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OH MAN. I have to tell you. Lots of times I wonder what a lip reader would think if he or she saw me in my car. Others would see my lips moving, but maybe they would think I had a Bluetooth headset. But a lip reader would know: cheesy love songs.

Today I was sitting in a café, in my usual sunny window, and I’d had a great writing session all morning but now my brain was fried. And I looked right out the window—the same window I sit in every day--right into people’s cars.

Lots of people were singing! Driving by; stopped at the light; heads bobbing—no lip reading necessary. Singing and car dancing.

I am so happy.

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Thank goodness I'm Chinese.

The window of opportunity between New Year's and Chinese New Year has always given me an excellent, extra grace period in which to ramp up for the new year, and I always need it. Damon has three families, all of whom have super intense holiday traditions, plus my family does Christmas, too. By the time January 1st comes, I am worn. Out. It takes all my energy every year not to become a Bah, Humbug.

(I love the actual people in these families, which is what ends up saving me.)

Some years, if Damon and I don’t get to do holiday cards, we send out Chinese New Year cards instead. I always like to take this time to clear my “debts” (here redefined to include whatever things I still want to finish in the old year), clean my house (literally and figuratively), brainstorm resolutions, and go!

This year, I've decided housecleaning includes this blog. That is why, with the Year of the Rat only a couple days away, I'm going to blog about Christmas.

Christmas was actually not as long ago for me as it was for you. Damon's three families did the whole thing on time, but my family just did Christmas two weeks ago, with the meal and everyone and presents. For ritual, we just have four stockings—unmarked and unpersonalized—tacked over the fireplace very gingerly, in a way that won’t support any weight. Those stockings represent me, my brother, and our two spouses.

The stockings always look sad and empty, and two of them aren’t even “stockings”; they’re red-and-green velvet wine bags that my parents got at some holiday party. (The wine bags actually look nicer than the other two, “real” stockings we got for $1.99 apiece from a drugstore twenty years ago, so even though I make fun of them, I appreciate them, too.) These stockings excite little interest in my brother and me every year, which disappoints my mom—every year. She always has to urge us to go look, and when we do, invariably, there are red envelopes waiting inside, each containing 50 bucks—sometimes 60—in crisp 10- and 20-dollar bills.

“Ohhh!!!” my brother and I and our spouses always say, surprised all over again. “Thanks, Mom!”

“Don’t thank me!”

Thank you, Santa!!

This year, after so many years of her hinting, “Santa might have left your something. Don’t you want to look?” we finally knew what to expect. The four of us gamely went over to the fireplace and did a whole round of, “Heyy! Here’s one for you! And here’s one for you!” handing out red envelopes, my mom beaming on.

Then, at the end of the night, we discovered that one of the envelopes was short. (One of the stockings had 40 dollars, not 60.)

“MAMA CLAUS! MAMA CLAUS!” three of us sounded the alarm, my brother protesting and laughing the whole time (“It's not a big deal!”). My mother came running. I don’t think she liked the “Mama Claus” moniker much, but she liked our message even less. “One of the stockings is 20 dollars short!”

“What?! NO!!” She looked aghast, her eyes growing huge. "I put it back!!"

“Busted! So busted!!" we howled. "Dipping into the Christmas stockings!” But my mother was adamant, taking the red envelope jointly in my brother’s hands. “Are you sure you looked? Look again!” Accusing my brother of total incompetence. And lo and behold . . .

“Oh! OH!” my brother cried out, whipping out a crisp twenty. “A-HAHHAHA! It was stuck in the lining!”

We were dying. Why is my family always like this?

“Awwww,” my mom said, shamefaced. “Why’d you trick me to confess? I needed cash one day,” she confided, now triumphant. “But it didn't make sense. I took much more than twenty.”


A recent blog entry by my friend Julie gave me food for thought on the cultural mishmosh of our lives. She mentioned, just in passing, that Santa Claus brings presents for her two (soon to be three!) kids. “Believing in the chubby bearded guy was Kevin's tradition growing up, not mine, but the kids hear about Santa from school, daycare, and pop culture, and I don't see any harm in it, so we're preserving the tradition as long as the kids keep believing,” she said.

That’s all she said, but it was the first time I’d ever considered the Santa dilemma from the us-as-parents' point of view. Usually, I think of it from the kids’ perspective. (Santa still leaves me presents, after all—at three households these days, no less—and with very different cultural implications at each. The Santa that brings socks and underwear is different from the Santa that individually wraps little toys and chocolates, who is different from the Santa with the red envelopes.)

When I think about the Santa dilemma, I always think back to the raging debate I first heard in the halls outside my first grade classroom, back in the day. Some of my classmates argued—violently, ganging up with each other—that Santa wasn’t real; others still believed.

I don’t remember actively believing in Santa as a small child, myself. I don't think I'd even considered the question up until that point. Presents from Santa appeared in my house, too, but without a lot of fanfare, and for some reason I'd never been that curious. So when I heard my classmates arguing—with all the scorn and hope that came on both sides—I felt neutral. Unsurprised. I hadn’t put that much thought into it, but the explanation (“my dad says it’s all our parents!”) suddenly made sense.

I mean, I might have been a little disappointed. Shocked, upset. It wasn’t like I was looking to be randomly disillusioned that day. But no one was paying attention to my reaction at that moment, so I was able to take my struggling emotions home in peace. And let's be honest: My parents never tried that hard to make it real. The “From Santa” tags were always written in their handwriting—something I was quick to point out in subsequent years. (Occasionally, after that, however, random unlabeled presents would also appear under the tree without “From Santa” tags, which would “surprise” my parents. This became a new source of aggravation for me.)

The darnedest thing was that my parents never gave it up, either. Just look at the stocking story I just told: my mom balked at us calling her Mama Claus. Even now, when Santa’s not bringing us wrapped presents anymore, you’ll never get her to say Santa’s not real.

(I'm sure I could get any of Damon’s parents to say it, in spite of how elaborately they do it up.)

I went through a phase in 2nd grade—and off and on even through 4th grade—when I was hellbent on proving Santa wasn’t real. I ransacked the house to find where extra presents or extra gift wrap might be hidden. I never found gifts, but I did eventually find extra rolls of wrapping paper that matched Santa's—hidden high-up in a closet in the guest bedroom. My parents were completely bland about it, admitting nothing.

I remember the wild, irrational hope coming to me at times during that campaign—long after the early years when I neither believed nor felt the issue was important. In that 2nd-through-4th-grade phase, it suddenly became important. I needed to prove it. Suddenly, I was going to make them say it.

But othertimes, because I couldn’t—and because they wouldn't—I’d still think, Could it be . . . ? And something huge in me would grow, irrational.

If I had a kid today, would I play Santa Claus? Would I—could I—dare to not?

I don’t know.

(Maybe my kids will have to be extra good, and I'll just hope irrationally along with them!)

I do have this philosophy that love—and magic—is created when two or more people play a game using the same special rules and definitions.

But that is a blog entry for another time.

love,
r


What do you guys think/ remember/ plan to do—about Santa Claus?

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It was a dark and stormy night when... two very good old friends of mine decided to chuck it all and move to Vermont. To do what, you inquire? Why, no mystery here-- to open a new bookstore. Yes, a new independent bookstore! (Oh, how much fun to write that!)

So if mysteries make your blood curdle, check it out-- it's called Mystery on Main Street, and it's located at 119 Main Street in Brattleboro. They've started a blog, too.

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I knew I wasn't in New York anymore
Southbound, I-89, Vermont to Long Island
Somewhere near Randolph,
one of those towns you only see
on picture postcards,
in art house movies,
and pinpoint black dots on a road atlas

These are the towns we pass straight through
these are the places we forget
These are the people we ignore

And I would never have known Randolph
And I never would have stopped
I would have kept my foot on the pedal
and soared by,
sixty-five miles per hour

But I know this name
I know this place
because my car's oil pressure gauge
went flatline at exit 4,
You don't fool around
with "STOP SAFELY!" messages
blinking on the dashboard
Something tells you
you're in trouble

Like a mirage,
a Mobil gas station appeared,
just off the exit ramp,
tucked into a white carpet,
sheaths of jagged, shaggy layers of snow
surprisingly busy with snowmobiles
truckers in workboots and parkas and knit caps,
and locals, fair-skinned and sturdy,
buying the Sunday paper and a pack of cigarettes

I pulled in, parking my unruly Volvo SUV in a corner,
ashamed and awkward and intimidated
by people who knew where they were going
and what they were doing

I prayed someone inside
the tiny store at the edge of the crossroad
would save me

"We're too small," the manager said,
never looking at me, ringing the cashier,
wiping the counter,
answering the phone
"We don't service cars.
You're gonna' need a tow.
25 miles to the nearest town
Don't worry.
25 miles is nothing around here."

AAA had to come to
rescue me
I learned a lot about Randolph, Vermont
in the two hours of my unintended visit to this
town, buffered by crossroads in the middle of nowhere

I asked Brenda,
the Mobil gas station attendant,
what people did in Randolph
and she told me:
"You're doing it."

Brenda bought me coffee
and lent me her cell phone
to call AAA
("Only Verizon works out here,"
she said)
We were the same age
Fortysomething
She'd rather be
a stained-glass artist
than a Mobil gas station attendant
but she already has grandchildren
she was abused for nine years
she knows how to open car hoods
she knows how to find dipsticks
she wants her children to join
The National Guard
I told her:
"I write poetry"

Driving home in a thick, white breeze of snow Sunday afternoon
Clutching the wheel for dear (not deer, ahem) life,
afraid my car would roll over
as two cars did just before me
on an icy bend on I-89 South

I saw a sign just like this



I thought I had stepped onto the set of Northern Exposure, a show I remember more for the cute Jewish doctor in Alaska
(okay, it could happen, but his mother wouldn't be happy about it)
and the nomadic moose in the opening credits

You see a lot of strange things on Long Island:
fake body parts pumped plump with Botox and gel,
Ugg boots and cuffed denim shorts,
Wrinkled in Time Grandpas in red Corvettes

We've got lots of doctors my mother wished I married
but we don't have moose



We do have the occasional MEESE-kite,
now that I think about it.
I wonder if MEESE is the plural of MOOSE

FYI: In Yiddish, meesekite ("mieskeit") are unattractive human faces.

Not that a moose isn't pretty in its own way.
It's an acquired taste, I suppose
Like squid
Like liver
Like gefilte fish

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Meet  43 children's authors & illustrators!

Kindling Words Caravan
Thursday, January 24, 2008
4:00-5:00
Phoenix Books
Essex, VT

I'll be there signing copies of Spitfire, and I'm bursting at the seams over the company I'll be keeping. 
Here are some hints...

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At least Lisa Yee's. My next editorial is about George Clooney.



(photo by Richard, taken at Joanna and Norwood Long's house)

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I brought back from Vermont a pound each of chocolate and penuche fudge for office sharing and have been industriously monitoring which is going faster. The results are surprising: although the chocolate is maintaining a consistent edge, the penuche is holding its own. Perhaps the Horn Book is even more New-England-parochial than we had all thought.

I share this thought with you because Kitty told me that I should reserve comment for another day on the amazing number of picture books we've recently received about pooping.

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Steve Jenkins gave a great speech yesterday morning here at the Red Clover conference connecting his own (and children's) interest in scale, the large scale and numbers involved in contemporary science, and the refusal of a large part of the public to believe in the scientific evidence regarding, among other issues, evolution. I'm hoping he will turn it into an article for us, so Steve, (or anyone at Houghton Mifflin, where Steve is visiting today) you're on notice that I'll be calling.

In the afternoon I hammered yet again at my favorite theme, that reading is ultimately a private exercise of the imagination and not a group activity, and that as librarians we have to remember to select books whose effects we will never know--it can't all be surefire story hour fare. For this point I chose to contrast Rachel Isadora's new edition of The Twelve Dancing Princesses (Putnam) with Jonathan Bean's At Night (FSG). Both books are great, but the first is a simply told, visually bold book that is perfect for sharing with a group while the second has its best audience in a group no larger than two.

Richard and I ended the day with a visit to Horn Book stalwart Joanna Rudge Long and her husband Norwood, who live in a Vermont-red house surrounded by mountains, the Appalachian Trail, and a maple-sugaring operation that looked nothing like the hole-in-a-tree-with-a-bucket I remembered from the picture books of my youth. The technology, scenery, company (including two smart and sweet dogs), conversation, and food could not have been better. While walking in the Longg' backyard--otherwise known as the AT--we endured a brief shower but were rewarded at its end with a full-on rainbow.

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I know it's early, but I want to let everyone know about the Burlington Book Festival coming up next month.  Burlington, VT hosts an incredible book festival each fall, just as the leaves are changing color in New England.  If you live in the Northeast (or even if you don't but you really, really like autumn leaves and books), it's worth the trip.  Most of the events are being held at Waterfront Theater on the shores of Lake Champlain.



I'll be presenting  on Sunday, September 16th at the Children's Literature Festival.  Here's my blurb from the festival website:

11:00 AM-12:00 PM

KATE MESSNER

Join Kate Messner for a trip back in time to the American Revolution on Lake Champlain. Kate will read from her middle grade historical novel Spitfire, set during the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776, sign books and present an interactive multimedia slide show about the real 12-year-old who fought in the battle. Kids will be invited to taste the food and try on the clothes of an 18th century sailor, handle artifact replicas and design their own powder horns to take home.

Waterfront Theatre Black Box, 3rd Floor

Right after my presentation, Linda Urban (lurban) will read from A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT and talk about the journey of writing and publishing a children's book.  (Even though Linda says it will make her nervous, my kids and I are definitely going to be in the audience!)

Also on tap for the Sunday kids' day... Tracey Campbell Pearson, James Kochalka, Anna Dewdney, Harry Bliss, Jim Arnosky, Barbara Seuling, Marie-Louise Gay, Barbara Lehman, and Warren Kimble.

And the rest of the Book Festival is nothing to scoff at either, with writers like Chris Bohjalian, Howard Frank Mosher, Russell Banks, and Joyce Carol Oates speaking on Saturday, September 15th.  The full schedule is posted at the festival website now. If you're in the area that weekend, please stop by the Children's Literature Festival and say hello! 

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I have a month pretty free of travel and speaking stuff so I’ve been doing more little library work in August. Here are a few things I’ve done this week both here and online.

• Stopped by the Tunbridge library in Monday to help a woman who is re-entering the workforce brush up on her Excel chops. I had to tell her that while Excel hasn’t changed much, the amount Excel tries to help the user has. That is, there are all these wizards and auto-widgets that try to make Excel easier but have the end result for novice users of making Excel harder. The main problem my student was having, however, was trying to figure out where her missing Word toolbar went and no matter how many times I said I pretty much couldn’t troubleshoot a personal computer problem remotely (and offered alternatives like a good manual or the help files) she sort of couldn’t stop talking about it. I see this fairly often. I suggested that she buy a USB drive so that I could give her homework assignments that she could take home.
• I talked to the Tunbridge librarian about a Photoshop problem she was having which was actually a much more complicated problem. She has taken photos of flowers for the library’s flower sale, but the way they show up on the screen and the way they print doesn’t reproduce the colors accurately. I showed her how to do some color adjustment in Photoshop but said that tweaking the printer to get things just right was likely overkill for what she was suggesting. Explained how color calibration works. Sometimes good tech support involves telling people that what they want to do is going to take significantly more time than they have budgeted, and suggesting an alternate plan. This sort of time estimate thing is fairly easy for me and seems to be a big difference between someone who is really comfy with computers and someone who is still in the early stages of getting to know how they work.
• The lady who lived next door to the library brought her laptop over to see if it had any “network card” in it so that she could use the library’s wifi instead of her dial-up. Answer: no, but I explained to her how she could buy one if she wanted to.
• Visited the Royalton Library to help the librarian figure out why the computer keeps asking for some sort of HP Setup CD when it starts and pops up a zillion messages, sometimes freezing the computer. Figured out how to turn off the thing that requires it. The staff computer also has some sort of virus file (according to AVG) that throws up random pop-ups but we couldn’t remove it even following Symantec’s instructions. Switching to Firefox at least made the pop-up problem go away and bought us some time.
• No one came to my Tuesday drop-in time. The network was down anyhow, for unknown reasons. The IT company who has the school contract wasn’t sure what the problem was and could give no firm ETA so I went to donate blood instead of waiting to see if anyone would show up just to tell them that our Internet was down. Even though my drop-in time is just “computer time” 90% of the people who come in use the Internet in some form or another.
• Wednesday I went with my friend Stan to the Tunbridge World’s Fair office. They are using some sort of Fair Management software that doesn’t play nice with the network. I knew I was in over my head so I brought my pal Stan in for a consult. He mostly hammered the software into shape while I cleaned up the office, organized things, and hung up a few years’ worth of ribbons. One of the library trustees who also works part time for the fair bought us lunch and offered us free tickets when the fair starts next month.
• I stopped by the Kimball Library in Randolph before drop-in time on Thursday. I’ve been working with the librarian who works on the website, helping make the site more functional for the staff as well as for patrons. I showed her how to get her web log files and run them through Webalizer and we looked at he traffic the site has been getting since we added the online catalog a few months back. I also helped her get a Kid’s Page started in the hopes that it will inspire the (very busy) kid/ya librarian to give us suggestions of what to put there.
• Thursday I had one student at drop-in time, a teacher from the high school who was trying to make a list of donors for the Crafts Center Restoration project in town. Someone had typed the list up originally and she needed to know how to add a name to the list she has on the disk. She wanted to use her computer at the school but it didn’t have a disk drive. So we muddled through that and I asked if she had any other questions and showed her how to make a mailing list using her ISP’s webmail program and also how to attach a photo to an email message.

Meanwhile this week, I’ve been going back and forth with some folks from VLA about changes we’re planning for the VLA website, bought tickets to Nova Scotia for a few talks I’ll be giving there in September, accepted an invitation to join the Steering Committee of the MaintainIT Project, made plans to do some work with Casey and the Scriblio project, firmed up plans for a talk in Rhode Island, passed on a talk in Delaware that conflicted with a talk I’m giving in Kansas, and started making plans for my next week of library visits and my next month of travel/talks. I have a friend who is another local librarian who is working possibly switching her library to an open source OPAC and we’ve been scheming about that. I got my inbox down to single digits by replying to almost everyone who had written me after the NYT/WSJ articles. If I haven’t replied to you yet, I swear I will this week.

That’s the report for now. Today is a day for guests and swimming in the pool and maybe some grilling in the backyard if the weather holds.

dayinthelife, jessamyn, librarian, me, rural, vermont, vla

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I'm rereading great bouquets of Robert Frost poems now for a project I'm working on, and I'm rediscovering how much I love his work.  So many little gems embedded in simple walks in the woods.  Can any Frost fans out there identify which poems these are from?  (I'll post answers next week.)

1. Earth's the right place for love.
2. Good fences make good neighbors.
3. We have ideas yet that we haven't tried.
4. So all who hide too well away must speak and tell us where they are.
5. 'Men work together,' I told him from the heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.'
6. 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.'
7. It's a nice way to live, just taking what Nature is willing to give.
   

If you live in New England, check out the  Robert Frost Trail in Ripton, VT some day.  It's a beautiful walk through woods and meadows, short enough for small kids.  You can stop along the way to read Frost verses that correspond to the landscape.  We stopped to catch frogs, too, on a trip when my son was little. The website says it will be closed for work for a few weeks in June but will be open in time for blueberry picking season.

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We’re going through some growing pains at the Vermont Library Association requiring a lot of email, extended explanations and apologies, and a revisting of what is and is not “normal” for libraries and library associations to do and to know. I’ve been quoting John Blyberg quite a bit.

Some people also just don’t like to step out of their comfort zone. They don’t want to absorb new things. I was on a top technology trends panel at OLA last January when someone asked, “what if we don’t want to learn about all these new technologies?” (paraphrase). I don’t think I was in the mood for hand-holding because my answer was, “it’s your job.” Really. I don’t believe libraries are life support systems for staff. We need to work for our bread. That means that we have so stop bunting and try to knock it out of the park every single time. That takes passion, and too many people in every industry, including libraries, lack it.

blyberg, libraryassociations, vermont, vla

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