single complaint and the kids spent the last moments together before their summer vacation dunking purple and gold balloons in the preschoolers' basketball hoop, sliding down the tiny slide, swinging, and talking as though they hadn't just spent the last nine months talking constantly to each other, even in class. There were two reasons for using the preschool playground: first, the high school students were finishing up their exams, so we couldn't let seventh graders anywhere near that building, and second, the elementary school's last day was yesterday, so there were no preschoolers around to complain at the thirteen-year-olds on their playground equipment.

It's wonderful to be done with school for another year. The kids have been done and checked out for at least a week, so teaching them has been quite challenging. I used my regular tactic of saving the end of an exciting read-aloud, and even that didn't hold their attention the way it usually does.

It was good having some time today to enjoy and appreciate these kids, without the responsibility of teaching them anything. My eighth grade students made speeches (they all write and perform one in class, and the students vote on who gets to speak at the graduation itself). They were all dressed up and looked amazing. I talked to their parents about how wonderful their kids are (and they are, though I forgot that sometimes in the past week). Then supervising the seventh graders was fun, watching the way they interact and how basically kind they are to each other. I'm glad I'm just saying see ya later to them, that I'll get another year to work with them and see what else I can teach them before I send them off to high school.

After they all left, I ate some lunch and then went to my classroom and finished up my comments. I had less room than on Twitter, so it was challenging to say something useful about everyone, but I at least managed to say something about everyone. I still have to go back tomorrow and clean my room, and we have a wrap-up faculty meeting on Friday, but the work for the year is basically done. Another school year is history.

I did have one moment during the graduation when I remembered the night of the earthquake. That terrible night we sat there, in that chapel, for a few minutes, right where we were sitting to celebrate these new high school students. We prayed and sang and tried to comfort each other until tremors sent us outside again. Even though the building has a tin roof, nobody wanted to be under a roof of any kind that night. The picture of us sitting there flashed into my mind, but then was gone.

This year's eighth graders were in sixth grade when the earthquake happened, and one of their classmates died. Nobody mentioned her from the platform today, but she wasn't forgotten in our hearts. We remember; at the same time, life is going on. We're making new memories that are fresher than those terrible ones.

Poetry Friday: Remembering and Forgetting

This time of year, I'm thinking a lot about remembering and perhaps even more about forgetting. My students are taking tests, so I'm finding out what they did and didn't learn. Even in the act of administering the tests, I'm humbled about my ability to impart anything to my kids. I give instructions, hand out the test, then answer all the questions that my instructions already answered.

There are many things I want my students to remember about this year, and there are many I want them to forget. I want them to remember what I taught them about books and poems and about how they can move and excite and teach us. I want them to remember how wonderful it is to work on a piece of writing until it shines and expresses exactly what you meant to say. But I want them to forget the days I was sarcastic and impatient. I want them to forget anything I said that was discouraging or made them feel less than the creatures of infinite value which they are. But I can't choose what they will remember and what they won't.

Yesterday on Your Daily Poem, there was this poem:


Memory

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

My mind lets go a thousand things,
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the very hour—
’Twas noon by yonder village tower,
And on the last blue noon in May—
The wind came briskly up this way,
Crisping the brook beside the road;
Then, pausing here, set down its load
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
Two petals from that wild-rose tree.


This made me think of Billy Collins' poem on the same subject.



Forgetfulness

Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.


The capital of Paraguay is one of the things Billy Collins' persona has forgotten, and that's one thing I won't ever forget, because I've been there. My brother got married there, and it's part of my memory in a way those random facts he mentions are not. I hope the same for my students, that at least some of what they have experienced this year will be part of their memory even when the random facts have slipped away.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Mom Enough

It's Haitian Mother's Day. My friend Beth posted this photo on Facebook. It was taken right after the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010.

Recently Time magazine published a story about attachment parenting with a photo of a woman breastfeeding on the cover. The caption was "Are you mom enough?" Don't we all wonder that, deep down, as mothers? Are we doing enough, teaching enough? We know we love enough, but are we expressing it in the right way to help our children become the people they should be? Breastfeeding is wonderful, but being mom enough is not about how long you breastfeed (and I say this as a mother who breastfed a long time).

Is this woman, nursing her injured child while lying on the ground after an earthquake, mom enough? You bet she is. Because she keeps going and does what she has to do to care for her child. Haitian mamas are mom enough.

Here's my post for Haitian Mother's Day in 2010. It includes a song sung by a Haitian musician for her mother.

Poetry Friday: Poinciana

The flamboyant trees are in bloom here in Haiti, and I took this picture this week over the wall of the basketball court at school. I was thinking of a poem, but never got it written, what with all the grading I've been doing. I decided to browse Google and see if anybody else had written anything about this beautiful tree, and learned to my surprise that the other name for it is the poinciana. And sure enough, there's a song about it! (Don't ask me why this video has the photo that it does. I suggest you listen to the music while looking above at my photo. There you go, isn't that better?)



Here are the lyrics:


Poinciana

Blow...tropic wind...
Sing a song...through the trees.


Trees...sigh to me...
Soon my love...I will see.


Poinciana,
Your branches speak to me of love.
Pale moon is casting shadows from above.


Poinciana,
Somehow I feel the jungle heat
Within me, there grows a rhythmic, savage
beat.


Love is everywhere, its magic perfume fills the air.
To and fro, you sway, my heart's in time,
I've learned to care.


Poinciana,
From now until the dawning day,
I'll learn to love forever come what may.


Blow....tropic wind,
Sing a song through the trees.
Trees...sigh to me
Soon my love... I will see.



This song has been performed by many musicians (here's a sampling) but was written by Bernier and Simon, again according to Google. (How did I ever find anything out before Google?)

So what with the jungle heat and the rhythmic savage beat, our semester is jigging to an end. This time next week I'll have taught my last full school day of the year. Hooray!

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Poetry Friday: Oceans

This week I listened to this program on a podcast. It's an interview with Sherry Turkle, who wrote Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Some of what Turkle said made me think about a poem I wrote a couple of months ago. It's about an experience a good friend had with technology.


He Seeks Oceans

Testing the new software,
He says, "Oceans" into his smart phone.
What will the cheerful, pleasant female voice suggest
To this man in a landlocked state,
Six hundred miles from surf, sand, and mermaids?
Will she counsel a ten-hour road trip
To the closest seaside town?
Or a ten-minute drive to a lobster restaurant?
Will she bring up alternative swimming experiences
Such as creeks, lakes, and public pools?

But no. She immediately replies,
"Ocean View Liquor Store," and gives the address and helpful directions.
The liquor store is surely no substitute for the ocean,
Any more than a lightbulb substitutes for the moon,
Or a one night stand for true, eternal love,
Or a cleverly designed smart phone,
However brilliant the virtual advisor,
For a much-loved human voice
Proposing a walk on the beach,
The shallow edge of endless ocean depths.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com


Early morning at the ocean (the real thing). Taken at Jacmel, Haiti, last December.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

If I Had $120 Million...

Photo Credit

Earlier this month a version of the Munch painting "The Scream" sold for $120 million. Here is an interesting New York Times article entitled, "If I Had the Cash, I Wouldn't Buy That." The author, Holland Cotter, details some other artwork he would buy if he had that kind of money, and concludes the article this way:

"Of course I never will start a museum, or, apart from an odd or end, an art collection. Part of me doesn’t warm to owning precious things. I’m glad there are museums where art can be kept, dusted and safe and out of my apartment. Personally I love ideas as much as objects, not that I can separate them: I feel ideas are as sensuous as things.

What I collect are experiences — traveling, seeing, being there, anywhere. For me “The Scream” will always mean the memory of a moody Oslo twilight from decades ago. The value of that experience to me is beyond price. When I hear $120 million, I think of how many experiences, for how many people, that might have bought."

Experiences. Yes, I agree with Cotter. I think the experiences are worth more, too. But I also think about a world where hunger is the #1 health risk and one out of seven people goes to bed hungry. A world where every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related illness that could be prevented by access to clean water. A world where measles still kills about 380 children per day. And I wonder, $120 million dollars for one painting? Is this really justifiable?

I love art, music, poetry; many people consider these things frills or luxuries. To me they are not. In Haiti they are not. Haiti may be poor, but it is full of all three; art flourishes here. I'm not saying that nobody should enjoy beauty. I know that art saves lives, as my friend Jess always says. I know that beauty has a way of changing things, as my friend Shelley says. (One could argue about whether or not "The Scream" fits anybody's definition of beauty, but clearly it expresses something about being a human being.)

But, really, $120 million? How can the world be such a lopsided place, where one painting goes for that much money, and children die for the lack of basic necessities like food, water, and vaccines? How can we put more value on a piece of canvas than on human life? Yes, that money could have bought a lot of experiences for a lot of people, as Cotter says. But it could also have saved countless lives. To me, that is something to scream about.

Poetry Friday: The Color of Lost Rooms

A couple of weeks ago, I won a copy of Irene Latham's book The Color of Lost Rooms in a blog giveaway. I was amazed at how quickly it got here; I received it last Friday. I've read it through, most of the poems more than once, but I know I'll be reading it many more times.

Yes, this is our very own Irene Latham, who's hosting Poetry Friday today and who initiated our Progressive Poem last month. She's a wonderful writer, of course; we all know that already. And these are beautiful poems, full of visual images. Several are ekphrastic, and although I haven't looked for all of the paintings they are based on, I've found all the ones I've searched for online. I like seeing what the basis of the work was, whether the poem sticks pretty closely to what's there on the canvas, like "Blue Still Life," or takes the painter's work in a completely unexpected direction, like "Alligator Pears in a Basket."

Other poems are based on historical figures, like Audubon's mother and Abe Lincoln and Audrey Hepburn, or characters from stories, like Hester Prynne (whom I'll never see in the same way again) and Guinevere. And still others seem more personal, like "Love Poem with Christmas Lights" or "Simplicity 8953," in which a mom sews her daughter a princess dress:

...I pack away

the scissors but keep thread in my needle
should white steeds dissolve into skittering mice,

the royal coach to a pumpkin, the prince caught
dancing with someone else.

"Living Room" is my current favorite in this collection, but every poem has some special touch, something that will bring me back to reread. You have to read these; you can get the book in paperback or in e-book format.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

IRA Conference Highlights

I got back from the IRA conference on Thursday, and it's now Tuesday as I'm starting to write this post. As expected, real life has hit hard, and I've been consumed with getting caught up on grading all the extra work I left for my kids to do while they had subs. I have a pile of books behind my desk in my classroom, waiting for me to put them into the computer so that I can put them on the shelf. My mind is full of undigested ideas and I don't have time to process them.

So, while they are still semi-fresh in my mind, here are some highlights from the conference:

• Dr. Steve Perry spoke at the opening session. He seemed a bit of a quirky choice for a room full of teachers, since he seemed to hold teachers responsible for most of the ills of education. I completely agree with him that we can't use any of our students' challenges as excuses not to teach them the very best we can, and it's hard to argue with his interpretation of the conference theme, "Celebrate Teaching," that we should celebrate teaching by getting rid of the teachers who aren't doing a good job. He's absolutely right that it's a disgrace that in some parts of the United States, nearly 50% of the adults can't read. At the same time, there's definitely a place for mentoring and developing teachers, since reaching his standard of "amazing" every single day doesn't come instantly. In fact, in May in middle school, I'm frequently not feeling the amazing. It's a little hard to make a slogan out of Perry's words: "If it's too hard for you, find something else to do." But here, watch his talk for yourself. And here's a great quote from it: "Teaching...is the single greatest act of defiance, ... encouraging children to snap reality in half."

• I went to a great session about teaching poetry. (More information here.) There were lots of useful ideas, but what sticks in my mind the most is that we need to stop summarizing what the text says for our students. I find myself doing that a lot, instead of letting them get to it themselves.
• 
  
• Cynthia Levinson wrote a book about the Birmingham Children's March, and I got to hear her talking about it. She put it in the framework of Joseph Campbell's ideas about the hero's quest. This was fascinating, and of course I bought the book to explore the history further.
• 
  
• The main thing on everybody's mind right now is the new Common Core Standards, and I went to a session on how all this homogenization affects ELLs, or English Language Learners. I felt a bit out of my depth here among the ESL experts and linguists, but I was introduced to many concepts for more research.
• 
  
• A session on revision discussed a new paradigm (to me) for helping students revise their work. Instead of beginning with what is wrong and what we can fix, we can encourage students to focus on what is strong about the piece. Then we can give a structured revision assignment, asking the student to write several more sentences in the part that we have identified which works.
  
• 
  
• ELLs can have their sense of themselves reinforced and enhanced when they are taught with a Writer's Workshop approach. Here's more information about that.
• 
  
• I attended a session on teaching essay writing using an hourglass graphic organizer.
• 
  
• I was privileged to get to hear Matt de la Peña speak. This was one of the two best sessions I went to. I hadn't read any of his work, but I bought several of his novels after hearing his presentation. He talked about what a powerful act it is to hand a kid a book, and the way we may never know the effects one book can have.
• 
  
• The other best session I attended was a panel of YA authors who spoke about bullying. The participants were Rita Williams-Garcia, Heather Brewer, Siobhan Vivian, and Jay Asher. I guess it's an emerging trend that the sessions I liked best were the ones with authors of YA books. It was wonderful to hear so many of them.
• 
  
• At a very expensive lunch, I got to hear Christopher Paul Curtis speak. He was funny and self-deprecating and made the very expensive price very worth it. Plus, my seventh grade boys were impressed.
• 
  
• At the closing session, there was a panel of four authors, who seemed sort of randomly chosen (as in, they didn't go together very well) but who were each interesting. The four authors were Esmé Raji-Codell, Laura Numeroff, Rita Williams-Garcia, and Linda Sue Park. The moderation was well done, excellent questions were asked, and if you could just imagine this session as four different sessions, it was great.
  

I started writing this post on Tuesday and I'm finishing it on Thursday afternoon. Blogger has been giving me fits and my internet connection has been slow (and I'm especially noticing it after just being in the States), but I hope this summary of my conference will have something in it that's helpful to someone.

I had never been to a conference this large, and I felt a tad overwhelmed by all the opportunities. There was no way to see everything. You could spend the entire time just going to book-signings if you wanted to. I felt that I wanted to be several people, so that I could experience multiple sessions during each time slot. It was exciting and energizing to be around so many people who care about reading, teaching kids, and great books. I highly recommend that you attend the conference next year in San Antonio!

Poetry Friday: Jane Yolen

I got back yesterday from the IRA conference in Chicago.  I had a great time there; frankly, I would have enjoyed it even without the conference.  I enjoyed traveling with a fellow teacher from school.  We did some Chicago sightseeing - though not as much as we would have liked.  We found a Target close to our hotel, and walked there three times in the four days we were there.  We enjoyed the fact that the electricity never went off - not once! - and that our room had hot water and internet access. 

But the conference was really wonderful, too.  I heard many interesting speakers, but the highlight for me was the author presentations.  I will blog more about some of what I learned in the next week or so.  But today I want to gush a little.  I was so excited to get to meet Jane Yolen.  She and J. Patrick Lewis were signing Last Laughs: Animal Epitaphs.  I knew that if I got to meet her I would just babble about how much I love her and ask her to be my best friend and maybe even cry, so I thought beforehand about what I wanted to say to her.  I wanted to tell her how impressed I am by her generosity with her writing, the way she shares it so freely.  Here's a recent example of what I mean.  Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect posted a prompt for her Monday Poetry Stretch, and who was the first commenter but Jane Yolen, with a beautiful poem that brought tears to my eyes. 

When I said this to her, Jane Yolen looked up and me and listened.  I'm sure she hears stuff like that all day long, but she smiled and said, "I love it.  I love participating in the conversation."

I told her that she has inspired me to be more open and generous with my own writing, and then went away with my signed book, feeling thrilled. 

Since getting to be a Jane Yolen fangirl was one of the best parts of the conference for me, I'm going to post a poem of hers.  It's the only one on the Poetry Foundation site - I wonder why they don't have more? - and it's a good one. 

Earth Day

By Jane Yolen

 

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me.

Each blade of grass,

Each honey tree,

Each bit of mud,

And stick and stone

Is blood and muscle,

Skin and bone.

Here's the rest.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

Progressive Poem

I apologize for allowing May to arrive before I posted the final Progressive Poem.  Here's the link to Irene's post from yesterday.  She made a found poem out of the final version, plus posted the final version itself.  I agree with her that this was so much fun, and I can't wait until we can do it again.

Here's the whole poem:

If you are reading this,                                                           
you must be hungry.
Kick off your silver slippers,

come sit with us a spell.
A hanky, here, now dry your tears
and fill your glass with wine.

Now, pour. The parchment has secrets,
smells of a Moroccan market spill-out.
You have come to the right place, just breathe in.

Honey, mint, cinnamon, sorrow. Now, breathe out
last week’s dreams. Take a wish from the jar.
Inside, deep inside, is the answer…

Unfold it, and let us riddle it together,
…Strains of a waltz. How do frozen fingers play?
How do fennel, ginger, saffron blend in the tagine?

Like broken strangers bound by time, they sisterdance…
their veils of sorrow encircle, embrace.
Feed your heart with waltzes and spices.

Feed your soul with wine and dreams.
Humble dust of coriander scents your feet, coaxing
seascapes, crystal sighs and moonshine from your melody.

Beware of dangers along the path of truth
and beware, my friend, of too much bewaring–
strong hands cushion you, sweet scents surround you—now leap

without looking, guided by trust. And when you land
on silver-tipped toes, buoyed by joy– you’ll know
you are amazing, you are love, you are poetry—

here, you rest.
Muse. Up ahead, stepping stones speckle the stream, sturdy now.
May your words roar against the banks, your life a flood of dreams.

I'm sad to say goodbye to National Poetry Month; maybe that's why I waited until May 1st to do so.  Another reason was that I am at a conference in Chicago and was busy until late last night.  I'll post more about the conference and my time in the States when I can.
 

Line Twenty-Nine

I'm in Chicago, having adventures, but I'm taking a moment to link you to the twenty-ninth line.  I will be sorry to say goodbye to National Poetry Month tomorrow.  It has been a lot of fun. 

Line Twenty-Eight

Here it is!

Poetry Friday: How to Be a Poet

I'm wondering how many Poetry Friday posters and readers are going, like I am, to the International Reading Association conference in Chicago next week.  Is there some kind of secret signal I should know to help me recognize fellow bloggers? 

I did a poetry reading this week.  Several people had been invited to read, but I ended up being the only one who accepted.  There was hardly anyone there, but it was still fun to read my poems to an appreciative audience.  I hope I can do that again sometime. 

I was amazed to see how many poems I had to choose from; writing just a little at a time, I have amassed quite a large collection.  There's a real sense of satisfaction in making something that didn't exist before.

Here's Wendell Berry for today, with his poem "How to Be a Poet."  I am afraid I don't follow many of his instructions.  There's not much quiet in my life right now, with kids at home and screeching middle schoolers at work.  But he says this poem is a reminder for himself, so I guess it can be a reminder for me, too.

How To Be a Poet

by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.   

Sit down. Be quiet.   

You must depend upon   

affection, reading, knowledge,   

skill—more of each   

than you have—inspiration,   

work, growing older, patience,   

for patience joins time   

to eternity. Any readers   

who like your poems,   

doubt their judgment.   

Here's the rest of it.

And here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.

And here's line twenty-seven of the Progressive Poem.

Happy Friday!

Line Twenty-Six

It's almost the end of the Progressive Poem.  Line twenty-six is up, and it's bringing us back to the silver slippers from the beginning.  I have a feeling this is going to wrap up beautifully. 

It's Poem in Your Pocket Day.  Do you have a poem in your pocket?

Line Twenty-Five

Our only male contributor for the Progressive Poem has added his line, and here it is.

Line Twenty-Four

Here it is. How is this all going to end?

Happy Anniversary to Me!

Today, April 23rd, is Shakespeare's birthday, and it's also the anniversary of the day I began this blog.  I've been blogging six years today.  Happy birthday, Will, and happy anniversary to me. 

Line Twenty-Three

Here's the twenty-third line of the progressive poem. 

Bud, Not Buddy

Book #9 of this year was Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis.  I read this book because I'm going to be hearing Christopher Paul Curtis speak next week at the IRA conference in Chicago.  (That's International Reading Association, not Irish Republican Army.)  I've never read anything by Curtis before, but some of my students were reading this book last week, and one of them said, "Isn't this the same guy who wrote The Watsons Go to Birmingham?"  I said yes, and asked if the student had enjoyed that one.  He said fervently, "Oh yeah."  So looks like I'll have to read that one too.

I loved this book.  It's the story of a boy finding home, and what could be better than that?  Bud (whose mother named him Bud, not Buddy - "Bud is your name and don't you ever let anyone call you anything outside of that either....Especially don't you ever let anyone call you Buddy.  I may have some problems but being stupid isn't one of them, I would've added that dy onto the end of your name if I intended for it to be there.  I knew what I was doing.  Buddy is a dog's name or a name that someone's going to use on you if they're being false-friendly.  Your name is Bud, period.") is growing up in an orphanage in Flint, Michigan in the Great Depression.  As the book opens, he's just been told he is going to go to a foster home.

Staying with the Amos family doesn't work out too well, to put it mildly, and his escape from there is the beginning of a series of adventures that takes Bud and the reader through life in the Depression and to one of the most satisfying endings I remember for a book in a very long time.  Bud-not-Buddy is a wonderful character, fully realized and completely believable, whether he's fighting, telling us his rules for living, or describing the world around him.  Here he is talking about the smell of an instrument case:  "The case had some soft smooth black stuff all over the inside of it, it covered everything, even the dent.  There was a real old smell that came out of it too, like dried-up slobber and something dead.  It smelled great!"  Here he is talking about music:

"All of the instruments blended up together, and just like that smell in the library, you couldn't tell which one was your favorite.  First you'd say it was Mr. Jimmy on the trumpet, then Doo-Doo Bug's trombone would make you think it was the best, then Dirty Deed would make the piano sound like water hitting big rocks and you'd know there wasn't anything that sounded that good until Steady Eddie would make the saxophone sing and talk and dance around everyone else and you'd swear that was the only sound you'd ever want to hear again.  All the while Herman E. Calloway and the Thug kept everything moving by making the drums and the giant fiddle pound out a soft steady beat, like someone's heart turned way up loud."

Even though Bud's life is difficult, he finds kindness from a series of memorable characters.  Bud is resilient, and ultimately the book is inspiring because he rises above everything that has happened to him in the past and finds the place he belongs.  Highly recommended in case there's anyone besides me that hasn't read it already.

Line Twenty-Two

Here's the twenty-second line for the twenty-second day!

Reading Update

The pace of my 2012 reading has been slow.  Here's what I've finished so far:

Book #1 was Jane Austen Made Me Do It: Original Stories Inspired by Literature's Most Astute Observer of the Human Heart, edited by Laurel Ann Nattress.  This is an anthology of Jane Austen fan-fiction, and while I am a big Jane Austen fan, I have to admit that I tired of the book before I was finished.  When I read imitations of Jane, or spinoffs, or sequels, or whatever, they mostly remind me of how well Jane wrote, and how nobody else can quite do what she did.  These stories were entertaining, for the most part, and I'll probably keep picking up Jane Austen fan-fiction even though it never quite satisfies me.  (See Book #3, below, for example.)

Book #2 was Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi.  I had read this before but it had been a long time.  This time I read it on my Kindle.  This book is about reading, and about the fact that our responses to what we read have as much to do with who we are and where we are in our lives as with the books themselves.  Nafisi and her students read and live simultaneously, as all of us do, and the Iranian revolution they are suffering through informs how they process literature.  As Nafisi is getting ready to leave Tehran, she tells a friend, "You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place."  Here's another conversation with the same friend:

"I said to him that I wanted to write a book in which I would thank the Islamic Republic for all the things it had taught me - to love Austen and James and ice cream and freedom.  I said, Right now it is not enough to appreciate all this; I want to write about it.  He said, You will not be able to write about Austen without writing about us, about this place where you rediscovered Austen.  You will not be able to put us out of your head.  Try, you'll see.  The Austen you know is so irretrievably linked to this place, this land and these trees.  You don't think this is the same Austen you read with Dr. French - it was Dr. French, wasn't it?  Do you?  This is the Austen you read here, in a place where the film censor is nearly blind and where they hang people in the streets and put a curtain across the sea to segregate men and women.  I said, When I write all that, perhaps I will become more generous, less angry."

(By the way, I really prefer authors to use quotation marks.)  Of course, as I read this I thought about the person I was the last time I read it.  That time I loved it, and this time I mostly felt sad at all the seemingly pointless, painfully absurd suffering in the lives of ordinary Iranians. 

Book #3 was more Jane Austen fan-fiction, this time by one of my favorite writers, P.D. James.  Death Comes to Pemberley is the story of a murder which takes place near Pemberley, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Darcy.  It contains such delights as a letter from Lady Catherine de Bourgh, which reads in part: "Mr. Pegworthy said that were I a man and had taken to the law, I would have been an ornament to the English bar - but I am needed here.  If I went to all the people who would benefit from my advice I would never be at home."  Oh, Lady Catherine, I know.  It's a curse.  Some Austen characters from other books make appearances, too, but I'll leave you to find them for yourself.  Earlier I linked to a good review of this book, and here it is again.  I read this on my Kindle.

When I was in the US in February, I saw a new Elizabeth George book.  When I was researching it, I found out that there had been another George book in between the last one I'd read and this new one I was just discovering.  Book #4 was that in-between book, This Body of Death.  Inspector Lynley is grieving the loss of his wife a couple of books ago, and while I am so sad for him, I don't think this excuses his huge lapse of judgement in this one.  Really, Inspector?  While this book kept me reading, I didn't enjoy it as much as previous Inspector Lynley stories.  Book #5 was the next one in the series, Believing the Lie.  I thought there was way too much going on in this novel, to a point that almost became comical.  I was wondering what else could possibly be introduced.  But I did very much enjoy an element that I always like in George's fiction, the many types of relationships, loving and not-so-loving, which she portrays so beautifully.  Her characters are individuals, in all their messiness, not stereotypes.  I read both of these on my Kindle.

Book #6 was Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life, by Shauna Niequist.  Last year I read Niequist's more recent book, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way.  I liked that one better; Niequist has found her own voice and Bittersweet reads less like she is channeling Anne Lamott (admittedly a far less profane Lamott, who cooks a lot better).  That said, I did very much enjoy this book, made up of essays about Niequist's own life.  There were lots of passages I wanted to read aloud, and will reread. I read this on my Kindle, too.  (I didn't fully realize until I was writing this post how much of my reading I have been doing on my Kindle lately.)

Book #7 took me back to Iran.  Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey, by Alison Wearing, is a travel book.  While the book jacket (yes!  I read this one in actual book format!) told me that Wearing was "traveling with a male friend, in the guise of a couple on their honeymoon," she makes us wait until page 114 before she reveals the true nature of their relationship.  (Spoiler alert:  I'm going to tell you what it is, but if you want to wait until page 114 to find out, skip to the next book.)  Ian is Alison's gay roommate from Canada.  He likes to travel too, and they have spent many hours planning this trip.  She would really rather be by herself, since she finds traveling a solitary pursuit, but knows she won't be very safe as a woman traveling alone in Iran, so agrees to take Ian along.  I was quite interested to know more about how they interacted, but Wearing doesn't tell us much.  Here's the paragraph where she finally spills the beans about the "honeymoon":

"I have a confession to make.  Ian isn't my husband.  We aren't even lovers, just friends.  We forged a marriage certificate just before leaving Montreal using photocopies of his brother and sister-in-law's document, and that is what we are using to get ourselves into hotels.  Most proprietors don't ask and of those who do, two have scrutinized the paper very seriously while holding it upside down, so we needn't have worried so much about its appearance of authenticity.  The thing we should have worried about, perhaps, is the effect that photocopying and whiting out names on a marriage certificate might have had.  By the time Ian and I reached Iran, his brother's marriage had collapsed." 

Alison and Ian's fake marriage kind of collapses, too - she seems to find him more and more irritating as the book goes on.  But she is fascinating on Iran, and especially on what it feels like to be a western woman forced to be covered at all times.  At first, covering seems to be a bit of an adventure, like a disguise, but she can't help feeling more and more oppressed by the limitations imposed on her because she is a woman.  But she also finds, when she gets back to more western values, that she can't fully accept them any more either.  Here she writes about watching a music video on satellite television in an expat's home:

"Shocked, horrified, mesmerized, hypnotised.  By the women on the television.  Stick figures prancing around in their underwear humping the air.  It's a music video.  I ca-ca-ca-can't believe how...it's not just the clothes or the lack of clothes or the grinding or the gyrating....It's the look on their faces.  I had forgotten how women look when they spend their lives trying to be sexy.  I had forgotten how lonely it looks.  How painful it is to watch."

But some of Wearing's most evocative passages are about home, her home: Canada.  Here she is placing a long-distance call to her mother.

"She'll be outside, it will be evening - no, around noon.  August, so fresh corn on the cob that will leave baby teeth marks in the butter.  Thick slabs of tomatoes from the garden, sleeveless dresses and hair that's still damp from the pond.  She'll be eating outside.  Corn, tomatoes and a huge green salad with dressing that gives you garlic breath for days.  Outside on the back porch, where she can see the hill, the sunflowers, the blue jays bossing the chickadees around.  Surrounded by dogs: Sox, Alex, Sebastian, Mugs, who will be seated around her like parliament members - she is, after all, the speaker of the house - and the cats, Figleaf and Foliage, perched on the trellis like tightrope walkers or lying next to the dogs, ready to pounce on the first tail that dares to move.  Having dinner.  If there's a breeze, the poplars will shimmer like stalks of crepe paper - ssshhhhhhhh - telling the earth to be quiet.  The air will smell of...I'm not sure.  I close my eyes and try to imagine it.  Can't.  I smell this telephone, the last thirty people that shouted into it, the smell of dirt and sweat and cramped quarters made of metal and rubber and glass." 

I also loved the description of Alison and Ian reading their mail when they finally make it to the Canadian consulate.  I recommend this book.  Like many travel books, it shows how people are not like the stereotypes we see on the news, and although it's several years old - published in 2000 - it is very much worth reading.  (Whew, see how much easier it is to write about a book when you read a paper copy?  I just can't mark passages as easily on my Kindle, since my usual method is ripping up tiny shreds of paper and putting them everywhere that I like a quote.)

Book #8 was Al Capone Shines My Shoes, by Gennifer Choldenko.  I read this because my son begged me to; he loved it.  I liked it fine, though not as much as the first book, Al Capone Does My Shirts, which I reviewed here.

So, that's it, almost the end of April and only eight books.  I'm in the middle of several, so I hope there will be more reading updates before too long.

Book Recommendations Wanted

So, my seventh graders are reading me out of house and home.  Their Literature Circle groups keep coming back for more.  I'm not about to say, "No, put that back!  What are you going to read in your groups in eighth grade?"

My administrator told me I can order some more LC sets (six copies or so) of novels.  I'm looking for high-interest titles that kids can read and discuss basically on their own.  I usually have several groups of between two and six kids going at the same time, so while I'm snooping on them and having them write and trying to keep track of them, we aren't going over vocabulary and discussing these books as a whole group.  It's OK if the books are slightly below middle school reading level if they hold my students' interest.  We're reading more challenging things as a whole class. 

Highly successful LC books recently have been The Outsiders, Zach's Lies, Claws, Freak the Mighty, and Al Capone Does my Shirts.

So, what do you recommend?  What are some sure-fire winners that your kids have enjoyed?

Line Twenty-One

Here's line twenty-one of the progressive poem.  Can't wait to see what happens next!