"One, two! One, two! And through and through, The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead and with its head he went galumphing back." *

I have just requested the following three books from the library:

1) Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon - Leonard Marcus. Inspired by this new-to-me blog I found, Crooked House, via...via Bookslut, I think, and Jessa’s post on Steph’s post on Beckett for Babies which made me cry laughing and be shiveringly delighted by her genius. I mean, seriously, how awesome is it? Think about it. It’s BRILLIANT.

And in reading Steph's archives, I found another clever and oh-so-smart post on Goodnight Moon, which I too have come to appreciate in the past year, and now I am hooked and am requesting her book recommendations.
It’s a slippery slope, my friends.

2) I also had to request Jess Walter’s Citizen Vince again. Because I am a dork and didn’t pick it up in time, and it was sent back from whence it came. But in ascertaining this fact, I called my local branch library and the librarian-whom-Gina-and-I-love answered the phone and recognized my voice and well, SWOON. I know, you have to be a pretty big dork to be thrilled that your librarian recognizes your voice, but that’s just the kind of dork I am.
And don’t pretend to be surprised, you knew it, too.

3) And last but not least, Josh Swiller’s The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa. H spent two years in the Peace Corps, and I am actually sort of fascinated, in a car-wreck sort of way, by the Peace Corps. And what could be more interesting than a deaf person’s take on life in a foreign country, working for the Peace Corps? Rife with possibility, that. Apparently he’s a good writer – it was the reviews on Amazon that actually sucked me in.

And last but not least – wait, I said that already – oh frabjous day! Richard Russo has a new book coming out on September 25. I will hie to the bookstore that day to purchase it. Even with his weak outing last book (Empire Falls) and his redundant short story collection, however brilliantly titled The Whore’s Child, I still think he’s a terrific writer who excels in the slice-of-life style that I tend to fall in love with. Nobody’s Fool is one of my favorite books, and his other novels are no slouches, either. (Oh, and wait: did you know – I did NOT – that Ann Patchett has a new novel, Run, coming out on September 25 also? Calloo callay!)

And in a lovely email this morning, Nutmeg gave me a list of other books I might find interesting. I must stop all this silly eating and breathing and showering and school-dropping-off and school-picking-up and grocery-shopping and working fliff-flaff - I must READ!

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* "Jabberwocky," Lewis Carroll

"I believe public education must help restore the daily ritual of the table in all our childrens' lives." *

I am having one of my (not really that frequent, despite what some may believe) I HATE PEOPLE days.

Hate #1:
My behind-us neighbors, very nice (and very frequently not even there) people, have had their nasty dogs outside all morning, and they’re barking their heads off. Annoying creatures.

It also means that Punto is not as content to hang out in our backyard when we go somewhere for an hour or two as he usually is, as the two dogs stand at the fence and snarl and growl at him.

Hate #2:
Dropping Primo off at school is never easy, as there is no official drop-off point, the parking is limited, and the school is on a fairly busy street (read: people flagrantly ignore the “Slow: School: 15mph” signs). This morning I was lucky enough to get a spot where I could watch for Primo to get into school and wave goodbye. Another mother wasn’t, so she took two minutes to stop, let her child out of the car, and watch him walk into school.

You’d have thought the three or four people behind her were on their way to emergency brain surgery.

When one construction-type guy in a huge white pickup truck honked his horn and shouted at her angrily, I snapped at him, “Cut her a break! She’s watching to make sure her kid gets in!”
“Gets in where?” he asked.
“The school, right there.”
To his credit, he shut up then, and looked suitably abashed.

The fat woman in the SUV behind him wasn’t so nice: “She can pull over! That’s just rude!”
I said, “Do you see anywhere obvious for her to pull over? She’ll just be a minute.”

Note that neither of these people was dropping a child off at school.
Forgive me for not being more understanding.
Fat-Woman zoomed off to her surgery in disgust.
I hope she crashed.

Hate #3:
Paxson is one of two schools in this city’s public school system participating in the Edible Schoolyard program. Founded and directed nationally by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame, the program works to teach urban school children where the food they eat comes from, and allows them to participate in its planting, care, harvesting, and preparation – from seed to table. A lot of hard work (parents, teachers, and kids) went into all the grant-writing, fundraising, and then the actual preparation of the schoolyard where the gardens are. Farmer Josh is an integral part of the school faculty now, and the kids greet him happily each morning, asking what’s ready to picked that day and how things are coming along.

One of the school parents is a chef, and is doing several cooking demos for the kids, using produce grown in their schoolyard gardens.

It’s an incredible thing, really – it’s exciting and educational and as many parents here are actively involved in ensuring their families eat more organically and more locally, there’s a huge amount of support for the program.

Last week the kids arrived at school to find several of their watermelons smashed all over the sidewalk. They took it in stride, and Farmer Josh handled it well.
But this morning I noticed that some hoodlum(s) had knocked over all the staked tomato plants, which were just about ready for major harvesting, and messed up the compost and its bin.

Do these derelicts have nothing better to do with their time than be destructive and horrible?
I hope they get hit by the fat lady in the SUV.

(It’s a damn good thing there are so many nice, wonderful, loving people in my life, or I just might lose all faith in the future of humanity.)


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* Alice Waters, in Slow Food, Slow Schools

"In a black and far off corner of my mind, there's a box of something I can't quite define..." - "Cigarette," by The Clarks

Just finished Anne Tyler’s Digging to America on my lunch hour. A very enjoyable book. Fans of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf should like this. The cover blurb makes it sound as if it’s about the adoption of two little Korean girls, and while that is the catalyst for the story, it’s really about Maryam, the Iranian-American adoptive grandmother of one of the two orphans. Maryam came to the United States as a young bride, and many decades on, she still feels like an outsider. Her search for and journey to belonging forms the crux of the story; she is a strong and complex character whom I liked very much. Sometimes Tyler can be a bit wishy-washy for me, but this was a well-crafted novel that I hated to see end.

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John Connolly’s Book of Lost Things spawned a flurry of emails between me and dear Suse, who apparently is as intrigued by fairy tales as I am; as many readers are, I think. My list of additional reading if you liked Book of Lost Things, in one place rather than sixteen different emails, for your perusal:

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales – Bruno Bettelheim. Part of the canon.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales - edited by Kate Bernheimer; also Bernheimer’s forthcoming (October 2007) Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales.

AS Byatt’s Little Black Book of Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, and Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. Byatt in her usual brilliant, lush, and enigmatic form.

Blood Red, Snow White by Ellen Datlow. Datlow has several anthologies, but this is the only one I have read. Entertaining enough.

The Outspoken Princess and the Gentle Knight - edited by Jack Zipes. Fun twists on old tales. Worth reading for Patricia Coombs’ "Molly Mullet" alone. Primo has made me read him this particular story so many times I could probably recite it verbatim.

Although I admit to abusing my professional status and searching scholarly databases for interesting articles to read, honestly, the best resource I have found, one that provided hours of fun, was this one: Sur La Lune Fairy Tales.

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I am trying to like The Last Witchfinder but it’s just a wee bit precious for me. Badger suggests maybe sticking with it till the protagonist gets to America; I may try that. Or I may pick up my copy of Susann Cokal’s Mirabilis at the library and read that instead. Hmmm...witches, wet nurses, witches, wet nurses...

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In other news: the dog is still here. He sleeps outside or in his crate at night now. So far, so good. I don’t mind picking up dog poop OUTSIDE.

I am in my sixteenth week and heartily sick of being sick. Excedrin and regular daily doses of Coca Cola (both okayed by my OB) have stemmed the migraines, but the nausea continues unabated. In fact, it grows worse. I don’t want to eat ANYTHING right now. It is at this point in my previous pregnancies that I wound up in the hospital, dehydrated and dizzy. I am hoping to avoid that this time.

I sat down with the official refrigerator family calendar this morning and finally filled in everything for the month of September. September is looking KEE-RAZY. I am exhausted already. In fact, I could really use a nap...