April Lindner's Blog, page 16

Memory Cards Light the Corners of My Mind (a Spring Break roundup)

Window Shopping in Florence, Italy
Love, Lucy gets her first Waiting on Wednesday mention from Stories and Sweeties.  Waiting on Wednesday is a fun weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.  Every Wednesday book bloggers list the soon-to-be-released Young Adult books they can't wait to read.

The January 2015 release of Love, Lucy feels so far away.  In the meantime, though, it's spring break, and I'm writing up a storm, working on the yet-untitled Greek novel.  For research and inspiration purposes, I've been digging around, looking for the lost Greek memory card, the one with a thousand pictures from my last trip.  Instead, I've been finding all sorts of other old pictures, like the one above, taken when I was in Florence, researching Love, Lucy.

And then there's this, taken two summers ago:


Some of my friends will undoubtedly recognize the handwriting, but for all the others, this is a speech, spelled out phonetically by Bruce Springsteen, in advance of a 1999 concert he gave in Milan. Finding it on the wall of the Hard Rock Cafe Florence was like bumping into an old friend far from home.  

Speaking of bumping into old friends, I also found a lot of family photos on that same memory card.  This one in particular:



It's my Ophelia: tail in motion, eyes full of love, sitting next to two bags of souvenirs I'd lugged home from Italy and Greece.  There will never be another Feef!

They're Heeeeeeeeere!

The Advanced Review Copies of Love, Lucy , reached me today.  And they're every bit as pretty as I hoped they'd be!

In Which I Steal Somebody Else's Photo Because Venice

I lifted this photo from the


I ate my cornetto and drank my cappucino standing at the bar, and felt simultaneously like I was having a private moment, but also was part of something, among friends.  The guy behind the bar chatted with regulars who came in and out.  The cornetto was perfect--crisp and fragrant and just  a little bit sweet--as was my cappucino, and all of Venice waited just outside the door to be explored.

The next morning, and the morning after that, I wandered the streets around the hostel, looking for that same cafe, but somehow I just couldn't find it.  But this morning I woke to this photo and felt like I'd accidentally wandered back in.

Midterm Interlude: While I Grade Portfolios....

Nico is emitting powerful "stop grading and hug me" vibes.


Meanwhile the struggle for the future of Saint Joseph's University wages on:


Saint Mary's Hall
Saint Ignatius, founder of the JesuitsTo pacify myself/procrastinate, I look at pictures of travels past and dream of travels future.

With my sister: outside the duomo in Florence and inside the duomoAnd I look forward to Monday.  If I can only grade fast enough, I can let myself return to my Greek novel on Monday.

At Knossos, looking up

Confessions of a Crazy Guinea Pig Lady (With a Poem by Alfred Nicol)

Leeloo says hello
We all wear many hats, and in addition to my most public ones (wife/mother/professor/writer/Springsteen fanatic) I have a semi-secret alternate identity: Crazy Guinea Pig Lady.  Or, to be more accurate, Crazy Rodent Lady.  People who know me from Facebook--including many folks I've never actually met--know I have a soft spot for rodents of all types, but especially for those docile, kidney-bean shaped puffballs we call guinea pigs (although nobody seems to know exactly why, seeing as how they're not pigs, and they're not from New Guinea).

These days, my house is home to two rescued guinea pigs, Leeloo and Tootsie Roll.  They're actually our second piggie pair; before them we had two boys, Turk and Bartleby.  


Back in the days of Turk, the best guinea pig ever

Back then, the internet was privy to my struggles to keep both boys alive despite their frequent bouts with bladder stones. When that battle was lost, the internet looked on as I obsessed over whether or not to adopt another pair, and if so, which pair out of the many lovely piggies in need of homes.  Around that time I started paying attention to all sorts of guinea pig rescue groups, and posting particularly adorable adoptables on a more or less daily basis.

All of this is how I became a Crazy Guinea Pig Lady.  Lately, when a cute picture of a hamster, guinea pig, rat, mouse, gerbil, or even a capybara, starts making the rounds on Facebook, it's a dead certainty that more than one friend will forward it to me.  And the other day I received this more or less anonymous giftie in the mail:




And of course I squeaked with glee!



Tootsie takes center stage
I could go on and on about how guinea pigs have distinct personalities, and how they have a predisposition to love and be loved.  I could tell you the legend of Turk, who never greeted me without kissing me on the lips, even when he was terribly sick, or of his friend Bartleby who sat beside him in those days, seemingly to comfort him.


Bart's turn
Instead I will post a beautifully crafted poem on the subject by my friend poet Alfred Nicol--a poem that cuts to the heart of why these patient little pets have a thing or two to teach us.

(As a guinea pig obsessive, though, I need to add a couple of fussy caveats.  The poem mentions alfalfa.  Better to give your guinea pigs timothy hay, my friends, and plenty of it. Alfalfa can cause those dread bladder stones.  And the guinea pig in the poem lives alone, but pigs are social animals and most of them are much happier in pairs.)


Guinea Pig
A pet, domesticated overmuch,
Inhabiting interminable lulls,
Most pusillanimous of animals,
Inertia's own, quiescent as the sands,
And shy to venture even round the hutch,
Her pleasure is a motor in my hands,
An instrument set racing with a touch.

A little thing of breath and heat compact,
Mildest of spirits, in a flask of fur,
Without even a sound as signature,
No bark or whinny, whistle or meow,
No word to instigate or to react,
She gently nods assent to here and now,
An answer well-considered and exact.

I'll learn from this one how much not to do;
How large a silence to accumulate;
To serve with those who only stand and wait,
To change alfalfa, sawdust, water, salt,
For other needs as moderate and few;
To thrill when lifted; visited, exalt;
Nor ever speak till I be spoken through.

If you're interested in learning more about these dear creatures, check out Guinea Lynx, the internet's best source for reliable piggie info.

Come Write With Me

I'm thrilled to report that I'll be on the faculty of the Summer Nightsun Writers Conference at Frostburg State University in Historic Downtown Frostburg, Maryland.  The faculty includes Bruce Weigl (poetry), Brenda Clough (sci-fi, fantasy, and horror), Marion Winik (nonfiction), Clint McCown (fiction), and me (young adult fiction). 

The program will include workshop opportunities, individualized feedback on your work, and craft sessions. There will also be readings by participants, workshop faculty, and special guests.  The conference runs from July 24-27, and it will be a great opportunity to generate new work and hone your craft.

Drop by the website for more information.  

Writing about Rock

Marc Scibilia at the Tin Angel in Philly

Thanks to With Her Nose Stuck in a Book, one of my favorite blogs about Young Adult fiction.  Today they're featuring my guest blog post on writing about music--why I can't seem to stop doing it, and how my obsession shaped my second novel, Catherine .



By the way, the guy at the top of this page is Marc Scibilia, a phenomenally talented singer songwriter who has opened for and recorded with another of my musical idols, Butch Walker.  

One very cold night in February we went to see Marc play at the Tin Angel in Philly, and he was impressive from start to finish. Check out this video for a taste of his songwriting and performing skills:

Living Will: A Poem By Darius Degher

I'm thrilled that Darius Degher's first poetry collection, To See the Sound , has arrived in the world.  A while back, Darius gave me the opportunity to read and blurb the manuscript, and I was charmed by his wordplay, his quirky subject choices, his command of craft, and for the way his poems mix intelligence and heart.

Here's one of my favorites from the collection:


Living Will
While filling in his living will
he discovered the will to live again.
For unacceptable qualities of life
he checked the boxes on the form
for chronic coma, feeding tubes,
persistent vegetative state.

For a week he lived his testament:
didn't sleepwalk through the frozen foods
or ignore the glorious florescence.
Quickened by the canteen's quiche,
he lost track of what a colleague said,
smiled about a project gone awry.
He notched his deepest ever breaths,
exhaled slowly like a yogi,
was dazzled by his prism paperweight.



Darius is a musician too.  His latest album, The Coyote Cantos, is available here.

And here he is, performing a song from an earlier album on Swedish t.v.:

Snowpocolypse Now

What is it about an impending blizzard that makes everyone run for the grocery store?  It's not like we couldn't pull on some boots and walk the five blocks to SuperFresh if we forgot milk or ran out of bread in the middle of a storm.  Nevertheless, we spent yesterday stocking up.  And up.  And up.

And once we'd laid in supplies for the Snowpocolypse, we ran out to squeeze in a little fun before the latest in a string of weather-imposed house arrests.  A movie.  And a plate of Bucatini Amatriciana to remind us of sunnier times--the week we spent in Rome a couple of summers ago.


I'll be cooking in earnest once the snow starts to fall.  Until then, I plan to cheer myself up by stealing a little precious writing time to work on my Greek novel.

Maybe I'll stream an Athenian radio station.  Maybe I'll peek frequently at the weather in Santorini (a comparatively balmy 59 degrees Farenheit at the moment I type this).  I'll browse through old photographs to conjure blue on blue on blinding white, steep cliffs, caper flowers bursting through sidewalk cracks, jasmine spilling from terraces, the jingle and clop of mule trains climbing the steep trail.



And I might even read some poems by James Merrill.  Especially this one--which so perfectly captures Greece, and travel, and memory, and the disorienting return to ordinary life.


After Greece

Light into the olive entered
And was oil. Rain made the huge, pale stones
Shine from within. The moon turned his hair white
Who next stepped from between the columns,
Shielding his eyes. All through
The countryside were old ideas
Found lying open to the elements.
Of the gods’ houses, only
A minor presence here and there
Would be balancing the heaven of fixed stars
Upon a Doric capital. The rest
Lay spilled, their fluted drums half sun in cyclamen
Or deep in water’s biting clarity
Which just barely upheld me
The next week, when I sailed for home.
But where is home—these walls?
These limbs? The very spaniel underfoot
Races in sleep, toward what?
It is autumn. I did not invite
Those guests, windy and brittle, who drink my liquor.
Returning from a walk, I find
The bottles filled with spleen, my room itself
Smeared by reflection onto the far hemlocks.
I some days flee in dream
Back to the exposed porch of the maidens
Only to find my great-great-grandmothers
Erect there, peering
Into a globe of red Bohemian glass.
As it swells and sinks I call up
Graces, Furies, Fates, removed
To my country’s warm, lit halls, with rivets forced
Through drapery, and nothing left to bear.
They seem anxious to know
What holds up heaven nowadays.
I start explaining how in that vast fire
Were other irons— well, Art, Public Spirit,
Ignorance, Economics, Love of Self,
Hatred of Self, a hundred more,
Each burning to be felt, each dedicated
To sparing us the worst; how I distrust them
As I should have done those ladies; how I want
Essentials: salt, wine, olive, the light, the scream—
No! I have scarcely named you,
And look, in a flash you stand full-grown before me,
Row upon row, Essentials,
Dressed like your sister caryatids,
Or tombstone angels jealous of their dead,
With undulant coiffures, lips weathered, cracked by grime,
And faultless eyes gone blank beneath the immense
Zinc-and-gunmetal northern sky.
Stay then. Perhaps the system
Calls for spirits. This first glass I down
To the last time
I ate and drank in that old world. May I
Also survive its meanings, and my own.

Snapshots of a Student Protest

Here are some pictures from a protest staged by Saint Joseph's University students on Thursday.  Though SJU students are by and large an easygoing bunch, many have been frustrated by an upper administration that makes decisions without input from students, faculty, or staff.  And lately the decisions have been sweeping ones, designed to change the face of the University these students love.

Here, from our campus newspaper, is a news story covering the protest and providing some background.


Students gather behind McShain Hall as the Board of Trustees are convenes
Professor Jenny Spinner photographs the crowd as security looks on
A sign asks "Where's the Magis?"