Sometimes a Shining Moment

In a former life, I probably wanted to be a food photographer. Not. But I do seem to take lots of food photos for this blog. This is yesterday's lunch (pumpkin muffins by Hannah). "Dinner" is what we call it in the South, as we eat our big meal in the middle of the day when I'm home.



We often eat in this cozy, companionable spot in front of the fire.





For the next four days, I'll eat lunch at Canterbury Woods Elementary School, where I'm working, in Fairfax, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C. I'm teaching personal narrative writing with 5th graders at Canterbury Woods and I want to share some thoughts on this process with you all during the week.

I'm signing stock at Politics & Prose in D.C. on Wednesday at 4pm. If you're in the neighborhood, please come by and see me. Anybody want to go to dinner afterward? Let me know. D.C. is my beloved old stomping grounds. Any Children's Book Guild readers out there?

I had such a mellow Thanksgiving it was hard to leave home yesterday. I'm out for 8 days, with one overnight at home. I'll go from here to New Orleans, where I'm going to be starting an oral history project with Coleen Salley. Then I toodle up to Hattiesburg, Missisippi, where I'm going to visit with elementary school students and give an address on December 4 to the University of Southern Mississippi Honors Forum. Here's the title of my talk: "From Mississippi to Mississippi: A Love Story in Three Violent, Compassionate Acts including The Beatles, the Vietnam War, and Your Personal History."

I've been writing this speech for over 30 years. I'll tell you more about that soon.

I'm feeling a bit flattened by this fall's schedule with a new book out there and all the traveling I do anyway in addition to the tour I've just finished. But you know how it is. You stand up in front of that classroom of students or that group of teachers or that gaggle of neighborhood kids, and you know that there is sometimes a shining moment, even in the midst of your flattened feelings or a difficult day, season, life, and you watch for it, for that moment. You are energized by it.

Sometimes you realize you are living it, that shining moment, right this minute. And especially, when you look back with some perspective, you realize that life is one shining moment after another, even in the midst of the challenges you face.

Maybe that's why I take so many pictures of food. I'm looking at this meal I'm about to eat, this meal that two (or four) hands have prepared so lovingly -- it's a shining moment. Something like that.

I have to go look in the mirror now and apply make up. This will not be a shining moment. Remind me to tell you about getting started with Weight Watchers on Saturday -- definitely not a shining moment on that scale. But I'm serious about this, and soon there WILL be shining moments to report. We're going to do these shining weigh-in moments together, too -- right? RIGHT? hello?

Off to school I go. Have a good week, everybody... the year is almost over! And hang in there, Hannah -- only two more weeks and the semester is DONE.

Rain in Dry Atlanta

We woke up to rain this morning. It's still raining. O Happy Day. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I am grateful for you. Thank goodness for friends, for family, for books, for good food, for shelter... for rain.

Catching up with Myself

Home. It's time for soup and fall vegetables. I bought beets, squashes of all kinds, beans, potatoes, onions, celery, carrots, and eggplant at the Farmer's Market over the weekend. Here's today's lunch. It's a mixture of yellow and green split peas, brown and wild rice, carrots, celery, onion, and some marjoram, allspice, garlic, cracked pepper, and ginger. I made it up. Added a slice of Farmer's Market whole-grain bread with just-ground peanut butter, and an apple.

Here's my lunchtime view. It's November, but we're still eating outside -- the sunshine is warm. I'm thrilled with the few days home, even if they are filled with administrivia. Paperwork, mostly, and laundry and lots of slow moving. Sleeeeeping. In my own bed.

I'm pulling together the odds and ends that I have finished so far with the new novel, as I'll meet with my new editor, Kate Harrison, on Friday in NYC. We're about to plunge into this Sixties trilogy in a big way. I spent a good while yesterday putting together a montage of photographs from the Sixties that I want to share with Kate and Harcourt folks. I put the images in PowerPoint along with musical accompaniment by the Maria Schneider Orchestra, in particular the cut called "The Pretty Road" from her new cd, SKY BLUE. I decided against a traditional '60s song and went instead for something completely different and orchestral -- I like the effect. I *love* the Maria Schneider Orchestra.

I was influenced in my musical choice for this montage by the effects in a movie I saw over the weekend, AMERICAN GANGSTER. I usually stay far away from violent movies, but I'm watching all kinds of movies (and documentaries) right now about the 1960s, and I was particularly interested in watching Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe working together. This is an amazing movie, and I loved the musical treatment. See what you think of the way "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" is used in this movie to juxtapose one way of life against another -- amazing, that's what I thought.

I'll be writing (and asking questions) about the Sixties in this journal as I talk about the process of research and writing the new novel. Who has seen TALK TO ME, the new Don Cheadle movie (just out on DVD after a summer theatre release)? It's terrific. I lived in D.C. in the mid-1960s, when Petey Greene was a D.J. on WOL radio.

Before I go back to paperwork, I want to give a shout-out to the good folks in Iowa City who made the week with 5th and 6th graders possible. Thank you all so much, new friends, for everything -- every single thing. Here are a few last photos from last Friday, to wrap up that week. Did I mention that all the "20" tee-shirts stand for the 20th anniversary of this Iowa City Community Reads program:

Friday's schools were Lucas, Hoover, and Wood. These three characters from Lucas were doing their imitation of the lit candle swaying in the dark after the assembly -- ha! They're holding bookmarks. Thanks, guys!






This was a surprise bunch at Hoover -- writers from the Iowa chapter of SCBWI! They brought me treats and a warm welcome -- it was so good to meet them. Thank you for coming! Let's see if I get this right. From left: Linda Karwath, Patty Hinch, Connie Hecker, Katherine House, and Dori Butler.



Here are the Lucas kids -- what a banner! "Pretend my aunts are running for us," I said. "Come here and love my neck! I could just eat you up!"





And here are the Hoover kids -- what a big welcome. I forgot to take my camera out of my bag at Wood, but trust me, I was there! I got a bit frazzled by late Friday -- fifteen schools in five days, 18 schools altogether and so many wonderful memories --


Saying goodbye to Iowa City! Great, collaborating, inventive, curious, creative librarians with a terrific program. Thanks to Julie Larson and Sue, who kept us all organized, to Paula Brandt at the curriculum lab at the University of Iowa, to Hills Banks and the Iowa Schools, to Barb Stein who is a goddess, to Mark and Bob at The Brown Street Inn for taking good care of me, to the folks at Prairie Lights for welcoming me, to the Iowa City Public Library and Katherine Habley, and to all the teachers who prepared their students for this week, and to those students, those wonderful readers and writers, those wonderful smiles and embraces -- all that good energy. I won't forget you. You have enriched my life.

I caught an earlier (and direct) flight home from Cedar Rapids in time to see my daughter's Oglethorpe Singers concert (thanks so much, Barb Stein, for literally speeding me to the airport on Friday afternoon). I slipped into a seat on the front row just in time to hear the Singers perform "Sing Me To Heaven." Here's a YouTube link to this song (rehearsal by the Bucknell Choir).

I stashed my luggage under a table near the theatre seats, and I sank down in gratefulness in my primo front-row seat. Car, plane, Marta train and taxi had brought me to the theatre, and now here was music, live music, accapella live music. I sat there, bathed in the sweetness of coming home and listened to those lyrics, to those voices, those notes. Big fat tears rolled down my face. Home.

After the concert: My daughter Hannah with good buddy Keith. They both graduate in May. Sigh.









Come have some supper with me. It's chilly enough for a fire tonight here in Atlanta. Two more days until NYC and NCTE. My new husband Jim, my piano player, is coming with me. He has the jazz scoped out already.

Catching Up

First of all, thanks so much for your mail. My email inbox overfloweth... thanks for the votes of confidence about this blog, about continuing it, and thanks for all the kind words about all kinds of things. I wish I were better at responding to every note. I have taken to saying that I correspond with my heart. I do. Hope you can feel it.

I want to catch you up on many things, but before I do, I want to give a shout-out to my friends in Southern California, who are battling fires everywhere. I was just in Southern California on tour and saw how beautiful was that land -- scroll down to see some photos. Now I'm concerned about my Harcourt friends, my Writers House friends, and my bookseller, teacher, student, reader, and librarian friends... heck, I'm concerned about everyone in Southern California. I'm sending hope, strength, and love.

This week I'm teaching (and learning) personal narrative writing -- to 4th-graders and their teachers -- in the Highland Park area of Dallas, in public schools. Here's an article by Jonathan Kozol that echoes so much about what I believe and teach... Kozol gives the Opening Gala speech on Thursday, November 15 at NCTE in NYC. Oh, how I'd love to hear him speak. I am working at NCTE, but I don't arrive until Friday. Maybe I'll see some of you on Saturday... (Kathleen?).

Peg Bracken died today. She wrote the I HATE TO COOK BOOK in 1960, when I was 7 years old. My mother was nothing like Peg Bracken, who was three years ahead of the curve started by Betty Friedan when she wrote THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE. My mother was not impressed by Betty Friedan or those who came along with her, but I remember reading Peg Bracken's book as a young mother in 1975 and laughing at her way of debunking the '50s ideal of womanhood:

Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.

I also loved at that time Phyllis Theroux, Patricia Leimbach, Erma Bombeck and Jean Kerr, all of whom idealized living at home with children and loving the pitfalls of motherhood. I aspired to that life -- longed for it. I especially loved Kerr's PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES. She made me laugh. I had never heard of Joan Didion or Ellen Goodman, but I would know them soon enough, and I would be heavily influenced by them as well.

But at the time, it was 1975, I was only 22-years-old and I already had two kids, was working full time as a single parent, and believed -- still! -- in the romantic notion of being able to stay home and be a full-time mom (was also influenced by Betty MacDonald's THE EGG AND I -- she of the MRS. PIGGLE-WIGGLE FAME!) and be totally fulfilled by this herculean calling, was convinced it was the only life I wanted, at 22... and didn't yet know that I would be granted this life only at a great cost... but more on this later -- because I also want to say that, that life, once I got it, was also so very satisfying to me.

I admire those women who, in a time in which many women believed they needed to follow the status quo of being "only good housewives" and no more, told us that there was depth and breadth to that choice, and that there was also depth and breadth and meaning in incorporating and moving beyond that choice.

Judy Blume was one of those pioneers. How exciting that she declares herself re-energized at age 70 and is publishing new work! I hope to be publishing good work at age 70. I came late to the idea that I could be a good mother and good writer, both.

I don't think I told you that I got sick at Southern Festival of Books. (Here's part of the group that came to hear me read on Saturday, Oct. 13 -- I was thrilled to see baseball players!) It was a great festival, as always, and I got to present this year in the Old Senate Chambers at the War Memorial Plaza, which was a great venue full of character.

Here are some folks from Vanderbilt University in my session... I was so pleased to see them! I have a special place in my heart for Vanderbilt. They know how to admit it when they've been short-sighted. They expelled one of their students, James Lawson, in 1960 -- he was teaching peaceful, non-violent resistance techniques to Diane Nash, James Bevel and more, he was advocating the integration of lunch counters and more -- and came back to right that wrong. Lawson became a minister, a lightening rod, and a peacemaker for civil rights, and he was instrumentally important in keeping the peace during the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike of 1968. Lawson is one of my heroes, and a hero of Vanderbilt's as well... they recently hosted James Lawson as a visiting professor -- more of one of my heroes later. He is one of the peaceful revolutionaries who raised his voice -- and continues to raise his voice -- in a time of great change.

My host at Southern Festival was Gail Vinett, who works for Ingram Book Distributors. Gail and I met at Southern Festival 2 years ago and feel instantly in like during the LITTLE BIRD tour at Southern Festival. When Gail heard I was going to introduce ALL-STARS at Southern Festival, she brought this photograph of her grandfather (he's on the right with the bat) and his All-Star team of only 9 players, to show all of us that it's perfectly possible (or was) to have an All-Stars team made up of 8 players as happens in THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.

Gail was great, the crowd was great, and if I hadn't been sick the day before, I would have been much more animated.





I did well on Friday at Central Middle School in Murfreesboro with Helen Hemphill (new book: RUNAROUND) and D. Ann Love (new book: PICTURE PERFECT), but knew I was getting sick on the way back to Nashville. Exhaustion. Too much touring and traveling was catching up with me.

It was the seeing-stars, tossing-lunch exhaustion. I excused myself from the evening activities and slept, and I was okay, although more subdued than usual, for my Saturday session in the Old Senate Chambers, which went well.

Here's David Gibson, "an old Winona boy" (Mississippi), who gifted me with speeches (on CD) by Willie Morris. Thanks, David. And thanks so much, Gail, thank you to Emily Masters who organizes the children's programming for Southern Festival, and a big thank-you to Humanties Tennessee, who manages to find the funding each year (thank you, funders!) to pull together this fabulous festival.

I came home from Southern Festival with just a couple of days before going to the Georgia COMO conference on beautiful Jekyll Island, where the trees all look like this:

I spent a day here, right on the beach -- here's librarian Trish Vlastnik (left) and Lea Ann Kelly (right), chairperson of this year's conference for Georgia school, public, and institutional librarians. What a great conference -- over 900 librarians! (Do you like my new red glasses? I do -- I can see!)










I returned home to pumpkins and candlesticks ($2.00!) I bought at Value Village...


...and to three days of eating miso soup and spinach salad and sleeping well in my own bed with my own husband.

And now, here I am in Dallas, having left my new husband behind yet one more time, having a blast in Dallas schools, and yet longing for the routines of fall and family. I'll be home on Friday night. Out again the following Thursday, to Austin. This is fall travel. Somehow, on this trip, I'm actually putting words to paper as well, writing the next story. More on this later, too.

I'm going to be keeping a close eye on the Southern California fires while waiting for friends to continue to check in, and I'll share with you my week in Dallas schools as well. I've been hired to teach writing workshops -- how does that work and what does that mean? Go back and read the Jonathan Kozol article. I want to be part of the revolution in education. At least I will raise my voice. I am in good company.

Did You Get the Number of that Truck?

Flat as a piece of shirt cardboard, that's how I've been, but I'm recovering -- have recovered -- and I'm on the way to Dallas, Texas this afternoon, where I'll work in Dallas schools all week. Yesterday Jim and I bought local honey, pumpkins, apples, tomatoes, and boiled peanuts (and that beautiful pink pitcher in the background) at a street fair in Loganville, where we stopped on the way home from a signing at the brand-new indie, The Man in the Moon Bookshoppe in Monroe, Georgia.
I'd driven to Monroe by myself, had a fabulous time with owner Vicki Worsham (who used to work for B&N and then Chapter 11 Bookstores in Atlanta) and her able assistant Allison (left), who teaches at the University of Georgia in Athens.

Customers drifted in and out of the downtown shop while I was there, but we had only one customer looking for a Deborah Wiles book, and that was at the end of our hour together. "Our downtown is being revitalized," said Vicki. "I wish you could have been here last week when 2500 people were here for Monroe Days." I was in Nashville last weekend. And I have learned that a booksigning is not about the number of people who show up the day of the signing. It's about creating a relationship with a bookseller, which is something I dearly love to do. I especially love to support brand-new independent bookstores. Man in the Moon opened its doors eight months ago.

It did my heart good to see members of the Wright Family asking for THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS specifically because they'd loved LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER so much, and because a friend loved ALL-STARS so much she'd given Mrs. Wright a copy of Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS. Connection, connection, connection. I'm so glad I went to Man in the Moon.

It was such a beautiful fall day -- a wondrously beautiful day -- and I loved being out in it. I took my time driving home (Monroe is about an hour east of where I live in Atlanta) and stopped in Between, Georgia, ha!, at the Between Nursery, where I bought rosemary and creeping fig for the house. I kill houseplants, but I'm determined to try again. Then I stopped at a flea market, where I found this chair (Cleebo has found the chair, too). I've been slowly renovating my house, corner by corner, and finding a treasure or two to put in the new rooms.

I couldn't fit the chair in my car, so I called Jim to see if he might be able to come get it this week while I'm in Dallas. "I can come right now!" he said. And did. What a sweetheart.

My $45 fan-back chair has found a home, and Jim and I found a street fair on the way home, where we bought Nu-Grape and walked in the sunshine for an hour.



We went to supper with friends, then friends came over to make music. Here's Dan on trombone and Jerry on trumpet.

Laurie on washboard:










Jim on tambourine:










The big finale:


Then we all collapsed in laughter. What a cacaphony of sound! What music! I'm grateful for good friends.

Over the past ten days I've also been to Nashville for Southern Festival of Books and to Jekyll Island, Georgia to speak at the COMO conference. I met up with old friends, made new friends, found good books, good food, good times, and I'll share it with you -- I took lots of photos. But let me finish with home, since that seems to be so on my mind right now, as it always is when I'm about to leave it. I'll start another post about travels.

Here's a picture of the far end of the kitchen, where the washer and dryer used to be. We moved them downstairs and have created a pantry here (or Jim Williams has).
You can see the creeping fig here -- hope I don't kill it -- and the yellow boots I bought in Maine years ago when I waded in Rachel Carson's salt pond.

One day I want to write about Rachel Carson. She believed so deeply in the interconnectedness of all things. She wrote: "If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength."

Yes.

Packing for Possibilities

It's not over-packing; it's packing for possibilities. My friend Deborah Hopkinson writes: "Be prepared for the weather in the Pacific Northwest!" So I try to do that. Friend Jane Kurtz writes, "Agree that it makes travel SO much easier if one only takes a carry-on bag." Right. Don't I know it. Still -- living out of a carry-on bag for twelve days on the road, I don't know. But I'm determined. I've sent Sweetheart Jim to the store for safety pins (don't ask), those travel-sized plastic containers (mine are full of who-knows-what -- must label next time), AA batteries, and quart-sized Ziploc bags (mine has finally worn out). I've paid my estimated taxes. Sigh. I'm as ready as I'm going to be.

I want to collect stories, like possibilities, on the road. Show me where you work, where you play, where you eat, where you shop. Here's where I buy my stunning wardrobe (and, according to some who shall remain nameless, it shows - ha!).


And here's where I buy fresh tomatoes:






Here's where Jim and I often eat on a Sunday evening -- we love the folks at Soul Veg, and the food is great, too. Jim is doing the obligatory "stand in front of the sign" pose.











I pined for this house in Kirkwood when I first moved to Atlanta. Isn't it gorgeous? It was in disrepair, but I was drawn to it like a moth to a porch light, I couldn't explain it. I felt the possibilities. Not long ago my friend Stoney told me that this was the old Dollar Funeral Home -- no wonder! I can just see Comfort Snowberger upstairs, in her closet, with Dismay, Funeral Dog Extraordinaire in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS, can't you? Dollar Funeral Home. Judge Hatchett has bought this home (yes, that Judge Hatchett) and is restoring it, readying it for all kinds of possibilities. I bought a little house in the little woods that suits me and my family. We're creating a new life there, a life full of... you know.

What about you? Where do you shop, eat, work, play? What will I learn about you on this tour? What will I discover?

Possibilities. It used to be just-about all I had. When I was a young adult with two small children, on my own, possibilities were precious. We walked to the library each week, and we'd tote home books to read together -- they were full of possibilities. We took with us what I called "possible bags" (I may owe this phrase to Marguerite Kelly -- I studied her book THE MOTHER'S ALMANAC obsessively, trying to learn how to parent.)

We'd meander to the library, our possible bags clutched in our fists. "Look at this rock! It's so beautiful! A whole acorn! This leaf has four colors in it! Look, a stick bug! A roly-poly! A DIME!" Life was a mess of possibilities on those walks, and we collected our treasures, taking the time to look, to listen, to be. We had the time. And we had possibilities.

In THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS, life is a mess of possibilities, too. Will the boys get to play in the one big baseball game of the year? Will House's elbow hold out so he can pitch? Will Honey get to tap dance? Will Frances ruin everything with another interpretive dance? Will an old man's secrets -- and benevolence -- be discovered? Will another old man's sacrifice bring everyone together? Possibly, possibly, possibly. What a beautiful word.

I've got a suitcase packed with possibilities. Can't wait to see y'all at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hey there, Carol Moyer, Trish, Diana, Rosemary, Nancy -- I'll be there soon --

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

This is the first summer in six years I have stayed home (well, July and most of August). I didn't travel to teach or speak or what-not, and I gave myself the gift of home. My family gave me the gift of themselves. What loveliness. Here is some of what I did.

I gardened.
I've lived in Atlanta for three years now, and I finally have gardens. I didn't even try to tackle the red-clay Georgia soil. Two years ago I started building raised beds, right in the front yard, where the sun is. I filled them them with good, dark dirt and compost and leaves. And this summer we had magnificent moments of beauty, even as I battled the whiteflies and drought.


My friends Doc and Bill built a porch for the front of my little house in the little woods. It's almost finished --






Friend Jim Williams finished the kitchen renovation. This is my favorite view -- into the woods!









Friends came from far away -- this is our friend Jen with my son Zach (also known as DJ Veda).






Nearby friends came to supper on the back porch and shared stories.






We shared music, too:






Went to New Orleans with Jim, my sweetie. Visited with friend and fellow Harcourt author Coleen Salley -- she's coming along steadily after a hip replacement in June. Here's Jim with Coleen:






And then, that sweetie Jim Pearce and I got married. Yes, we did! July 30, at the DeKalb County courthouse in Decatur, Georgia. My kids came with us. Friends came to our home for pot luck afterward. They brought guitars and casseroles (including black-eyed-pea salad!) and we had an evening of songs and words and even a little dancing as we celebrated together. It was a moving, memorable day of family and friends, laughter and (tender) tears.

I moved from Maryland to Atlanta three years ago, in part to live 2 miles away from Jim instead of 650, in part to come home to the Southland as a writer, and in part to create a home from which my family would begin again as well. My youngest-of-four Hannah had just graduated from high school in 2004. Now she's beginning her senior year at Oglethorpe University here in Atlanta.

So. I stayed home this summer. I climbed Stone Mountain. I ate real tomatoes. I slept like a baby. I wrote, strong and steady. I researched the next book. I reconnected with family and friends. I'm just about ready for The Book Tour. Come with me! Here's the Harcourt webpage for THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS -- it's beautiful, isn't it? You can read an interview I did with Harcourt, and you can read the first chapter of ALL-STARS here.

And before I let you go -- tell me: How did you spend your summer?