Mrs P W’s Sunset Years

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle needs to pick herself up, give herself a first name (Peter suggests Peggy) , dig up the pirate loot in her backyard, buy a condo in Boca (I mean, how many years can you live in an upside down house?), and enjoy the good life.

Thanks to Betsy for pointing me to Laurel’s wonderful short story.

2010 Scott O’Dell Winner

Congratulations to Matt Phelan:  I am a huge fan of this book and am delighted it won.

A Sort-of Resolution

I have to admit I’m not much for resolutions of the New Year’s sort.  Goal-setting and other such activities are hell for me.  This is because the moment I set a goal I obsess and become overly preoccupied with achieving it.

For example, in my thirties I was a competitive runner.  It was my first positive experience with a sport and I enjoyed it tremendously. I loved being part of a track club and when racing went well it was exhilarating ; however, after a while I became far too anxious about doing the right amount of weekly mileage, participating in speed and track workouts, and so forth.  Eventually injuries forced some temporary suspensions and I quit running to compete to running for my own enjoyment. Since then I’ve run regularly, but love not worrying about time or distance.

And then there was Weight Watchers.  I had a rough time of it after 9/11; months of sleeplessness and weigh gain happened and so I joined Weight Watchers.  After reaching my goal I stayed on for a few more years, but finally quit and, even though I’ve gained some of it back, do not want to return if I can avoid it.  I experienced the same sort of anxiety I’d had with running — what would happen at my weekly weighing?  What about that dessert I’d had? I couldn’t stand being so preoccupied about everything that went into my mouth.

My school used to require us teachers to set goals and it made me incredibly anxious — I took the whole exercise more seriously than my colleagues and worried all year about what might happen if I hadn’t succeed with some goal or other.

Because of this I’ve not been one for New Year’s resolutions.  I’ve got a few vague ideas of what I’d like to do this coming year, but I’m not writing them here because if they don’t happen in 2010, that is just fine.  They will either happen in 2011 or maybe they aren’t meant to happen.  That said I do like Laura Miller’s suggestion to read a book in 2010 that you think you will hate.   Now I have to admit I often do this because I make an effort to read many new books for children and some of them are books that don’t look like ones I’ll like. And sometimes that is the case and sometimes it is not.  So here is the best I can do resolution-wise  — try to make more of an effort to read more books I don’t think I’ll like.

And I should say that I do have some deadlines and such — say a book revision — and I will make them, not to worry, editor and agent. I may get anxious about them, but I always meet deadlines like this. In fact, these sort don’t bother me at all. It is the self-imposed ones that do.

Lo, the poor Na’vi!

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind;
His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

From Alexander Pope’s  “Essay on Man”

I saw Avatar yesterday.  As I was sitting in the theater waiting for it to begin I checked my twitter feed and found a tweet from @chavelaque to an article, “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar‘” that I quickly skimmed, an article raising issues I already had myself from what I’d read about the plot  But I was there to see the movie because I’d also read that despite the storytelling problems, the visuals made it must-see viewing.

And now that I’ve seen the movie I have to wholeheartedly agree with the article’s writer.  In fact,  I’m flummoxed by the critical love the movie is getting.  Yeah, it is an impressive piece of visual filmmaking, but that story, that dialog, those stock characters, and so on is lame, lame, lame.  Especially the plot.  I mean, I’d thought and hoped we were mostly beyond the sort of sentiments expressed by Pope in the 18th century.  That is, the objectifying of the “primitive,” the rehashing yet again those 19th century tropes of the vanishing red man, the 70s environmental Indians-are-the-keepers-of-the-earth-and-we-whites-need-to-do-something, and on and on and on that is front and center in this mediocre piece of storytelling.

While a few of the enthusiastic critics mention this, they are so overcome with excitement for the visuals,  the absorbing world, the technological wizardry that they don’t seem to see them as significant. Yes, for a while I was fascinated and interested in the filmmaking, but the clichés and the hokey tropes kept jumping out at me and kept me from getting lost as seems to happen to so many other viewers .  The  noble savage, Pope’s “lo, the Poor Indian” attitude brought forward a few centuries,  the pristine environment, the fake “primitive” language, the various ceremonies and rites, and so on was all too much for me to suspend my critical stance and just go with the imagery.

Art for me is about meaning-making. Great art is about making me think and be moved and transcend my lousy little world.  This one puts me in another world, I’ll grant you that, but a world that looks all too much like one I’d like us to move beyond.

Oh, Those Annoying Snollygosters

The latest in old and new English vocab here.

The Dreaded Cull

Books You Can Live Without.

Rereading Holmes

As an adult rereading Holmes with a more critical, demanding eye, however, I find the stories thin, unexciting, sometimes confusing, and almost always quickly forgotten. The characters are still deathless, the atmosphere nicely judged and subtly stoked, and Conan Doyle’s writing isn’t half so clumsy or overwrought as many of his peers’. But, as with Faulks’s Bond pastiche, not much seems to happen in Sherlock Holmes tales.

I’ve been thinking about taking a stab at rereading Holmes, but Darragh McManus has me nervous.

Illness at Night

This cockroach-like existence is cumulatively intolerable even though on any given night it is perfectly manageable. “Cockroach” is of course an allusion to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist wakes up one morning to discover that he has been transformed into an insect. The point of the story is as much the responses and incomprehension of his family as it is the account of his own sensations, and it is hard to resist the thought that even the best-meaning and most generously thoughtful friend or relative cannot hope to understand the sense of isolation and imprisonment that this disease imposes upon its victims. Helplessness is humiliating even in a passing crisis—imagine or recall some occasion when you have fallen down or otherwise required physical assistance from strangers. Imagine the mind’s response to the knowledge that the peculiarly humiliating helplessness of ALS is a life sentence (we speak blithely of death sentences in this connection, but actually the latter would be a relief).

From Tony Judt’s  profoundly moving essay, “Night.”

Gleeful Tidings of Joy

Happy Christmas!

The Translated Me

This was the first convention that I ‘ve been to since I got my Iphone and I travelled a trifle wild employing the camera for twirping intentions. For those not following me on chirrup what is incorrect with you? ( only kidding ) – here are those photos. By no intends a good overview of what I maked, but a couple of things withal.

So on Friday after the general session with Julie Andrews and her girl, I halted in to the jubilation for Lee Bennett Hopkins wads of playfulness to hear such distinguished poets as Jane Yolen, J Patrick Lewis, and Walter Dean Myers roast Lee. Sadly, I could n’t rest for more of them as I desired to catch a graphical novel session happing across the hallway. I came in in clip to be component of a draw-off between Flatness Holm and Jarrett J Krosoczka. The thought was for Matte to force Dejeuner Lady and Jarrett to make Babymouse, each with an audience member training them. Goodly, I certainly ran right up to train Matte so he maked Tiffin Lady functioning in my NYC schoolroom.

Don’t tell my agent or editor or the others who think I can actually write, but evidently that is from a blog post of mine. Sort of.  Actually it is, as discoverer Flatness, I mean, Matt Holm describes it, the beginning of a “translated-to-some-foreign-language-then-retranslated-to-English-stolen-blog-post” of mine. May I just say, I’m very honored to be worthy of mangling.