Cynthia Lord's Blog, page 70

Black Friday

Yesterday, my daughter and I went shopping. She wanted to buy some Christmas presents for her college friends while she was home.  So we squeezed our way through crowds in Freeport, and we found some fun presents to buy. 

We stopped for an afternoon coffee and a snack at the Whoopie Pie Shop. 

   Yes, it's an entire store of whoopie pies! 

    This shop even sells huge whoopie pies that can serve as birthday cakes.

    I tried a coconut whoopie pie. It was yummy, but my two favorites remain red velvet and the classic one.

     Sherman's Bookstore had copies of all my books.I was especially pleased to see Touch Blue with its Maine Literary Award sticker, right next to my good friend Toni Buzzeo's brand-new Lighthouse Christmas.

As we started home I asked Julia, "Do you want to see the ocean?"  She goes to school inland, and I know she misses it when she's away.  We drove home past farms and coves.

   

The snow was melting and a low band of fog cut everything. 

And the clam diggers were out working on the flats.



As we stopped to take a few pictures, Julia said, "You can't take a bad photo in Maine. You just point and shoot and the state does the rest." 



I had to agree with her.

Five Things on a Friday

First Parish Church, Portland, Maine. Photo by my husband, John

1.  It was a lovely Thanksgiving yesterday.  The food was yummy and we had a happy, restful day, just the four of us.  We're not a football family--Julia and I always watch the National Dog Show!  So the team we're cheering for on Thanksgiving afternoon is Team Milo!

2.  I'm the only person in my family who likes pumpkin pie.  So it's all for me!  In fact, I might even have some for breakfast!

3.  It's a good thing I bought my new winter coat a few weeks ago. Winter has come early here this year. It's unusual for us to have had two snowstorms already before Thanksgiving. 

4.  We're putting up our Christmas tree tomorrow. It feels too early, but my daughter probably won't be home again until after her college finals. So we want to decorate together before she goes back to school.   

5.  It was fun and poignant to see the reactions of the schools that won a visit with me.  I heard from four out of the six media specialists almost immediately. It reminded me why being an author is important to me.  It's easy to get bogged down in the submission/reviews/business end of things.  But tha'ts not what lasts beyond that bright burst of publication. What lasts is the work and the times that you changed someone else's world in a small way. Some of these schools haven't ever had an author visit, and I get to be the first one.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder



Hanging with the big birds!

Thank you all for being among my many treasures.  

I hope you all have a wonderful day!  The turkey is cooking and the house smells incredible. Before everyone woke up, I drew the names in my school visit contest.  I received more than 50 entries, and I felt badly just choosing two.

"I have to choose more than two," I said to John a few days ago.

He smiled. "I knew you would."

Yup, we've been married 26 years. He knows what I'm going to do before I know what I'm going to do!



So I put all the entries into the lupine  bowl that I bought myself when Touch Blue won the Lupine Award.  And I drew three of each color (yellow for West, blue for East). Here are the SIX winning schools that'll I'll be visiting this spring.

It's a nice variety of directions to travel, all in beautiful places, and a variety of schools: two elementary schools, two middle schools, and two K-8 schools:



Phippsburg Elementary School, Phippsburg, Maine
York Middle School, York, Maine
Washburn Elementary School, Washburn, Maine
Long Island Community School, Long Island, Maine
Samuel Wagner Middle School, Winterport, Maine
Glenburn School, Glenburn, Maine

Have a great day, everyone! 

The woods are lovely, white and deep

I woke up to this:



It's still coming down.  But Milo is curled up beside me, and everyone else is asleep, including my college girl who came home last night.

I have everything.

Thankfulness

Stonington, Maine. Photo by my husband, John

Yesterday I spent some time getting ready for Thanksgiving. It's one of my favorite holidays, because it's about family and pausing to think about the goodness we have.  And I have a lot to be thankful for every year.

I spent last night researching the high school boys' basketball division of the Maine schools who entered my school visit contest.  I did find a website that listed all our high schools by division, so for the elementary schools that didn't know if they were East or West, I hunted up which high school those kids would eventually attend. It's crazy to think of islands and coastal towns being in the "Western" division, but some of them are. So it's somewhat arbitrary!  But it felt like a fair and easy way to divide the state in half.

I wrote the western schools on yellow slips of paper and the eastern ones on blue. I have a lot of entries--in fact, some schools must've passed the details around, because I think every school in Bath entered!  It's a fun and wide variety: some small K-8 schools, some busy downtown schools, some huge middle schools, some adorable K-2 schools, and a few places I had to look up on a map because I didn't know where they were (Enfield Station? Glenburn?)!  It'll be very hard to only choose two on Thanksgiving. 

Today I pick up my daughter at college. There will be lots of tail-wagging tonight. :-) 

Getting Back to Work

I'm working on it, Paige!

Yesterday I finished answering my mail. Then for the first time in a few months, I let myself look at the the books I've been using for my next novel. It's exciting to go back to it now. November is a good month for creative things. There's a stillness to it that really feeds me.

And I'm starting the day with a nice boost. Touch Blue made the Indiana Young Hoosier Award list for 2012-2013,  That's its 10th state list nomination, and I've loved every trip I've made to Indiana.  The idea that kids in IN will be reading about lobster fishing really makes me smile. Congratulations to my LJ friends: Loree Burns, Barbara O'Connor, Jill Esbaum, and Jeannine Atkins, too!



My husband recently took a trip to Spruce Head, Maine and came home with some beautiful photos, including this one of stacked lobster traps.

We Still Live Here: Independent Lens (PBS)

This program is almost an hour, but I found it thought-provoking and moving. Here's the description from PBS:

The Wampanoag saved the Pilgrims from starvation, and lived to regret it. Spurred on by their celebrated linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird, the Wampanoag of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard are reviving their language more than a century after the last native speaker died. Watch online through Thursday, November 24.

Five Things on a Friday

  1.  Here's what my laptop looks like with its broken screen. Although it's possible to read around the ink blot designs, it's annoying. So John brought an old monitor up from down cellar so I can hook up to that monitor until my new laptop arrives.   

2. A small furry something removed one of the little vents in our eaves and got into our attic. We sealed the vent, but apparently we sealed him in the attic. So now we have to trap him or hire someone to remove him. It's probably a squirrel. When you own a house, there is always something trying to share it with you!

3.  Over 40 Maine schools have entered my school visit drawing already.  I didn't realize how heartwarming it would be to read all the entries--I've received a lot of love and stories about my books along with those entries. It will be hard to have only two winning schools. I truly wish I could go to all of them! 

4.  I bought our turkey.  Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and I am really excited to have my daughter home from college for a few days!  I miss her.

5.  I have some email and kids' mail to answer today, and then I'm happy to concentrate on the holidays, my new novel, and our next Hamster picture book.  

Back from New York!

 
Rye Middle School, Rye, New York

I had a great trip to Rye and Armonk, New York, my last two school visits of 2011!  In both schools, Rules is a core book for sixth grade so I spoke to the sixth graders at each school. This was also a return visit to both schools.  It was great to see the media specialists and teachers again!  And to meet this year's sixth graders. 

This trip had lots of nice moments and they started as soon as I arrived at LaGuardia. I always have to bite back a giggle when a school uses a car service to pick me up at the airport and some smartly-dressed man is standing in baggage claim holding a sign that says LORD on it. It's usually just written on the back of a folded-over piece of scrap paper, but it makes me feel like a movie star.

On the ride to the hotel, we chatted a little about the area and the school and then he reached beside him and opened the console and took out a well-worn copy of Rules. He said his twin 14-year-old daughters wanted him to ask me if I'd sign it.

"Don't hit any bumps!" I said, signing it on my knees.

In Rye, I did my presentations and had lunch with a wonderful group of kids, many of whom want to be authors and are working on stories and books. One girl also touched my heart when she told me that she has a friend in England who has a brother with autism and her family had mailed a copy of Rules to that family.


HC Crittenden Middle School in Armonk. As you can see, I didn't have nice weather. In fact, most of town lost power while I was at school!  The lights flickered during my presentation, but the school has a generator, which kicked in and allowed me to finish my slides! 

In Armonk, I went to supper with the PTO author coordinator and her lovely family.  At school, the teachers and staff were so welcoming. In fact, the principal had lived and worked in Northern Maine years ago!  So it was fun to talk with him about potato farming and moose and the challenges and strengths of bilingual schools (in this case French and English). 

And I had a nice surprise.  A couple sixth-grade girls were early for their session, so we were just chatting. One girl asked me if I had other books, and I told her I was working on a new novel, but I also had a second novel published last year called Touch Blue. 

"YOU wrote Touch Blue?!" she asked. "I LOVE THAT BOOK!"  She told me her teacher last year had read it to the class, and then she had read it again on her own. 

When I sent Touch Blue out into the world, I worried about disappointing my readers of Rules. That probably did happen sometimes, but it's wonderful to see that it also didn't happen. 

But for all those nice moments, this trip started with a hard boom--literally!  In the airport in Portland, my suitcase fell over on the hard ladies' room floor, and my laptop screen cracked. When I booted up my laptop, the screen looked like an abstract painting with big black blots and squiggles!  

I always bring my programs on a flashdrive as a back-up, and I wondered if I would have to call my schools and tell them I needed a laptop to use, but I decided I'd test everything first. So I walked to a quiet corner of the airport and set up my projector and held a piece of white paper in front of the lens to see what the image would look like on the screen. Those cracks and blots didn't affect what came through the projector, so I did the visits using my damaged laptop. 

Now that I'm home,  I need to have that screen replaced--or maybe buy a new laptop.  So I won't be online very often until it's fixed.  I was sorry that it happened, but I've done over 200 school visits in the last 5 years and this is the first time I've had something happen to my equipment.  So I can't really complain.

  I have a little dog sleeping against me and three months of writing and family time ahead.  So really, everything is good. Even with some big black blotches and squiggles.  :-)

For Maine Librarians and Media Specialists

New Harbor, Maine. Photo by my husband, John

Today, I'm off to New York today to do my last two school visits of 2011.  I have a quieter 2012 ahead, and that will be a nice change of pace. But I've decided to say thank you to my state librarians and schools by doing two free school visits this spring to Maine schools.

If you are a Maine librarian or media specialist, here are the details:

Hello, everyone!

It's that time of year when we all are reminded to say thank you. One thing I've always been grateful for is the support that I've felt as a Maine author from my state librarians and media specialists. Thank you for everything you do--for kids and families, for your communities, and for Maine authors and illustrators.

I have a quieter 2012 than I've had for the past five years, and I've always felt badly that not every school that might like an author visit has the resources to make that happen. So I'd like to offer to do two free school visits this spring, anywhere in Maine--just to say thank you.

On Thanksgiving Day, I'll draw two names randomly, one from Western Maine and one from Eastern Maine (based on which division your high school boys' basketball team plays in! If you don't know, don't worry about it. I'll figure it out for you!). Just email me privately with your name, your email address, and the name of your school (and East or West, if you know it), and I'll enter you in the drawing.

There will be no charge from me, and if it's far enough from home that I need to stay overnight, I'll do that on my own. I can speak to any grades PK-8, but I do ask that your school make the commitment to read one of my novels to any kids who are 4th-8th graders who would be coming to hear me. You can choose which novel, but the most successful visits with older students are always the ones where the kids have had that preparation. I'm also glad to talk about Hot Rod Hamster with grades PK-3 and they don't need preparation. I'll spend the day at your school and do up to three sessions with any number of students.

So if you'd like to be entered, please send me a private message before Thanksgiving.

Best wishes,
Cindy
cindy@cynthialord.com