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Okay. Wake up. It's all right. It's all right. You're safe.

I just had a horrible dream.

I met someone in a concentration camp.
He was a musician and actor. Someone Almost Famous.
I remember him wrapping a sheet around me. As if to hold me close. Keep me warm.
We fell in love. (Survival instincts make strange bed-fellows.)
I remember the kiss that sealed our fate.
And we knew we had to run. We held hands, our thin cloth coverings wet and dirty and flapping in the rain. I was barefoot. I remember the feeling of the mud drenching and swallowing my toes, slowing me down. He kept running.

And there are the Nazis chasing me through the forest, Nazis holding me down, making me scream my allegiance to Hitler as the guns are drawn and I am sobbing.

It's not good to cry on your birthday.
Very superstitious. {}

The day can only get better-- if you call going to the dentist for major mouth surgery "better." I know. Could he have picked a worse day and told me "That's all I have"? He made me an offer I couldn't refuse. ;}

Thanks to you for the lovely thoughts here (can LJ entries be copied and pasted from one entry to another?) and in e-mail.

I need to erase this nightmare from my memory. Too real, too painful.

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young



Added to edit after posting: Too bizarre. Check out the time this entry was posted on Live Journal. 3-0-6. Shiver me timbers! Oy! Seriously unplanned but maybe it's a sign.. The Powers that Be work in Mysterious Ways. Is it too early to start drinking? I have a feeling it's going to be ONE OF THOSE DAYS.... ;}

In my ever-obsessive need to stake my claim as a Native Daughter of the lovely borough other writers now think they discovered circa 1985, I post this hip, hot essay from author Colson Whitehead as originally read in this Sunday's New York Times Book Review section:
I WRITE IN BROOKLYN. GET OVER IT. (his title, not mine)

I started reading Colson's novel JOHN HENRY DAYS and I can't remember why I put it down. It was during Springsteen's Seeger Sessions tour and I was big on learning more about the iconic John Henry, the Steel Driving legendary hero.
(I think I stopped reading more due to my Springsteen show schedule and less because of the quality of the writing. I remember the reviews. They liked it.)

statue of John Henry

In case the memo has not reached your desk yet: Brooklyn has always been cool and kind to writers. I should know. Stamping foot, pouting lips. I was there before you. So get over it. ;>

pretty little map of Brooklyn; double click to enlarge for a better view

My cordless mouse is dying so I am about to melt into the ether, like the Wicked Witch of the West. Foiled by technology. And I have no idea where the replacement batteries are. What kind of modern convenience is this?

I so wanted to write about the biography I just bought from Amazon. I could not find it in the stores. I can't wait to crack it open and fall in: it's the biography of Betty Smith, author of one of my favorite books... wait for it... A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. (Click link to browse its glorious, Brooklyn-authentic pages.) Better yet, because I don't want you to leave here without a gift, Browse Inside here (and don't say another disparaging word about Brookly bum-types again): ;}

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

Needless to say, Bruce and I relate on many things, including Writer's Block. ;} (Welcome to my theme song.)

For a Good Time, Watch This... especially at the 2:57 mark

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Madison Square Garden, NYC, 10/18/07, performing DANCING IN THE DARK. I was there, way up in the rafters but for Bruce, you do what you have to do... (and a profound thank you to the kind person who shared this awesome and raw concert footage on YouTube)

I'll be leaving for my Kindling Words retreat in the Green Mountains of Vermont in a few days. Alas, I am already surrounded by mountains--white mountains of paper of my own creation and design. The hills are alive with the sound of paper. Desperate for release. Fresh air. Liberation. It is an embarrassment of riches. Now when will they leave me alone and go visit a friendly editor or two? Shall I pack them up in a basket of goodies and send them on their merry manuscriptic way? Will they be thwarted by a wolf in the heart of darkness? (Or, better yet, am I the cruel wolf thwarting my own path?)

Take that, Brothers Grimm!

Signed,
Ross Writing Hood ;>

and yes, I'm in the passenger seat.



"These two lanes will take us anywhere..."
Where I'm Coming From, what it feels like to leave the city behind and "stumble" towards the outskirts of town. Driving out of New York, driving home and into the arms of Long Island, kicking off my shoes and letting go...

My very first YouTube upload.


Pinch me. I feel as if I discovered electricity.
I YouTubed myself and.. it worked.
"Mr. Watson! Come here!"

It's Newbery/Caldecott announcement morning. Life's about to change for a few of you out there. I suspect you're not sleeping either. ;>



p.s. January 14th. Happy Birthday to my cousin David... wherever you are

This is what happens after 1: overdosing on two drinks, linguini with white clam sauce, and a Veal Francaise at the The Park Side Restaurant in Queens, where tuxedos and GODFATHER-types meet, 2: a sinus headache, 3: a snoring husband ruining any chances of a good night's sleep and 4: the curse of having a television in your bedroom and a remote control to keep you company, jumping from channel to channel until your eyes rest upon a 4 AM showing of THE GRAPES OF WRATH and you know you're not going anywhere until the credits roll.

I think, therefore I write.

You have anything better for me to do with my time in the middle of the night?

Don't answer that unless your thoughts are PG-rated. ;>

And hell if I didn't think so hard that I turned to keyboard and screen. Damn you, wretched and tempest-tossed writers. Can never keep these things to yourselves, can you? ;>

Great Characters Make Great Stories. These are the books we remember. The characters that transcend the page. The iconic voices we carry with us, speaking to us from beyond the confines of the novel and remind us, time and again, why literature is a powerful link between generations. These are the voices that inspire me to write. To paint words into life, to connect reader to reader, to be "a little piece of a big soul." Not just for today but for tomorrow.



citycatinwindow introduced me to ARTISTS FOR LITERACY, an organization that promotes music inspired by great characters and great literature. Their mission is to make literature more accessible, to marry music and the written word in order to "open doors" to a more critical analysis of a book that might otherwise be daunting to a young reader.

TOM JOAD from John Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH stands tall in my pantheon of literary heroic characters. His "I'll be there" soliloquy has moved many to tears, to action-- and to music. I know. Woody Guthrie was right there, compelled to create a homage to Tom Joad after Guthrie saw the movie, THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Fast forward to another great writer who found truth and beauty in this quintessential American literary hero. Enter Bruce Springsteen. (Ah, there's always a tie that binds my words to Mr. Springsteen.)

It may not be the first question I ever ask should I have the chance to have a one-on-one moment with my muse (and, should that day ever come, I highly doubt any intelligible sounds would make it past my quivering lips), but this writer would love to ask that writer what about Steinbeck's Joad inspired him to paint his musical portrait of the Joad character in Bruce's GHOST OF TOM JOAD. Steinbeck's novel identifies a cultural war that is seeped in the soul of the American dream. After stuttering and stammering for 23 minutes in Bruce's face, telling him what hismusic has meant to me (everything), oh how I would love to ask him: "How do you see your music as a source of characters questioning what is wrong and what is right in America? Who are your characters speaking to? The choir or the disenfranchised- the believers or the estranged and alienated? Are your characters uniquely American and why? Would you rather sing to the church or a confused, wandering congregation?"

I suspect this would be his answer:



Then I would fall faint to the floor.

And... end scene!

Speaking of Page Turners: Here's to 2008-- and to you and your characters and the life you give them. (Or is it the other way around?)

newport2newport has prompted so many of our friends to share their holiday traditions here to make her spirits bright. The photos and stories are full of air and color and magic-- and a mystery to someone like me that sits this day out and can only experience it from the sidelines.

My Jewish family created its own Christmas Day Survival plan. We would head into the city and park the car somewhere off Fifth. My mother, not one to wait in lines, would sneak us all into the queues and bypass many snickering tourists. We were New Yorkers. We didn't have to wait to ogle our department store Christmas displays. (Swear. My mom's a wonderful person. Just not a very patient one.) {}


We walked across Fifth to see the tree and ice skaters at Rockefeller Center. I have thousands of childhood photos with the same background in the image below: those delicate, blinding white angels guarding the magnificent tree. We were the ones who changed, who grew older. The sight of all those lights and the smells of roasting pretzels never grew tired.



We weren't supposed to act like tourists. Buying pretzels and hot chocolate from the street vendors was something we watched others do. But hot chocolate. The creamy aroma was too much to bear. I cried that my fingers were falling off. My fingers were burning through my gloves. I whined until my parents gave in. They always did. (And I am surprised this tactic works on me today?) ;>



And, the piece de resistance, like the song says: we eat Chinese food on Christmas. (Google it. There's a viral video of this song making its way across the streets and avenues of YouTube.) Throw a movie in before or after dinner if you're really in the mood to do the Full Jewish Christmas Day Monty. ;>


one of my favorite Christmas traditions: watching A CHRISTMAS STORY; you can catch it one more time on TBS before the 24-hour marathon ends

You look around the restaurant and you just know: these diners celebrate Chanukah. You fit in. You belong. You've found a place where you're not alone in the universe!





Day was done. We made it through another Christmas Day, another institutional day that wasn't ours to celebrate but was ours to make our own rites of passage. And it worked.

I may have posted this poem before. I wrote it a year or so ago when I was feeling particularly left out of the tinsel and eggnog and giftwrap and ornaments and noels. Year after year, little kids like me learned to smile sweetly while strangers asked: "And what did you get for Christmas?"

I never knew what to say. I didn't want to be rude and say I'm Not Christian. Childhood has enough problems without adding another Not Something to the list of things you wished you were-- if only for a day. {}
______________________________________________________________

THE HAVE NOT
by Pamela Ross

Twas the twenty-fifth day
in the depths of December
I wondered why this day
was one to remember
No mistletoe hanging
No tinsel or toys
No "Merry" or "Greetings"
Just envious "oys"
While families gather
All Christmas-consumed
Their place in this wonderland
gently presumed
While children like me
learned too quickly to say
"No Santas, no presents,
Not My Holiday"
And so on this day
when the world seems to stop
No restaurants open, no markets to shop
I swallow the feeling of being a "not"
of feeling left out and a people forgot
But calendars fade
when good friends are in sight
So to all a sweet life
And to YOU a Good Write. {}

Ho ho ho,
tis the season to hold hands across the universe,
Pamela
________________________________________________________________

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM MY HEART TO YOURS



My Grown Up Christmas Wish for all of you: a lifetime of miracles and peace, music and laughter, health, happiness, love wherever you find it and... may all your days begin and end with a little Bruce Juice. Remember: HE knows if you've been bad or good... but he likes you better if you're good. So do I.{}

Vote in the comments!

Bruce Springsteen--THE BOSS!


Jackson 5

Lots of thoughts tonight about what words and music do to make people feel less alone. To need someone. To be needed. To feel as if you matter. To hear someone say: "Don't worry. I'm here."

That is what I get from reading and writing. A soul connection that breaks down barriers and walls and silence. It makes me feel as if I matter.

In a world where it is all too easy to get lost and overwhelmed in a nomadic and narcissistic crowd, I wish you all that same sense of belonging and connection to somoeone or something.

It makes a difference.

This is my kind of crowd.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Milan, Italy
Check out the synchronized arm dancing during E STREET SHUFFLE.
Magnifico!




Actually, compare the audience reactions for yourself. Check out Yours Truly and 15,000 of my fellow fans "Dancing in the Dark" at the October 6th, 2007 show in Philadelphia, PA. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. (When those bodies start jumping on the right of your screen, you should know I am right in there. At the 4:33 mark in the clip, Bruce is standing right in front of me. Nirvana, baby!

Tomorrow is Jack Prelutsky’s birthday, so I’d like to send him a happy shout out and celebrate his life and work with a brief post.

He was born on September 8, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Hunter College in Manhattan and worked as an opera singer, folk singer, truckdriver, photographer, plumber’s assistant, piano mover, cab driver, standup comedian, and more. He is married and lives in Seattle. He enjoys photography, carpentry, and creating games and "found object" sculpture and collages. He collects frog miniatures, art, and children’s poetry books of which he has over 5000.

Prelutsky has garnered many awards in his long career including citations as: New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, School Library Journal Best of the Best Book, International Reading Association/Children's Book Council Children's Choice, Library of Congress Book of the Year, Parents' Choice Award, American Library Association Notable Children's Recording, an Association for Library Services to Children Notable Book and Booklist Editor's Choice, among others. In 2006, he was honored as the first Children’s Poet Laureate by the national Poetry Foundation which included a $25,000 prize. His combined works have sold over a million copies and been translated into many languages.

Jack Prelutsky is a prolific writer, with many collections of poetry to his credit, including enormously popular anthologies he has compiled of other poets’ works, such as The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (Random House 1983), Read-aloud Rhymes for the Very Young (Knopf 1986), The Beauty of the Beast (Knopf 1997), and The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury (Knopf 1999). In addition, there are many collections of his own popular poetry available including books organized around topics such as Tyrannosaurus was a Beast: Dinosaur Poems (Mulberry 1993) and The Dragons are Singing Tonight (HarperTrophy 1998). His holiday poems are also very appealing: It’s Halloween (HarperTrophy 1996), It’s Christmas (HarperTrophy 1995), It’s Thanksgiving (HarperTrophy 1996), and It’s Valentine’s Day (HarperTrophy 1996), also available in one single audio anthology from HarperChildrensAudio (2005). And for younger children, he created a kind of “American Mother Goose” with nursery rhymes that reference cities and places in the United States, rather than European sites such as “London Bridge” or “Banbury Cross” in his collections, Ride a Purple Pelican (Greenwillow 1986) and Beneath a Blue Umbrella (Greenwillow 1990).

Jack Prelutsky became established as a poetic dynamo with the publication of The New Kid on the Block in 1984, his best-selling collection of 100+ poems illustrated by cartoonist James Stevenson with understated comic genius on every page. With poems that are nearly childhood standards now, like “Homework! Oh, Homework!” and “Bleezer’s Ice Cream,” the music of Prelutsky’s verse is irresistible. Since the publication of New Kid, he rivals Shel Silverstein for name recognition in the field of children’s poetry. Equally popular companion books followed, including Something Big Has Been Here (1990), A Pizza the Size of the Sun (1996), and It’s Raining Pigs & Noodles (2000). A fifth installment is slated for publication in 2008: My Dog May Be a Genius.

Many of Prelutsky’s poems lend themselves to choral reading and poem performance in a variety of ways. For example, his poems with repeated lines or refrains provide a natural opportunity for group participation on the refrain. One of my favorite strategies for performing Prelutsky’s poetry is singing. Count the beats in the first line or two of the poem; then count the beats in the first line or two of the song to see if they match. Many of Jack Prelutsky’s poems, in particular, match song tunes, which may not be surprising when one remembers he was a singer and musician before turning to poetry. Try his poem “Allosaurus” (from Tyrannosaurus was a Beast: Dinosaur Poems), a poem describing the ferocious qualities of this dinosaur sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” It’s a hilarious juxtaposition of lyrics and tune. Challenge the children to match other of his dinosaur poems to song tunes.

Allosaurus
by Jack Prelutsky

Allosaurus liked to bite,
its teeth were sharp as sabers,
it frequently, with great delight,
made mincemeat of its neighbors.

Allosaurus liked to hunt,
and when it caught its quarry,
it tore it open, back and front,
and never said, “I’m sorry!”

Allosaurus liked to eat,
and using teeth and talons,
it stuffed itself with tons of meat,
and guzzled blood by gallons.

Allosaurus liked to munch,
and kept from growing thinner
by gnawing an enormous lunch,
then rushing off to dinner.

From Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast
[Sung to the tune of “Row, row, row your boat”]

For more about Jack, his life, and his work, check out his new web site and look for Poetry People; A Practical Guide to Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).

P.S. As always, I'm glad to participate in the Friday Poetry Round Up, hosted this week by Semicolon. (Thanks!)

Picture credit: www.nssd112.org