Kimberly Brubaker Bradley's Blog, page 9
January 28, 2019
Some of My Friends Got Phone Calls This Morning!
Phew, I just finished watching the web broadcast of the ALA Youth Media Awards. I didn't have a book published this year, which took away any stress about stickers and made watching a pleasure. Plus I'm so pleased for the winners. Some I haven't read yet--I'll be making a bookstore order as soon as I finish this post--and some are books I simply loved.
A Stonewall Award for Julian Is a Mermaid, one of my favorite picture books ever.
A Coretta Scott King author honor for Lesa Cline-Ransome, for Finding Langston, which I was privileged to review for the New York Times, and wholeheartedly loved.
A Printz Honor for Damsel, which was my personal favorite of all the YA I read last year, because it is so everloving fierce, the antidote to every princess fairy tale--and written by Elana K. Arnold, a friend!
A Legacy award for Walter Dean Myers--I only wish he were alive to receive it in person.
Such lovely Caldecott Honors, and then another win for Sophie Blackall, who also won 3 years ago and has been a friend since the night of the banquet.
The Newbery itself for Meg Medina. I haven't read Merci Suarez yet but I've loved everything Meg has ever written.
Newbery Honors for the Book of Boy, which I don't know but which has been recommended by several friends, and The Night Diary, by Veera Hiranandani, which I have loved since forever. It's Veera's debut, and it's amazing.
I'll tell the story, which I may have told before. Namrata Tripathi, an editor for Dial who now has her own imprint, Kokila, and who I've known and worked with and very much liked for a long time, asked me, just as I was heading out on a two-week book tour, if I'd consider blurbing this debut novel she was working on. From just about anyone else in the world, I would have said I didn't have the spoons to even consider it. I was busy; I was stressed. But it was Nami who asked, so I said maybe, and then Nami sent it to me electronically. I don't like reading books electronically, especially galleys, so I thought, well, maybe can certainly turn into no, and didn't worry about it.
But then I was in the middle of this tour, and I was on a plane seated in the bulkhead, where you can't have any bags by your feet--everything had to be in the overhead bins for takeoff. We were delayed on the ground, and I was sulking, tired, grouchy. All I had was my phone. I took it out and started reading the story Nami'd sent, because I don't have Kindle on my phone so it was actually my only option, and I was even more grouchy because I really hate reading on my phone's tiny screen.
I put my head against the side of the airplane, shielding the screen from the sun, and mentally longed for the plane to take off so I could get my real book down from the overhead bin. Meanwhile I begrudgingly started The Night Diary.
The next thing I knew was the bump of the plane touching down. We'd not only taken off, we'd flown two hours and landed. And now I was even grumpier, because I had to get off the plane, and I hadn't finished the story yet. I tend to get enmeshed in books but rarely do I get so entirely absorbed.
Three years ago--three years and 17 days, it was the 11th of January--I got a phone call on the morning of ALA Youth Media Day. It was fantastic. Today I woke up wondering whose phone was ringing with good news.
Congratulations to everyone. I hear Elana's buying the falafel.
A Stonewall Award for Julian Is a Mermaid, one of my favorite picture books ever.
A Coretta Scott King author honor for Lesa Cline-Ransome, for Finding Langston, which I was privileged to review for the New York Times, and wholeheartedly loved.
A Printz Honor for Damsel, which was my personal favorite of all the YA I read last year, because it is so everloving fierce, the antidote to every princess fairy tale--and written by Elana K. Arnold, a friend!
A Legacy award for Walter Dean Myers--I only wish he were alive to receive it in person.
Such lovely Caldecott Honors, and then another win for Sophie Blackall, who also won 3 years ago and has been a friend since the night of the banquet.
The Newbery itself for Meg Medina. I haven't read Merci Suarez yet but I've loved everything Meg has ever written.
Newbery Honors for the Book of Boy, which I don't know but which has been recommended by several friends, and The Night Diary, by Veera Hiranandani, which I have loved since forever. It's Veera's debut, and it's amazing.
I'll tell the story, which I may have told before. Namrata Tripathi, an editor for Dial who now has her own imprint, Kokila, and who I've known and worked with and very much liked for a long time, asked me, just as I was heading out on a two-week book tour, if I'd consider blurbing this debut novel she was working on. From just about anyone else in the world, I would have said I didn't have the spoons to even consider it. I was busy; I was stressed. But it was Nami who asked, so I said maybe, and then Nami sent it to me electronically. I don't like reading books electronically, especially galleys, so I thought, well, maybe can certainly turn into no, and didn't worry about it.
But then I was in the middle of this tour, and I was on a plane seated in the bulkhead, where you can't have any bags by your feet--everything had to be in the overhead bins for takeoff. We were delayed on the ground, and I was sulking, tired, grouchy. All I had was my phone. I took it out and started reading the story Nami'd sent, because I don't have Kindle on my phone so it was actually my only option, and I was even more grouchy because I really hate reading on my phone's tiny screen.
I put my head against the side of the airplane, shielding the screen from the sun, and mentally longed for the plane to take off so I could get my real book down from the overhead bin. Meanwhile I begrudgingly started The Night Diary.
The next thing I knew was the bump of the plane touching down. We'd not only taken off, we'd flown two hours and landed. And now I was even grumpier, because I had to get off the plane, and I hadn't finished the story yet. I tend to get enmeshed in books but rarely do I get so entirely absorbed.
Three years ago--three years and 17 days, it was the 11th of January--I got a phone call on the morning of ALA Youth Media Day. It was fantastic. Today I woke up wondering whose phone was ringing with good news.
Congratulations to everyone. I hear Elana's buying the falafel.
January 24, 2019
The Government Shutdown Harms Babies
For those of you (both of you) wondering Where in the Sam Hill I have Been, the answer is, wallowing under my deadline. Which is Monday.
I'm working hard, and well, and blog posts haven't been a priority. So far for January my priorities have been 1) trying to help my husband through his surgery 2) my manuscript 3) everything else.
I'm starting to put pieces of what I consider my normal life back into the picture. Tuesday I rode my horse. Wednesday I went to both yoga and my shift at Faith in Action. Today I'm writing this blog post. Go me.
We're in day thirty-something of the federal government shutdown, which as far as I can see is just a pissing match with no clear benefit to anyone. So far, to me personally, it's been annoying because I had reason to believe I was on the verge of my nonprofit getting 501(c)3 status right before the shutdown, and because I haven't been able to get some tax forms I need. (The IRS mails them out, instead of allowing them to be downloaded. Whose dumb idea is this?) These are trivial issues. Most of senators and Congressional representatives seem to feel that missing a few paychecks is also trivial, to the eight hundred thousand or so federal employees, many of whom are still working, just not getting paid. It's a nice life when you can imagine that a month without income doesn't mess people up, but it's not a real one. We need some real-world governance around here.
Meanwhile, yesterday I saw an example of the shutdown hurting some of the most vulnerable members of our society. A woman came into FIA seeking help with her electric bill. She'd never been there before. She was roughly 30 years old with a high school degree. Her husband walked out when she was eight months' pregnant with their third child--the other two are preschoolers--and isn't paying any child support. She had her baby two weeks ago and returned to work last week.
Let me say that again. She had a baby two weeks ago and returned to work one week later. At a restaurant. On her feet the whole shift. Because otherwise she'd lose her job. (Her mother watches the children.) (Here's a reason we need more women in government: because anyone who's given birth understands how inhumane that is.)
Her income--which is above minimum-wage, forty hours per week--is insufficient to their needs. Take away bare-bones rent and utilities--nothing more, not car expenses, not diapers, not food--and she's got less than $400 a month left. That was fine when her husband was in the house and working.
Given her situation--I ran the numbers, it's easy to do--she would be immediately eligible for something like $500 a month in food stamps, and WIC for herself, the infant, and at least one of the other children. WIC is a supplemental nutrition program that would pay for all the baby's formula, plus healthy food like milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables for the rest of them. It's a voucher program that can only be used for specific healthy foods. She'd probably get $300/month worth of food from it right now. So $800 in food per month for a woman and her three children.
Which she isn't getting, because she can't even apply for these programs because the government is shut down.
The safety net we have in place for people exactly like this--hardworking with dependent children--is on furlough.
You can't be pro-life and not care about this woman's children. You can't be against abortion and at the same time support a system that denies her newborn baby food. (I don't know whether she's breastfeeding, but I highly doubt it. Hard to breastfeed when you're working a shift job full time.) It's time for Washington to quit fooling around.
I'm working hard, and well, and blog posts haven't been a priority. So far for January my priorities have been 1) trying to help my husband through his surgery 2) my manuscript 3) everything else.
I'm starting to put pieces of what I consider my normal life back into the picture. Tuesday I rode my horse. Wednesday I went to both yoga and my shift at Faith in Action. Today I'm writing this blog post. Go me.
We're in day thirty-something of the federal government shutdown, which as far as I can see is just a pissing match with no clear benefit to anyone. So far, to me personally, it's been annoying because I had reason to believe I was on the verge of my nonprofit getting 501(c)3 status right before the shutdown, and because I haven't been able to get some tax forms I need. (The IRS mails them out, instead of allowing them to be downloaded. Whose dumb idea is this?) These are trivial issues. Most of senators and Congressional representatives seem to feel that missing a few paychecks is also trivial, to the eight hundred thousand or so federal employees, many of whom are still working, just not getting paid. It's a nice life when you can imagine that a month without income doesn't mess people up, but it's not a real one. We need some real-world governance around here.
Meanwhile, yesterday I saw an example of the shutdown hurting some of the most vulnerable members of our society. A woman came into FIA seeking help with her electric bill. She'd never been there before. She was roughly 30 years old with a high school degree. Her husband walked out when she was eight months' pregnant with their third child--the other two are preschoolers--and isn't paying any child support. She had her baby two weeks ago and returned to work last week.
Let me say that again. She had a baby two weeks ago and returned to work one week later. At a restaurant. On her feet the whole shift. Because otherwise she'd lose her job. (Her mother watches the children.) (Here's a reason we need more women in government: because anyone who's given birth understands how inhumane that is.)
Her income--which is above minimum-wage, forty hours per week--is insufficient to their needs. Take away bare-bones rent and utilities--nothing more, not car expenses, not diapers, not food--and she's got less than $400 a month left. That was fine when her husband was in the house and working.
Given her situation--I ran the numbers, it's easy to do--she would be immediately eligible for something like $500 a month in food stamps, and WIC for herself, the infant, and at least one of the other children. WIC is a supplemental nutrition program that would pay for all the baby's formula, plus healthy food like milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables for the rest of them. It's a voucher program that can only be used for specific healthy foods. She'd probably get $300/month worth of food from it right now. So $800 in food per month for a woman and her three children.
Which she isn't getting, because she can't even apply for these programs because the government is shut down.
The safety net we have in place for people exactly like this--hardworking with dependent children--is on furlough.
You can't be pro-life and not care about this woman's children. You can't be against abortion and at the same time support a system that denies her newborn baby food. (I don't know whether she's breastfeeding, but I highly doubt it. Hard to breastfeed when you're working a shift job full time.) It's time for Washington to quit fooling around.
December 20, 2018
Christmas Spirit
Here is an actual excerpt from a recent group text among my girlfriends:
#1: I'm going to Abingdon Olive Oil company this morning, can I get anybody anything?
#2: a maid, a massage, and someone to finish my Christmas shopping.
#3: Amen!
#1: I'm talking olive oil or balsamic, bitches.
#4: DAMN
We are nailing Christmas this year.
No, I really mean it. This year has been a colossal pain in the kiester in a number of large, important ways. We've collectively dealt with death, disability, unemployment, animals dying, mental health issues (our own and others), politics, jerks, and a variety of other stressors. We have persevered. We have, in fact, persisted. I'm not going to share any details about the crap, because those mostly aren't mine to share (and honestly, where they are, they aren't for public consumption) (I guess that's the crux of it: the ugly bits are never to become gossip fodder) but I will say that this year I learned that sometimes, in both good and bad situations, the only appropriate words are I Love You. I've said them often this year. I've meant them oftener than that.
It's also been a ridiculously good year in some equally large, important ways. I reconnected with old friends. I made new friends I will treasure forever. I saw and did so many new things I can hardly believe they all happened in one year. I swam in the Dead Sea this year. I walked through the ruins of Pompeii. I heard Mass inside Gaudi's masterpiece. I stood on a stage and thanked my parents for making me into a writer, and, in a surprise move, wrote something I believe is my best work to date. I am very, very grateful.
This year, unusually for me, I have not been one little bit anxious about Christmas--about the gifts, the parties, the decorations, the expectations, about whether or not I was fully appreciating the birth of Christ Jesus or eating healthfully or remembering to exercise. None of that. I'm enjoying what there is and not worrying about what there isn't. Which is probably the whole flipping point. Glad I got to it. Hope you get there, too. Merry Christmas.
#1: I'm going to Abingdon Olive Oil company this morning, can I get anybody anything?
#2: a maid, a massage, and someone to finish my Christmas shopping.
#3: Amen!
#1: I'm talking olive oil or balsamic, bitches.
#4: DAMN
We are nailing Christmas this year.
No, I really mean it. This year has been a colossal pain in the kiester in a number of large, important ways. We've collectively dealt with death, disability, unemployment, animals dying, mental health issues (our own and others), politics, jerks, and a variety of other stressors. We have persevered. We have, in fact, persisted. I'm not going to share any details about the crap, because those mostly aren't mine to share (and honestly, where they are, they aren't for public consumption) (I guess that's the crux of it: the ugly bits are never to become gossip fodder) but I will say that this year I learned that sometimes, in both good and bad situations, the only appropriate words are I Love You. I've said them often this year. I've meant them oftener than that.
It's also been a ridiculously good year in some equally large, important ways. I reconnected with old friends. I made new friends I will treasure forever. I saw and did so many new things I can hardly believe they all happened in one year. I swam in the Dead Sea this year. I walked through the ruins of Pompeii. I heard Mass inside Gaudi's masterpiece. I stood on a stage and thanked my parents for making me into a writer, and, in a surprise move, wrote something I believe is my best work to date. I am very, very grateful.
This year, unusually for me, I have not been one little bit anxious about Christmas--about the gifts, the parties, the decorations, the expectations, about whether or not I was fully appreciating the birth of Christ Jesus or eating healthfully or remembering to exercise. None of that. I'm enjoying what there is and not worrying about what there isn't. Which is probably the whole flipping point. Glad I got to it. Hope you get there, too. Merry Christmas.
December 17, 2018
Clear the Decks and Deck the Halls
Ten minutes ago I finished reading the contract for my new middle-grades novel, the one that started as an unplanned stream-of-consciousness rant because I was so unbelievably angry and frustrated over the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and the basic inability of our nation to discuss sexual abuse, PSTD, and mental health in general with any sort of integrity or veracity--yeah, okay, even that sounds like a rant--anyway, I wrote a rant. I sent it to Dial on October 2nd. Ten minutes ago I signed the contract for the book that is in the process of arising from that rant. Two minutes ago, through the magic of the internet, I received my countersigned copy.
It's under contract. On December 17th.
Wow.
I mean, really, things never happen like this. I am so so happy.
The first full draft is already in my editor's hands.
The final draft is due January 28th.
My last four books have taken an average of 3 years each to finish, so four months start to finish, whatever, bring it, I'm ready.
I did some excellent work on another manuscript last week, and on Friday thought, that's a good place to leave it until February.
Today I did paperwork, went to yoga, then unexpectedly had to take a trip to Johnson City to sign some bank stuff (I'm officially an officer in Holston Pony Club, again. I've been secretary, DC [which is like president], nothing, joint-DC [vice-president], DC again, nothing, and now I'm treasurer, which means I've covered everything, I think). Anyway the incoming DC gave me a lift in her truck, which is equally as fabulous as mine (2001 Ford diesel engine, it will never die). (When I got into her truck, she said, "I usually apologize for the mess, but I never really mean it.) The incoming DC is a computational biologist. After we signed the papers we went out for tacos and discussed her research. It's fascinating.
The rest of the week is all about happy Christmas prep and this new novel. The rest of the month: happy Christmas and the new novel. The month after that: visiting my son, and the new novel.
I LOVE THE NEW NOVEL.
It's a wonderful life.
P.S. I'm just about to head to the post office to mail my own personal gifts to the teachers and people associated with our first year of the Appalachian Literacy Initiative: copies of Dpnalyn Miller and Colby Sharp's book Game Changer. It's all about how improving access to books improves students' reading ability and academic performance. It's an excellent gift for any teacher or librarian you know.
If you want to improve the lives of Appalachian school children, I'd be grateful for any and all gifts to ALI.You can mail a check to Appalachian Literacy Initiative at PO Box 3283, Bristol, TN 37625, or click here to purchase books on our wishlist from Parnassus Books, our preferred bookstore. You’ll receive 10% off with the code GIVEREADING, and Parnassus will ship the books to us free of charge. You can also purchase books from our Amazon wishlist by clicking here.
It's under contract. On December 17th.
Wow.
I mean, really, things never happen like this. I am so so happy.
The first full draft is already in my editor's hands.
The final draft is due January 28th.
My last four books have taken an average of 3 years each to finish, so four months start to finish, whatever, bring it, I'm ready.
I did some excellent work on another manuscript last week, and on Friday thought, that's a good place to leave it until February.
Today I did paperwork, went to yoga, then unexpectedly had to take a trip to Johnson City to sign some bank stuff (I'm officially an officer in Holston Pony Club, again. I've been secretary, DC [which is like president], nothing, joint-DC [vice-president], DC again, nothing, and now I'm treasurer, which means I've covered everything, I think). Anyway the incoming DC gave me a lift in her truck, which is equally as fabulous as mine (2001 Ford diesel engine, it will never die). (When I got into her truck, she said, "I usually apologize for the mess, but I never really mean it.) The incoming DC is a computational biologist. After we signed the papers we went out for tacos and discussed her research. It's fascinating.
The rest of the week is all about happy Christmas prep and this new novel. The rest of the month: happy Christmas and the new novel. The month after that: visiting my son, and the new novel.
I LOVE THE NEW NOVEL.
It's a wonderful life.
P.S. I'm just about to head to the post office to mail my own personal gifts to the teachers and people associated with our first year of the Appalachian Literacy Initiative: copies of Dpnalyn Miller and Colby Sharp's book Game Changer. It's all about how improving access to books improves students' reading ability and academic performance. It's an excellent gift for any teacher or librarian you know.
If you want to improve the lives of Appalachian school children, I'd be grateful for any and all gifts to ALI.You can mail a check to Appalachian Literacy Initiative at PO Box 3283, Bristol, TN 37625, or click here to purchase books on our wishlist from Parnassus Books, our preferred bookstore. You’ll receive 10% off with the code GIVEREADING, and Parnassus will ship the books to us free of charge. You can also purchase books from our Amazon wishlist by clicking here.
December 13, 2018
The Return of Santa Duck
We have acquired a poinsettia at our house, so our Christmas decorating has officially begun. I have wondered if our neighbors are puzzling over why the Bradleys' trees, usually lit up all around the house, remain dark this year. The answer is, you can't string lights on trees while using a walker. And I myself have never been part of that operation. It's possible lights will be strung on December 22nd, the day the tree goes up, when the children are home. Or not. I'm happy either way.
Some of the other houses that usually decorate on our road are dark this winter too. We're rather somber. But with great joy, and not a little relief, we all noticed when the Santa Duck reappeared.
Santa Duck is an inflatable duck. He looks exactly like a bath duck grown to dinosaur size, except that he wears an inflatable Santa hat and a jaunty, I suspect homemade, red knit scarf. He sits on the top of the flat gable of the roof of a small square house on Weaver Pike. The house is down in a hollow, so the top of its roof is barely above the level of the street. Santa Duck usually shows up right after Thanksgiving and stays until after the New Year.
This year Thanksgiving came and went. No Santa Duck. The next weekend came and went. No Santa Duck. The natives of Bristol grew restless. The Bradleys without lights on their trees? Eh. Whatever. Also Doc had surgery, didn't you hear? But the lack of Santa Duck--I truly cannot remember a Bristol Christmas without him--caused community-wide concern.
We discussed it in my yoga class. I muttered about it to friends. Someone took a photo of the empty flat roof and posted it online, and soon someone else had created a Facebook post called Bring Back the Bristol Santa Duck. It was widely shared, and, quite quickly, someone put up a photo of a bearded man sitting at a sewing machine, repairing a seam on the duck.
All was well. The Santa Duck has been restored to his rooftop. My yoga instructor texted me a photo of him, fully blown up and well tethered down, within hours of his reinstatement. The town breathed a happy sigh. Santa Duck lives.
And if you think that giant festive inflatable bath ducks have nothing whatsoever to do with the birth of Christ Jesus the Savior of humankind, I'm here to say I think you're wrong. Joy. Light. Santa Duck. It's all part of the story.
Some of the other houses that usually decorate on our road are dark this winter too. We're rather somber. But with great joy, and not a little relief, we all noticed when the Santa Duck reappeared.
Santa Duck is an inflatable duck. He looks exactly like a bath duck grown to dinosaur size, except that he wears an inflatable Santa hat and a jaunty, I suspect homemade, red knit scarf. He sits on the top of the flat gable of the roof of a small square house on Weaver Pike. The house is down in a hollow, so the top of its roof is barely above the level of the street. Santa Duck usually shows up right after Thanksgiving and stays until after the New Year.
This year Thanksgiving came and went. No Santa Duck. The next weekend came and went. No Santa Duck. The natives of Bristol grew restless. The Bradleys without lights on their trees? Eh. Whatever. Also Doc had surgery, didn't you hear? But the lack of Santa Duck--I truly cannot remember a Bristol Christmas without him--caused community-wide concern.
We discussed it in my yoga class. I muttered about it to friends. Someone took a photo of the empty flat roof and posted it online, and soon someone else had created a Facebook post called Bring Back the Bristol Santa Duck. It was widely shared, and, quite quickly, someone put up a photo of a bearded man sitting at a sewing machine, repairing a seam on the duck.
All was well. The Santa Duck has been restored to his rooftop. My yoga instructor texted me a photo of him, fully blown up and well tethered down, within hours of his reinstatement. The town breathed a happy sigh. Santa Duck lives.
And if you think that giant festive inflatable bath ducks have nothing whatsoever to do with the birth of Christ Jesus the Savior of humankind, I'm here to say I think you're wrong. Joy. Light. Santa Duck. It's all part of the story.
December 9, 2018
I'm calling it Advent
Things are looking up. My brave husband survived a week of working half-days. It was very close to too much for him. The irritating thing is that he went back to work then because his surgeon specifically told him he would be ready, and then, when he did it (and he'd scheduled a full week of patients so it would have been hard for him to back out) both the surgeon and the physical therapist acted as though he'd been peremptory. They were all, "Whoa, dude, that's a bit much, don't you think?" and he said, "That's what you TOLD ME to do!" But it turned out okay.
Today we would have attempted church despite the stairs and the standing, except that we can't make it down our driveway. We're having a snow day. It usually snows here in upper east Tennessee about 4 times a year, to any measurable amount; we usually have a day or two that I can't make it down my driveway about every other year. I could probably get out with my truck--but there wasn't any way I was letting my husband attempt the snow and ice and general slipperiness. No sir.
Normally we are very into Christmas decorations. By that I mostly mean my husband, but really, I love it too. I just leave so much of the decorating to him because I can, and because he takes such joy in it. Every year he concocts an elaborate centerpiece for our dining room table, and he never seems happier than when he's creating it, humming to himself, deciding between red decorations and gold. He decorates our banister, too, and puts up a secondary tree in the living room, and none of that's happening this year. Our family tree, which we usually decorate on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, will go up December 22nd when the children return. I do plan to get out the Nativity sets and the stockings, though I'm a little concerned that the dog will see the Nativity sets as elaborate chew toys. She's already been very enthusiastic, this morning, about her first snow.
So it's a small Christmas, to match our small Thanksgiving, and it's perfectly fine. We Catholics aren't supposed to get too excited ahead of the main date anyhow. (Despite what Amazon.com is telling you the Twelve Days of Christmas are actually Christmas and the eleven days following, not before.) This year it turns out we're celebrating Advent, thoroughly and well. Veni, veni, Emmanuel.
Today we would have attempted church despite the stairs and the standing, except that we can't make it down our driveway. We're having a snow day. It usually snows here in upper east Tennessee about 4 times a year, to any measurable amount; we usually have a day or two that I can't make it down my driveway about every other year. I could probably get out with my truck--but there wasn't any way I was letting my husband attempt the snow and ice and general slipperiness. No sir.
Normally we are very into Christmas decorations. By that I mostly mean my husband, but really, I love it too. I just leave so much of the decorating to him because I can, and because he takes such joy in it. Every year he concocts an elaborate centerpiece for our dining room table, and he never seems happier than when he's creating it, humming to himself, deciding between red decorations and gold. He decorates our banister, too, and puts up a secondary tree in the living room, and none of that's happening this year. Our family tree, which we usually decorate on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, will go up December 22nd when the children return. I do plan to get out the Nativity sets and the stockings, though I'm a little concerned that the dog will see the Nativity sets as elaborate chew toys. She's already been very enthusiastic, this morning, about her first snow.
So it's a small Christmas, to match our small Thanksgiving, and it's perfectly fine. We Catholics aren't supposed to get too excited ahead of the main date anyhow. (Despite what Amazon.com is telling you the Twelve Days of Christmas are actually Christmas and the eleven days following, not before.) This year it turns out we're celebrating Advent, thoroughly and well. Veni, veni, Emmanuel.
December 6, 2018
Anne Frank, Again
Thank you! I now have a list of 12 books to investigate, only 2 of which I was aware of before yesterday. That's fantastic. Meanwhile I went to the library. I came home with a pretty enthusiastic stack, including a recent biography of Shirley Jackson by Ruth Franklin. I've only just begun it but already I can see that her husband was in life more nuanced than he appears in Wikipedia. Not surprising.
Meanwhile, oddly enough, the book I sat down and devoured during my husband's appointments yesterday was the graphic novel version of the Diary of Anne Frank. I say "oddly" only because I'd said I didn't want to read any Holocaust novels, and of course DAF is not only a Holocaust story, but it's a true one in which the teenage heroine is murdered at the end.
(I'll interrupt my blog to add a link to a post I recently read, an article in the Smithsonian pointing out some real problems with the public adoration of Anne. It begins, "People love dead Jews. Living Jews, not so much." It's very worth reading.)
I have a long relationship with the Diary of Anne Frank. I don't remember when I first heard about the Holocaust, but I remember the first time I read Anne's book. I remember it with awful clarity, because I thought it was fiction when I picked it up. I didn't know it was a true story. I expected it to end well. I still remember laying stomach-down across my bed, engrossed in the book, and running full-force into those awful words, "Anne's diary ends here." And then the shattering afterword. I buried my head in my pillows and sobbed.
When I was in Israel I said a few times to some of the other writers on the trip, "I've always wanted to change the ending of the diary. I've wanted to Anne to survive, and I've wanted to write what happens to her then." It's true; I've wanted to write that story for as long as I've known I was a writer. My friends, every one of them, said, "You can't do that." And they're right. I can't. What's next--a kinder, gentler Hitler?
I imagine the adapter and illustrator of the graphic novel felt a certain trepidation, but the version they've produced is stunning. Certain emotive elements of the diary lend themselves very well to full-page illustrations--the sequence of Anne comparing herself to her "perfect" sister Margot is brilliant, economical, complete. But then they fill whole pages with large passages from her diary, uncut, barely illustrated. They're using the full version of the diary, not the edited version first published. Anne shines in these pages.
And still the chilling words, "Anne's diary ends here."
If you're a teacher or librarian, get this book. Your students will love it. Your students will learn from it.
Also, you all were great with the reading recommendations yesterday. What have you got that's high-interest for fourth-graders? ALI is putting together our book lists for our two spring selections. I've got some good ideas but I'd love to have more. Thanks!
Meanwhile, oddly enough, the book I sat down and devoured during my husband's appointments yesterday was the graphic novel version of the Diary of Anne Frank. I say "oddly" only because I'd said I didn't want to read any Holocaust novels, and of course DAF is not only a Holocaust story, but it's a true one in which the teenage heroine is murdered at the end.
(I'll interrupt my blog to add a link to a post I recently read, an article in the Smithsonian pointing out some real problems with the public adoration of Anne. It begins, "People love dead Jews. Living Jews, not so much." It's very worth reading.)
I have a long relationship with the Diary of Anne Frank. I don't remember when I first heard about the Holocaust, but I remember the first time I read Anne's book. I remember it with awful clarity, because I thought it was fiction when I picked it up. I didn't know it was a true story. I expected it to end well. I still remember laying stomach-down across my bed, engrossed in the book, and running full-force into those awful words, "Anne's diary ends here." And then the shattering afterword. I buried my head in my pillows and sobbed.
When I was in Israel I said a few times to some of the other writers on the trip, "I've always wanted to change the ending of the diary. I've wanted to Anne to survive, and I've wanted to write what happens to her then." It's true; I've wanted to write that story for as long as I've known I was a writer. My friends, every one of them, said, "You can't do that." And they're right. I can't. What's next--a kinder, gentler Hitler?
I imagine the adapter and illustrator of the graphic novel felt a certain trepidation, but the version they've produced is stunning. Certain emotive elements of the diary lend themselves very well to full-page illustrations--the sequence of Anne comparing herself to her "perfect" sister Margot is brilliant, economical, complete. But then they fill whole pages with large passages from her diary, uncut, barely illustrated. They're using the full version of the diary, not the edited version first published. Anne shines in these pages.
And still the chilling words, "Anne's diary ends here."
If you're a teacher or librarian, get this book. Your students will love it. Your students will learn from it.
Also, you all were great with the reading recommendations yesterday. What have you got that's high-interest for fourth-graders? ALI is putting together our book lists for our two spring selections. I've got some good ideas but I'd love to have more. Thanks!
December 5, 2018
Help! I need help!
It will come as no surprise to anyone that replacing one's entire knee joint is a rather big deal. I saw an x-ray Monday of my husband's new knee. They sawed off the ends of his shinbone and his femur, and shaved the backside of his patella, and added whole new ends made of teflon or something that fit together cunningly well and will, in time, work brilliantly, I'm sure.
They are starting to function now. It's been painful, and difficult. My husband reacts oddly and un-usefully to opiods and apparently also has some strange anatomy--some nerve too close to some artery--that makes nerve blocks not work well. So everything hurt, and still does. He has been diligent in this therapy. He's slowly improving. He's back to work half-days this week.
Last week sucked for several reasons, some of which aren't wholly my story. One of the more minor examples: after a very quick business trip to Orlando on Friday (I accepted the Sunshine State Young Reader's Award, with thankfulness and joy) the plane I was on got within five miles of home before deciding it was too foggy to land. We diverted back to Atlanta where I spent the night in a cheap airport hotel. Not a crisis. Just annoying. But other bits were worse.
In the midst of all of it I've been struggling to find a single damn thing to read.
I took The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici with me to the hospital on the day of Bart's surgery, along with a French grammar I'm studying. We had to check-in by 5:15 am. Yeah. Luckily I've got some easy computer games on my phone.
At home I tried again with the first book on my to-read pile. The Librarian of Auschwitz. Yeah. No. I don't care how well-written the book is, Auschwitz is still Auschwitz. Not something to enjoy in times of trouble.
Okay, so next I went with a duo of two Mary Balogh Christmas novellas. I quite liked the first one. Fluffy, but very Christmassy. Then the second was essentially the first over again. Slightly different setup but exact same Christmas details, down to a small boy claiming he could, "skate like the wind." They were written years apart; publishing them in the same volume was a really bad idea. So I was off Mary.
Tried N. K. Jemisin next. I think she's brilliant and I'll probably love her stuff when I've got the brainpower to make sense of it. This is not that time.
My book club book is Girl, Wash Your Face. My sister loved it. I think in most circumstances I would like it, but again, not now. From what I can tell it's a light pep-talk, and while I usually love me a good advice book I'm not taking advice this week. I'll try that one again on the weekend because I would like to have read it by book club.
I have a lot of books downloaded on my iPad, most of them comfort fluff. I was just starting to go to them when I shattered my iPad's screen. I looked at it one morning and it was broken. Probably I knocked it out of my bed on the night. Anyway, it still functions--though probably not for long--but it's very hard to read the words behind the broken screen.
I had Challenger Deep from the library. Love Neal Schusterman. Don't really want to read about schizophrenia this month.
I had The Nanny Diaries from the library, too. I felt too sorry for the children in the book to find it funny.
Nine Rules to Break When You're Romancing a Rake. Sounded very promising. However--if you're going to write Regency-era novels, for Lawdssake learn enough about horses. Everyone rode them or traveled in carriages back then. No one drives a high-perch phaeton in the country in a snowstorm. No one. If you don't understand what is meant by the phrase, "well-matched bays," don't use it, and don't stick women on stallions as though it were an everyday thing. Stallions themselves--not an everyday thing. Not even then. (Once I read ten pages of a book where, on page 10, the young Duke grabbed his shotgun and went out solo on foot to do a little fox-hunting.)
Ahhhhhh. I re-read my two favorite Joanna Bourne novels, Rogue Spy and The Black Hawk. Then I fumbled around with the opening chapters of Kate Morton's The Clockmaker's Daughter. She's like JoJo Moyes where I'm concerned--sometimes I like her, sometimes I don't. This one I don't.
Picked up--again, library book--Life Among The Savages, a memoir by stellar American novelist Shirley Jackson. I was really enjoying it--funny, accessible, light--when I noticed on the bio on the back that she'd died in 1965, aged only 48. I'm 51. So that sucked. So then I looked her up on Wikipedia to see why she died so young, and the answer was heart trouble and cigarettes and addiction and anxiety, and also her husband was an over-controlling womanizer who forced her to agree to an "open marriage" she didn't want. Now I know Wikipedia is not wholly reliable. My own entry is rigorously policed by my daughter's friend, who has to keep editing out ridiculous phrases other people keep putting it--it's become on the nature of a family joke--but still, reading about her life made me see her memoir, in which her husband keeps murmuring about money while heading off to his office, gleefully, which she tries to cope with four children and a series of unreliable household help and writing novels that are still considered classics in their genre seventy years later, as well as making most of the household income--a little differently, and much less amusing. When she died her younger children were still living at home. I was not looking to read about disasters.
Then my lovely friend Hilary McKay recommended a old book by Elizabeth Von Atrim, Fraulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther. My new iPad had arrived, so I looked this book up, and it was FREE on Kindle, probably because it's so old and obscure. Started it with great joy. Then put it down. I'll probably love it some day. For now, not so much. I read 20 pages and absolutely nothing happened. Not one blessed thing. Lots of words, charming words, not a one of them fine active verbs. I'm not absolutely addicted to plots, but still.
That was last night. That's my reading history of the past two weeks. I typically read 4-5 books per week. The past two weeks: 3--the two Joanna Bournes, and Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp's Game Changer, a short brilliant nonfiction book about increasing access to books in schoolchildren. So, 1.5 books per week in weeks when I've had lots of reading time. It's no wonder I'm cranky.
I'm headed back to the library this afternoon while my husband's at physical therapy. Help a sister out, here. What's good? What will be not sad and not stupid and not too bleeping literary?
They are starting to function now. It's been painful, and difficult. My husband reacts oddly and un-usefully to opiods and apparently also has some strange anatomy--some nerve too close to some artery--that makes nerve blocks not work well. So everything hurt, and still does. He has been diligent in this therapy. He's slowly improving. He's back to work half-days this week.
Last week sucked for several reasons, some of which aren't wholly my story. One of the more minor examples: after a very quick business trip to Orlando on Friday (I accepted the Sunshine State Young Reader's Award, with thankfulness and joy) the plane I was on got within five miles of home before deciding it was too foggy to land. We diverted back to Atlanta where I spent the night in a cheap airport hotel. Not a crisis. Just annoying. But other bits were worse.
In the midst of all of it I've been struggling to find a single damn thing to read.
I took The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici with me to the hospital on the day of Bart's surgery, along with a French grammar I'm studying. We had to check-in by 5:15 am. Yeah. Luckily I've got some easy computer games on my phone.
At home I tried again with the first book on my to-read pile. The Librarian of Auschwitz. Yeah. No. I don't care how well-written the book is, Auschwitz is still Auschwitz. Not something to enjoy in times of trouble.
Okay, so next I went with a duo of two Mary Balogh Christmas novellas. I quite liked the first one. Fluffy, but very Christmassy. Then the second was essentially the first over again. Slightly different setup but exact same Christmas details, down to a small boy claiming he could, "skate like the wind." They were written years apart; publishing them in the same volume was a really bad idea. So I was off Mary.
Tried N. K. Jemisin next. I think she's brilliant and I'll probably love her stuff when I've got the brainpower to make sense of it. This is not that time.
My book club book is Girl, Wash Your Face. My sister loved it. I think in most circumstances I would like it, but again, not now. From what I can tell it's a light pep-talk, and while I usually love me a good advice book I'm not taking advice this week. I'll try that one again on the weekend because I would like to have read it by book club.
I have a lot of books downloaded on my iPad, most of them comfort fluff. I was just starting to go to them when I shattered my iPad's screen. I looked at it one morning and it was broken. Probably I knocked it out of my bed on the night. Anyway, it still functions--though probably not for long--but it's very hard to read the words behind the broken screen.
I had Challenger Deep from the library. Love Neal Schusterman. Don't really want to read about schizophrenia this month.
I had The Nanny Diaries from the library, too. I felt too sorry for the children in the book to find it funny.
Nine Rules to Break When You're Romancing a Rake. Sounded very promising. However--if you're going to write Regency-era novels, for Lawdssake learn enough about horses. Everyone rode them or traveled in carriages back then. No one drives a high-perch phaeton in the country in a snowstorm. No one. If you don't understand what is meant by the phrase, "well-matched bays," don't use it, and don't stick women on stallions as though it were an everyday thing. Stallions themselves--not an everyday thing. Not even then. (Once I read ten pages of a book where, on page 10, the young Duke grabbed his shotgun and went out solo on foot to do a little fox-hunting.)
Ahhhhhh. I re-read my two favorite Joanna Bourne novels, Rogue Spy and The Black Hawk. Then I fumbled around with the opening chapters of Kate Morton's The Clockmaker's Daughter. She's like JoJo Moyes where I'm concerned--sometimes I like her, sometimes I don't. This one I don't.
Picked up--again, library book--Life Among The Savages, a memoir by stellar American novelist Shirley Jackson. I was really enjoying it--funny, accessible, light--when I noticed on the bio on the back that she'd died in 1965, aged only 48. I'm 51. So that sucked. So then I looked her up on Wikipedia to see why she died so young, and the answer was heart trouble and cigarettes and addiction and anxiety, and also her husband was an over-controlling womanizer who forced her to agree to an "open marriage" she didn't want. Now I know Wikipedia is not wholly reliable. My own entry is rigorously policed by my daughter's friend, who has to keep editing out ridiculous phrases other people keep putting it--it's become on the nature of a family joke--but still, reading about her life made me see her memoir, in which her husband keeps murmuring about money while heading off to his office, gleefully, which she tries to cope with four children and a series of unreliable household help and writing novels that are still considered classics in their genre seventy years later, as well as making most of the household income--a little differently, and much less amusing. When she died her younger children were still living at home. I was not looking to read about disasters.
Then my lovely friend Hilary McKay recommended a old book by Elizabeth Von Atrim, Fraulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther. My new iPad had arrived, so I looked this book up, and it was FREE on Kindle, probably because it's so old and obscure. Started it with great joy. Then put it down. I'll probably love it some day. For now, not so much. I read 20 pages and absolutely nothing happened. Not one blessed thing. Lots of words, charming words, not a one of them fine active verbs. I'm not absolutely addicted to plots, but still.
That was last night. That's my reading history of the past two weeks. I typically read 4-5 books per week. The past two weeks: 3--the two Joanna Bournes, and Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp's Game Changer, a short brilliant nonfiction book about increasing access to books in schoolchildren. So, 1.5 books per week in weeks when I've had lots of reading time. It's no wonder I'm cranky.
I'm headed back to the library this afternoon while my husband's at physical therapy. Help a sister out, here. What's good? What will be not sad and not stupid and not too bleeping literary?
November 27, 2018
Giving Tuesday, blah blah blah
I'm cynical about this Giving Tuesday stuff.
We only give this one day a year?
Eh.
For what it's worth, I'm also not a fan of Black Friday or Cyber Monday. I'm okay with Small Business Saturday, but mostly only because some of the people with small businesses around here are my friends.
When you live in a small town you quite often know the people on the other side of the counter, and they you, and if you like their business you want it to stick around.
I recognize the privilege in my constant willingness to ignore Black Friday. The amount of money I'd save isn't worth the hassle to me. That's nice for me. But anyway, I'm cynical about the whole thing.
We usually decorate our Christmas tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We didn't this year. We had it tentatively scheduled for the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving, before the children flew back to their current homes, but my husband wasn't feeling up for it--this knee replacement stuff is hard and painful--and none of the rest of us wanted to proceed without him, so now we're decorating the tree on December 22nd, which is when the children come back (it's so fantastic that they both get to spend Thanksgiving AND Christmas with us still). We are not putting up little wreaths on all the dining room and kitchen windows. My allergies were so bad last year I declared it was time to ban indoor fresh fir, and I haven't yet found a source for fake small wreaths. Not that it matters as the husband isn't yet ambulatory. Likewise the garland on the bannister. Also the outdoor lights. I'll put up the Nativity sets soon, and get out the stockings, but on the whole it's a pared-down Christmas just as it was a pared-down Thanksgiving.
And that's fine. Thanksgiving was lovely. I could wish an easier recovery for my husband, but I'm grateful for, among other things, my work-at-home life that makes it easy for me to care for him. I'm grateful for our full first-floor bathroom that means he can shower without climbing stairs. I'm grateful for a lot of small things, and many big ones.
This morning I packed up bookplates to send out to the schools enrolled in the Appalachian Literacy Initiative. The first set of student-selected books are on their way to the classes, and the second set has been ordered. (We'll be a little quicker next year--we want the first set arriving by the end of October. But this is our pilot year, we're still figuring things out.) We had stickers made that read, "This book is a gift from Appalachian Literacy Initiative, and now belongs to:" and then there's a line for the student to write their name. I got extremely pleased as I went along, because--I need to order more stickers. I got a great deal on them online, and remember wondering how many I should buy, but this was before any of the schools had applied. I was vaguely hoping we'd be able to enroll 20 classrooms--the board thought that was overly optimistic--so I bought 2000 bookplates. In the end we enrolled 28 classrooms from 40 applications. 675 students x 2 books so far = 1350 books. Then 16 classroom books so far x 28 classrooms = 448 books. That's almost 1800 stickers.
1800 books.
To finish out the program for the rest of the year will take another 1686 stickers and books.
I am so loving this math.
I know I keep asking for money on this blog, and here I am doing it again, because after all it is GIVING TUESDAY. I'm practically obligated, right?
Here's the thing: our 501(c)3 status hasn't been granted yet. We registered as a non-profit in the state of Tennessee last March. We created a board, voted and approved our articles of incorporation and other legal bits, and filed for status with the IRS in early June. It was a big honking application and I was proud of completing it. On June 25, I got an official IRS letter saying they'd received my application.
And there we sit. There's no problem of which I am aware. Last week I got a tich frustrated and called the IRS and rattled off all our official numbers, and was told that we had not yet been assigned an agent, which as far as I could tell after further questioning meant that no one had done a damn thing. "It has not yet been 180 days," the IRS agent told me, indignantly.
OK. 180 days will be Christmas, and want I really want this year is tax-exempt status for ALI so we can apply for all these grants I've researched and learned about, and all the corporate-matching funds people offer me, and so I can approach publishers who don't have strong reason to love me (my own publisher, who does, has made a generous donation.) Right at this moment we're having to rely on personal donations--and when we do get our status it will apply retroactively to March 2018, our date of incorporation, so yes, your gifts should be tax-deductible, they just aren't yet--and people have been amazing, I swear they have, and I'm so grateful,
But you know, it's Giving Tuesday. Maybe you'd like to give a book to a kid who's never owned one before. Maybe you are buying books for kids in your own life, whom you love, and while you're at it you'll buy one for this kid--this fourth-grade girl in Leon, West Virginia, or the boy in Berea, Kentucky, who never saw themselves as readers because they honestly had nothing to read. Because their teachers are trying to build classroom libraries from books they find at Goodwill. Because the dollar books from Scholastic Book Fair look like leftovers, and when you're a poor kid you're sick of getting stuck with leftovers all the time.
You've got a thousand places to put your money. I know that. I don't even like Giving Tuesday. But maybe you do. And maybe ALI is something you'd like to support.
If you’d like to support the work that we’re doing, you can mail a check to Appalachian Literacy Initiative at PO Box 3283, Bristol, TN 37625, or click here to purchase books on our wishlist from Parnassus Books, our preferred bookstore. You’ll receive 10% off with the code GIVEREADING, and Parnassus will ship the books to us free of charge. You can also purchase books from our Amazon wishlist by clicking here
We only give this one day a year?
Eh.
For what it's worth, I'm also not a fan of Black Friday or Cyber Monday. I'm okay with Small Business Saturday, but mostly only because some of the people with small businesses around here are my friends.
When you live in a small town you quite often know the people on the other side of the counter, and they you, and if you like their business you want it to stick around.
I recognize the privilege in my constant willingness to ignore Black Friday. The amount of money I'd save isn't worth the hassle to me. That's nice for me. But anyway, I'm cynical about the whole thing.
We usually decorate our Christmas tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We didn't this year. We had it tentatively scheduled for the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving, before the children flew back to their current homes, but my husband wasn't feeling up for it--this knee replacement stuff is hard and painful--and none of the rest of us wanted to proceed without him, so now we're decorating the tree on December 22nd, which is when the children come back (it's so fantastic that they both get to spend Thanksgiving AND Christmas with us still). We are not putting up little wreaths on all the dining room and kitchen windows. My allergies were so bad last year I declared it was time to ban indoor fresh fir, and I haven't yet found a source for fake small wreaths. Not that it matters as the husband isn't yet ambulatory. Likewise the garland on the bannister. Also the outdoor lights. I'll put up the Nativity sets soon, and get out the stockings, but on the whole it's a pared-down Christmas just as it was a pared-down Thanksgiving.
And that's fine. Thanksgiving was lovely. I could wish an easier recovery for my husband, but I'm grateful for, among other things, my work-at-home life that makes it easy for me to care for him. I'm grateful for our full first-floor bathroom that means he can shower without climbing stairs. I'm grateful for a lot of small things, and many big ones.
This morning I packed up bookplates to send out to the schools enrolled in the Appalachian Literacy Initiative. The first set of student-selected books are on their way to the classes, and the second set has been ordered. (We'll be a little quicker next year--we want the first set arriving by the end of October. But this is our pilot year, we're still figuring things out.) We had stickers made that read, "This book is a gift from Appalachian Literacy Initiative, and now belongs to:" and then there's a line for the student to write their name. I got extremely pleased as I went along, because--I need to order more stickers. I got a great deal on them online, and remember wondering how many I should buy, but this was before any of the schools had applied. I was vaguely hoping we'd be able to enroll 20 classrooms--the board thought that was overly optimistic--so I bought 2000 bookplates. In the end we enrolled 28 classrooms from 40 applications. 675 students x 2 books so far = 1350 books. Then 16 classroom books so far x 28 classrooms = 448 books. That's almost 1800 stickers.
1800 books.
To finish out the program for the rest of the year will take another 1686 stickers and books.
I am so loving this math.
I know I keep asking for money on this blog, and here I am doing it again, because after all it is GIVING TUESDAY. I'm practically obligated, right?
Here's the thing: our 501(c)3 status hasn't been granted yet. We registered as a non-profit in the state of Tennessee last March. We created a board, voted and approved our articles of incorporation and other legal bits, and filed for status with the IRS in early June. It was a big honking application and I was proud of completing it. On June 25, I got an official IRS letter saying they'd received my application.
And there we sit. There's no problem of which I am aware. Last week I got a tich frustrated and called the IRS and rattled off all our official numbers, and was told that we had not yet been assigned an agent, which as far as I could tell after further questioning meant that no one had done a damn thing. "It has not yet been 180 days," the IRS agent told me, indignantly.
OK. 180 days will be Christmas, and want I really want this year is tax-exempt status for ALI so we can apply for all these grants I've researched and learned about, and all the corporate-matching funds people offer me, and so I can approach publishers who don't have strong reason to love me (my own publisher, who does, has made a generous donation.) Right at this moment we're having to rely on personal donations--and when we do get our status it will apply retroactively to March 2018, our date of incorporation, so yes, your gifts should be tax-deductible, they just aren't yet--and people have been amazing, I swear they have, and I'm so grateful,
But you know, it's Giving Tuesday. Maybe you'd like to give a book to a kid who's never owned one before. Maybe you are buying books for kids in your own life, whom you love, and while you're at it you'll buy one for this kid--this fourth-grade girl in Leon, West Virginia, or the boy in Berea, Kentucky, who never saw themselves as readers because they honestly had nothing to read. Because their teachers are trying to build classroom libraries from books they find at Goodwill. Because the dollar books from Scholastic Book Fair look like leftovers, and when you're a poor kid you're sick of getting stuck with leftovers all the time.
You've got a thousand places to put your money. I know that. I don't even like Giving Tuesday. But maybe you do. And maybe ALI is something you'd like to support.
If you’d like to support the work that we’re doing, you can mail a check to Appalachian Literacy Initiative at PO Box 3283, Bristol, TN 37625, or click here to purchase books on our wishlist from Parnassus Books, our preferred bookstore. You’ll receive 10% off with the code GIVEREADING, and Parnassus will ship the books to us free of charge. You can also purchase books from our Amazon wishlist by clicking here
November 19, 2018
Small Thanksgiving
This morning my husband's stress meter was set to Apocalypse even before he stepped on the candy shard. I'd just gotten into the shower when he made a noise like Chewbacca. "I just stepped on a tiny sharp white thing!" he shouted.
"The dog got into your peppermint Life Savers!" I shouted back.
He growled again. My husband, I mean. It's not my fault the dog found his Life Savers but it is my fault that we have a dog. And I thought I'd cleaned up the mess, but the bathroom floor is speckled shiny white and blue tile and those pieces were hard to see.
"If I cut my foot I can't have surgery!" he said. This is true.
"Put on some socks!" I said back. I'm pretty sure Life Savers aren't sharp enough to penetrate the thick socks he wears.
My husband has been having a rough time. This morning he was still on call for his practice, about to go perform surgery, and less than 24 hours from a total knee replacement. That he's receiving, not performing. Also his tooth still hurt. His mind was running an auto-loop of all the things that could go wrong with his knee, and it was not effective to try to reassure him because just recently everything possible went wrong with one of his teeth. Three root canals. Extraction. Dry socket. Heavy antibiotics because of the pending knee surgery. He's lost 15 pounds in the last few weeks simply because it hurt too much to eat.
He's having his knee replaced because he has no cartilage left. When he was a boy he fractured his patella playing baseball and it healed with a sharp internal edge. He's had repeated surgeries on that knee and we've known for awhile that a joint replacement was only a matter of time. He hoped, however, for a little more time.
I'm optimistic. He, right now, is not. Did I mention the time he ruptured his Achilles? That hurt. A lot. Still does. Then there's the shoulder surgery....orthopedists love the man.
As do I. Meanwhile, Thanksgiving is going to be small this year. It's funny to me how my holidays flip-flopped. When I was a child Thanksgiving was sacrosanct. It would take place either at my house or my aunt's house, but it always, always involved the same family and the same food and the same card games. Christmas changed from year to year. Thanksgiving never did.
Then I grew up. My children have known a never-changing Christmas. We found a good set of rituals early and kept them. It's been rare for us to have family visiting on Christmas and we never travel. The only big change is that now that they're adults they don't wake us up at four am. Thanksgiving has been our variable holiday--different family, different friends, different food. We've traveled and hosted friends and been hosted by friends, and all of it has been lovely, but not this year.
This year will be the four of us. I had family willing to come and I told them no. My husband will be two days postop, sleeping in my office. My children don't arrive home until late Wednesday night. I floated the idea of getting our turkey from Bojangles this year. (For my Yankee friends, that's a Southern fast-food fried chicken chain.) Bojangles deep-fries turkeys. I always thought deep-fried turkeys sounded interesting but also, in my hands, a near-guaranteed way to set the house on fire. We all like Bojangles, especially my son, who hung out there after school with his friends so often in high school that the manager gave them all t-shirts.
But the children protested mightily, and finally I got to the root of their unhappiness, which was, you can't stuff a deep-fried Bojangles turkey with my grandmother's stuffing.
My grandmother's stuffing--made primarily of saltine crackers and bacon--is legend. It achieves greatness only by being cooked inside the bird--you can't get anything close to the same texture or taste without it absorbing all the poultry juice and drippings. It is magical. I cram that turkey as full as possible with the stuffing; no matter how much I make, there are nearly no leftovers.
Ok. I understood. Grandma's stuffing had to be on the table. But that caused me to rethink the entire menu. What if, instead of making all the dishes I usually did, I only made what mattered most?
Turkey with stuffing. My daughter added cranberries. My husband added our traditional sweet potato casserole. My son added Sister Schubert's pan rolls. (Those come frozen in Southern grocery stores.) We thought hard about dessert and decided to go with fancy ice cream. The end.
It will be plenty to be thankful for.
"The dog got into your peppermint Life Savers!" I shouted back.
He growled again. My husband, I mean. It's not my fault the dog found his Life Savers but it is my fault that we have a dog. And I thought I'd cleaned up the mess, but the bathroom floor is speckled shiny white and blue tile and those pieces were hard to see.
"If I cut my foot I can't have surgery!" he said. This is true.
"Put on some socks!" I said back. I'm pretty sure Life Savers aren't sharp enough to penetrate the thick socks he wears.
My husband has been having a rough time. This morning he was still on call for his practice, about to go perform surgery, and less than 24 hours from a total knee replacement. That he's receiving, not performing. Also his tooth still hurt. His mind was running an auto-loop of all the things that could go wrong with his knee, and it was not effective to try to reassure him because just recently everything possible went wrong with one of his teeth. Three root canals. Extraction. Dry socket. Heavy antibiotics because of the pending knee surgery. He's lost 15 pounds in the last few weeks simply because it hurt too much to eat.
He's having his knee replaced because he has no cartilage left. When he was a boy he fractured his patella playing baseball and it healed with a sharp internal edge. He's had repeated surgeries on that knee and we've known for awhile that a joint replacement was only a matter of time. He hoped, however, for a little more time.
I'm optimistic. He, right now, is not. Did I mention the time he ruptured his Achilles? That hurt. A lot. Still does. Then there's the shoulder surgery....orthopedists love the man.
As do I. Meanwhile, Thanksgiving is going to be small this year. It's funny to me how my holidays flip-flopped. When I was a child Thanksgiving was sacrosanct. It would take place either at my house or my aunt's house, but it always, always involved the same family and the same food and the same card games. Christmas changed from year to year. Thanksgiving never did.
Then I grew up. My children have known a never-changing Christmas. We found a good set of rituals early and kept them. It's been rare for us to have family visiting on Christmas and we never travel. The only big change is that now that they're adults they don't wake us up at four am. Thanksgiving has been our variable holiday--different family, different friends, different food. We've traveled and hosted friends and been hosted by friends, and all of it has been lovely, but not this year.
This year will be the four of us. I had family willing to come and I told them no. My husband will be two days postop, sleeping in my office. My children don't arrive home until late Wednesday night. I floated the idea of getting our turkey from Bojangles this year. (For my Yankee friends, that's a Southern fast-food fried chicken chain.) Bojangles deep-fries turkeys. I always thought deep-fried turkeys sounded interesting but also, in my hands, a near-guaranteed way to set the house on fire. We all like Bojangles, especially my son, who hung out there after school with his friends so often in high school that the manager gave them all t-shirts.
But the children protested mightily, and finally I got to the root of their unhappiness, which was, you can't stuff a deep-fried Bojangles turkey with my grandmother's stuffing.
My grandmother's stuffing--made primarily of saltine crackers and bacon--is legend. It achieves greatness only by being cooked inside the bird--you can't get anything close to the same texture or taste without it absorbing all the poultry juice and drippings. It is magical. I cram that turkey as full as possible with the stuffing; no matter how much I make, there are nearly no leftovers.
Ok. I understood. Grandma's stuffing had to be on the table. But that caused me to rethink the entire menu. What if, instead of making all the dishes I usually did, I only made what mattered most?
Turkey with stuffing. My daughter added cranberries. My husband added our traditional sweet potato casserole. My son added Sister Schubert's pan rolls. (Those come frozen in Southern grocery stores.) We thought hard about dessert and decided to go with fancy ice cream. The end.
It will be plenty to be thankful for.
