Santa Rosa plums. We planted our tree as an afterthought, an espaliered affair that hides behind our outdoor fireplace. But it gets lots of southerly sun, and it’s just above our bees so we got an unexpected bonanza this year. I followed a recipe for Santa Rose Plum Jam Conserve from local jam artisan June Taylor in The Pleasures of Slow Food. Divine! From here on out I will always leave the skins on my plum preserves because they add such twangy tart to all the sweet. (The secret: cut the pitted fruit into bite-sized chunks before cooking, so the skins aren’t too over-sized and off-putting.) Then Mr. T and I made plum ice cream. All the foodies have been blogging about David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, and rightly so. It’s full of flavors that you know will be wonderful like Pear Caramel and Guinness-Milk Chocolate. Plus all sorts of mix-ins like Buttercrunch Toffee and Candied Lemon Slices. When I brought my plum ice cream to a dinner party, someone called it the bomb. I think he liked it. (Next up: Malted Milk Ice Cream with crunched-up malt balls. Yowza!)

knitting projects. This one still needs button loops, so I don’t have modeled shots or a ravelry update yet. I’d hoped to finish it before our trip so I could wear it; instead I was still working on it on planes, trains and automobiles. It’s Ysolda’s Coraline, but I’m calling it my Smocked In Sweden sweater because I started the smocking during the long drive from Stockholm to the south. There will now always be red farm houses and purple lupine looped into that smocking. The smocking was so fun to knit that I had to remind myself to look out the window at all that gorgeousness.

I’ve always wanted to knit a gold cardigan, and after finishing that one up there, all done up in alpaca and too hot to wear anytime soon, I looked for a pattern that would work in cotton. I stumbled on this version of the knitty pattern Que Sera, and I had to flat-out copy it. All that color! All that texture! And it is the most fun pattern ever to knit while watching swimming lessons. I’m not sure the color will flatter this dishwater blonde, but I’m hoping the sweater will be stunning enough that no one will notice.

honey! Speaking of gold, look what we got. Our first honey harvest, after two seasons of keeping bees. We hadn’t planned to harvest so soon. But we don’t use foundation in our frames (you can read about that here), and sometimes without foundation, bees will build wonky comb. In this particular box, the bees built the comb in perfect rows, but diagonal to the frames. If we hadn’t been traveling, I’d have recognized it sooner, and would have cut out the errant comb or two and refastened it properly with rubber-bands. But left on their own, the colony filled the entire box this way. You can’t pull the frames from the box when the comb is attached at angles, so Chris and I had to remove several frames at a time, destroying the comb and watching honey ooze everywhere. We cut them into a big cake pan, did our best to shoo away the bees, and eventually brought it inside and used the crush-and-strain method to extract the honey. You can see a video of the method here. Basically you crush the wax to release the honey from the comb, and then strain it into a big container.

Now we have about a dozen jars of honey with a very delicate floral flavor, and lots of beeswax for crafts. Since we have two hives and a hillside of blooming lavender, there should be more by the end of the summer. Thank you, girls!

farm city. I knew about this book by Novella Carpenter, about her experiences starting a small farm on a vacant lot in a seedy part of Oakland. You might think I’d have wanted to read it, since she’s local, but I’m not so keen on books in the look-at-the-fringe-thing-I’ve-done! genre. I’ve read 168 novels in 168 days! I dressed in clothing made from trash for a year! The writing in that sort of memoir doesn’t tend to do it for me. But one day I picked up a copy at the bookstore, and was drawn in by the first line: “I have a farm on a dead-end street in the ghetto.” By the end of the first page I was won over by the writing; reading on the back flap that Carpenter “attended UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism” gave some insight into that. It’s a fun tale–despite the fact there’s enough meat-animal killing to make a vegetarian like me wince. Carpenter’s mindfulness about the process makes it readable, though, and thought-provoking. (Quirky discovery: half-way through the book I realized that Carpenter is the sister of Riana Lagarde, whose These Days in French Life flickr photos I’ve followed for a few years. Small world!)

a new blog project. I have big plans for something here in September. It’s a secret for now, but my wheels are spinning.

an anniversary. As of today, I have been married to this man for 22 years. Twenty-two years! Either we are very old, or we married very young. Or both. In the photo, it looks like he’s leading me off to a lifetime of fun. We’re still going. (Happy anniversary, Sweets.)

So you know I’m going to ask: What has you all atwitter?

Can you tell me about your family and audiobook listening?

I’m starting a chapter on audiobooks for my book. (My book! Remember that old notion? Remember the chapter-a-month challenge? Golly gee whiz, I have some catching up to do.)

Listening to audiobooks together has probably been one of the most consistent activities we’ve done in our family’s thirteen years of homeschooling–a close second only to my reading aloud. From the time H was about five, we’ve almost always had an audiobook running in the car. We’ve listened to everything from Ramona the Pest to Odysseus. Nowadays H isn’t in the car with us very often, and the book is usually one that T and I have chosen together–but Lulu often surreptitiously switches off her iPod and listens along.

Both older kids also spent years listening to audiobooks in their rooms. Lulu especially. She’s an auditory learner and didn’t love reading until she was about eight. But she loved her audiobooks. And she listened to them again. And again. And again. And–it must be said–again. Mr. T has been doing the same for the last three years or so. I can’t believe that our Harry Potter discs haven’t worn down to wafers by now.

In my notebook, I’m jotting down notes about why I think we love audiobooks so much. Here are a few random thoughts.

• Audiobooks make me feel less guilty about all the driving we do. All the activity-schlepping and errand-running is instantly transformed into a literature appreciation session.
• Professional readers even make the classics captivating. Have you ever heard Tim Curry read A Christmas Carol? And Patrick Fraley’s rendition of Huckleberry Finn is a revelation. (I’ve decided that no kid should be expected to read Huckleberry Finn and all its confounding dialect, when the spoken version is such a joy.)
• On days when I’m feeling sick or lazy, or one of the kids is feeling sick or lazy, we can curl up on the couch and have someone read to us. Someone who reads really well. (And if Mama isn’t feeling too sick or lazy, she might even be able to knit.)
• Audiobooks allow kids who might not be reading yet–or may not enjoy reading–to lap up literature.
• Likewise, audiobooks allow kids to enjoy books that might be more advanced than their reading abilities.
• Listening to books–and re-listening to them!–helps kids internalize the flow and rhythm of good writing.
• Some books I just don’t want to read aloud. All those thick-as-a-dictionary Harry Potters? You may call it sacrilege, but I just couldn’t do it. And why would I want to, when Jim Dale and his universe of wondrous voices does it so much better?
• If you’re into silly phrases like vocabulary-builder, audiobooks are it. I’ll never forget the morning when seven-year-old Lulu accused her older brother of having “a severe lack of moral stamina.” (Thanks, Lemony Snicket!) I’m also pretty sure that audiobooks had something to do with H’s high SAT reading scores. Not that we listened because I cared a dang about SAT scores back then, but it’s a useful fringe benefit.
• And perhaps most dear to my heart: when we listen in the car together, our drives often become impromptu literature analysis sessions. Casual book clubs, if you will. This isn’t something I instigate, mind you, but something that just happens. Someone will say something like I think J.K. Rowling makes the beginning drag on for too long or Why is it so funny when a bad guy like Count Olaf says a word like yep? And suddenly we’re all throwing in our opinions and dissecting just what makes writing good. It’s a beautiful thing. And do I see the results of these conversations come into play in my kids’ own writing? Um, yep.

I am still a great fan of reading aloud, and would never let audiobooks replace reading to my kids. But there’s something discretely captivating about a good audiobook. Maybe it’s the professional reader. Maybe it’s the fact that we manage to get through audiobooks faster than our read-alouds–and momentum can be an important factor in enjoying a book. Maybe it’s because it takes no extra energy from me to stay in the car a little longer when we get to a really good part. I don’t know. But I do know that listening to audiobooks has played a large role in my kids’ development as writers. And I want to include a chapter about that.

So tell me: Does your family listen to audiobooks? How? When? Where? Could you share some favorites?

Please feel welcome to respond to any or all of the above, or whatever else crosses your mind. Thank you. Your feedback means even more to me than a pan of homemade vegetarian lasagna.

Several months back, I received a comment from Kelly Corrigan. Kelly Corrigan! Before that, when Kelly’s book The Middle Place came out, I’d inhaled it in three days–and I don’t do that very often. The book is Kelly’s story of getting breast cancer as a young mom, just as her beloved father is diagnosed with cancer. And if that sounds like a downer of a story, prepare to be surprised. Kelly is such a lively, witty writer that the book is as hilarious as it can be heartbreaking. (Click on that link to the book to read an excerpt and see for yourself.) And once you read it, you’ll never forget the charming character that is her father, George Corrigan. Trust me on that.

I haven’t yet read her new book, Lift, but I’m getting ready to inhale.

Anyway, Kelly wanted to know if she could use a few of my photos for a little project she was getting together. (I believe my response was Are you kidding? Of course!) She also wanted to know if I knew anyone who could help her make the video.

Do I know anyone who can make videos? Um. Yeah.

So I gave Kelly a link to my photostream, and H worked with her on the video. The kid learned a lot about working with a client, being willing to make changes, last minute deadlines. When Kelly was struggling to find enough photos, I sent links to the photostreams of my favorite mama photographers. I wasn’t surprised that she loved the work of kate and molly as much as I do. (Met those two via blogging too. Continually amazed, I tell you.)

Here’s the beautiful video essay that Kelly came up with. You might recognize a few familiar faces in there.

Fast Tube by Casper

Hope your Mother’s Day is just as heartwarming.

Because I think you should read this book.

mr. t tries on a whole new mind

It’s a book about how we’re leaving an era widely known as the Information Age, and entering a new one. Pink writes, “We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical, linear, computerlike capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and society built on the inventive, empathetic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age.” And this book is all about the skills we’ll need in this new age.

The premise here is that many of the jobs held in the Information Age are now carried out by computers, or outsourced to foreign labor. So the jobs of the future will require skills that are more right-brained than left-brained, skills that Pink calls “high concept” and “high touch”.

And while the book’s primary audience is the business world, I think New Mind has big implications for parents, and for homeschooling parents in particular. (An aside: I know that many of my readers aren’t homeschoolers. Still, the fact that you follow this blog, and based on the comments many of you have left, I assume that we have some intersecting philosophies about parenting. I imagine that you value learning that’s meaningful to your child. So while I refer to homeschoolers in the rest of this post for the sake of sentence fluidity, know that I’m speaking to any parent who takes a particular, deep interest in his or her child’s learning.)

Anyway, what’s interesting about the skills–or “abilities”–that Pink writes about is that they’re nothing like the logical, linear skills that schools have convinced us that we’ll need. Let’s see if I can summarize.

• Design. Pink says that these days, products, services, and experiences can’t be just functional. “Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.” Design matters! Which validates the time your son spends designing a better skateboard ramp, or your daughter spends making a model Indian kitchen. And it’s another reason why project-based learning can be so valuable: when kids choose their own projects and create them, they’re designers. And the act of designing is almost always fulfilling.
• Story. Hee-haw, you know I love this one! Pink’s point here is that information these days is so accessible that it’s overwhelming. We need people who can present information and data in a compelling way–with story. Story is why you remember the history you’ve learned via historical novels, films, and personal accounts, but not what you learned from a textbook. It’s not so important that our kids memorize a bunch of information; it’s more important that they can shape information into something that’s meaningful and captivating to others. So all those silly Pokemon stories that your kid endlessly rattles off? It’s teaching him to be a storyteller, and it’s good stuff. Keep it going.
• Symphony. This is the skill of being able to gather disparate bits into something new. This particular ability fascinates me for egocentric reasons–it’s a skill I never conceived of before, but it’s one I think I’m pretty good at. For instance, I’ve always belittled myself for not being a very creative cook. I tend to follow recipes, rather than make up my own. But when I think more about it, I realize that when I cook, I actually pull together lots of information. If I want to make a vegetable lasagna, say, my mind will go back to dozens of recipes I’ve looked at or tried over the last twenty years–and frighteningly, I usually remember where I saw them–and I’ll combine ideas from several and create something new, which is creative in its own way. It’s the same skill that had me cutting up and reassembling my writing in my last post; it’s the one that compels me to compile a bunch of ideas into a book. Symphony is the skill of an applied researcher, I suppose, and it’s something that no one ever told me I had talent for. But I see my kids cultivating it constantly in their self-designed projects–like when one combines wii games with Norse myths. Symphony also includes metaphorical thinking, which is an ability that I always admire, as a writer.
• Empathy. The ability to walk in another’s shoes. This isn’t a skill that schools truly value–you don’t see standardized tests measuring empathy. But it is an ability that many parents hope to nurture in their kids. And it’s worth nurturing, not only because it’s noble and decent but, according to Pink, it’s also practical. Many jobs of the future will require people to do what computers can’t–interpret the emotional needs of others.
• Play. Homeschoolers don’t need to be convinced of the importance of play in daily life. We see how much our kids learn from play; we understand that having enough time for play is vital. I found Pink’s chapter on play a bit disappointing; his examples highlighting the importance of play are laughing clubs in India, and the effects of playing video games. Somehow I would have liked more–but I didn’t need to be persuaded. My kids taught me the importance of play years ago.
• Meaning. This is the ability to understand deeper underlying reasons for doing what we do: “purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment”. This is another ability in which homeschoolers have an intrinsic advantage. If our kids have control over what they learn, it gives their learning value and meaning. They aren’t learning for someone else’s purposes, but because their learning matters to them. Pink quotes American journalist Gregg Easterbrook: “A transition from material want to meaning want is in progress on an historically unprecedented scale–involving hundreds of millions of people–and may eventually be recognized as the principal cultural development of our age.” I think homeschoolers are on the forefront of this transition.

Pink devotes a chapter to each ability, followed by a portfolio of ideas for developing those abilities. The story portfolio, for example, encourages the reader to consider writing a 50-word mini saga, to interview and record friends, to visit a storytelling festival (Carrie, I want to do that this year!), to experiment with digital storytelling. So many exciting ideas. It’s a fun book, an enjoyable read–not what I expected from a book in the Business section.

But here’s what thrills me most about this book: My kids use these abilities constantly. There’s a whole lot of right-brained thinking going on around here. But the kids don’t learn this way because their dad and I want them to “rule the future”, as New Mind‘s subtitle says right-brained thinkers will. We don’t homeschool because we want our kids to get into good colleges, or get better jobs. We’ve homeschooled because we want them to be curious, creative people who love to learn, who know their passions and value the notion that those passions might guide their lives. Their learning is kid-driven and mostly project-based because that’s the sort of learning that motivates them.

Pink’s book won’t change our homeschooling. But it does validate what we’re already doing. A Whole New Mind makes me realize that learning driven by kids and based on their interests isn’t just fun, it’s practical. It’s giving them skills that are not only rewarding and fulfilling but–dare I use this word–marketable. And yes, I’ve always known this, always believed it, but it’s awfully nice to read a carefully researched book written for the big, bad Business World that seconds what homeschoolers have always known.

So I think you should read this book. Not because it will change your life, but because it might give you courage to keep at the life you’ve chosen.

I haven’t done one of these atwitter posts in a while. Here’s what has me all worked up these days.

Knitting. Looky! Even though I haven’t posted here, I’ve been knitting. Hats!

This one (ravelry link) is my favorite, ’cause I can pretend it’s the 1930′s and it doesn’t smash my (already plenty flat) hair.

(updated the photo: I felted the hat a bit because it was too big. This photo is post-felting.)

This was my first foray into colorwork. Isn’t it a pretty pattern? I’m a continental knitter, and was hell-bent on learning how to hold both yarns in the left hand. I kept fiddling with ways of stranding the yarn across my fingers and finally figured a way that worked for me. Having both yarns on the same hand made my tension even, I think.

I also knit a pair of super-wooly socks for Chris to wear around the house, but he won’t hold still long enough more me to get a photo. Now I’m swatching for Ysolda’s coraline. 

The girls are back in action! Here in northern California, my plum tree is blooming, the rosemary is draped in blue and my bees are busy. I opened up the hive over the weekend and found lots of capped honey, and saw Queen Bee-atrice strutting around some glossy white larval bees.

Can you see her in the photo, the longer one towards the middle? Yippee! I think we’ll get honey this year!

new blogs: Danielsaurus is fascinating. Here’s a description from the sidebar: “Daniel’s been hardwired to the Internet since he was twelve and spends a lot of time on it finding nifty things to share. Mostly he writes about children, play, kids’ cultures, and the ‘bigger picture’ of childhood in society.” It’s a constant flow of thought-provoking links and wonderings.

Making marmalade. Last summer, stefeneener and denise gave a jam workshop that finally got me past my irrational fears of canning, and at Christmas my parents gifted me with some fine equipment. 

Our satsuma mandarin tree went bonkers with fruit this winter, so satsuma-vanilla bean marmalade was my first canning attempt. Fabulous recipe! It turned out so tasty that I have a big bowl of our last satsumas, ready to make a third batch. Favorite snack: this marmalade with almond butter on Swedish crispbread. Snarf.

New books. I’m still meaning to write a post on Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, giddy as I am about the ideas in that book. I also read his newer book, Drive, about motivation. It’s also a fascinating book, all about how intrinsic motivation is much more powerful than external motivators, but this one didn’t knock my hand-knit socks off as much as the other book. Because, of course, as a homeschooling parent, I see the power of internal motivation in action every single day. I’ve learned the hard way, as many homeschooling parents do, that my attempts at motivating my kids have not a fraction of the power that their own internal fires do. So the ideas here weren’t new to me, but if you have any doubts about the potential of internal drive and want scientific back-up, or if you want hints for becoming a more internally-driven person, it’s a good read. And, in the section on kids and education, Pink gives a nod to unschooling! Pink’s TED talk on the topic is compelling–it gives you a sense of what the book is like.

And has anyone read 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)? I haven’t, but am intrigued. Lots of interesting stuff from the author, Gever Tulley, at tinkering school.

So, what has you all atwitter right now?

If you haven’t been reading along, these are the posts in which I wring my hands over how un-waldorfy things can get around here, and how I tend to feel guilty about it. Or try to justify why I don’t feel guilty.

I’ve been feeling less and less guilty lately. Brought on by a confluence of different ideas from different people.

First was Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs. I’ve already raved on and on about this book, so I’ll spare you. (Although if you can get your hands on the audiobook version, which Chabon reads, you must.) In my reflection on the book, I wrote this:

“There’s something about the way Chabon combines his Pulitzer Prize-winning style with the most base cultural references that captivates me. In his essay on Legos—one that had particular resonance for me as the mother of two Lego-loving sons—Chabon writes, “Time after time, playing Legos with my kids, I would fall under the spell of the old familiar crunching. It’s the sound of creativity itself, of the inventive mind at work, making something new out of what you have been given by your culture, what you know you will need to do the job, and what you happen to stumble upon along the way.” That making something new of what you have been given by your culture is a big part of Chabon’s genius. It’s precisely what he does in these essays, again and again.”

And one could certainly argue that Chabon made something new of what he was given by his culture when he took his lowly childhood love of comic books and fashioned it into a Pulitzer prize-winning novel.

Second was my reading of Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. I’m planning to write a post on the book soon, so I won’t say much yet. But holy sheep dip, this book has so many implications for educators–for homeschoolers especially–about the skills kids will really need in the future. So many of Pink’s ideas are what I and a world of other homeschoolers have intuited over the years, but what a joy to get such heavily-researched validation!

Third was yet another insightful post by Lori at camp creek about not limiting what our kids learn from. (You may have already clicked on my link to this post in the sidebar–if not, go read!)

Which all led to the morning when Mr. T was trying to come up with a project for our homeschool history fair, based on his interest in Norse myths. I can’t remember who came up with the idea first–it may have been my suggestion after I saw how he was “enacting” a video game by jumping across the family room furniture. But somehow the idea formed: he plans to design his own Lego Wii-style game, based on Norse mythology.

map of the nine Norse worlds

Now he won’t be actually making a playable game, of course. But he’s imagining levels and drawing pictures and narrating to me what happens in each. And we’re thinking of begging his big brother to help him make some stop-animation films for each level.

Here’s what he has so far. My waldorf guilt must warn you that there is a lot of virtual punching involved. But if you can hang in there, I’ll explain what I think the kid is getting from this.

map of level 1

LEVEL 1: THE BATTLE OF YMIR

Object: Defeat Ymir

First of all, go to Ymir and punch him three times. He will jump to a ledge. Beware, he’ll throw icicles down! Also, jotuns will fall from the sky. They’ll only take one punch to defeat. 

Remember, don’t go into Ginnungagap or the sides of the board or you’ll die.

Go under Ymir’s ledge and pull down a lever. More ledges will come out of the wall. Jump on them to get to Ymir’s ledge and punch him three times. He’ll jump to a new ledge and the one you’re on will explode. You’ll fall to the ground.

Then, go under Ymir’s new ledge and step on one of the three red squares. Your teammates will step on the other red squares. Then Ymir’s new ledge will come down. Jump on to it and punch him three times. He’ll jump to the ground. Punch him three more times and the level will end.

Tips:

How to get the magic box: in Free Play, be Loki or a different character that can jump really high and jump on to the island in the middle of Ginnungagap. Collect the floating box.

If you win:

You unlock Odin and his brothers and you can be them in Free Play.

How this level is based on Norse myths:

Well, there really wasn’t any levers, red squares, floating boxes, jotuns falling from the sky, or an island in the middle of Ginnungagap. Really, there wasn’t any Lego things whatsoever.

What there really was were the characters of Odin, Loeder and Hoenir, who were brothers and the first of the Aesir gods. There also was Ymir, who was the first of the jotun race, or a frost giant. Odin and his brothers really fought Ymir and they did throw him into Ginnungagap. I didn’t put blood in because I didn’t want it to be too violent, but there was blood in the story. Ginnungagap was a giant pit in the middle of Niflheim and Muspelheim, the first of the nine Norse worlds.

Nifty fact:

The Star Wars planet Mustafar was based on Muspelheim.

First, I have to tell you how incredibly excited Mr. T is about this project. He thinks about future levels endlessly, and begs me to take more dictation. So there’s deep immersion.

Second, there are lots of writing skills at work here. After I wrote Level 1, he said, “Now do the dot-dot thing.” 

I knew what he was getting at. “You mean put a colon in?”

“Yes, a colon.” And he came to check that I did it right. On the next line, after I typed object, he said, “Now put a colon.” 

How can I not be charmed by an eight-year-old who requests colons in all the right places? 

I asked him if he’d consider adding the How this level is based on Norse myths section (hoping to make sure the project looks somewhat educational for the homeschool fair.) Mr. T was happy to. He said, “Can the narrator be funny in that part?”

“What?” I didn’t see that question coming.

“You know, funny. Like this.” And he proceeded to narrate the section above, influenced, I’m pretty sure, by the disclaimer page that follows each Magic Schoolbus book. My favorite part is Really, there wasn’t any Lego things whatsoever. (I’m not fixing his grammar at this point–he’ll learn to use the right verb tenses in time, but for now I want to keep intact his eight-year-old voice.) I love how he’s picking up the notion that one can write with personality and humor, even in nonfiction. 

“Oh, and I want to add a nifty fact.” A nifty fact? I have no idea where he got that phrase. From National Geographic Kids? From one of the many behind-the-scenes books on comics that he’s read? When I asked where he got this particular nifty fact, he ran upstairs and brought down his Star Wars encyclopedia. Surely wii games and Star Wars books are just the sort of “crap” that Michael Chabon writes about; my kid is using crap to learn how to make his informational writing captivating. 

He’s using just the sort of right-brained thinking that Pink writes about to put this project together. He’s researching Norse myths and considering the wii games that he likes to play. Then he’s applying his research to design a game that takes into account those myths while also being entertaining. Silly as his project may sound, I’m convinced that these are the types of skills the kids of today will need in the future. It’s not the content that he’s working with that matters so much, it’s the thinking skills involved.

If content like wii games is what captivates my kid, I’m willing to go with it. And, surprisingly, I don’t feel even a smidge guilty.

On New Year’s morning, I woke to find a message in my inbox telling me that Scott Russell Sanders had left a comment on my blog. Sanders was my essayist for October, and reading his message was such a thrill, and a closing more satisfying than I ever could have imagined for my year-long project. 

This wasn’t the first time a writer had left a comment on my blog, but it was the first of my beloved essayists to stop and say hello. I’m not sure I would have ever had the gall to put these thoughts out in public if I’d ever dreamed that the writers themselves might show up to read what I’d written. And I’m not sure I would have ever started this project if I’d realized what a time-consuming creature it would become.

Oh, it was time-consuming. There was at least one book to read each month. (And not a lick of fiction all year–not a lick!) After reading, I had to go back over my highlights and select favorites. Type them in and explain what I admired about them. And then write a little nutshell overview of what I thought about the writer. Those posts took me hours to write–usually over several days. Somehow they got longer and longer as the months went on, yet they consistently received far fewer comments than any of my regular posts. What was I thinking? What kept me doing it, month after month, like that dutiful teachers’ pet in the front row that makes everyone cross their eyes? 

I’m not entirely sure. There was something about declaring the project in public that fueled me. Who wants to fail on the stage of the World Wide Web? But more than that, I think, it became clear in the early months that I was learning an awful lot from the project. Here’s what I wrote when I first started out:

“The idea of studying essayists came to me in late December, when I was reading some writer’s list of favorite writers. And I realized, with plenty of despair and loathing, that although I’ve been reading and writing essays for thirteen years now, I would have a hard time coming up with a list of favorite essayists. I could give you a couple names, but a couple is a set, mere salt and pepper shakers. Not a list.”

And now? After twelve months of being a good student, sitting as I am in the front row, I can rattle off a long list of favorites. I can even tell what I’ve learned from each one. (Not that I can apply what I’ve learned. But I’m trying.)

Annie Dillard showed me how to observe, how to make every word in every sentence count; Michel de Montaigne  showed that in an essay, it’s more important to raise questions than to answer them. From Sue Hubbell I learned how to approach instructive writing using the essayist’s toolbox, and from Joan Didion how to work the telling detail, and the rhythm of a paragraph. I will always love Anne Lamott for her humor, her heart, and her wacky, spot-on metaphors. I’ll always appreciate Molly Wizenberg for showing me how to leap from the blogging world to the literary one. E.B. White showed me how an essayist can be witty and intelligent yet still downright charming, while Pico Iyer taught me how to pay attention to the details in the world around me, whether I’m in Iceland or my own kitchen. M.F.K. Fisher showed how insight into people is as important as details about things–and how to be sassy. Scott Russell Sanders taught me how to craft beautiful lines about pain as well as joy, and Michael Chabon showed me how to craft beautiful lines, somehow, from the most mundane bits from our culture and our days. And Adam Gopnik, well, Adam Gopnik will always be the Scarecrow to my Dorothy, my first favorite essayist.

This project has been so satisfying. I’m thinking of slurping all the posts into a Blurb book, so I can revisit all those fabulous lines until they burn themselves into my brain and fingers and make me a better writer.

Recognizing the power that a public year-long project seems to have on me, as the year wound down I began considering a new project for the new year. As good as it would be for me to read another dozen essayists, to finally get around to studying Virginia Woolf, I’m not doing it. It just took too much time. I thought about doing something completely different, something with photography, because I want to take better pictures.

But eventually I realized that the natural follow-up to this project would be to take what I’ve learned this year and to try to apply it to my own writing. And to make some progress on my book idea, since it’s the project that matters most to me right now. So I’ve come up with something I’m calling my Chapter-A-Month Challenge. I’m going to try to get a draft of a new book chapter completed each month.

I have no idea if I can pull this off. I write s-l-o-w-l-y. I write about as fast as Mr. T brushes his teeth, because he spends most of his brushing time making faces in the mirror. But at least I can try to write slowly more often, right? Once a month I’ll report here on how it’s going. Maybe I’ll share a few lines; maybe I’ll just whine about how hard it is to wake up at 5:00 am on Tuesdays to write. I’m not sure.

I’m putting the challenge on my blog for the kick-in-the-pants effect I hope it will have on my writing, not because I think you, dear readers, will find it interesting. I hope you don’t mind indulging me once a month.

The week I finished off my essayist project, I read one more essay. This one was by Alexander Chee, from Mentors, Muses and Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives. It’s an essay about the time Chee spent in the classroom of Annie Dillard, my January essayist from last year. By the time you get to the part where Dillard tells her students that whenever they’re in a bookstore, they should put their finger in the place on the shelf where their own book would be, you are guaranteed to have goosebumps if you’re an aspiring writer yourself.

“If I’ve done my job, she said in the last class, you won’t be happy with anything you write for the next ten years. It’s not because you won’t be writing well, but because I’ve raised your standards for yourself. Don’t compare yourselves with each other. Compare yourselves to Colette, or Henry James, or Edith Wharton. Compare yourselves to the classics. Shoot there.”

After nearly twenty years of trying to teach myself to write, I’m sure I won’t be satisfied after another ten. But after twelve months of reading some pretty excellent essayists, twelve months of sampling them and savoring them, now, when it comes to my own writing, at least I know what I’m shooting for.

random notes:

If you’ve been reading here for a year now (and how lucky I am if you have), you’ll remember that it was my thoughts on Adam Gopnik that inspired this project. I started 2009 bemoaning the fact that after years of reading essayists, I hadn’t developed a real sense of which were my favorites and why. I’d read, but I hadn’t studied.

But I had this to say about Gopnik (to understand one reference in this passage, you need to know that earlier in the post I shared one of my Great Talents: to remember nearly every commercial jingle of the 1970′s):

“Well, I did study one essayist. A few years back I became smitten with the work of Adam Gopnik. I read his books with a green highlighter in my hand. I striped his books, you could say. I wrote down lines I liked in my journal, and went so far as to write down why those lines worked, and why they spoke to me.

And guess what? I can tell you a thing or two about Adam Gopnik’s writing. I can tell you that he writes like the valedictorian in your high school class–with smarts that force you to reread sentences, and occasionally make you want to tell him to stop showing off. He writes with a poet’s ear; sometimes his lines sashay and sing. And what I may love most: beneath his considerable brain beats a heart as sappy as a 70’s Kodak commercial (the ones that featured Paul Anka singing “The Times of Your Life.” And yes, I can sing it.) Gopnik wants to impress you with his smarts, but he also wants to knead your heart just a little–and he’ll do it, unfailingly, in the last lines of his last paragraph.”

I spent December rereading particular sections from two of Gopnik’s books: his Christmas journals from Paris to the Moon, and the Thanksgiving essays from Through the Children’s Gate.  My rereading only reinforced what I wrote about him above (although I’m not sure I ever wanted him to stop showing off).

Since these particular essays were Gopnik’s reminiscences of his previous year, they often contain many disparate bits; a single essay might cover French fax machines, French pomposity, Christmas trees, Halloween, the carousel in the Luxembourg Gardens, French lunches, fact checkers, rude Americans in Paris, French subtitles, arrogance and courtesy in French commerce, infuriation at the Musée d’Orsay, and a pinball machine at the back of a café. Yet Gopnik manages, somehow, to gather all these bits into a single cohesive mass, and it’s deft and beautiful, like you’re watching a master baker form croissants. The fax machine errors become an analogy for pomposity; the wrapping of an éclair a symbol for pomposity’s opposite. Everything comes together in the essay’s last lines, as I mentioned above, and the result is more stunning than any French pastry.

a few lines to love:

On his second attempt at buying Christmas tree lights. The first time he discovered that French lights come in round garlands, not long strings.

“The trouble now was that the new white lights I got were white lights that were all twinkling ones. I saw the word clignotant on the box, and I knew that it meant blinking, but somehow I didn’t associate the word blinking with the concept “These lights blink off and on.” It was the same thing with the garlands, come to think of it. It said guirlande right on the box, and I knew perfectly well what guirlande meant; but I am not yet able to make the transposition from what things say to what they mean. I saw the word guirlande on the box, but I didn’t quite believe it. In New York I believe everything I read, even if it appears in the New York Post. In France I am always prepared to give words the benefit of a poetic doubt. I see the word guirlande and shrug and think that maybe garland is just the French seasonal Christmas light-specific idiom for a string. The box says, “They blink,” and I think they don’t.”

Gopnik is always fascinated by the odd little idiosyncrasies in daily life, whether in France or at home in New York City.  And he always seems happy to portray himself as hapless. To humorous effect.

After taking his son, Luke, who is three (I think), to see a puppet show of The Three Pigs in the Luxembourg Gardens, the two take a late-night stroll with the stroller:

“Luke, all the while was keeping up a running, troubled commentary on Les Tres Petits Cochons. “Why there were two wolves?” he would spring up, sleepy, from his pousette, to demand. (Actually, there was just one, but he would appear, with sinister effect, on either side of the proscenium.) “Why he wants to eat the pigs?” “Why that man knock him?” “Why that crocodile bite?” Why, why, why…the question the pigs ask the wolf, that the wolf asks the hunter, that the hunter asks God–and the answer, as it comes at midnight, after all the other, patient parental answers (“Well, you see, wolves generally like to eat pigs, though that’s just in the story.” “Well, hunters, a long time ago, would go hunting for wolves with guns when they were a danger to people”), the final exhausted midnight-in-the-lamplight answer, wheeling the pousette down the Quai Voltaire, is the only answer there is, the Bible’s answer to Job: because that’s the way the puppet master chose to do it, bcause that’s the way the guy who works the puppets chose to have it done.”

Here’s yet another example of an essayist using a long, complicated line to convey a long, complicated situation. Any parent remembers the whys of a three-year-old, and Gopnik reminds us how those whys go on and on, and even intersperses his (ultimately ineffective) explanations right in the middle of that long line, to complicate it even further. I especially admire how he gets across his that’s just how it is! point at the end: not once, but in two different ways. It gives his “final exhausted midnight-in-the-lamplight answer” the desperate impact it requires. Saying it twice shows how exasperated he is. It also adds to the rhythm of the line.

On Luke at four, noticing his father’s French:

“He recognizes that his parents, his father particularly, speaks with an Accent, and this brings onto him exactly the shame that my grandfather must have felt when his Yiddish-speaking father arrived to talk to his teachers at a Philadelphia public school. I try to have solid, parental discussions with his teachers, but as I do, I realize, uneasily, that in his eyes I am the alter kocker, the comic immigrant.

‘Zo, how the boy does?” he hears me saying in effect. “He is good boy, no? He is feeling out the homeworks, isn’t he?’ I can see his small frame shudder, just perceptibly, at his father’s words.”

I like the drawn-out analogy here, the imagined scene. Zo, how the boy does? perfectly gets across just how cringe-worthy Gopnik’s French must seem to his son. It’s that haplessness, once again.

The first line of Through the Children’s Gate:

“In the fall of 2000, just back from Paris, with the sounds of its streets still singing in my ears and the codes to its courtyards still lining my pockets, I went downtown and met a man who was making a map of New York.”

I love the rhythm and the sounds of this sentence. All the s words–sounds, streets, singing, ears–then the hard c sounds–codes, courtyards, pockets–and then all those m’s–met, man, making, map. Read it out loud; isn’t it lovely? The poetry lures you right into the book.

From the Thanksgiving essay written after 9/11:

“Children don’t mind if their parents are worried; they expect it–parents are there to worry. But they notice at once if their parents are afraid, for that is what parents are never to be.”

Gopnik does this often–he boils down his observations into a universal statement. His phrasing makes it read like an aphorism. And there’s that wonderful rhythm once again.

After agreeing that Luke and his friend could have a two-night sleepover, but without any screen time:

“Once before, they had used a no-screen weekend imaginatively, to hold a fire sale of old Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. They both have outgrown the game in the past year and now view their beautiful old Rackhamish cards with disdain and the kind of disbelief about their enthusiasms of seven months ago that we have for pictures of ourselves in decades past–the haircut! those clothes! Childhood is just like life, only ten times faster.”

There’s that aphoristic statement at the end. And the exclamatory asides–the haircut! the clothes! Very Gopnikish. I took a particular delight in watching Luke and his friends, over the years and through the essays, become obsessed with almost exactly the same games that H and his buddies went through over the years, although H’s gang favored Pokemon over Yu-Gi-Oh! There were baseball cards, and Major League Baseball Showdown cards and eventually the Lord of the Rings game with painted figures. Gopnik writes this about Yu-Gi-Oh!, but it really applies to any of them:

“The game, when you play it, has mind-numbingly elaborate rules, but you never seem to play it. The goal is to collect the cards and plan to play it someday.”

Precisely. Ha! It baffled me with H and his friends, and it’s baffling me again with Mr. T and his, with their Pokemon collections. West Coast boys and East Coast boys–it’s all the same! Gopnik describes the Lord of the Rings game, which involves the painstaking construction of miniature plastic figures, which are then primed and painted in eye-crossing detail. 

“The game combines, so far as I can see, the joys of being a Malaysian child laborer in a small-goods sweatshop with the excitement of double-entry bookkeeping.”

Maybe this is only funny if you’ve had a boy that has played this particular game. In which case I’m sure you are nodding and snorting in agreement.

And this, in an essay on worrying over Luke spending too much time on computers and video games:

“Considering the maze of screens and cards and pages, I ended up at last with a bitter, semi-Marxist conclusion: It is not that we want them free of screens, really. It is that we want them to be screen producers rather than screen consumers. We say that we don’t want them enslaved to screens, but what we really want is for them to enslave other people to them. We want them to be Steve Jobs or Steven Spielberg–feudal screen lords rather than mere screen peasants, screen serfs. We do not mind if they play games, so long as they grow up to write software. We will leave them alone for a weekend to write their screenplay, even if they have to huddle over a screen to do it.”

Adam Gopnik, how did you get inside my brain? This is my bitter, semi-Marxist conclusion exactly. (And please explain, if I think like you, why, oh why, can’t I write like you?)

And one more, just because it kills me. This is from the last Thanksgiving essay, when Luke is eleven, and Gopnik asks every day after school, at 3:15, how school was, even though he knows he’ll get only “the high-shouldered shrug of the exasperated” in return. But then, every day at 3:30, Luke sends him an IM, filling in his father on all he hadn’t acknowledged.

“I understood what he was doing. To submit to the parental three-fifteen is to surrender autonomy; to send complete messages from your own computer is to seize control of the means of communication, allowing you to declare both autonomy and your essential goodwill. He was doing what children have to do: He was making me, his strongest tie, into a weaker tie, and then strengthening the tie again, but on his own terms. He is getting ready to go. He is putting his first shirt in the bottom of his eventual suitcase.”

Ah, that last line. Even more poignant when your kid is seventeen, and the suitcase is half-filled. 

It was especially interesting to read these essays in succession, to watch Luke grow from a boy in a stroller to a boy with a shirt in his suitcase. Childhood is just like life, only ten times faster. I just love that Adam Gopnik.

So, what’s next?

Will I begin Another Year of Excellent Essayists? Will I finally get to Virginia Woolf? Will I find time to read some–any, a short story, a page, something please–fiction? Will I take a new direction and embark upon My Year of Excellent Egg Dishes?

Come on back for my next post when I’ll get all mawkish and misty-eyed about what this project has meant to me, and yammer on about what I’ll do in 2010.

Last Friday I spent the morning descending into the internet hell of IP addresses that would not work, computer settings improperly changed, baffling terms like DNS and PPPoe and DHCP, and several futile phone calls to a so-called service provider who would not help me unless I paid $99 for some service.

I asked Lulu if she would please do something with Mr. T so he would not be totally ignored as I descended further and further into the depths.

Look at what she came up with.

That’s a Christmas ornament for one of Mr. T’s friends. Made with Pokemon cards.

Lulu came up with the project herself. She’d seen something similar, done with photos, in the fabulously fun book I’d bought for her, Photojojo: Insanely Great Photo Projects and DIY Ideas. Somehow she decided that the same idea would work for her brother’s beloved Pokemon cards.

Martha Stewart, I know she’s only 14 and all, but you really oughta hire this girl.

She showed me how she did it, and a few days later (and a few minor yet essential computer settings discovered and changed), I helped Mr. T make a few more. We adapted the basic Photojojo instructions, as per Lulu’s advice. I drew four lines, each half an inch apart on the cards. Mr. T cut along the lines, and I punched the holes. (That part is tough for little hands.)

Mr. T lined up the card strips (a fun little puzzle) and inserted the brads. Two cards made each ornament. According to T, both cards should be of the same color, and the yarn tie must match. Must match.

Oops, he’s got the brads in backwards there. We also had to fold the brad tips in half after bending them, as they were rather long.

Voila!

As I helped Mr. T spread Charizard Christmas cheer, Lulu was up to something new.

She’s stitching up  a voodoo doll. Of the actor Robert Pattinson from the Twilight films. Lulu and her friends are Twilight-crazed, but apparently not crazy for Pattinson. 

Lulu also found this project in her Photojojo book. I wished I’d gotten better photos of the dolls, with the pins and all, but Lulu snatched them away and wrapped them up before I ever got a chance.

I think the gifts were a hit. All I know is that yesterday at the park, when she passed out three of these dolls to her friends, I heard the most ear-ravaging set of teenage girls’ screams.

Leave me a comment, Martha, and I’ll pass along her number.

The first is a knitting project that I actually finished a while back, and have been meaning to share.

This is the sweater that made my sweater coat jealous.

The sweater is Jane, from Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard. The bottom portion of the sweater as written is designed with a chevron pattern; I decided to try something lacy instead. I used the lace pattern from the Lacy Skirt with Bows that I knit from Greetings From Knit Cafe.

I’m happy with how it came out. (Just don’t tell my sweater coat how much more often I wear this one.)

More (typically) ramblesome details here for you Ravelers.

I also have a writing project to share. I have a new essay in the November/December issue of Natural Life magazine. This is the second time running that one of my essays has been retitled for publication–I originally named this piece “Homeschooling My MFA” (and I have to say that I prefer the cheekiness of that title.) In the essay I look back on nearly twenty years of trying to teach myself to write–and realize that what I’ve been doing looks a lot like what my kids do as homeschoolers.