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Thanksgiving smacks of Tradition.


Levy uses her mother Jutta’s discovered album - the actual poetic entries, art and oblaten of her friends sharing their twelfth year in Hamburg, Germany, from January through November – as the springboard for telling, in poetic verse, the true story of the Salzberg family’s last year in Germany. Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party reigned supreme. As public persecution of Jews and thus Jutta’s family increased daily, escape to family in America proved the only way out. Excerpts from Jutta’s diary share the Salzberg’s eventual safe passage to New York. Jutta’s sister Ruth’s entry closes the book.

        “Whoever loves you more than me
          Should write behind me, certainly.”

Levy created The Poesiealbum Project on her blog, The Year of Goodbyes.
She invites readers of all ages to send their own pages. 
Perhaps six lines about a wrong in the

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States. For most of us, that means celebrating with a big turkey dinner. However, in my Italian-immigrant family, every holiday calls for a multi-course dinner that typically consists of antipasto, soup, bread, pasta, meatballs, salad, cooked vegetables, roasted meat, potatoes, fresh fruit, and dessert. For Thanksgiving, we simply accommodate the turkey tradition by featuring the bird as our roasted meat.

I am so used to our family’s customs that I neglected to prepare my husband (then boyfriend) before he attended his first Thanksgiving dinner with my family. When my mother served homemade fettuccine and meatballs (following the requisite antipasto and soup), he assumed there would be no turkey. Being an easy-going guy, he didn’t say anything and simply ate his fill of pasta and meatballs.
Well, imagine his surprise when we whisked the pasta plates away and my mother brought out the bird, vegetables, and potatoes. Afterward, he told me he'd been too full to have more than a bite of turkey, and as a result, it hadn’t felt much like Thanksgiving to him. (Now he knows to pace himself, which I’m sure he’ll do tomorrow when we celebrate at my aunt’s.) Ironically, for me it wouldn’t have felt like Thanksgiving without pasta.

In this series of posts, we’ve been talking about the role of food in fiction. As JoAnn discussed, food can “ground fantasy in reality.” I agree. I also believe food plays an especially important role in historical and multicultural fiction. Everyone has to eat. Seeing what a character does and doesn’t eat can give readers insight into that character’s world, whether it’s a world of Scrapple and food rationing, as Mary Ann described in her post, or one where Christmas Eve dinner revolves around seafood, as in my novel Rosa, Sola. Because food-related customs and rituals can serve to bind people together or to set them apart, food can affect a character’s relationships, too. I still recall feeling like an outsider at lunch in elementary school. While other kids were eating peanut butter and jelly on squishy white bread, I had to deal with mortadella on crumbly, homemade Italian bread. No one ever swapped sandwiches with me!

Of course, food can be a characterization tool in all types of fiction. Like real people, characters may have quirky food preferences, preferences that can even affect a story’s plot. We see this in picture books like I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child and I'd Really Like To Eat a Child by Sylviane Donnio, illustrated by Dorothee de Monfreid. But food preferences can also play a role in middle-grade and young-adult stories. After all, where would the plot of Twilight and other vampire books be if vampires craved macaroni and cheese instead of human blood?

For everyone celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, I wish you a happy

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Good Morning:

I've been tagged by the lovely and always sincere Katey of Quacks of Life. I love to give the 7 random facts about myself, but...I won't tag anyone else because I think I've tagged just about everyone I know already. So, here it goes:

1. Like Katey, I knew that my kids would learn at home before they were born.

2. I no longer count my steps.

3. I can't breath in complete darkness.

4. I have a passion for Fried Green Tomatoes.

5. I will be celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary on June 13th.

6. I hate showers, as I can't breath when water gets on my face, so I take baths.

7. I have no sense of logic, therefore, everything I own is out of order.

and...there you have it. 7 random facts about me.

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I have a few errands to run today, and then I'm off to the studio to paint some backgrounds for my next round of collage ACEOs.

I've listed another set of 3 ACEO collage prints in My Etsy Shop. This particular set includes 3 prints from my "Best Friends Forever" series.

"Best Friends Forever #3 : Circus Men"
Check out the guy in the pink pants. His fly is open!! I have a series of vintage photos with these two guys hamming it up for the camera. They were circus performers from the 20's. I think they were a couple.


"Best Friends Forever #4"


"Best Friends Forever #1"


I'm offering free shipping on all of my "sets of 3" ACEO collage prints today, Saturday and Sunday. As always, if anyone is interested in my collage, it can be purchased directly through my blog. Just go to my profile and send me an email.

As always, thank you so much for continuing to stop by my blog to read my daily entries and take peeks at my art.

Until Tomorrow:
Kim
Garden Painter Art
gnarly-dolls

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