The Crab Apple Sling Shot Sting

I have a post in progress, but I was so impressed by the large-scale water balloon assault my children planned for Tim's arrival at home after 12 hours on call that I had to post it.

It was, in its execution, less than impressive.

Following Tom

I love walking across the street to our tiny village post office. My proximity to this lovely little outpost of civilization is particularly convenient just before Christmas, when I remember what a nightmare the pre-holiday post office was when we lived in cities. These days, I stroll over, wrapped presents in hand, and chat with Jewel, our postmistress about the news of the neighborhood as she tabulates my postage. Today was particularly lovely, however, as I received a package. I handed Jewel the "you have a package!" yellow slip from my post office box and she handed me an envelope from HarperCollins. I ripped it open, and there it was. My advance copy of the Following Atticus paperback.

I flipped to the P.S. section to find my part in the book: an interview with the author, Tom Ryan. Yes, I get to do interviews all the time, and yes, seeing my name in print has lost a teensy bit of the lustre and thrill I felt when I saw my first published pieces, but it's still pretty damn cool.

What makes this particular project special to me is that my involvement in this book is a gift from Tom. Tom discovered my work - through Twitter, I think - and we started corresponding about our writing. At that point, Following Atticus was not out in hardcover yet, so I got to watch Tom's progress through the gauntlet of book publicity and appearances. When it came time to prepare the paperback edition, Tom went out on a limb and asked HarperCollins to allow me to write the author interview and its introduction. Normally, the publisher has someone in-house write this section, and it's unusual for the author to be named, but Tom pushed. Fortunately, his wonderful editor, Cassie Jones, was game, and they supported me through the process of producing the P.S. section.

Authors can be a snarky and divisive lot, and it's unusual to find the ones who will share their success with writers who have not yet broken through. Tom is one of those authors. He is not only a talented writer, he is a kind and generous person, and I am grateful for his faith in me.

Following Atticus comes out in paperback on August 7, and Tom's blog has all the details of his book tour, if you want to come on out to get a book signed and meet him (and Atticus).

Happy reading!

Creating a Coming of Age Ritual in the New York Times!

Come on over to the New York Times' Motherlode for Ben's experience milking at Robie Farms, complete with video!

"Creating a Coming of Age Ritual"

Shopping Spree

I have found that there are only so many words - and so many hours - to go around. Unfortunately, the progress I am making on other projects is resulting on a total neglect of this blog. In honor of this admission of my limits, I am posting a piece I originally wrote for my first blog, The Mill Yard. On my way home from an outing with my sons and nieces, I stopped by a local farm for some frozen ducks, and remembered writing about the day I came face to face with a recently deceased deer's head.

Enjoy!

I hate shopping. Hate it. From what I hear, I have always hated it. My mom loves to tell people that while I was a perfect child in every other way, I was a terror in stores. Something about the hum of the fluorescent lights, or the muzak or the unbelievable quantity of crap available for purchase makes me want to flee. And I'm not just talking about department stores. I'm talking about grocery stores, shoe stores, toy stores. And this was long before I became a country-bumpkin-farmer-rural-eater-hermit.

My husband, Tim, can tell when I'm about to blow. My eyes start to glaze, I fidget, and by the time I get snippy it's almost too late. The tailspin has begun and it's best to just get out of the store as quickly as possible. I hear from my sister that my niece Mina may have inherited my fear of shopping gene. She has decided it's best to keep Mina out of stores altogether, that it's no longer worth the public humiliation.

Luckily, I live in Lyme. We have a general store and a small artsy gift shop, and that's about it in the retail department. I could travel about twenty-five miles to Lebanon to Route 12A, where someone wisely decided to cluster all of The Ugly. 12-A has all the big stores - Sears, J.C. Penney, Home Depot, Price Chopper, Borders, KMart - but they are isolated in a strip mall purgatory so people don't have to see it unless they go there on purpose. Which I don't. The closest mall is in Concord, I think. Maybe Burlington, VT. I'm not really sure. Both are at least an hour away, so I don't feel any immediate threat to my safety.

I do like the kind of shopping I used to do with my mom in the North End of Boston. We used to walk the neighborhood with our bags and collect one thing here, another thing there. We would wait for the butcher to trim our meats in the thoughtfully placed chairs and talk with the old Italian women until our orders were ready.

I have managed to carve out a similar routine here in Lyme. On Mondays, I drive up to Robie Farms for my milk, cream, cheese, eggs, honey and maple syrup. Betty Sue Robie makes her cinnamon donuts on Monday mornings, so I suppose I could go on another day, but I'm no fool. I get to chat with Lee Robie about how things have been, how it's been tough to keep enough cream on hand because local restaurants buy it all up, and how the chickens lay so few eggs in the winter. His son, Mark Robie, makes their cheese, and sometimes Mark lets me into the cheese cave so I can taste how things are aging in there. He makes a fine Toma, a tasty Gryere and a smooth Cheddar-type farmstand cheese. His cheeses get better the longer he's been at it, but I have to admit that I may have benefited from some of his mistakes because he sells them to me at a discount. Whe I am done shopping at Robie’s Farm Stand, I add up what I owe based on their price list and stick my cash or check in an antique cash register, the kind with the big arm you pull down to make the drawer open. That's my favorite part. If I have forgotten my wallet or am short of cash or can't make change, I just leave a note to that effect in the register and settle up next time.

Most of my meat comes from friends, neighbors, and local farms. I have a freezer full of half a pig, a quarter cow, some bear sausage from an obliging neighbor (it's really gamey but great on pizza with caramelized onions), and a couple of other oddball items I will get around to preparing at some point. My handyman is usually good for some ground venison or a turkey tom once year when he needs to clean out his freezer.

If I need any additional meat, I have a couple of options. Robie Farms sells beef, veal, and the best breakfast sausage I've ever had. Lately, Betty Sue has given Lee permission to sell some of their precious porterhouse steaks, and they are incredible. I go to Recordridge Farm in Lyme for venison, buffalo, boar, beef, chicken, and recently, duck. They also sell maple syrup and eggs. I pick out my meats, weigh them, and figure a total cost. I leave the cash tucked under the scale with a note indicating my name and what I bought.

This sort of shopping is not for the timid. The first visit to a new farm is a intimidating, especially if I have not called ahead. Most farms assume you know the ropes, and it's usually less than obvious where exactly the freezer or eggs are kept. I had two false starts at Recordridge Farm before I actually purchased anything. I had been given specific instructions, but it just looked so wrong. The first time, I went to the right door but assumed the sticky latch was locked, so I went home. The second time, I realized the door actually opened, but when I looked around in what is their tenants' laundry room, I was sure I was in the wrong place. After fact-checking with a friend who buys her meat there, I went back a third time and finally found the freezers around the corner from the laundry room in a dark corner of the basement.

Unfortunately, the first freezer I investigated featured an entire buck’s head. I can only imagine that one of the Recordridge clan had been hunting, intended to save his trophy for mounting, and the freezer was the most obvious place to keep it fresh. It just happened to coincide with my first shopping day. I’m not easily spooked. I even snapped a photo for posterity. I managed to find my ground bison and venison loins in the other freezer. I calculated my bill based on the $3/pound standard, and left my check tucked under the scale.

On the way out of the driveway, I waved to the deer and water buffalo. They graze across the street from the Lyme Elementary playground and often gather along the fence to watch the children play soccer during recess.

My grocery shopping certainly isn't efficient, and sometimes I come face to face with recently killed animals, but I'll take it over strip malls any day of the week.

Lahey and the Swan

On this, my fourth day of summer "vacation," I am coming up for air.

School actually ended over a week ago, but I agreed to teach a rock climbing camp the week after school got out. I had been dreading the commitment, but the fifteen lovely students enrolled in the camp ended up re-affirming everything I love about teaching, and we all had a great time.

But every moment I belayed those kiddos, watching them twirl and laugh at the end of ropes strung from the rafters of our gymnasium, I could hear deadlines ticking away in the background. Lovely deadlines, deadlines I asked for, deadlines I worked years and years to earn, and gladly accepted, but deadlines that render the concept of a summer vacation quite moot.

Amid the writing deadlines, I also have to design a new course this summer, and the next couple of weeks are dedicated to that project. However, what I really can't wait to get down to is the writing. The lovely process of steeping myself in research, organizing notes, and banging out the words.  

I still have not figured out how to balance all of it, but I have figured out how to say no to the stupid details that matter less than my family and the words I long to craft. Painting the house. Tending to the gardens. Rebuilding the chicken coop. Fixing the garage door.

The fact that those projects need to be dealt with drives me nuts.

In the meantime, I have decided to keep tutoring Latin over the summer. It's one of my favorite hours in the week because the students are a mom and daughter pair. The daughter loves mythology and Roman culture, and the mom loves the grammatical Latin. This week, we reviewed the second declension endings and looked at some Roman and Greek art. I showed them some photographs I took last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and asked them to identify representations of the gods based on their symbols, postures, and outfits. It was great fun. At the very end of the hour, the daughter (age 11) asked me a question about the story of Leda and the swan (who was really Zeus, all dressed up his his feathery finery in order to seduce Leda) that I was hard pressed to answer.

"But how did Leda get pregnant by a swan?"

Fortunately, her mom took the reins. She smiled and said, "It's a myth, honey. Sometimes you just have to let go of the little details."

I think I will heed this wise mom's advice on the story of my summer. The next couple of months is just going to have to be about the big picture, not the details.

If Leda could produce Castor, Pollux, Clytemnestra, and Helen all in one concentrated nesting session, I can certainly buckle down for a season in my own nest and produce a couple of articles and a completed book proposal. Leda's creations managed to inspire timeless stories and one even led to the fall of Troy. Certainly I can take down a deadline or two from the comfort of my nest.

It Would Be, It Would Be So Nice

I'm taking my lead from Betsy Lerner and Teri Carter. Both bloggers I truly admire and adore. If they can take some time off to deal with their lives - children, work, the Queen's jubilee, my two young nieces staying with us for a week, and the summer climbing camp I have to teach at Crossroads - I can do the same.

I have promised an editor that I will have my chapters done by the end of the summer, and there is big news coming from the Lahey front on publication, but in the meantime, there's lots of work to be done.

But before I can begin working on all of that, I have to calculate final grades, write grade reports, and proofread grade reports...

Okay. So the beginning of my summer is deadly dull, but still, it's what I have to get done.

In the meantime, I offer up a post that my friend and colleague Teri Carter inspired a while back. Every writer, every teacher, has a bookcase of books they mean to read. We had piles of books next to the bed, but then I found an extra bookcase around, and created our "we really do mean to read these" bookcase in our bedroom.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours. What do you plan to read over the summer?

P.S. The first photo response is from my former student who will be taking on her first full-time post this fall! I wish I could say I had an entire summer to stress out and read before my first real teaching gig, but I was hired 48 hours before school started, so it was more a trial by fire. Yippee for my student, though, and look what she gets to read! 

Something Comes From Something

Friday was the last day of classes before we head into a week of rehearsals for the middle school musical. The students provided the perfect conclusion to the year in the form of their King Lear creations. I asked them to create visual representations of the storm - both physical and psychological - in King Lear. That's all I gave them in terms of parameters. I said that the success of their projects hinged on depth of thought, creativity, time, and dedication. Some of the lovely and amazing projects were handed in on Tuesday, and they were lovely. As I had promised to complete my own version of the project as well, I presented it to them on Friday, and then the rest of the class presented their creations.

When I arrived at my office in the morning, there were projects everywhere. On every surface, on my chair, on the floor, on my desk.

Storms exploding out of heads,

self-immolating crowns of purple and gold,

beautifully painted boxes depicting Lear's loss of identity and his inability to see himself clearly.

The creations were smart, creative and revealed the students' understanding of what Lear experienced out there, on the heath, as he descended into madness.

This last creation is a personal favorite of mine. The student had asked if he could present a sort of performance art piece in order to represent his take on Lear's storm. I was skeptical, but as I have written over and over again, my students never cease to surprise and amaze me. I told him I trusted his judgment, and gave him the green light for his performance. What I love most about this creation is that it required him to commit, to put himself out there and pull off a performance that could have easily fallen into frivolous silliness. Yes, we laughed, but not because the performance was funny. We laughed because we loved it, and because we loved him for his courage.

We laughed because his was the last presentation, on the last day of class, in their last year at Crossroads Academy. I laughed because this is what they will remember, after they have left our small, rural community for high schools all over New England.

Thus ends English 7 and 8 for the 2011-2012. It's been a great year.