I finished Mockingjay on the bus ride home this afternoon.
Here’s what I can say spoiler-free: it changed my view of the other two books. They’re cast in a different light when I look back.
That effect was so strong that it feels like I changed as I moved through the series.
I love it when a trilogy does that.
Well played.
Last night was the first official event of the IPRC Certificate term– a meet and greet with readings by some of the instructors in the poetry, fiction/nonfiction, and comics tracks. (Aww, I typed “meet and great” by mistake!)
I had cleverly arranged to eat dinner with Sanguinity and LeBoyfriend just down the block at the Thai Peacock. I like that place! Dinner was a thank-you to LeB for caring for the dog and garden while Sang and I went to Colorado; Sang presented him with a small bag of garden tomatoes which had finally turned red just this week. (And it’s an early variety!)
After dinner I still had half an hour to kill at Powell’s before turning up at the IPRC. I cruised through the YA section, which was as always full of books I’ve been meaning to read (Gimme a Call and Will Grayson, Will Grayson among others) and wound up at the Nobel Prize for Literature shelf. Somewhere this week I ran across a blog that’s two people corresponding about reading Nobel authors. Like them, I have never or barely heard of most of the winners, and want to read more of their books. I’ll try to remember to check the Nobel list as I continue my Alphabet Reading project. (Up to O, as soon as I’m done with Speak, Memory and an E. Nesbit and The Time-Traveler’s Wife!)
Over at the IPRC when I got there, a card table was set up in the hall with a muslin bag for each of us students. The bag contained a nametag, paperwork about the certificate program and accompanying IPRC membership, and a perfect-bound journal made in-house by an IPRC intern! Sweet! A tour was just starting as I arrived, so I tagged along even though I think I’ve had two or three tours already at various times. Amy the volunteer had a pitch-perfect tour-guide air– not quite hauteur, but definitely guiding and presenting each room while dressed in vintage wool. There’s so much style at the IPRC. And not a cat-sweatshirt lady writer to be seen! You guys, I have a two-year membership there now. :)
I actually suck at meeting and greeting, so I had an awkward period of drifting around, trying the wheat-free Newman’s Oreologues, and holding up the wall. Judging from the nametags, poetry and comics tracks had the best turn-out, and since there are two fiction/nonfiction sections I still don’t know if I saw anyone who will be in my class on Mondays.
It was hot and muggy up there, but we all crowded into a room borrowed from the ILWU (union of the employees of Powell’s Books!) for the reading. B.T. Shaw read poetry– I especially liked a piece she said she’d read only once or twice before. It kept flipping perspectives from a family’s poppy garden, to the father (“Poppy”) and grandfather, to the act of writing about this (using the names of computer keys as commentary). She threw in some short funny poems, too.
Kevin Sampsell represented the fiction/nonfiction team. There is no Portland Hipster more venerable than Kevin Sampsell, and I say that with total admiration. (He runs the small press section at Powell’s as well as an indie press that’s having its 20th birthday this year.) He read from his memoir A Common Pornography— it made a splash in Willamette Week and so on when it came out earlier this year, but I hadn’t heard or read any excerpts yet. It’s good and I’m definitely going to get my hands on a copy and read it! He also read from a new novel MS, similar in format and tone to the memoir.
Shannon Wheeler read last–or rather, talked, and showed his sketchbooks and cartoons on a screen. He had just been to New Orleans with two dozen writers, artists, environmental journalists, and others to witness and document the Gulf oil spill. I could see how what he’d seen and what he had to say were just bursting out of him– he’s collaborating on a graphic novel, figuring it out as he goes. It was inspiring to see that passion, but also my chair was hard and it was almost 9:00, when I was supposed to meet Sang back at Powell’s for a ride home. I hope I’ll get to hear him again without the time crunch sometime. He’s getting cartooons into the New Yorker, which he says likes to get TEN CARTOONS A WEEK from contributors so they can really work with the cartoonists and develop a stable of regulars. Man, that must be a lot of work.
It was a long day, but I left looking forward to workshop this afternoon. I rode home with Sang and she let me unwind with a little Plants vs. Zombies on her computer while she knitted a hat for our neighbor’s baby shower this afternoon. Now I’m going for a run– nice not to have to get in in early before the heat anymore!–and before I know it will climb on a bus to head for the IPRC again.
Sanguinity and I kept a friend company at the Urgent Care clinic on Sunday, and Sang found this 8 1/2 x 11 document, abandoned on a clipboard in the waiting room:
I don’t think the same person was writing and coloring… so maybe the coloring came first? I wonder who, if anyone, delivered the message, and why it was in writing.
(Warning: this is looooong! I talk about every freakin’ aid station! and lots of other things in between!)
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“She’s so calm,” Sanguinity said about me to Leboyfriend, as we sat in our campsite on Friday night. “If that was me the night before a climb, I’d be all keyed up.”
Call it fatalism, or denial, but the reason I was so calm was that I really didn’t think I would finish the Mt. Hood Pacific Crest Trail 50-Miler Saturday. I mean, fifty miles, that’s just unreal. It seemed like a good idea when I signed up, and I kept telling myself that just making it to the starting line was progress after being DNS (registered but Did Not Start) a couple years ago, but… nah. I’d be pulled at a cutoff.
We all went to bed early on Friday, tired from the omg endless packing that every camping trip seems to involve and the drive up the mountain. (We did make a stop on the way up at Little Crater Lake, where children told each other loudly that if you went in the deep blue water you’d be PARALYZED. By the cold, assumedly, though they made it sound like there were neurotoxins floating around.) I slept soundly until about an hour before the alarm went off, at a quarter to five.
I was taking the early start at 5:30. I pinned my number on (single digits, #9! It was just from registering so early, but I told Sang it meant I was an elite, and that’s why I was in the “first corral” at 5:30. I’m so hilarious), and put on my Dirty Girl gaiters for the first time ever, and somehow I fell into getting-dressed meditation or something, because I looked at my clock and it was 5:21 and I was still at the campsite! Crap! The starting line at the ranger station was close, but not that close. We booked over there in time for the last of the pre-start instructions, so at least I could see where everybody went as they jogged out of the clearing. Sang took my drop bags to turn in, I distributed kisses, and off I went after the rest of the pack.
We followed the Miller Trail to the PCT where it follows the margin of Timothy Lake. There was enough light that no one needed a headlamp; the air was cool but not cold. Pretty, pretty trail, with glimpses of the lake through the trees. The first aid station was close to Little Crater Lake where we’d been the day before. It was minimalist in amenities (no drop bags, porta-potty, or spectators), but had the cheeriest volunteers of any aid station. Someone took my water bottle to refill while I had a little Coke and picked a few snacks from the table. At least one race director must be very into hygiene– everything was in serving-size packets instead of the traditional big bowl o’ food that everyone dips their grubby hands into. This aid station had even placed trash stations a few hundred yards along the trail, so we wouldn’t have to pack the wrappers. Great service!
On to the aid station at Hwy. 58, or as I found out it’s called, “the mosquito place.” Sang and LeB were waiting for me there! I didn’t even need to get into my drop bag, as they had the purple Dr. Eldritch tote with all my race stuff in it. First thing, I combed my hair, which I hadn’t had a chance to do in the rush to start. Then I put on sunscreen while the bugs had a feast. Then up the trail again to the turnaround at Hwy 26, near the Frog Lake sno-park. I was running well and making good time! Sang and LeB met me again. I tried to convince them to skip the mosquitoes on the way back and just meet me back at the start/finish, but they didn’t listen and shooed me onto the trail. :)
My knee started complaining on the way back, but I could still run. I walked some, but played little games to keep running as much as I could. Walk in shade, run in sunshine. Run every time you see bear grass blooming. Stuff like that. And not for the first time, I contemplated my theory that pain below a certain threshold can be metabolized into the kind of stress chemicals that are great for running! (The threshold being nausea.) I decided not to air my theory to Sanguinity in case she was unable to resist a withering look even during my race. Oh, I also thought of lots of brilliant titles and lines for this post. Way better than this. Gone now.
By then the early-start and regular-start people were mingling and there were lots of people passing, coming and going. When I got back to Hwy. 58, I ate some candied ginger from my drop bag and sunscreened my face, which I’d forgotten the first time around. I admit, it was awesome to see LeB and Sang again! Then back to Little Crater Lake and then the ranger station! I pulled in there around noon or 12:15. The knee was dictating more walking, less running, but as I said to my team, “Sometimes I’m still running even when nobody’s looking!” Sang had my pace worked out and was confident I could make the cut-off at the farthest aid station, by 4:15 p.m. I started to wonder, while she got me a flat coke and some salt tabs: was it actually possible that I might finish?
I didn’t think about it much, though, because “one cut-off at a time” was the strategy I’d decided on before the race. That and “be tough.” I’d just been reading about Juli Astairs winning Vol State, so she and Marcia were my toughness models. And Anita Ortiz, and another woman I heard on a podcast who talked about “turning off the pain.”
Soon after I started south both knees were hurting enough that I couldn’t run much at all. A shame to miss all the free speed on the downhills! But power-walking uphills was still fun, and there was quite a bit of level trail. The PCT is graded for horses and tends to follow ridgelines, so as trails go it’s gentle. There were quite a few horses on the trail, and at our campgrounds, too, all looking gorgeous and healthy. I was happy to step off the trail and stand quietly, but as usual felt guilty for taking the uphill side, which I believe is against horsey etiquette. I just don’t want one to slip and fall on me!
Soon I passed a sign marking the border between Mt. Hood National Forest and the Warm Springs Reservation. Traveling on the trail itself is allowed, but no spectators were allowed at the aid stations on Warm Springs land. The first of the two aid stations seemed to be right in the middle of the forest, like magic. (It turned out there was a gravel road just beyond.) I got there at about 1:40, with six miles to go before the turnaround and 4:15 cutoff. I was in good shape.
The knee pain was not good, and I was dismayed when I hit some long, steep-feeling downhills. (Runners who were still, you know, running, probably loved it!) I had to inch my way down some sections. There was a pretty one-log bridge crossing a stream at the bottom, but I didn’t dare stop and play lest I lose time. (The bugs were also a deterrent.) Someone told me I had a beautiful smile, though, so that was a lift. :)
I walked on, mostly uphill now, but already dreading the future downhill this implied. People passing me on their way back from the Warm Springs Meadow aid station told me encouraging things about raspberry sherbet, but I was really low. I had been speed-walking with purpose, but now I was trudging. I wasn’t going to make it back to the finish before the 6:30 cutoff. Should I turn in my race number at Warm Springs Meadow, even if I was there a bit before the cutoff? Or wait to be pulled at the next aid station, where at least I would have made it forty-some miles (but slowly and painfully)?
Luckily, I at least knew that it’s a bad idea to walk into an aid station and quit. What you do is, you sit down and have a drink and a snack and rest a couple of minutes, and then decide. So I did that. The sherbet was awesome. Amazing. I asked the volunteer behind the snack table how the sweeps worked. She said “Well, this aid station closes at 4:15. And the course closes at 6:30? You still have a margin.” (It was about a quarter til four.) I don’t think she really understood my question, but that was good enough for me. I didn’t get into my drop bag at this station either. I turned and walked back down the trail with my ice cream still in hand.
And it went great! For a long time I had good speed and energy. I met a few more people on their way to the aid station, and encouraged them with talk of sherbet like people had encouraged me. (They were insufficiently impressed, like I had been.) I was having a little taste of what I believe is one of the coolest things about ultras– you can fade way down, and then come back. Deer flies zoomed in circles around me and dust hung over the trail, but things were fine.
Two older guys I’d seen from time to time throughout the race passed me. They were in it together, trotting along and getting ‘er done. They asked me if I was okay and if I needed anything; I said, “No, no, my knees are making me slow but I’m good.” They jogged off and I heard one say to the other, “Yeah, I think my age is making me slow!” I caught up to them at the aid station. They’d been booking in case the aid station shut down at 5:30, but although the truck was being packed up there was still ice, water, and gummi bears. (And lots of other stuff, but those three items were what I needed to sustain me.)
Six more miles. My burst of energy had dimmed, but I focused on putting as much distance as possible between me and that aid station, so that if a sweep did come along, I wouldn’t be ordered to go back there. I was glad every time I crossed a dirt road. When I really flagged, I figured that sitting down and a snack were what had revived me before, so I sat on a rock or tree stump long enough to unwrap some food and sneak a peak at my watch. The bugs got me going again. Several very perky people passed me with a “good job.” (That’s the universal thing runners say to each other, so I say it too, although doesn’t it seem a bit judgey?)
The 6:30 cutoff time had passed. I was back in the Mt. Hood National Forest, and looked around to see if Sanguinity might have come to meet me. She wasn’t there, but a bit later down the trail, there she was! She was walking with a guy who I assumed was a sweep, but who turned out to be the brother of another runner. He went on to look for his sister, and Sang turned around to walk me in.
It was great to be with her, and not have to be so self-propelled anymore. We were passed by a couple more people. I stepped aside for a passel of women who were practically dancing down the trail while chatting. One or two of them passed me, but then another one saw the race number pinned to my shirt. “Hey, a RUNNER!” she said. They were the sweeps! Much different than the reluctant but stern figure I had imagined holding out a hand for my race number. Sang made a joke about how we had politely stepped off to let them go by. “Not on our watch!” one said, and they tagged along behind us, removing the ribbons that marked the course and laughing and burbling with each other. (Being a sweep looks fun!)
Finally we came to the road in the campsite, and then up to the road leading to the finish area. LeB was up ahead and called to the race people that a runner was coming. Several kids started yelling it too. By the time I turned the corner there was applause and cheering. Several dozen people were still around and all of them seemed really happy when I crossed the imaginary finish line! I thought it was so, so sweet of the race people to keep the course open past 6:30. They still had bananas and drinks out on a table, and an earnest volunteer told me to sit in ANY chair I wanted. I remembered then to ask Sang what time it was. 7:24, she said. A little under fourteen hours.
I sat on some steps (they really were packing up the furniture) and had a box of delicious warm chocolate milk. Sang was horrified and fascinated. Another volunteer came and dropped some extra snacks off. Aww! I was really happy. Did I mention that Sang and LeB both cried when I finished? :)
I didn’t even have to walk back to the campsite, as the car was parked just up the road. Sang went and got the solar shower she’d been tinkering with during the day and set it up for us. I peeled off my gaiters and shoes and socks to examine my filthy blistered feet. LeB built a fire, and Sang made dinner.
Both feet blistered pretty badly– the ball of each foot is basically a large blister, with extra blisters on each heel and most toes. Clearly at this distance or longer I should pre-tape. The knees recovered quickly, as they do. Race results were posted here this afternoon, and there I am, DFL (Dead Fucking Last, for you non-runners) in 106th place of 106. Another baby step for this baby ultrarunner. “You know where I’d be if this were Badwater?” I said to Sang. “Just past Stovepipe Wells. Looking up at my first climb.” I have a long way to go, if I want to go there.
I don’t have any races on my calendar. I’m going to take awhile and get strong, try to make my knees bombproof again like they were all too briefly after that month of backpacking. I did this race on guts, but if there’s a next one I want to do it on good training and knowledge– and not keep anyone waiting an extra hour again!
I am really happy I finished. Really grateful to my amazing support crew. And really glad to be on Spaceship Couch with my feet up!
Sanguinity and I are getting drive-through breakfast before hiking. We pull up to the menu board and look at the bowl/sandwich and combo options.
Me (from passenger seat) to Sang: I’d like a Denver bowl a la carte, please.
Sang, out the window to the speaker: We’d like a Denver bowl a la carte…
Speaker: A Denver bowl…what?
Sang: A…JUST the Denver bowl.
Speaker: Okay, that’s all then?
Sang: No!
Speaker: [subsides in confusion]
Sang eventually conveys the rest of our order. Before we pull up to the payment window, Sang gives me a good punch for my schoolmarm vocabulary.
I got an email on Friday to say I’ve been accepted into the Independent Publishing Resource Center Certificate Program, fiction/nonfiction track! Ever since I applied I’ve been thinking about zines, letterpress (which I didn’t think I was interested in but now suddenly I am), stories, handmade boxed sets, and the cool people I’m likely to meet there. I’m psyched!
Other weekend highlights:
I zipped through The Wolves of Willoughby Chase over the weekend– I don’t think I read it as a kid! although I had Black Hearts at Battersea on my shelf. Thoroughly satisfying tale of the evil governess, plucky orphans, and giant estate with roaming packs of wolves. It prompted me to poll people– do you like reading books set in the same season you’re living through, or the opposite? I’m an opposite girl. When it’s a hot summer day and I’m reading about snow and ice on the moors, part of the enjoyment is feeling how the author is creating the chill and making me believe it even while I’m sweating and eating popsicles.
Maybe next winter I’ll be rereading Mary Stolz’s Go and Catch a Flying Fish. I think that’s the most summery book I know.
I kicked off the letter N in my reading-by-alphabet project with Emily Cheney Neville’s It’s Like This, Cat, the Newbery winner from 1964. I can remember, sort of, what I thought and felt about it when I read it as a kid. For one thing, I thought the main character was verging-on-poor. In truth, he’s the only child of a Manhattan lawyer and they’re doing just fine. Why did I think otherwise? Maybe I associated his ducktail haircut and black sweater he wears “practically all the time” with a James Dean wrong-side-of-the-tracks thing. Or maybe it was because he doesn’t do anything after school or on weekends except listen to records and mooch around the city– no middle-class lessons or sports teams or activities. Things were different in 1964.
One marked difference is the attitude toward spay/neuter. After I finished the book I went and read Amazon reviews, especially the ones by kids, and several were mystified by why the “cat lady” and other people who cared about animals were letting them have litters. The decision about whether to neuter Cat is a BIG DEAL and people are really upset about it! It reminded me of Mary O’Hara’s Thunderhead (sequel to My Friend Flicka) when Rob is like, this horse must never be gelded. Now shelter cats and dogs are routinely altered as young as eight weeks. There’s been a cultural shift.
Similarly, funny to see the cat lady’s vegetarianism described, but not named because I guess a kid in 1964 wouldn’t use the word vegetarian: “I don’t think she really wants to eat the turkey herself. She’s pretty strictly a fruit and yogurt type.”
I ran across a journal article about children’s books set in New York, in which children are flâneurs— walking around, observing and incorporating what they see into their own art and narrative. I hadn’t thought about it, but Ruth Sawyer’s Roller Skates makes a good pair with this book. Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays was another one the article discussed. They’re episodic, gradually deepening the characters and bringing them into more intense situations, while the city itself is as much character as background.
I appreciate the 1964 setting more now than I did as a kid– back then I figured it was straight-up reporting on what life was like at age 14 in New York. (Of course, then I was nine or ten, and still listened to vinyl records myself.) Other than that, I think I feel about the same about the book. I like the low-key, clear voice, but I don’t really get why it beat out Rascal for the Newbery.
If you want to check it out, it’s at Project Gutenberg here, with the Emil Weiss illustrations. Emily Cheney Neville died in 1997; I’m surprised it’s public-domain already. I thought I read back when that she came from a wealthy, prominent family, but I couldn’t find much about her online. I’d love to know if she and Louise Fitzhugh ever hung out.
I grew up lazy, and I’ve stayed lazy. I’ve always liked to eat ice cream and cake, and the line of least resistance for me has always been close to the border of sleep. When I was nine or ten, I kept an enormous mound of comic books on the floor of my bedroom, and my favorite thing was to burrow into my mound, find myself a comfortable position there, and in this wonderful swamp, which was also readable, I would reach a state that fell exactly midway between reading and napping.
Wallace Shawn, “Myself and How I Got Into the Theatre”
This post title and quote have been sitting in my drafts folder for a few weeks. I even drew a mind-map on 9″x12″ newsprint in an attempt to figure out what to say. “Lazy” is in a circle in the middle. There are other Wallace Shawn quotes, questions, phrases, reminders of anecdotes, solid lines and dotted lines all over the page to connect them.
It’s all an artifact of a couple of days when everything I thought of seemed to connect to everything else. If it had all come together, wow, what a great essay that would be. But it didn’t, and now I’m pretty sure the moment has passed. (Maybe because…I’m lazy?)
So I thought I’d just post it now, because I love the quote, and because I’m still wandering around in the fog, trying to think about discipline, willpower, schedules, rebellion, whining, stress, fatigue, time, failure, change, and laziness. And then trying not to think about them, because none of it seems very useful. I guess I’ve had a week of mostly failure. Writing time comes, and I sit there doing whatever I was doing. The hour for writing shrinks to the half hour, then is gone like the last bits of moisture from a cast-iron pan when I dry it on the stove. I just want time to stop. I have difficulty wiping my mind clean and focusing. I resent the things that steal my time, but considering they’re things like “earning a living” and “procuring food,” who do I think I am that it should all be handed to me? And when I have a chunk of time to write, I am not writing anyway!
You see how it goes, round and round. “Fighting tofu,” Writing Down the Bones calls it. (Hmm, in 1986 Natalie Goldberg felt it necessary to explain that “tofu is cheese made out of soybeans.”) I feel worn out with making myself do stuff, and with fretting. I feel like that horse in Glen Balch’s Midnight Colt that’s too high-strung to race. (Hee– the remedy for that was making him walk and walk and walk around an Idaho ranch all day, never allowed to run. He wore out three halter ropes with all his fidgets and fussing, then became a solid racehorse and won it all! Woo hoo, sign me up! Oh.)
Next week I am going to nail 12 hours of writing. I may not reach my ultimate goal of 21 hours/week until after next month’s 50-mile race. Because oh boy am I behind on that too. On Saturday I pulled on my running clothes in slow motion…sat on the couch and did nothing…filled my water bottle…sat…couldn’t force myself out the door until noon. I think I felt defeated already, and didn’t want to go through the pain and make it real. But then I did 20 miles with no knee trouble. Go figure. Now if I can just do some hill work in the next couple of weeks…
After a long stretch of kidlit and YA, it was jarring to open China Mieville’s The City & the City (the last “M” book in my alphabet project!) and start in on a murder-mystery opening much like The Black Dahlia, with a murdered woman’s body providing everyone’s investigative fodder. Not sure how I feel about that genre convention. Still, I liked some of his descriptions of police work:
Corwi did not try to disguise her police clothes because that way those who saw us, who might otherwise think we were there to entrap them, would know that was not our intent; and the fact that we were not in a bruise, as we called the black-and-blue police cars, told them that neither were we there to harass them. Intricate contracts!
And, more simply, of the lab at the station, “There were notice boards on the walls, from each of which grew thickets of papers.” Ah yes.
My forties are pretty great so far. I took the day off work Friday and went to breakfast at Bar Carlo with Sanguinity and LeBoyfriend. Breakfast sandwich on brioche with avocado and egg, yum! We walked home by way of the dollar store so Sang could get birthday candles. LeB and I did the Friday NYT crossword while she got started on cake. The crossword was perfectly calibrated for us– we didn’t think we’d finish it, but then we did. How’s that for a narrative that’s boring to read but satisfying to live!
LeBoyfriend caught a bus back to his part of the city, and I headed out for a ten-mile run. My idea was to do 10 miles each day for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, then a one-shot 30-miler next weekend. As it turns out, Friday’s run at the college track was awesome, but Saturday’s was cut to seven miles for knee pain and Sunday was three miles out of time crunch and conservatism about the knee. At this point, I’m feeling fatalistic about the 50-miler. Whatever happens will happen, and there’s no point in pushing an injury in an attempt to train. I’ll still try for a good long run (and/or walk) next weekend.
The cake was a flourless chocolate number baked in ramekins and muffin cups. It had a souffle thing going on, very puffy but falling after it came out of the oven, leaving a chocolate meringue-like crust on top. Perhaps not county fair material but SO GOOD. Rich. Buttery. Dark. Chocolate. And I successfully blew out my candles, thank you. I didn’t wish for what I thought I would. But I will say no more. (I have the hardest time not discussing birthday wishes!)
On yesterday’s run I saw two large turtles in the Reed Canyon, sunning on a log, as well as a mallard pair with a very late brood of two tiny beeps. This morning on a dog walk, Sang and I watched a woodpecker (flicker, probably) go to town on a telephone pole. Can you imagine those incredible neck muscles! (say I of the fragile neck that needs daily yoga to avoid pain).
Also, fifteen minutes from now I will have met my writing time quota for this week. (I started counting on Friday, my birthday, and gave myself a head start with hours from earlier in the week. But still.) It’s a big jump. A big, big jump, and I do worry how it will cut into other parts of my life. But I’m already feeling a freedom and expansiveness because now there will be time to work on more of the ideas I’d have given up on before. I can take time to really fix things, and think about them. I’m revising a story with a deadline of June 30, and I can actually try different things without panic. I have time to tinker. Having plenty of time and plenty of work both, now that’s happiness.
Finishing off the weekend with another birthday celebration, Evan’s belated birthday sushi! I need to figure out the laundry situation too. The kitchen is in sore need of attention, and it’s so much more pleasant when Sang and I can tackle it together while reading aloud, but I guess that might have to be another day.
I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend too.
After the library, garage sales were my biggest source of books when I was a kid. Standard pricing was a dime for paperbacks, a quarter for hardbacks. And Saturday after Saturday, I’d read the back of a book in someone’s driveway, turn it over, and see it was by Ruth Chew.
This was before I really understood that live authors wrote books, and that all the books by one author have something in common. I had no conscious awareness of style yet. But seeing Ruth Chew’s name gave me a certain feeling, of action and slightly nasty characters and witchcraft that was more dangerous than cute.
She was never one of my favorite authors, but thanks to the Scholastic book club and its garage-sale recirculation, she was omnipresent in my world like an element in the earth. (In fact, I just found out she illustrated Shark Lady, another paperbook that seemed to always be around when I was a kid!) It never occurred to me that she would die.
Obituary, with a nice photo.