Writing is a Game of Inches

My son recently linked me one of his favorite blogs titled Rands in Repose (another reason to raise children well: they turn out to be very interesting adults who can bring new ideas into your life).  While I liked the post about bookshelves, I was very interested in his new post about writing a book.  (The title to this blog is taken from that post.)

He has lots of great advice, but it begins with the bold statement:
"Don’t write a book. Even better, stop thinking about writing a book. Your endless internal debate and self-conjured guilt about that book you haven’t written yet is a sensational waste of your time. My guess is if you took all the time that you’ve spent considering writing a book and translated that into actual writing time, you’d be a quarter of your way into writing that book you’re not writing."

Somedays I think I'm about there.  It's been roughly five years since I graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing, and the (hideously complicated) novel is tucked away safely on some dusty shelf, the strains of pomp and circumstance long gone.  But so is the notion that I'd ever complete another book.  Or write and be paid for it.  I immediately went off on sabbatical with my husband, and I dutifully re-wrote the (hideously complicated) novel once but when I started in again, I realized it could probably never be re-written to my satisfaction.

One day I took an inventory of a few of my fellow graduate students.  Sherri is a roller derby queen.  EJ got one of the few available full-time faculty positions at the local community college.  Melanie is a teacher at one of the high schools in the area. Motherhood has captured Jenny.  Elizabeth spent the years after graduation nursing her son through his (eventually fatal) brain cancer. Kate still teaches part-time at the institution we all graduated from and is the only one I know that is writing (drama, for local productions, but I don't know if she gets paid for it). And me?  I write blogs and teach part time at a local community college.

The guilt over Not Writing at times is huge.  My sister told me she thought that my blogging was a way of getting my writing out there.  She's probably correct.  So when I read Michael Lopp's post this morning, it resonated.  I do write nearly every day, in short bloggy forms.  The habit--and the urge--is compelling.  But, in spite of that writing degree, the encouragement from people that matter to me, and that nagging thought that I if don't take a leap off the cliff I won't know if I can fly, I still don't know--even though I have the basic plot line and the characters for a novel--if a book will ever come out of me.

So instead, I just pull up the keyboard, open a blog, and start writing.

All My Favorite Radio People Doing Lady Gaga

Filling in the Canada Trip Blog

While I posted just four pictures a night and wrote two to three lines each day while on the road in Canada, you didn't think you'd get away with just that little of a post from me, did you?

So, I've been filling in the posts this about our trip to Nova Scotia this past week, but it's taking me longer than I thought.  Tonight I finished our drive around the Cabot Trail in the Cape Breton National Park (shown above).  If you're keeping track, head over to the Canada tab on the Traveled Mind homepage.  There the updated posts are listed.

Windmill Farmer--Video for Your Weekend

I found this on Boing Boing Blog (which I enjoy but can't keep up with--they're so prolific!).  I thought it was so nice--a perfect little video for a weekend, which I hope will not be quite so hot as the week!

They quote the filmaker, Joaquin Baldwin:

"This film was inspired while driving back from a trip to Palm Springs, when my partner said that it must take them forever to plant and grow so many windmills. I wrote down the title The Windmill Farmer for an idea to explore later, and about a year later I started developing it into a character and story. This film took 4 months to complete from the first boards until the final mix"

Dinner: A Love Story

I happened on this article in the New York Times, while I was avoiding going outside in the 96-degree heat (I'm a heat wimp), and loved the idea that Jenny Rosenstrach had chronicled what she had cooked for her family in a small journal.  Of course, I love the idea of journals, and the dailiness of life that they can portray.  I'm always drawn to epistolary novels, the characters' lives revealed day by day (although a steady diet of those can get tiresome) and think that our own personal journals can function as sort of an epistolary fiction/fact/memoir in some way.

I clicked over to her website, Dinner: A Love Story, and browsed through it.  (I'm sure her hits for the day will go through the roof) and loved what I saw at the end of one of the posts.

Make Dinner, Not War.

My mother did just this for years and years and year, and now apparently, my Dad does a lot of the cooking, while she's busy recovering from various physical challenges.  I've followed in their footsteps, but we've always been a household that revolved around the table.

There's a saying around my husband's family that while his father was down in the basement, challenging the young adult grandchildren to get out and change the world, his mother was upstairs in the kitchen, fixing dinner and doing just that, meal by meal.

Filling In the Spaces

I'm starting to fill in the spaces on our Canada travel blog.  I've completed three days, but it will take me many more to finish (I'm going slowly).  If you want to head to the main Canada page, with a listing of all the completed posts, click *here* --or--click on the Traveled Mind photo (upper right) and choose the tab at the top of the home page labeled "Canada."

Slipper Chair

I found this slipper chair on the sidewalk last fall.  It was Providence.  I had decided I needed a chair in the bedroom--after all, Dave had one, and I had to resort to standing while we chatted or sitting on the bed.  I checked out Pottery Barn--they had some nice ones, but were Mucho Bucks.  And then, at dusk, while driving down the street on trash clean-up day was this chair and a broken desk.  I stopped, opened up the back and put the chair in and drove off, thrilled with my score.  Shades of New York--we used to find lots of treasures on those days.

I had intended to upholster it myself, but instead took it to a professional, and what you are seeing is a result of that decision.  Otherwise, it would still be upside down on top of the workbench outside in the garage, instead of sitting in my bedroom.  I used Amy Butler's fabric from her most recent line--a heavyweight twill just for home decorating.  The total cost was a fraction of Mucho Bucks.

This is the fun part--when taking photos for this post, I noticed this sweet little detail: a little flower centered on the button at the upper back of the chair.

We're Home from Canada. . .

. . . however body time is somewhere over Ohio. While it's not that much, it appears to be significant in terms of function.  I anticipate very soon that my brain and body time will synch up and then I can write a coherent post or two.  Maybe.

Meanwhile, enjoy this blog post about the quilts I saw in Canada.

O (We're Going to) Canada!

Follow along with a daily photo on TraveledMind.com.

Reaction to Donovan's Soccer Goal

Danziger, on his blog The Year in Pictures (on my blog list on the right), explains:
"Watching Landon Donovan’s game winning goal on Wednesday Purdue University senior Robby Denoho and decided it merited an instant tribute which he posted to YouTube. Within hours, the video had gone viral, and as the American players headed to bed on Friday night ahead of their round-of-16 match against Ghana in Rustenburg, more than 350,000 viewers had tuned in.

"It also didn’t take long for the video to get to Donovan himself. For all of the plaudits the American soccer star received after his moment of glory, it was seeing the reaction his goal provoked that touched him the most. "Not sure if you guys saw this but it brings tears to my eyes every time,” Donovan wrote on his Facebook account."

Christine and Doug: Sail Away!

On the occasion of my sister's marriage to her sweetheart, a quote, from Mark Twain:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Congratulations to both of you on this very happy day!
(and I hope you have a grand old time in Paris)

Summer Reads

I remember that day pretty clearly. The brilliant and dazzling lesson plan fell on its face. The students were more bored than I was. The silence that met a non-starter discussion question was overwhelming. I was a failure in the classroom. Me, whose father graduated from Harvard and had taught in Higher Ed for his entire lifetime. Me, whose grandmother taught in elementary school all her life. Me, whose two sisters were in education. My husband is a professor. I wanted to be one too. A good one.

At the end of that class period, I threw all my books in my bag, came home and after dinner Googled the phrase “bad teacher.” I read and read and read and happened on a website where teachers moaned about their “snowflakes,” the new class of students who never prepared for class and expected to be entertained. Even though the tone was snarky, the comments eye-popping, I learned a lot that night. I learned that bad days happen. That students will never be as prepared as you are. That I had to keep going, but have a laugh once in a while in order to keep some perspective.

So often in teaching we think it is all about pedagogy–about the way we teach our material to our students. I think this “how” is critical because it forces us to become prepared and fluent in what we want to teach. Knowing our “how” teaches us to teach, in the best scenario. But I also think that there is more than simply knowing our material and delivering it, more than simply being momma birds to baby birds in a nest.

As I continue to define for myself what being a good teacher might mean, I was intrigued with the advice given to new teachers by Mike Rose, in his column “Graduating into the classroom,” for the Los Angeles Times. At the end he notes that a good teacher, “regardless of grade level, subject or styles, has the equivalent of what musicians call ‘big ears’; they are curious, open, on the lookout for anything they can use in the service of some larger goal.”

That’s what going to conferences is all about, as well as reading and gathering and trying out new things in the classroom is all about. But I also think that’s why summer break is crucial as well: it gives us places outside the classroom to fill up our senses, to move beyond our teaching scripts to restore our energy, make unusual connections, explore new experiences. We can take time to take some time to watch the flight of a bird on the shore, listen to the pines in a forest, make a quilt or a chair or linger on the playground. Perhaps it’s also a time to read a book completely out of our usual sphere of influence and interest (see my list of things to the right of this post) in order to keep tabs on that world for which we are preparing our students to one day enter, step by step.

Have a good summer.

New Bathroom Floor

New home improvement project: floor in the upstairs bathroom.
Actually Not New home improvement project: floor in the upstairs bathroom.

We ripped up the old linoleum five years ago this coming fall (two layers!) and put down tile from a shop which appeared to have all its faculties intact, but indeed, the shop left out the backer board and the tile and grout began to crack almost immediately. Yes, yes, I said. I'll get it replaced. I called the shop and they sent someone out. More cracking. They sent someone out. This someone got into a fight with the drunken boss one night and then the shop said it was his fault, and the someone said it was the shop's fault, and so we lived with the cracking lo these many years.

Figuring out the boards.

Mostly done. I would show you a done post, but I know don't like the blue rug in front of the sink and I haven't had the time/inclination to go out and get a new one and besides maybe I don't even like the color of the bathroom anymore and some new color towels might improve the view. . . Domino effect. Always.

Where Americans Are Moving

First spotted on the SwissMiss blog, this map from Forbes gives an interesting analysis of where Americans are moving. Click on it to be taken to Forbes website, and the map.

Objective Reality of Humanity

I put up the recipe for from-scratch Angel Food Cake over on ElizabethCooks.com. I started thinking about this after I visited Matthew's home for his birthday back in April. Kim and I were discussing angel food cakes, you know--the usual: store-bought vs. home-made. So I thought I'd make a cake showing all the steps in case anyone wants to try making it for themselves, and deciding which they liked better.

I've been reading the book Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew B. Crawford and so far it's been an interesting read. I gave it to my brother as well, as he also likes to work with his hands. Crawford quotes from the philosopher Alexandre Kojeve:

The man who works recognizes his own product in the World that has actually been transformed by his work: he recognizes himself in it, he sees in it his own human reality, in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of the originally abstract and purely subjective idea he has of himself.

Does this idea extrapolate to angel food cakes? Perhaps. I just know that I like items made from my own hand quite well, and perhaps that is the reason that I have one blog dedicated to quilting and sewing and one dedicated to recipes.

Old Provence Quilt

I have had some spectacular failures. On this, Crawford notes that "creativity is a by-product of mastery of the sort that is cultivated through long practice." Yes folks, it's not like it is on TV. Sometimes cakes fall, dresses turn out to be horrid, a quilt may hang in the closet until I get the energy to pull it out, unpick it and re-invent it, revealing the "objective reality of my own humanity" in my handiwork.

New Provence Quilt

And unlike a trip to Target, where I knowingly buy cheap stuff that I know will be tossed away in the future, and unlike a furied session of housecleaning that I know will come undone and need to be redone in the future, the things I make have staying power, if only in memory (as in the case of the French Berry Tart, which we are still talking about this week).

I've made quilts for all the grandchildren, although some are kept put away for the future. After reading in this book, I want to say--Take them out!! Let the children play with them, use them for picnics, wrap up toys and dolls and treasures in them, for they reveal me, these things that are "transformed by my work,"and perhaps that is really all I have to give to these children of my children.

While the emphasis of Crawford's book is examining "manual competence, and the stance it entails toward the built, material world," in discussing the idea that things will outlive us, I'm reminded of one of my father's favorite poems by James Russell Lowell: The Vision of Sir Launfal. In this poem a knight who travels the world over looking for The Holy Grail returns home, defeated in his quest. At his door he encounters a beggar, and the knight shares his last bit of bread with him. The beggar reveals himself to be the Lord, the very Christ which Sir Launfall has been searching for in one way or another. The final stanza reminds us that:

Not what we give, but what we share,--
For the gift without the giver is bare;

I hope that these small grandchildren will remember their grandmother from the quilts I've made them, among other things, much as I remember my Grandmother Sessions by her stories told on her swinging glider on the back porch, and my Grandmother Bickmore by her bent hands teaching me how to knead homemade bread.

Baked Bean Smash-Up

A website I haunt has the greatest time-wasters ever. Here's one to try: smashing baked beans--a game from Simon Panrucker.

The Secret Powers of Time (video)

A Wild Night and New Road

Lucille C. was one of those elegant women with long, thin necks, slim hips and the perfectly coiffed hair. Her jewelry was understated, but stylish, and she wore a lot of straight knee-length skirts with broad-shouldered jackets. I remember her bracelets. As she got older, her eyes were a bit more sunken back into her finely sculpted face, and yes, she gained a few more wrinkles, but from the time I knew her to the time she left to go up to Gunnison, Utah and live next door to her son, she didn't seem to age, not even on the day she buried her husband.

Lucy--as many called her--left just as my life got busy and so I only heard certain details of how she was doing. That's she'd moved into a smaller home near her son, that she felt they ignored her and weren't helpful, that one day they took her to the rest home and while she was there, signed the papers to sell her own home and keep her there. I heard that she missed fresh lemons off of the tree. I heard that the daughter-in-law who lived next door "borrowed" her Christmas china and kept it. I heard that Lucy was losing weight--a scary thing on a woman who never had an extra ounce to begin with. I heard she was losing her hearing and was occasionally muddled. I heard that she fell and broke her ribs. Then I heard that she contracted pneumonia. This past week, I heard of her death. I'll miss her.

Because she's so far away there's no obituary, but if she were to have one, I'd want her daughter-in-law that lives here to write it, for when she broke the news to me, she said that Lucy had "gone to her glory." Of all the ways I've heard the process described, of all the many words that we use to convey the information, I like that one. The others that are seen in the obituaries I read faithfully every morning contain versions of : passing, crossing the bar, gone to her eternal rest after a noble fight. That last one always prompts me to wonder if my fight would be noble, or if in fact, there'd be no fight at all, but only relief. (I'll let you know later.) These other euphemisms seem not to have the verve and plainness of Emily Dickinson's language, when she wrote that "Dying is a wild night and a new road," and in fact, I've banned the insipid phrases from my obituary (like I'll have anything to say about it).

Of course, I can be cavalier with my plans for those who are left behind when I go to my glory: while I assume I'll miss them--I'll be gone. However, I'll probably feel differently when my time comes to stand on this side of the casket, gazing in on a familiar face. I may use euphemisms, too. Please sit me down and have a little talk with me for then--as the bereavement counselors say--there's a good likelihood that I'm apparently not processing the full range of emotions that attend the death of someone that is loved. Apparently that is critical--to do it at the time. Okay. Add that one to the list.

We seem to have so many interim deaths before the last one arrives that we have a whole range of phrases ingrained in our language; we describe fatigue with the phrase "I'm just dead." We joke around and say "You kill me." Or my favorite, which came from the new widow of several days, after she spent the afternoon looking at coffins for her deceased husband: "If Richie knew how much these things cost, he would just die."

How to talk about death then? Maybe you like the soft shoe, the dead body shuffled off in heavenly choruses and swaddled in euphemisms. I have a feeling when if that moment finally arrives in my life to stand beside the casket and say good-bye, that I'll employ a whole host of wicked and frightful mechanisms in order to cope. Dickinson's description of death may prove to be the better template for struggle, as those left behind will face more than one wild night, more than one new road.

Finally Did It

I finally did it.

No, I didn't write the Great American Novel.

No, didn't clean out the garage, either.

And no, I also didn't paint the house (but that's on the list).

But what I did do, is set up a place where I can write about my quilting, separately from this blog, my Regular Life. I find I'm only doing that kind of posting--about quilting things--in summer, when the grading and lesson plans of school are in the deep freeze and I have some time to get to all those projects I dream about in between correcting dangling participles and run on sentences.

Transferring the posts was a nice journey back in time; I read through all the posts on this blog and saw my life and your lives reviewed. You readers (mostly family) are an amazing bunch of people with lots of interests and events.

The new blog is almost the same address as this one, and you only need to head there if you're interested in reading about quilting/sewing and that kind of stuff. I also needed a web address to post on the blogs I visit, and I really just wanted a sewy-type blog if these random readers ever decided to visit there.

Now open for business: occasionalpiece.wordpress.com. Click on the daisy logo in the sidebar to head on over there.

Classic French Berry Tart

Click on the above photo to head over to the newest entry at Elizabeth Cooks: a class French Berry Tart. You can also read about how we screwed up the first time, when making it for the church pie-baking contest.

And Happy Birthday to my sister Susan! This piece is for you.