The story of Mr. Penguin and the Road-kill Bunny...

photo by Dean

...or, the wonderful toys handmade for me by Kym, which arrived all the way from Australia. Isn't Mr. Penguin magnificent? Glad he arrived with his own warm, woolly scarf since it's still quite chilly here and odds are that we aren't done with the snow (although that should all make him feel right at home).

photo by Dean

You have just got to love the wonderful sense of humor proven by the creation of a 'road-kill' toy for a pet! We weren't sure, Dean and I, that we were going to let Biscuit have his new toy; not that we're mean or selfish, but he's not been the best doggie to his soft toys in the past.

We took a deep breath, told ourselves that Kym said it was for Biscuit, and introduced them:

And it was love at first bite! I am delighted to say that so far, anyway, Biscuit loves his bunny but has not loved him to death, which is wonderful. Those knots on the ends of bunny's appendages are Biscuit's favorites, and they seem to keep him occupied enough so he doesn't chew up the bunny otherwise. Also, the lack of stuffing is perfect, since Biscuit's general trick is to knock the stuffing out of a toy as quickly as he can.

Thanks again, Kym!!

Flashback Friday

Me, Chicago, springtime, 1963

Yes. Ahem. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

An Open Letter to Kate DiCamillo

Kate;

You disappoint me.

It's not so much that you blatantly stole (blithely borrowed? is that your game?) the underpinning of Hitty: Her First 100 Years by Rachel Field. Come on now, did you really think we wouldn't notice? That we'd get caught up in the Velveteen Rabbit comparisons?

And it's not -- believe me -- that I'm incapable of giving my child exposure to sadness, difficulty, despair. (Go back and read my posts about watching sad movies with him. Go on.) Great literature does cover the course of human experience, human emotion, and I know all that stuff about the inevitable path of a protagonist -- the pain and suffering that leads to redemption. Check.

Spare me.

So really, after trusting you completely based on the triumph that is The Tale of Despereaux, we began reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane without worry or care. Now the irony here (at least I think it's irony -- I know it's not sarcasm) is that I wanted us to start reading Hitty as the new bedtime story. Got it out and everything. But Dean doesn't feel he can trust Rachel Field, after the very difficult part near the ending of Calico Bush (which his teacher recently read to the class). Dean says he'll NEVER read another Rachel Field book again, which is how I now feel about you. So there you go.

[If you are not Kate DiCamillo and you *think* you want to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, you might want to stop here -- but I BEG of you NOT to read this book to a child until you've read it yourself and decide that you really want to inflict it on the young.]

Why am I so upset?

Could it be because of the horrific depiction of child abuse at the hands of an alcoholic? Because for a four-year-old girl that abuse/neglect results in her death? That her death comes after the words "she coughed up blood"? And that's after the five-year-old boy who dies by "drowning" thanks to pneumonia. Could it be because every kind, decent person meets cruelty, abuse, torment -- and that no ill befalls any of the evil-doers? The message that nice people are chewed up and spit out by the world while evil people get their way? That you actually have Edward nailed by the ears to a CROSS at one point?

Yeah. Nice bedtime story.

Kate, if this was the story you felt you needed to write, then you and your publisher needed to work together to place this very clearly as an ADULT title. Not a children's book. It pains me to think of how many others will continue to be subjected to this horrific story based on your reputation as a great children's author. No, I honestly do not feel I am over-reacting; I am a student of children's literature, knowledgable about fairytales, the real Brothers Grimm, the long rich history of sad tragic tales told to educate.

You disappoint me.
Jennifer

PS: Consider our partnership, real or imagined, severed permanently, irrevocably. Unless you do something in future to redeem yourself and change my mind. Just a hint -- that probably won't involve selling out the rights to a story and allowing a film to be made that takes virtually nothing to from your original work other than the title.

[I know -- just don't ever get on my bad side.]

Processing

Walt Disney World, Animal Kingdom, 'Asia' Oct. 2008

I was peripherally aware that the Academy Awards were coming up, although my mom caught me off-guard yesterday when she asked if we'd be watching them. What, already? And, no -- I really can't think what year it would have been when I last watched them. Dean's not even to blame for that; I'd been getting up for work on Monday mornings by 4:30 a.m. for years before he was born, and that's just not a schedule that allows for Sunday night tv watching past about, oh, 7 p.m.

Even more difficult to trace is the point at which I stopped caring. Movies used to be a big part of my life. I even wrote film reviews for a small newspaper on Cape Cod at one point. I mention that only because it's an element of my interest and commitment to film; it was not the kind of thing that literary careers are made of. Anyway.

I suspected, and then confirmed, that the only film nominated this year that I saw was Wall-E. I'm having a hard time figuring out where I file that bit of information. Is it under "pathetic," as in "are you going to get a life anytime soon?"? Is it under "somewhat liberated from mass media"? Is it under "parenthood"? Another slippery part of the equation is how movies have changed. What passes for entertainment often doesn't interest me -- too violent, too graphic, too deeply disturbing. Partly that's age and partly that's just me, so there's less out there that I'm interested in seeing. I guess Benjamin Button would have been a maybe, but I really don't want to do anything to encourage Brad Pitt. (Enough, already.)

Seeing

Grate on a storm drain

The complete circuit around the cul-de-sac on which we live is one-third of a mile. I walk the dog around that circle between 6 and 15 times every day (depends on how cold it is, depends on whether or not anyone else helps with the dog-walking effort, depends on how much time the dog needs). It's difficult to go farther afield during winter because the accumulated snow and ice makes the somewhat busy road to which ours connects very narrow and somewhat treacherous to walk. In warmer weather, there's a big stretch of time during which most of the sides of that road are covered in poison ivy and we don't want the dog to carry those oils into the house on his fur. So I've traveled somewhere between 2190 and 5475 times (730 to 1825 miles) on this small stretch of road in a year.

It takes real effort to see each day, to really look at what's out there, what's different, what needs to be noticed. I was thinking about her walks and all the beauty she captures -- with envy. I wondered what was out there that I haven't seen, haven't appreciated.

Loot

I'm delighted that Kym received the swap package I sent her: a family of three very different bears. (It happens sometimes in families.) Anne set up the swap as a tribute to handmade toys, and I felt it had been too long since I'd had toes in the swap-y waters. Aside from the delight of putting a package together, I enjoyed traveling to some new blogs and meeting new friends of handmade things. Some of my regular blogs are temporarily illegible; there's a corrupted font somewhere in my Mac and we haven't been able to ferret it out. This comes of having billions and billions of fonts, loaded in several places. THIS drives poor Ken crazy. Oops.

As far as loot flowing into my own mailbox, this very wonderful and tiny little monkey arrived today; a birthday gift to me from my sister. Thank you, Paula! (No, I don't think this counts and yes, I will write a real thank-you note.) I also had a lovely birthday card from one brother today and my other brother called me for a nice long chat on the morning of my birthday. I do love when birthdays last and linger.

Today is one of those days when Dean looks very grown up to me; no question that childhood is NOT lasting nor lingering as long as I'd wish. The brilliant sun on the snow made us both a little blind, but not so much that it prevented me from seeing that he is changing. Growing.

Flashback Friday

Birthday party, Chicago, 1966?

A bit stuck on a theme, I guess -- sorry about that. I promise to move on by tomorrow. (Head of the table, nearest you; but you knew that, right?) There is something to be said for the olden days, when we dressed up for birthday parties and behaved so well that big groups of us could gather in each other's homes and nothing got broken.

Forty-seven...

...and counting!

Almost....

Kindergarten school portrait, Chicago, 1966

Getting ready by looking a little further back....

Poetry in motion

A whole city out there, made of ice. But in miniature now. Crushable, melting, thin.

We know what's coming.

Way-back Machine

1980 High School Year Book

Whoa. I'm not sure what I was expecting from Facebook, but it wasn't the return to high school that it's turned out to be. I would never have thought people outside of my very immediate circle (which was small) would have remembered me. It's weird to think about the places where your own story intersects with other people's -- especially without your being aware of it much or at all. Facebook has a very different feel than blogging; for the moment I'd say it's shallow but broad and much more public. The 'public' is more people you know directly, even though a blog is open to everyone and Facebook works off of personal invitations. I'm not expressing this well because I'm still processing it, but so far I'd be willing to recommend checking it out over there if you haven't yet.

And in the "life is so interconnected that my brain is having trouble comprehending it all" department, this experience is dovetailing for me with Natalie's deep thoughts about beauty and self-image. I did not think I was beautiful when I was in high school; I consistently measured myself against standards of beauty that left me falling short. I wish I could have appreciated and valued what I had then, and wonder if I'm capable of applying that appreciation to my current self (whom I think of as having danced way past 'prime').

Time

You can feel the difference in the quality of the light. The angle of the sun is already noticeably enough different. In just three weeks we'll 'spring ahead.' (I pledge that I will do my best not to complain here about daylight savings time; I've sung that song often enough before.) Anyway, you would just know; you would go outside and you would know that change has happened and that more change is coming. I love those deep instincts we have, the abilities we forget to use.

I only just figured out recently that the design of an analog clock -- the hands moving 'clockwise' around the dial -- corresponds exactly to the movement of the sun as marked by a sundial (or by a person standing perfectly still for as long as the sun shone). Did everyone else realize that except me? It made me happy to discover it, in any case, and it made me feel better about my preference for clocks with dials and not digital numbers -- does this happen to you too? -- if I see a digital clock (4:53 or whatever), or if someone just tells me the time, sometimes it doesn't really stick -- it doesn't make sense to me, or I can't easily figure how much time I've got left before I have to do something. But if I can see a clock face -- just glance at it and really just take the information in visually, instinctively -- then I have a much clearer sense of what time it is and that I have about 20 minutes before I have to get going. Sometimes I compensate by picturing a clock face when someone tells me the time.

Ah, another post that went off in a direction on its own, before I realized what was happening. I need to make the best use of the time that's left on this gorgeous Sunday afternoon; better go see what the boys are doing.

Happy Valentine's Day

Flashback Friday

Me, Chicago, the blizzard of '67, in front of my high school which was across the street from our house

I completely forgot it was Friday until just now. I don't know why I thought that a post-a-day was ever going to be possible. I picked this photo in honor of my high school friend Alisa, whom I just discovered on Facebook today. I better go finish cooking dinner before the onions burn.

S, continued

So yesterday I started my list of 10 things I love that begin with 'S.' Here are my final four.

7. Sweden. People from Sweden, Swedish design, a Swedish Christmas; what's not to love?

8. Socks. Seriously. I pretty much always wear them (which I why I love sandals by Keen). I love these; I just wish they made crew length, which is my favorite.

9. Stamps.

10. Seasons. Oh sure, I'll complain. I wish spring were longer and winter just a wee bit shorter. I'll get tired of being hot and tired in summer. But I can't imagine life without all the seasons.

Want to play along? Just ask and I'll give you a letter so you can make your list of things you love.