Colleen Mondor's Blog, page 13

In a Bing Crosby movie

I am seriously daydreaming about Christmas right now.

I know that it's fashionable to hate on the holiday madness and we're also supposed to be on one side or the other of "Happy Holidays" vs "Merry Christmas" but I love them both. (Go ahead, tick me off and I'll scream "Season's Greetings" at you while juggling a nativity scene.)

I just feel like watching endless schmaltzy movies where there is snow and shopping and mistaken identities that lead to romance. I also want to see puppies with red ribbons and jingle bells around their necks and trees covered in snow.

I have no idea why this is happening right now, I'm just sharing it with you so you can surf the madness with me.

I'm preparing to hang ornaments from the light over our dining room table and struggling to resist putting part of the decorations up on the mantle. Has anyone filled a vase with a vase with ornaments for the middle of the table? Does it only look good in magazines?

I have no time for this early (EARLY) season madness! I should not be looking for the holiday cds and reaching for Miracle on 34th Street right now. I have about 8 books to review (really) and a couple of articles to work on. Plus some other writing which might be something I can do something with or not. I just need to work it and find out. (I really really want to get those pieces done.)

Somehow, I need to accomplish all this while stringing beads, writing Christmas cards, sipping hot chocolate and listening to the Ally Macbeal Christmas cd. (You did know that Robert Downy Jr. can sing didn't you? Listen to him sing Joni Mitchell's "River" and you will kind of fall in love. Seriously.)

Excuse me now while I go wrap a few gifts. And expect to see some holiday decorating tips here very soon. I just can't seem to help myself.

Austin Dreaming for Kidlit Con

So, I will not be in Austin, Texas this weekend which is a shame because a lot of folks I would love to spend a weekend talking about books with will be there and I'm missing out. The 7th Annual KidLit Con is in Austin and there will be a keynote speaker and sessions on blogging and reviewing and not losing your mind (key to this whole thing we do) and mostly, if it is like the previous six conferences, there will be a TON of discussion on books.

This doesn't sound nearly as exciting as it should.

I co-hosted the 5th con in Seattle with the indomitable Jackie Parker and we had a blast. There was so much good important talk about literacy and the importance of reading and how to get more kids and teens excited about reading. These are all things worth thinking about and talking about and in ways both big and small they are world changing topics.

But also, and just as importantly, we talked about the sometimes insane nature of the blogosphere and endless emails from authors who don't seem to understand the best way to approach a potential reviewer and publishers who push certain books really hard while ignoring requests for others (which is really odd when the books pushed hard are often by famous authors and the ignored ones are not and thus could better appreciate the extra help of blog exposure).

In other words, the whole weekend was equal parts serious professional discussion and nonstop venting. Can you imagine a better way to regroup, recharge and reassess how you feel about books and blogging?

I really really wish I could be in Austin this weekend. I will be avidly reading the posts next week from all those who attend. In the meantime, see how excited Sarah is about going, and if you are local you can still register. All details on the con are here, check it out and if you can, be there and have a blast and make the rest of us jealous!

Dancing Around the Edges

I feel I have been neglecting my site horribly - I need to update the sidebar for several columns and I have run so many articles at Alaska Dispatch that I would like to copy here but it seems impossible to keep up with. Also my posts should be at last 3X a week and yet I continue to find myself here only once or twice which is really far too little. I'm working on it, promise.

Some interesting articles read lately I wanted to share. At Smithsonian, Tony Horowitz has a profile of Joseph McGill Jr who is staying in every former slave dwelling still standing in the US. He does this, to bring notice to the dwellings in an attempt to save them. His message is pretty powerful:



"Americans tend to focus on the 'big house', the mansion and gardens, and neglect the buildings out back," he says. "If we lose slave dwellings, it's that much easier to forget the slaves themselves."

Also a book I came across in the University of Utah catalog sounds interesting: Canyon of Dreams* by Don Lago. It includes stories of Edwin Hubble, who tested his telescope there in 1928, the Apolla astronauts preparing for lunar exploration, singer Roger Miller who lived there in a trailer one summer, "pushin' a broom" which later went into his song "King of the Road" (love that song!) and William Randolph Hearts fighting the NPS over his property on the canyon. I have been to the Canyon twice and it really is as spectacular as you hope it to be; I think this would make a very good read on western history.

Author Kelly McMaster has a lovely piece up at the Paris Review blog on owning a small bookstore and her deep love of reading. Here's a bit:

There was a loneliness that permeated my childhood that could only be filled by books. Watching my son's love of books simmer and steep, I realize it isn't so much that I'm afraid of not being able to relate to him if he were a nonreader, or that he wouldn't be smart or able to succeed. Books prepared me for so much--not just grief, but romance, betrayal, heartbreak. Stories sometimes functioned as a kind of escape, but mostly I simply learned how to be from my books.

After reading this essay, I added Kelly's book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir From an Atomic Town, to my holiday wish list.

Little Brown has a very cool tumblr - one of the best sites for a publisher on the web (I think). Also, they are publishing Col. Chris Hadfield's memoir which sounds like the book for Christmas. (He sang Bowie in space. BOWIE IN SPACE.)

I love these vintage Barbour ads - the notion of a "Ladies Scooter Suit" just makes me happy. (I have the Tomboy Style book - it's one joyful page after another.)

I am writing reviews for four books for December, reading three for Booklist (due in Nov and Dec), finishing up a book for the Bush Pilot blog at Dispatch and working on several articles. There is a balancing act out there for me that I haven't found yet but it will allow me to write as much for myself as for others. I have been there before; just need to find it again.

No worries. I'll get there. :)

*Canyon of Dreams is due out later this month.

Gaming near an asylum

I've been reading Jenny Davidson's The Magic Circle for the past few days and it has thinking all over again about the endless appeal of abandoned buildings with mysterious histories.*

What is it about former factories and prisons and asylums that makes our inner explorers want to peek in the windows and crack open the doors? Why do we wander past cemeteries and monuments, consider old train stations and schools, and linger just a few moments longer then we really have time for? It's not treasure but something else - something more appealing then flash and cash.

We don't study the history of buildings that much in school but boy, do we yearn to know more when we drive past them on the highway.

In The Magic Circle, which is a thriller somewhat in the terrifying vein of Single White Female (although the roommates are 100% not the enemies....really), two of the characters are creating games that center on buildings in New York City. One is focused purely on the virtual world - you walk the route and play through your iphone which gives you information, challenges and rewards as you go. The other is gearing up to more hands-on (I'm only halfway through the book) and seems to involve challenges with some dangerous possibilities.

I just know that things are not going to end well for everyone in this one.

As the characters talk about playing the two games in The Magic Circle, I can't help but remember times that I was drawn into something similar when I was in college. It was never this indepth or detailed but still - the longing was the same. We wanted to find something in a forgotten place; we wanted to discover something. We wanted an adventure that gave us a chance to be brave. Jenny has perfectly tapped into that longing and for all that her book is set in New York City, it reminds me very much of the Florida I knew and the girl I was.

I know this one is going to end well for everyone, but it's no surprise to me that I can't stop reading.

* I should point out however that Libba Bray's The Diviners has thoroughly cured me of every going near anything that appears to be a haunted house.

[Post pic of Rockland State Psychiatric Hospital in Orangeburg, NY.]

Just "Roar"

We've spent a lot of time at Children's Hospital in Seattle over the years. This video is everything about how tough and sad and hopeful and amazing these places can be. (Plus, that girl in the tie-dye shirt is a rock star. For real.)

World War II Envelope Artwork

The National Postal Museum has a current exhibit on illustrated mail that includes several examples of Jack Fogarty's letters sent from 1944-45. Fogarty served with the Army's 98th Evacuation Hospital in the Pacific and became lifelong friends with a fellow soldier, James MacDonald, and his wife Mary who was home in Queens, NY. Fogarty sent letters to Mary with envelopes showing scenes of life at the camp. In Smithsonian Magazine, Fogarty describes the letters as "an expression of love for the MacDonalds." Jack Fogarty is now 92 and lives in New Jersey. Both the MacDonalds have passed away but their daughter donated 33 illustrated envelopes to the museum. Check them out if you get a chance; really wonderful stuff.

A poetic pause

I'm working on my November column which is nonfiction and includes several recent books on the Civil War. One of them is poetry from Smithsonian Books: Lines in Long Array: A Civil War Commemoration. It includes previously unpublished contemporary poems as well as period poetry (plus photos - I'm sure the final edition is gorgeous). This stanza from Geoffrey Brock in "Staring Back at Us: A Gallery" really stayed with me:

[Facing a thousand tomes on the Civil War

in our local bookshop, my son asks: Why so many

books on a single subject? A long story,

I say. And if there's an end, it's just beginning.]

Although the poem is not at all about current politics, it made me think of the current madness in Washington. "A long story" indeed.

I am having a bit of a moment with poetry, a surprise that makes me very happy.

Heather Lende reminds us sometimes the story is right in front of you

I've just finished reading Heather Lende's memoir Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs and it has left me deeply impressed by how difficult it must be to write a book that reads with such ease. I feel like I have spent a year living in Haines, AK with Lende and her family and friends and when the last page was turned I didn't want to let that place go.

This is a 21st century Our Town, folks, and it is splendid. (To date myself, it is all the good you remember of Northern Exposure and even a pile of the quirkiness as well.)

Here is a bit that particularly resonated with me, when Heather explains why she relented and did not object when her husband wanted to hang a Dall sheep head over the mantlepiece. (The plan was to keep "dead-animal trophies to the kitchen".)

You make concessions in a marriage. Everyone does. My husband stayed by my side for three weeks in a nursing home. He paid two thousand dollars in vet bills for a dog that his daughter loves but that drives him crazy. He goes to work everyday and runs a lumberyard in this tiny town well enough to support us. The mortgage is paid off, and he gave me roses on Valentine's Day. He thinks I am pretty even when the March winds howl up the Chilkat River and I get that Walker Evans dust bowl look in my eyes. He still has the same smile he had in college when I fell in love with him. This is all a long way of saying that if he likes the sheep that much then I don't care if he hangs it in the living room.

I don't know about you but that reads as one of the more romantic passages I've come across in ages. The whole book is that way really -- as Lende writes about the accident that nearly killed her (she was medevaced to Seattle and after surgery and hospital spent those three weeks in a nursing home in the rehab that she mentions in the above passage), her children, her friends, the death of her dear mother, she comes around again and again to her husband and her life and all of it is part and parcel of the same thing. She has a good life and she loves the guy she's spending it with. I just don't think it gets much better than that kind of quiet joy.

Copies of Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs will be winging their way to certain dear family members this holiday season. I strongly encourage all of you to read it as well. :)

From the glossy pages

Catching up on a bit of magazine reading and wanted to point out the lovely interview between Michael Pollan and Ruth Reichl in the June issue of Smithsonian. Here's a bit:

P: It's empowering, for them--for everyone. Food choices are something fundamental you can control about yourself: what you take into your body. When so many other things are out of control and your influence over climate change--all these much larger issues--it's very hard to see any results or any progress. But everybody can see progress around food. They see new markets rising, they see idealistic young people getting into farming. It's a very hopeful development in a not particularly hopeful time.

R: And it's something we all do. We've all been shouting for a long time, "You vote with your dollars." And it feels like when you shop in the right place, you shop in your community, you are personally having an impact.

P: And they see the impact because the markets are growing. There's this liveliness at the farmer's market and this sense of community, too. Which, of course, food has done for thousands of years.

R: But had not in America for quite a while. It had to be rediscovered.

Also, over at Alaska Dispatch I highlight a recent piece in The Economist about increased automation in the cockpit and the unexpected problems it presents. Here's a bit from what they had to say in the original column (entitled "Babbage") about the Asiana crash:

Babbage was recently shown a training report by a now-retired "standards captain" at United Airways, who had spent five years in Seoul instructing Asiana and Korean Air Lines crew. The account is not for squeamish passengers. The instructor describes how, when checking out even experienced crew, asking them to make a visual approach (ie, using basic head-up flying skills) for a landing "would strike fear into their hearts" -- so dependent had they become on the head-down operation of their automated equipment.

That explains how they flew the plane in to the ground - no one was paying attention. (Talk about definition of terrifying.)

Finally, very important piece in Orion about how breast cancer is such a popular cause in America but a cure remains out of reach. Most notably, we all need to way more careful about embracing the pink ribbon. A bit:

Even the American Cancer Society itself--whose board members, over the years, have held ties to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, to drug companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, and to industries that produce carcinogenic products, such as the Sherwin-Williams Company (think paint stripper)--is not free from blame. With reported annual net assets of over $1.5 billion, the ACS "is more interested in accumulating wealth than saving lives," says the nation's leading charity watchdog, the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The ACS has a long history of obfuscating links between chemicals and cancer, according to an article in the International Journal of Health Services, and was conspicuously silent on California's Cosmetics Safety Act, which passed without the nonprofit's support in 2005. The Cancer Prevention Coalition says the ACS allocates under 0.1 percent of its annual budget to investigating environmental causes of cancer. Five radiologists have served as its president.

Also, this has nothing to do with any of the above but I have seen several previews for Gravity and decided my heart can not take watching that movie. Someone please tell me how it ends and then maybe I will endure it. :)

Life In a Northern Town (or thoughts on Haines, AK)

Several wonderful things from my week in Haines last week. In no particular order:

1. The Chilkat Valley News. I never get tired of a local newspaper; they truly are the heartbeat of a small town. (Author Heather Lende rather famously writes the obituaries.) Also see the nearby Skagway News which is equally delightful.

2. You need to read all of Heather Lende's books right now. Immediately. I am reading Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs and it is amazing. You wouldn't think a memoir of small town life could be so compelling but she writes so personally (this one covers the period after a near fatal accident and long recovery) and evocatively that you simply can not put it down. Book clubs will adore Heather's work. Truly. (A new book is due next fall from Heather.)

3. Every time I think I have a handle on AK aviation I find out about more books on the subject I have not read. I came home with one and another is on the way. When reviews are posted in the Bush Pilot blog at AK Dispatch, I shall let you know!

4. I bid on a small 1960s era carry-on bag from Reeve Aleutian Airways and I WON! I could not be happier. Really. It looks just like this one.

5. I have copies of The Flying North in my hands right this moment. It will be in stores by November 1st. It is so made of awesome I don't know how to begin. (We sold the few copies we had on hand at Haines and everyone was delighted with it. So cool!)

6. There were dozens of eagles at Chilkoot Lake and bears and all of it was like a picture postcard of what Alaska is supposed to look like.

7. There are more talented artists and writers and musicians and craftspeople in Haines and Skagway then anyone could hope for. Being around them all was positively blissful and I can't wait to go back.

8. "Life in a Northern Town" - I love this version and it makes me think of Haines. Enjoy....