Kids Heart Authors–February 14

Dina will be attending Kids Heart Authors Day at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA from 10-12 am, along with the following picturebook, middle grade and young adult authors and illustrators: Jeannine Atkins, Diane deGroat, Rich Michelson, Crissa-Jean Chappell and Ellen Wittlinger. Please try to come and spread the word to your friends in western Massachusetts–this event is for children and families of all ages!

Traditions

We have a tradition on Chanukah to put menorahs in windows on all sides of the house, and then get out and walk around the house, singing and looking at the lights from outside. Since we started doing this, around eight years ago, we have gone out in all types of weather–knee-deep snow, sheets of ice (a bit of a challenge since there’s a hill involved), mud, rain, sleet, blizzards, and clear starry nights. But it is never disappointing, especially with my kids’ exuberant energy; their enthusiasm rears at the bit, even though they’ve reached the attitude-driven teen and post-teen years. And at least that means they’re old enough to make the latkes, and I don’t have to, any more.

It’s been fun having both kids home for the five nights of Chanukah so far, though today they took off for New York. So it will be just my husband me trouncing around the house in a little while. I wonder if it will feel silly, as I don’t think we’ve ever done it without at least our son being there. Our daughter has missed a bunch of Chanukahs, since the holiday’s been earlier the last two years and she was in college, though last year we Skyped her so she could participate virtually. Amazing–the power of technology.

A Chanukah tradition we started this year each night as we opened our presents, was Tzedakah, which means giving to charity. Each night we pick an organization to give money to, and we all contribute. So far, we’ve picked refugee relief in Darfur, Heifer International, a local shelter, an organization where Veterans go into schools to talk about the horrors of war, and Neve Shalom, an organization that brings Jewish and Arab kids and teenagers together for peace programs. We’ll pick the other three when the kids get back on Monday. It will be the end of Chanukah, but there will probably also be a stray present or two to open. I’m delighted with my lined mittens and silk underwear and warm socks–as well as opportunities to connect back with my own teenage years with a DVD of Get Smart and a CD of Cat Stevens–now Yusuf. I wonder if they’ll pack the same umph. I wonder what tradition-laden things my kids will want to remember when they’re my age. I’m hoping that at least one night per year, they’ll circle the house with us, so we can all look at the light.

Happy holidays, everyone!

On Gloss and Loafer Snowflakes

Like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with the snow, yet I am grateful for the reflected light, especially in these dark pre-solstice dates. I am loving the view from my window, the remnants of the storm, the snowflakes that now look like harmless loafers without purpose, falling on my neighbor’s white New England farmhouse. It continues to snow without accumulation, and I feel like these loafer snowflakes–continuing to write without really producing much to talk about or be proud of.

With snow, however, comes ice. Glossy, crisp, and flat. I like to think of ice as the stuff bad writing is made of, though who am I to decide what writing is good and what is bad? I will therefore revise that statement. I like to think of ice as the stuff my bad writing is made of, a substance intensely beautiful but with no permanence. A substance that depends on surfaces. I have been struggling with this surface idea of writing, struggling with plummeting depths, worried that the constant call of my life’s other surfaces, the teacher, mom, house caretaker surfaces will make it impossible to get through that ice.

So, I am going to go back to journaling, to sitting quietly, to worrying less about projects and more about process. I am going to be a loafer snowflake for a while, and I am going to relegate my “ice-life” to afternoons and evenings, claiming the mornings to take that brave plunge into the depths of white out. I am hoping that something will germinate out of this process, though the scariest thing is that it may not. Still, if I learn a tiny bit of patience, it will be well worth it.

Amazing

I don’t think I will get any writing done today. I am absolutely giddy. All day yesterday, I felt so nervous, even though for the last week, I’ve checked the yahoo map compulsively, counting up the blue states, trying to convince myself that there couldn’t be cheating in Ohio and Florida and Pennsylvania, and where ever else that would need to happen to keep Obama from reaching 270, and  that as bad as those allegations were in 2000 and 2004, there was still an element of doubt. The country was polarized enough that it was practically split down the middle, and neither the Democrats or Republicans were offering a candidate that truly inspired people to get out and give their all.

If there are cheating allegations this time, I kept telling myself and anyone who happen to cross my path, there should be people in the streets–massive protests. Because this time cheating would really go against the will of a clear majority of the people. Everytime I heard about the latest dirty trick–the flyer in Virginia that said Democrats vote on November 5, the robocalls in Pennsylvania saying Obama would cause a second Holocaust, I felt sick, angry. This stuff should be illegal, and campaigns that engage in it should be fined heavily, or even disqualified. This is beyond negative campaigning; it’s cheating, and it’s slander. It wouldn’t be tolerated in sports, which has a far less  important outcome than the leadership of the country.

But I am so thrilled that democracy has prevailed. That people’s votes can actually count.

My students at the university where I teach were all excited yesterday, so many of them voting in their first presidential election. Several were absent, but with good cause, needing to drive two hours or more to their polling places in their home towns. I’ve been teaching there for eight years and I’ve never seen this before–the intensity of their interest was stunning and inspiring.

And I’m proud of daughter for getting up early on a Saturday morning to cast her vote a few weeks ago in Ohio, where she re-registered once she started college in order to vote in a swing state. She called right after they announced the winner. “Is it really true?” she asked, and I realized how much she’d been imbued with her parents’ cynicism about stolen elections and power interests dictating American politics rather than the people’s will. And I’m proud of my son’s friends in high school, who spent their study hall time calling voters in Pennyslvania on their cell phones. After all the rhetoric about “The Me Generation” our hope rests with these young voters and soon -to-be voters who are actively participating in building a better world.

While I may have political differences with Obama, (I often vote for Green Party candidates or independents) I was proud to cast my vote for him, because over and over during the course of the campaign, he impressed me with his leadership, pragmatism, and most importantly his message of unity.  I believe his willingness to listen, collaborate and engage in meaningful dialogue with those who agree with his positions and those who don’t will make him a profound leader who has the ability to change the face of the country and the face of the world. And I was also impressed with McCain’s concession speech as reflective of the “real maverick” McCain we knew in 2000. I may disagree with his approach, but I believe that before his campaign spun out of control, the policies he offered were sincerely based on his beliefs and values.

Obama’s got a hard job ahead of him, perhaps an impossible job, but I hope that now that the election is over we can put differences aside and work together toward our common goals. Viva America!

Work Addiction

Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Yesterday, I went with my family on our ritual New Year’s hike along one of the less-used trails on the Mt. Holyoke Range in western Massachusetts. The mosquitoes were out full-force, but we managed to find a quiet few minutes to sit by our favorite stream and meditate on the year that passed, and the year to come.

Even for a day, it’s hard to break with routine, and the pressing feeling of all the goals I should be accomplishing: writing, marketing my work, preparing my classes, grading my papers, dealing with the messy house. It’s hard not to turn on the computer and let myself be lulled by the distractions of e-mail, and blogs, and spider solitaire. But I didn’t turn on the computer yesterday, and my goal was to make myself not work, not even think about work.

It was hard. I am addicted to work. In any 15-minute block that looms before me, I think, “what can I accomplish?” Can I make headway with the junk mail on this messy table? Start another batch of pesto from the forest of basil that sits on the counter? Dice up more of the tomato harvest for salsa or sauce? Check my e-mail one more time, in hopes that there might be a message that isn’t a joke, a you-tube link, or political junk mail? Sweep dog hair off the floor?

What is it with Americans and our addiction to productivity?

Today, even though I’d intended another computer-free day, since it is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I succumbed when my husband said he was going to try to whittle down his e-mail box. But I tried to do it mindfully. I read blogs from my live-journal children’s lit friends, and thought about how so many of us are in similar positions: super-mom writers with outside jobs, always beating ourselves up for not writing, always setting the next set of goals.

But I’m going to turn off the computer now, and walk in the woods with my dog. And later, I’m going to go bicycling with friends. Because personally, I am never going to get out of this current phase of writers’ block if I keep thinking of my next book as one more piece of work to accomplish. I’ve got to get to the point where it’s as appealing as the fall light.

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