http://www.hectv.org/programs/ser/hectvlive/

This is the website  for a broadcast of the Arbuthnot Lecture in St. Louis earlier this month. (It begins with a brief theatrical production of "The Birthday Ball.")

I have been somewhat silent recently because, sadly, of serious health problems in the family. Martin has been hospitalized since April 25th so I have been spending most days in the hospital, though it was a lovely diversion to have 10-year-old grandson Rhys with me for the weekend. In Maine his older brother was starting little League season (and a nice start, with gorgeous weather and several good strong hits)  while here Rhys and I went together to an iMax movie called "Adrenaline Rush" whicb involved a lot of jumping off of cliffs (me with my eyes closed; Rhys watching enthusiastically). We also designed a board game...partly because on FRiday I had had a nice visit from sixth graders form an Orthodox school in Sharon, MA, and one of them brought a board game he had designed, to show me:

His was based on The Giver" but Rhys and I did a more general theme —one card said, "Meet Charlie Sheen. Go to Rehab"—Rehab was, of course, a space on the board, along with Zoo, Shopping Mall, Luxurious Resort, and others.

You had to be there, I guess.

It was a nice diversion from days in a hospital room and I was sorry to put him on the bus back to Maine Sunday afternoon.

I have canceled a number of coming events: IRA in Orlando for one. I'll miss being with people I had looked forward to seeing but I'm grateful that others are stepping in. Everyone has been extraordinarily helpful and kind. Martin and I are both grateful.

And Alfie loved the visit from Rhys.

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/news/newsDetail.asp?ID=182

This is long. Sorry.  But it's a lecture I gave last month at the University of Michigan.

A beautiful Easter Sunday here in Cambridge, with yellow tulips in bloom in my front yard. I remember childhood Easters in Pennsylvania  and the frustration of having to wear a coat, covering up the new dress that I would wear to Sunday School. New clothes were a big deal then. Twice a year we would take a trip to Harrisburg---I think only about 18 miles, but it seemed a huge excursion---my sister, mother, and I, (it was a ritual that my sister and I held our breath while we drove across the bridge that crossed the Susquhanna River)  and go to a big department store to get new clothes.  Following the shopping we would go to the park in front of the capital building, and feed the pigeons with peanuts from a vendor with a cart. Everything seemed adventurous and exciting back in those days when kids were not overloaded with advetures and excitement.  

I am always aware when I start to fall into "in my day..." tales of simpler times, and how I rolled my eyes in feigned boredom as an adolescent when my mother did the same thing. How I treasure her stories now! Some years ago, in a book called The Silent Boy, which is set in a small Pennsylvania town in the early 1900s, I used some of those childhood stories of my mother's. She was gone by the time I wrote that book (which is illustrated with old photographs, including some of her).

My mother's aunt, my Great Aunt Mary, was a photographer in the early twentieth century and left some remarkable photographs, including this one from 1910.

Happy Easter.

http://www.aadl.org/node/40341

I hate when I make a dumb mistake. (Well, don't we all?)  This is a link to an interview I did when I was in Ann Arbor three weeks ago, and it's actually a fun interview because she went out of her way to ask not-the-usual questions.  But just for the record: I referred to a poem quoted in the book A Summer to Die as being by Housman; and it's not..it's by Gerard Manley Hopkins. And I KNEW that, which is why I am irritated with myself.

A.E. Housman:

Gerard Manley Hopkins:

They don't even look alike!

I remember my children, when they were in kindergarten, learning, and then singing endlessly, a song that included the words "All the colors that we know...live up in the raaainnnboooww"

It is raining a little today and that means that the bright yellow of the forsthia is absolutely dazzling against the new spring greens in the yard.

When I was a child, my best friend and I used to walk "downtown"...about 3 blocks...on Saturdays, clutching our allowance money, to Woolworth's. We always ended up buying paper dolls.  But again and again I found myself lingering by the sewing-materials department, where there was a large display of thread, all arranged by graduated colors. Coates & Clark, I think was the brand of thread.  Is it truly weird that a 10-year-old child was each week tempted to spend her entire (small) allowance on spools of thread, just so she could look at the colors?

I was puttering today in one of the guest rooms of my house, and happened on this pillow:

Several years ago,  I went into a yarn shop and spent my allowance on a batch of crewel yarn in all shades of reds and oranges and pinks; then, using a postcard photo  of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting of a poppy, I created this pillow. It took a long time! But I remember the satsfaction of combining those wonderful colors:

I think I made this at about the time I was writing "Gathering Blue" in which the main character, Kira, is doing the same kind of colorful needlework.

I am rarely in the sewing department of a store these days. (Is there such a department anymore?) But I still linger in towel departments, entranced by the gradations of color.  And if you turn me loose in a hardware store you will never find me by the screwdrivers or insecticides. No: I am always hanging out with the paint chips.

I remember loving the movie as a child..."Meet me in St. Louis"...with Judy Garland, June Allyson, and Margaret O'Brien; I'm sure there were others who were well-known names, but those are the ones I remember so fondly.

I am about to leave St. Louis today to return home, but it has been a lovely stay here, despite some very strange weather..including tornado warnings the evening of the Arbuthnot Lecture at the St. Louis County Library.  So many good friends here for the occasion!

The day after the Arbuthnot evening, I spoke to an audience at the main City Library (as opposed to the County)...here they are, attentively listening to the MC tell them that no recording or photos were allowed (and at that moment I took out my cell phone and took this)

..and this other photo is at a TV station, where I was waiting for my interview time,and the weather lady was doing her thing in front of the green screen:

The startling thing about such TV interviews is their brevity...zip, you're on; zip, you're off...and sometimes, as in St. Louis two days ago, you are still sitting there while the interviewer says, "Next, a serial killer is tracked down..."

Now I have some time at home, and then off to Orlando for IRA, where I am to speak on a panel having to do with the Newbery Medal; and also at the Young Adult Literature Luncheon; then rushing home to Boston to be on time to speak at the annual meeting of Massachusetts Child Psychiatrists and Psychoanalysts. But things are winding down. Summer is coming. I say no to most invitations for summer events (meaning that I have missed some wonderful occasions) because that is when I am in Maine, when I am with family and friends, when I write, when I relax.

Now: off the the airport...a little nervously, because when I tried to check in on-line, I was told that "On-line check-in is full" ...so I am headed early to the airport, hoping they have not overbooked the only non-stop flight from St. Louis to Boston.  The worst words one ever hears from an airline agent are "Sorry, but..."

This afternoon, while working on writing a speech, I decided to try to find a letter that I received probably 26 or 27 years ago. I was referring to it in the speech, and I knew I had saved it, so I went looking. I pulled open a drawer that had probably last been opened in 1995.

Here is the stuff I took out of that drawer.

I didn't find the letter. But I have now spent several hours going through what I can only title "saved stuff." And the most amazing stuff is the collection of writings from so far back that they are typed on erasable typing paper; it was painful, looking at those pages, and remembering what hard work it used to be to write!  All that rolling in-and-out of paper. Correcting typos.  And then revising!  Forget it!  It meant you had to retype the whole thing.

I found a picture book text called "Grandma's Alligator"which I think I had shown to my (now long retired) editor, and he hadn't liked it.....but I still do.  Hmmpphh.

But the really interesting thing is an adult novel that I never finished. A thriller, actually. I even had written out a synopsis of each section Parts 1, 2, and 3---and I have to say that some scenes sent a chill up my spine.   And I had done research of the most grisly sort!  There are xeroxed pages—I remember a doctor friend got these for me from a hospital library—detailing the most minute charges to a corpse as it decays. The manuscript has a body lying undiscovered in a Maine cabin in late fall...so decompositon is relatively slow. And tension does mount! 

Could I go back to it and finish it now? I still like its premise and in re-reading I think the suspense holds up and the main character is believable, sympathetic, and interesting. But the problem is, she's a photographer. A housewife and mother to 8-year-old twins, but also a very gifted and serious photographer with a darkroom connected to her house. This was written back in, oh, probably 1979-1980.  A lot of scenes (a lot of suspense, actually) take place in her darkroom. There's one particularly unnerving scene when one of her children wanders (disobediently) into the darkroom and comes out holding a damp, crumpled image and says, "What's this? It's gross"..and what it is, is an extreme close-up of part of the dead body.

Anyway: you can see the problem. These days anyone with a decent digital camera can be a "photographer," a term which has little meaning anymore.  The mystery and beauty of darkrrom chemistry is long gone.

So I think my book manuscript will go back into its drawer and remain unfinished.

Its title, incidentally, was/is a photographic phrase: GRAB SHOT.

Not really. April here did begin with a snowstorm, as it does some years. But now the scylla is blanketing one corner of the yard (does anyone remember a popular song from the '50s called "Lavender Blue"? It had very silly lyrics, as many '50s songs did. But it does describe the color in the southwest corner of my yard ), and the forsythia is about to burst into its wondeful yellow. And we have taken the house off the market and decided to stay, because there is no place we like better than this.

I returned from a 10-day trip with a purse fullof unreturned hotel keys and a suitcase full of laundry. It is very good to be home, though it was quite a wonderful trip, with great bookstores to visit, a few schools, a University lecture hall, a high school auditorium, a lot of enthusiastic readers, and quick visits with some friends en route. I was plied with gifts and fortunately most were small and thoughtfully chosen...a bookmark engraved with my name; a box of note cards embossed with my name; the charming little dish from Copenhagen that Sean and Christine Astin gave me. One gift was big and unwieldy (a framed poster from my lecture in Ann Arbor) but I managed somehow to carry it without compromising my only-carry-on status; and Michael from Rakestraw Books kindly mailed me the book that I had no room to carry.

Here are some photos from St. Anthony's Park Elementary School in St. Paul, MN, a visit sponsored by The Red Balloon:

The wonderfully self-confident NOAH is introducing me here.

After the presentation in the multi-purpose room I signed books in the library...

 and here are some enthusiastic fifth graders.

I so rarely visit schools any more, for lack of time (and okay, lack of energy. It takes a lot of adrenaline!) but when I do, as here, I am reminded of the vibrancy and enthusiasm of kids....and the dedication of their teachers and librarians.

Now I must re-group and re-pack and head Thursday to St. Louis for the Arbuthnot Lecture, at which I will see another extraordinary group of old friends who will be gathered there from many different parts of the country....plus many many strangers who will feel like friends because we are all passionate about the same things.

When my grandson James was very small...three or four...he loved a recording of Louis Armstrong singing "Wonderful World." We could hear Jamie, as we called him then, singing it to himself frequently. But he sang it exactly as he had heard it, with Louie Armstrong's diction...so it was always "wonderful woild."

I thought that as I looked out this morning and saw the sun shining on the lavender-blue flowers. What a wonderful woild.

I got home this morning from my 7-city trip (counting Ann Arbor separately from Detroit) and am still unpacking and doing laundry but will post some photos. Unfortunately I can't seem to load the vidoo of an auditorium full of wonderful kids in Chicago, singlng Happy Birthday to me! But I can show you the necklace some of those kids made for me:

A mouse, an apple, and a willow tree: representing three of my books!

And here I am also in Chicago (Naperville, actually, at Anderson's Books), with Eric Rhomann who did the charming ilustrations for "Bless This Mouse"

And now: The amazing bed in my San Francisco hotel:

and the also amazing bed in my LA hotel (okay, the bed is not amazing; but the BATHTUB beside it is, well, unique in its placement):

Here I am with Sean Astin, in LA, at the Getty Center:

His lovely wife, Christine and their three daughters were there as well and we got a chance to talk about the film of NUMBER THE STARS. I'll keep you posted.

And here, brought to me from Copenhagen by Sean and Christine:

A nice memento of that lovely city. They have spent a lot of time there working on research for the movie.

No photos from Denver (where it snowed!) or Minneaplos/St. Paul or Detroit/Ann Arbor. I guess I had gotten tired by then.  Or, actually...people had give me GIFTS...some large ones, actually...and it made my luggage situation more difficult, and finding the camera, buried under stuff, was hard, so I gave up on the documentation.

It is great to be home. Martin and Alfie agree.

After Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and Minneapolis/St. Paul, I am now in Ann Arbor, Michigan where later today I will give a lecture at the University.  For the most part this has been an uneventful  trip, made pleasant by good people in each city. One unnerving moment when I got an email from my oil company in Maine telling me that my furnace may have gone off and my pipes may have frozen.....but it turned out not to be the case. Whew.

Now, another concern, which i will pass along, though i suspect readers of this blog are adults rather than children.

This morning I received an email (through my website) from a boy who had received a message, an email, puportedly from me. He had astutely perceived, from the wording and a mis-spelling, that it was not. But someone has created a g-mail address with my name in it and had contacted him (so I am assuming other kids as well) inviting him to a "party."

I've contacted the police and am waiting for a call back from the detective who handles computer fraud. In the meantime I can only hope that other young people who received this email will recognize it as a fake and won't respond to what could potentially be dangerous.

For all the benefits that computers provide for us......there is a whole new set of problems.

And also: Massachusetts is expecting a snowstorm!  Not fair!

I brought a camera on this trip but unfortunately I forgot to bring the gizmo that allows me to download photos into my laptop. When I get home I'll put them in: a video taken from a stage in an auditorium in Chicago, looking out at an auidience of kids who are enthusiastically singing Happy Birthday to me; and a photo of me with illustrator Eric Rohmann, signing books. No photos from SF, where it rained every minute, except for one of the amazing bed in my hotel room. And a photo of me with Sean Astin and his wife, Christine,  in LA.  We went to the Getty Center, where I had not been before---it's spectacular---and found a quiet place to sit and have tea and talk about the movie of "Number the Stars"...

Anyway, no photos yet. But they will come.  I am in Denver now...where it snowed this morning!...and headed to Mieeapolis/St. Paul tomorrow.  From there to Michigan, Oak Park and Ann Arbor, and then HOME on Saturday.

It was interesting to be in public with Sean, whose face is well known because of the Lord of the Rings movies, and to see the number of fans* who come up to him and say, "Are you...""  "Could you possibly be..?" "Can you sign my child's sweatshirt?" "Can I have my photo taken with you?" and to see that he remains cheerful and gracious.  Fame could be a nuisance, I  think.

*including a group of women in headscarves who said they were from Iraq and had been in this country only four months

My hotel in LA (actually, in Claremont, east of LA), had a tiny movie theater behind it, and as I was finished with appearances by 6 or 7 each evening..I went to two movies: "Of Gods and Men" and "The Lincoln Lawyer"...in the evenings, which made it seem almost like a vacation.

Later today I go to do a reading/signing at the wonderful Tattered Cover bookstore.  Then back to the hotel to reorganize my suitcase (only a carry-on! For ten days! I am so proud of myself!) for the next leg of my journey. No movie theater here. But I'm good at watching mindless TV at the end of a busy day.

I'll be heading out next Monday, the 21st, for a 6-city tour (Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Mpls/St. Paul, and Detroit/Ann Arbor).  Schedule of events available on my website: http://www.loislowry.com/tour.php  Book tours are always exhausting. But to my pleasure I will see a number of friends this trip: Eric Rohmann (illustrator of "Bless This Mouse") in Chicago (he'll be at the bookstore with me); my daughter and several friends in SF; Sean Astin, who is making the movie of "Number the Stars," in LA; my friend Alan in Denver; my friend Margaret (to whom "Bless This Mouse" is dedicated), in St. Paul...so there will be some fun times.

In tiny print (lower right corner) on this poster it says "Phto by Nadine Lowry"...she took this when I was in Germany just before Christmas. And here is the beauitful granddaughter/photographer Nadine:

This morning I spent some time sitting and observing a second grade classroom in a public school nearby, making notes about the things on the walls, observing the kids—a wonderfully diverse group, this being Cambridge, MA—watching the teacher teach math (I would FLUNK second grade math), all on behalf of the Gooney Bird books. And I watched the teacher, later, privately, hug a little girl who had been distessed at getting an answer wrong.  How sad that some schools don't allow teachers to touch students. That little girl so needed that hug.

I am busily preparing the Lamstein Lecture (March 31st) and the Arbuthnot Lecture (April 15, St. Louis)...(ah, here's one more poster)..

...but right now I am dashing off to get my hair cut.

Oh, and alsao envying my son Ben. Here he is with his Lori in the Caribbean. Today, in Cambridge, it is bleak and raw and rainy.

Reading each day's email that arrives through my website is always interesting, sometimes heartening, occasionally (sorry) annoying, often surprising.

Here is an excerpt from one that came today:

Respected Mam,

I am a teacher and administrator in Dr. Tobgyel School, situated in Thimphu, Bhutan, in this country for our Class X board exams we teach one of your master creation novel THE GIVER, it is in our syllabus and I am so happy to inform you that the students not only enjoy the novel written by you but they cherish each and every moment of the novel class reading your novel. As a teacher I am so thankful to you for giving me an opportunity to teach your creation, it is an life time opportunity to teach a novel like this.

It is a reminder of the role that a book takes on long after it is out of the hands of the writer. Recently, in anticipation of moving, I have been sorting and packing, and in some cases donating, foreign editions of books, and so I have been looking at copies of The Giver in Estonian and Hungarian and Hebrew and a zillion other languages (I don't even know what language they would be reading in Bhutan; Chinese, perhaps?)  and thinking about all those young poeple out there, all of them pondering the same questions, worrying about the future they will all share.  

These two are—(I think; sometimes it's hard to figure them out)—Vietnamese and Serbian.

It's truly overwhelming.

I will be leaving March 21st to visit Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Ann Arbor (schedule of events will appear when I have final details, on my blog  www.loislowry.com) in order to introduce poeple to what I think of as "the mouse book."  Since the main cast of characters appears on the cover, I'll introduce them, left to right:

Harvey, an adolescent,well-meaning but often obnoxious

Roderick, a somewhat bumbling but good-hearted companion (he would like to be more than that) to...

Hildegarde, the elected Mouse Mistress, leader of the community: lots to do, lots to worry about. And she must fend off:

Lucretia: Sneaky, sarcastic, and Hildegarde's sworn enemy. Lucretia would like to usurp Hildegarde's postiion

and finally: Ignatious, elderly and pedantic. He lived for years at the University Library, nibbling knowledge, but ended up at St. Bartholmew's by mistake, having fallen asleep in Father Murphy's coat pocket...where he had gone to nibble some tobacco crumbs... during a dull lecture.

My favorite illustration, out of all of Eric Rohmann's wonderful illustrations, is this one:

I love the look on Roderick's face as he struggles to boost Hildegarde up to where she can reach into the bottle.

This book will not be officially published until March 21st but I'll quote some interesting pre-publication comments, both public and private:

KIRKUS calls it  "gently Christian"

A reveiwer on Amazon says it is "Too Catholic"

Publishers Weekly says: "An impeccably constructed, good-humored adventure"

The former dean of a major theological seminary (Anglican) says that it proves what he has always known, that one must avoid Altar Guild ladies.

And an Episcopal church organist, male, says in an e-mail that Trevor Fusili, the organist in BLESS THIS MOUSE, is just perfect except for his hair.  Trevor has long and unkempt hair. The organist says that his hair should be close-cropped.

Who knew?

Tomorrow, March 3rd, would be my son Grey's birthday and it is hard to believe that he would be 52 if he had lived. Where does time go???!!  He was born in 1959, (I was about to turn 22) when my Naval officer husband was stationed in Key West, Florida. But...typical of a submarine officer...he was at sea when I went into labor. So I took the 12-month old first child to a neighbor and drove myself to the Naval hospital, stopping to pay my rent at the housing office en route. The baby was born a few hours later and two days after that I brought him home wearing nothing but a diaper and wrapped in a thin blanket. Let's hear it for Key West weather! The earlier child has been born in New London, Connecticut (another USN base) the previous winter and came home from the hospital through a snowstorm, bundled in blankets.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the two of them, taken at the time they turned two and one.

By then we lived in South Carolina...again, a Naval assignment.

For the life of me I can't remember how I managed that incessant packing up and moving. (We moved again, to Massachusetts, when they were 3 and 2).

They were wonderful little kids: funny, smart.....but perhaps I am prejudiced?  Could it be? Moi?

Happy Birthday, Grey. We wish you were with us still.

This handsome poster has been created for the not-yet-made film of NUMBER THE STARS. Producer/director Sean Astin is still in the process of raising the necssary financing but he has a fine screenplay which adheres very closely to the book, and plans (if $$$ is forthcoming) to film in Denmark next spring.

Sean told me this recently:  during leadership speeches that I give at universities...when the students ask what I'm doing next and I tell them we are adapting Number the Stars... without fail, a very specific audible gasp, filled with strong memories and a pulse of excitement, bursts forth... followed invariably by a round of applause...

I hope his production company can pull the necessary pieces together because he is very commited to the project and has worked terribly hard to bring it this far. As I know, though, from watching The Giver movie start and stop and start and stop for years now, these things are never certain.

In the meantime: I love the poster.

...but who's counting; right?

It is Monday morning, Presidents' Day, and I have just recently corrected the galleys of a new Gooney Bird bok, set in February, when GB herself points out that it is unfair for Abe and George to get all the credit—and the holiday—when there were OTHER presidents born in February. (She, of course, knows who they are)

That book, called GOONEY BIRD ON THE MAP, will be out in the fall.

As for me, even though it is snowing one more time, I am delighted to be up and sitting at my desk after three days with a nasty virus.

Day #1, Friday, I spent in bed wishing for a hasty and merciful death.

Day #2, Saturday, I lay on the couch, dozing.

Day #3, Sunday, yesterday, I was still on the couch, too miserable too be up and around, and too headachy to read, but had slept enough to last me a lifetime; so on Sunday morning at 9 AM I turned on the TV.

Except for Patriots and Red Sox, nether of which are in season—or impending blizzards or cataclysmic world events—I never watch TV in the daytime. So it was a day of revelations.

First, George Will. Is George Willl on every major network all of Sunday morning, or is that just an hallucination brought on by fever?  Listening to George Will talk in a monotone about collective bargaining is right up there with watching paint dry.

And am I just imagining this, or did we all have George Will as a classmate in seventh grade? The boy who gave oral reports on current events for extra credit?

Next: there is an Oprah channel. I have just discovered this. Desperately clicking my way through a hundred channels, I discovered that Oprah Winfrey now has bought her own TV channel and is able to pay homage to herself all day long every day.

Was it because I still had a pounding headache...or does Oprah really SHRIEK a lot?

Moving on from there, I watched an endless documentary about fundamentalist Mormon communitiies; and then I watched an endless documentary about the Amish; and after a while they becgan to seem indistinguishable, except for polygamy, which the Amish don't care for.

I vaguely watched a FLDS woman give birth to her seventh baby, helped out by her benignly-smiling three sister wives, who then had to prepare dinner for their 26 chillden; and then I watched an Amish woman sew, wash, and iron the clothing for her family—without electricity. Her children will not go beyond eighth grade in school because higher education is thought to be corrupting.  Watching, I thought: is there anything remotely to be envied about the lives of these women???

And my answer was yes. They do not watch daytime television.

Recently I finished a new Gooney Bird book which takes place in February, just before the children go off on thier school vacation ("Gooney Bird on the Map"..the second-graders are studying geogaphy); it will be published next fall. So I have been thinking about February, and what a crummy month is usually is...weatherwise, at least.

But yesterday was my February child's (my oldest child)'s birthday...she is FIFTY THREE!  How did that happen?!...and I was remembering how excited I was (I was TWENTY!) to be driven to the hosptal in New London, Connecticut, that cold morning. It was a Thursday. She was born that evening, and in those days new moms stayed in the hospital for a few days...unlike now.  So there I was, thrilled to have my pink-cheeked, reddish-blond-haired baby girl (and I also had a good book, I remember: I was reading Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" (see, I was scholarly even when I was a college drop-out and a too-young mother); and that weekend a big snowstorm hit Connecticut. Much of the hospital staff couldn't get to work. So it was very bare-bones and quiet in the corridors. Quite a nice little vacation, actually, with a book, a baby, and food on a tray.

Here she is six week later:

wearing her grandmother's christening gown.

I have just finished the first draft of Part 2 of the fourth book in what was once The Giver trilogy, soon to be, I guess, quartet. It is now at 309 pages so I expect the final first draft will be well over 400, the longest book I've done. And it is taking forever because I interrupt it with other, shorter projects (and also trips, moving, movies, and real life in all its various forms)

This house officially goes on the market February 27th (photo from real estate brochure):

...and in the meantime, they are starting work on our new and smaller place: bookcases, etc. If this house is sold we will move in late May and so between now and then I will have to face the monumental task of sorting things out and making decisions. AND a book tour (for "Bless This Mouse") in late March. AND the Arbuthnot Lectre (St. Louis, mid-April). AND the IRA convention (early-May) etc. etc.

But I focus on smaller increments of time. Tuesday, an eye appintment. Tuesday night a friend arrives from California, for two nights. Thursday and Friday mornings I spend at two different schools...something I almost NEVER do anymore.

Oh dear, I am falling into the Blog Trap:  Recitation of My Life. How dull is that! February is the cause. We all become lifeless and boring in February.

Sorry. :-(

Well.  I've been tidying up the house because tomorrow a real estate photographer is comig to take pictures, because the house is going on the market soon, and so...on the theory that I would never see my office this neat again..I took some photos myself, as a memento.  Then tried to create an album of House Photos, and somehow, without intending to, posted the album on Facebook.

I could, of course, have deleted them. But I decided not to...because what the heck, the house is for sale, and maybe somewhere out there in Facebook land, is the perfect person who wants to pay $$$ to live in it.

We are moving only a short distance away, doing a bit of downsizing, because this house has ten rooms and there are only two if us living in it.  It will be a wrench, though. I have lived in this house longer than I've ever lived in any house. I grw up in a military family and moving was a way of life.  For that reason I don't dread it the way many people do, and in fact even find it exhilirating.

But oh, I will miss my spice rack, which  I designed, and which is the best spice rack in the world. I'll put my photos here and if you really peer hard at the kitchen, you will see the spice rack. Also, please notice how neat and tidy my office is!

And if you are looking for a great house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, here it is: these are only four rooms of it.  There are six other rooms. They are all wonderful. And there is a weeping cherry treee in the yard. Oh dear, now I may start weeping myself.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I imagine you all know, from your school days, the Frost poem. Frost, of course, was a New England poet and knew what he was talking about when it came to ice. Here is my backyard:

 

and my front walk:

It is unusual to see Alfie out there because he hates and fears the snow, and the only way I can get him outside is to pick him up---26 poounds---take him struggling to the door, and toss him outside. Even then he just stands there and cries and I feel like an 8-year-old wanting to jeer "Big crybaby!"

But in truth I feel like a big crybaby myself when every morning we wake up to MORE SNOW.  Last week we got a $100 fine from the city for having our sidewalk inadequately shoveled. But there is no place to put the snow anymore.  And just to add another layer of morosity here, this morning I went out and shoveled, lifting the shovel to try to toss each load of snow onto snowbanks already 5 feet high, and then I came back in to continue work on a manuscript, right at a place where a young protaganist is training to cliimb a mountain, working to strengthen her legs and arms and back. Hah. She should go out and shovel some snow.

I did have a respite from winter when I went The Woodlands, Texas, two weekends ago, to a book festival there...here I am with the terrific bunch of kids who were my guides and caretakers for the day

and this past weeknd I was in NYC at the SCBWI conference, but of course it was snowy there as well.

1100 or so people there, including lots of old friends. I had dinner one evening with Robie Harris and breakfast one morning with Linda Sue Park.

People struggling past, to try to get to work, or wherever, are carrying umbrellas, because the precipitation has now become sleet, and the newscasters say everything is going to freeze solid. As Frost pointed out, for destruction, ice is also great.

My daughter in San Francisco is about to start the process of re-doing a kitchen, and she called the other day to ask my opinion of ice-on-the-door refrigerator as opposed to ice-in-the-feezer. I have both, a different kind at each of my two houses. No real opinion, I guess, though I do like the ease of holding your glass to the door and having the cubes plop in. But right now we could just reach outside and break off an icicle.

Froze

I'm just remembering something. Several years ago I was reading a new book by the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk (I just looked it up to check the year it was published; it was 2004, and a review says "acclaimed Turkish author Pamuk delivers a nearly impenetrable political novel.")  My grandson, Rhys, wandered through the room, glanced at the cover of my book,  and commented, "I see you're reading a book called 'Snow.'"   I was quite startled because he was only 4, and I said, "Rhys! You can read!"  He looked equally startled by this revelation and he said, "No, I didn't read it. I recognized it."

It's an interesting observation, and though I tried to explain to him that reading is, actually, largely nothing more than recognition....he became bored and wandered away.

Anyway, today I was thinking about SNOW, for obvious reasons. We have been assailed by snow off and on since mid-December, when i got stuck in Zurich interminably because the airports closed.  Then I went to South America and just missed another big snowstorm here. Last Friday I flew to Houston, delayed by yet another snowstorm. And tomorrow I go to New York, but have luckily once again gotten the timing right because I think we'll be dug out by this afternoon.

Here is the view from my dining room window:

But if you step back, here is more of the same room:

and then look closely, there on the table, is:

which was delvered to me yesterday, a fragrant and colorful thank you from a friend who came recently to dinner.

The delivery person, a woman, was an opera singer. No, she didn't burst into an aria (though she should have, because the friend who sent the flowers is named Mimi; so Rudolpho's deathbed cries: "MIMI! MIMI!" would have been great) but we got to talking, and that's how I happen to know that making a living as an opera singer is very tough, and so one trudges through snow and delivers flowers on the side.

And now I mst finish up the power-point I'm using Saturday morning in New York at the SCBWI conference where I am the opening speaker. I fiddled around with a lot of different ideas and themes for this particular speech but finally settled on the never-ending topic of where one gets ideas.

Mostly, in truth, they come out of nowhere and take you by surprise.

I think an opera singer appearing at your door, holding a spring bouquet, during a snowstorm, is a such a moment.

Here I am back in Cambridge, where today it is snowing once again. But before I move on from my memories of Easter Island, I'll post a few more photos:

This is what the landscape loks like: desolate, beautiful in a rugged way.  You can see, down by the coast, a row of 15 moai (they face inward, always, never looking out to sea)

and here I am, down there with those fifteen. I LOST that Red Sox cap, incidentlly, on the trip. Maybe now some Rapa Nui kid is wearing it, wihtout a clue about who the Red Sox are.

I included this photo, with the wild horses, because it gives a sense of the size of the heads that are everywhere (and if they were to excavate this one, there would be many feet more below ground. These statues are HUGE)

And they are carefully protected, with strict rules about not touching them...and the threat that if a tourist is caught touching one,  not only will there be a huge fine, but also you will miss your plane home because the court proceeding will take DAYS.  But of course the horses don't know or care. They brush up against the statues, walk across the petroglyphs---clomp clomp clomp---and worse.

This is looking down into the crater of one of the three volcanoes that formed the island. Because the walls of the crater create a kind of greenhouse effect, the vegetation inside the volcano is very lush, compared to the barren landscape that covers most of the island.

Incidentally, there are very few creatures on Easter Island. The horses, of course, imported long ago from elsewhere. Some birds. But no snakes. There are some small ants but we saw no sign of any other insects---and it was a treat being in a tropical climate with no mosquitoes!  Windows wide open all night, and the only worry was that a curious horse might poke its head in.

These photographs are all taken by Kay, the friend I was traveling with, because she is more efficient than I and has already downoaded and put hers in order. Mine are still mostly in my camera. But mine will look very much the same.

Easter Island belongs to Chile...hence the Chilean greeting as a title for this post....but the native population is Rapa Nui. I would say hello in their language if i knew how.

Yesterday, when I was huffing and puffing my way up the side of a volcano to see the quarry where the Rapa Nui statues were carved, I realized that when I signed into the National Park entrance ledger, and had to put my age---73---I looked at the previous ages on the list and saw that I was the oldest person there, at least that day. So I was feeling smug. But also wondering what the heck would happen to someone (me?) my age who had a heart attack while hiking in the hot sun in this desolate landscape.  Luckily I came down just fine and had, instead of a heart attack, a nice warm shower at my hotel.

(The hillside leading up the quary. You can see the statues everywhere. There are over 900.)

But today I asked my Rapa Nui guide about medical care on this tiny island in the middle of nowhere. They say it is the most remote inhabited place on earth)  He loked enthusiastic and optimistic when he told me that three young Rapa Nui men are now studying medicine on the South American continenet. And they will come back to the island when they finish their studies.

Then there will be three trained doctors here. Cat scan? No. MRI? No. Operating room? No. Surgeon? No. But still...

I'm not trying to deter anyone from coming to this absoultely fascinating place!  just be aware that it is incredibly remote and  amazingly desolate.

I had known in advance about the statues..called moai...of course. But I'd not known that the island has a population of semi-wild horses that roam everywhere. More horses than humans. They were brought to the island by early explorers and reproduce unchecked. It's quite beautiful to encounter, while hiking, a herd of galloping horses. But they don't have enough water, and the brush on which they graze isn't nourishing enough. So they are thin, often gaunt; and now and then you encounter a dead body; yesterday I saw, pathetically, an emaciated foal standing because the body of a mare.  Typically American, I asked the guide is there was anything to be done for the foal, any way to save it. He seemed surprised by the suggestion. It's nature's way, he said, with a shrug.

(These two actually look pretty good)

It is January and I am sitting outdoors, writing this, wearing shorts. Some chickens are pecking in the grass nearby. This morning I watched a surfing competition among the young local guys.  The once-a-day plane from Chile has just come in overhead. Tomorrow I'll take that plane and will end up on Friday back in snowy Boston.

*  IORANA!  That's how you say hello in Rapa Nui.  I just checked.

I am leaving tomorrow, with an adventurous woman friend, for first Santiago, Chile, and from there to Easter Island.  For some reason I have always been fascinated with Easter Island...or Rapa Nui, as it is called by Polynesians...but never thought I'd actually get there, since it is the most remote place on earth. That means, I guess, the farthest from any other land. But one day some months ago when I was talking about my fascination with it, my frined Kay said, "Hey, I'd do that!" And so we are.

Just for the record, here's where it is:

...and of course everyone knows about the mysterious structures there, which date back (the earliest ones) to the 12th century:

There are also caves with wall paintings and lots of interesting cultural phenomena. Few roads, and most of what you see is accessible only on foot...so we will be doing a lot of hiking.  Kay says she won't do caves. I won't do cliffs.  It's the old Jack Spratt and his wife thing.

People have asked if I would set a book there. And the question makes me think of a trip I took not long ago. Last spring I was in South Africa and while I was there, I visited an elementary school in a small village with an unpronouncable name. One little boy of seven or eight, in a crowded classroom, had a strip of bright blue cloth tied around his upper arm, over the sleeve of his school uniform. I asked the guide about it, and was told that it meant the child had recently had a death in his family. He would wear the blue armband for a period of mourning and it would let others know that they should not say things to him like, "How are you?' which would remind him of his sadness.

I found myself in my "what if...." mode, the one that all writers sink into now and then. Earlier in the day I had been watching a couple of very large beetles waddling around in the dirt near the cottage where I was staying. Now I began to picture an African child who yearns for a pet (don't all children?) and who secretly, privately, decides that one of these huge beetles would be that for him. Maybe he gives it a name, and feeds it, and builds an enclosure out of twigs and grass to keep it safe.  But..what if?  One morning he finds it dead. And so he ties a strip of blue cloth around his arm and trudges sadly off to school. (I could picture the illustration) And then...

HALT. Stop right there.   Fortunately I realized, before I went one  step further in my mind, that this was an impossible story for me to write. I didn't have a clue about this culture. All I knew was one little tidbit of information give to me, a tourist, by a guide. It could have been mis-information. It certainly was incomplete information. Was the blue scrap of cloth a religious talisman? If so, what religion? I didn't even know what tribe this child was part of, or anything about its history or customs.

And so no, I am not going to set a book in Polynesia, not until I get my doctorate in anthrolpology...unless I were to write of a young person taken there as a tourist...and even then it would be fraught with potential pitfalls.

I'm just going to hike around (with a guide)...caves okay; no cliffs...and wonder and daydream.

I was just reading the January/February issue of The Horn Book, and came across, in the list of Best Books of 2010 the title THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson.  I don't know the author and haven't read the book. But something about the title triggered a memory, one of those fleeting things that doesnt go away, but also doesn't step forward and identify itself.

I googled the book and read about it, and nothing was familiar (except that the author and I went to the same college, apparently...far apart in time, though)

Then I had a brief AHA! moment, tracked this one down, and found a very favorite book from my own childhood:

This was a familiar and a very happy memory, this book, which I loved when I was 8 and 9.  But it still wasn't what I was looking for...though both titles, THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE and THE SEA IS ALL AROUND, made me remember a psychiatrist friend describing what is called an "oceanic" feeling....a feeling I certainly experienced as a child, a sort of oneness-with-the-universe sensation.

Then I remembered. I remembered both the experience (I was four, standing at an easel in a nursery school in New York)  and later, the written, recollected account of it in an autobiographical book called AUTUMN STREET (published by Houghton Mifflin in 1980):

Sky is all over. The sea is all around. The sky is everywhere.

He's got the whole world in his hands.

Here in Maine—and rumor has it, in Cambridge as well—the wind is howlng and the snow is flying. Reading in the paper about all the travelers stranded in airports in Europe and the USA, I think we were amazingly lucky to make our way out of Zurich on 12/22 and eventually home by a circuitous route. 

The blizzard began last night, as predicted. But Ben and Lori and the boys were able to be here for the day (Funny Rhys, who had a birthday in early December, said to me on arriving: "I believe when you last saw me, i was only nine") to exchange gifts, have lunch, (and champagne, to celebrate Christmas and aslo Lori's having been named a partner in her law firm), and to watch the Patriots trounce Buffalo (while the boys, 12 and 10, went down to the Magic Lantern movie theater on Main Street to see "Tron: Legacy")  All in all a small-town holiday. Anticpating the snowstorm, I had stocked up on food and flashlight batteries (haven't lost power, though; not yet at least); and Martin and his son Andrew, who is with us, schlepped firewood in from the barn so we were/are all set for the long haul.  Still hoping to get home tomorrow, though, if the weather lets up.

I finished Anita Shreve's new book, "Rescue," on my KIndle, and have started "The Hare with the Golden Eyes" by Edmund DeWaal

At the heart of Edmund de Waal's strange and graceful family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, is a one-of-a-kind inherited collection of ornamental Japanese carvings known as netsuke. The netsuke are tiny and tactile--they sit in the palm of your hand--and de Waal is drawn to them as "small, tough explosions of exactitude." He's also drawn to the story behind them, and for years he put aside his own work as a world-renowned potter and curator to uncover the rich and tragic family history of which the carvings are one of the few concrete legacies.

which was highly recommended by a friend. Being snowbound is a good occasion for reading, of course—or doing jigsaw puzzles—or for watching movies. Last fall the video rental store in this little town closed its doors, and I bought a batch of videos at slashed prices...some old favorites, of course...like "Milk" and "The Hours".... but also some I had never seen, like  "Sexy Beast" with Ben Kingsley, and "In the Valley of Elah."

I might actually work, as well. Now there's a thought! I have my current ongoing manuscript on this laptop. And I have a speech to write: keynote address for the SCBWI convention in late January.

So: no shortage of things to uccupy my time. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!