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Since this is a lecture of sorts, I’ll keep it short.  After reading an article in the newspaper – you know, that inky thing that comes to the house via the doorstep – I feel compelled to address the “dumbing of humanity”.  The article mentioned how printed maps are being phased out due to the popularity of GPS devices.

Okay, maybe maps are  a pain, what with having to fold and unfold them and jamming them into an already full glove box.  But… map reading is just one more thing we humans are giving up in favor of having a machine do our thinking for us.  Every time we give up learning new skills, we cheat our brain out of its natural tendency to want to learn and fire new synapses.

There is a whole generation of people who will grow up not knowing how to do some of the following: read a map,  write/read in cursive (many schools don’t teach it any more), sew on buttons or hem a skirt, fix a leaky faucet or rewire a lamp, make ice the old fashioned way with trays, open cans with manual can openers, tie shoes, tell time with an analog clock, build a campfire, make a meal from scratch, write a simple letter to a loved one using no abbreviations.  I could go on, but  I’m sure you can think of some of your own things to add.

Why are we so content to let machines  or others do these important brain/ problem solving exercises for us?  Why are we letting our brains turn to mush?

Technology is great, and I’m not going to throw away my laptop anytime soon. But, if we don’t start exercising our brain with these varied skills and activities, where will we as humans end up? Not as the smartest species surely.  As the old saying goes, “Use it or lose it.”

Give your sexiest organ something to do.

If you want to join the Bloggers from all over the world in a discussion about world poverty you can find out more at: The Blog Action Site. Just click on the logo above, and join in the effort. And when you do, pass the word along to your friends.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

So, in the midst of massive packeting, I took an (all-too-frequent, I'm sorry to admit) email break, to learn, much to my delight, that EMILY was recently a book selection for a teen book group. The group's leader, Rachel Kamin, tells me:

"The members of the Temple Israel High School Girls Book Club in West Bloomfield , MI – Emmy, Cassie, Jordana, Rachel, Liz & Ariel – discussed Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa at their first meeting of the year. This year they will also be reading The Weight of the Sky by Lisa Ann Sandell, Light Years by Tammar Stein, and Notes for the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonenblick. Last year, the girls enjoyed A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life by Dana Reinhardt, Goy Crazy by Melissa Schorr, and Jailbait by Leslea Newman."

Apparently a lively discussion ensued, which I'm sorry to have missed. But how exciting and flattering to have been chosen! (And by the way, "Weight of the Sky" is on my to-be-read pile, as well, as Lisa Ann Sandell and I are going to be speaking together on a Jewish Book Month panel in November).

In the meantime, I thought I would post the questions Rachel used for her group discussion. I have to admit it was a fun exercise (if more than a little bit narcissistic) for me to think of my own answers to the following, now that I've had a year or so of distance from the manuscript:

High School Girls Book Club
October 8, 2007


Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa by Micol Ostow
Discussion Questions


1. At the beginning of the book (p. 3) Emily explains that people mistake her for being stuck-up. Do you agree with her that “being stuck-up is infinitely better than sticking out”?

2. Why does Emily’s sense of loss over her grandmother’s death confuse her? Why does she feel that she is not entitled to her emotions? (p. 22) How would you answer her question: “How can you lose something you never had to begin with?” (p. 13)

3. Do you think Lucy’s coldness/unfriendliness towards Emily is justified? What preconceptions does Emily have of her cousin and her family? What preconceptions do they have of her?

4. Emily admits that “most of my feelings for Noah are more about the idea of Noah than Noah himself.” (p. 104) What is going on with their relationship?

5. Why does Emily decide not to go back to New York for her brother’s birthday? (p. 130)

6. What does Emily mean when she says that being “Jewish is like a default state of being, whether you are conscious of it or not”? (p. 78) Did Emily’s Jewish identity play a significant role in the story?

7. Why do you think Emily and Lucy both assumed that it was Gloria who broke off ties with her family in Puerto Rico?

8. What did you think of the book’s ending? Was it expected, believable, satisfying?

Hello!

It's been over 3 months since I've written anything of my own, but tonight it just felt possible. I went over to one of my favorite Magnetic Poetry sites for inspiration, and these words got me started -- cloud, strike, crash, tingling, waiting, happen -- even though I only used a few of them.

Here is the result, not quite perfected, fresh off the press as it were:

Parchment

by Nancy Rae Kienzler

It was our longest, our greatest, our finest drought,
The time we dried like raisins, like sawdust, like parchment.
Experienced as we were, knowing it would end,
As droughts always do, we waited patient and still.

And yet, nerves tingled. Senses heightened.
Do you smell electricity? Are those cirrus or cumulous?
Are the leaves up? Are the cows lying down?
Even the animals were restless then, pacing and sighing.

One night we heard the crackle across the bone-dry hills.
We sat on the porch and looked Southward,
Then wrapped around the side to look Westward.
It was beautiful, and so brilliant, but no more. Not a drop.

I don’t remember the fall or feel of that first raindrop,
Nor the first storm, momentous as it must have been.
But the weeks, and the weeks, of watching and wanting,
Waiting and withering – I hold on to those.

Well, I'm honoring National Poetry Month quietly after all. A mere two weeks after I wrote my first April poem, I've written my second. Thank goodness I had a little E.M. Forster to inspire me today.

Late to the Party

“Only connect!” he said, and in one inspired moment
she inventories her life, her melancholy connections,
her splintered fragmented rent-asunder day-to-day.

She lives her prose. She eats and drinks her prose.
Her prose keeps the heat on, the lights on, gas in the car,
roof over head, you know. You know.

Her passion? Her passion’s been hiding out a long time --
biding its time, as the minutes days years drop away
almost without notice, like water shaken from an umbrella
by a woman arriving late to a party.

“Only connect!” he said, and now she’s late to the party,
a little soggy and disheveled, and wondering how long she’ll have to stay.