Monday Magpie

monday magpie, kidlit edition

The sunrise walks are off-and-on, but overall enhancing my life. Today’s was one of the first with a discernable ~Sunrise~, with lemony clouds and rays, instead of an overcast ~Lightening of the Gloom~. Sunrise is currently around 7:40 a.m.

Two kidlit links have been rattling around my head for a bit:

  1. The Politics of Louise Fitzhugh, Leslie Brody, 2020 in The Paris Review. Fitzhugh stopped the presses on Nobody’s Family Is Going To Change so that she could include the names of two Black boys, Clifford Glover and Claude Reese, who were killed by NYPD. I haven’t yet read Brody’s book about Fitzhugh, Sometimes You Have to Lie, but I know I will. But maybe first I’ll reread Nobody’s Family Is Going To Change. A white author’s novel about a Black family, and so very 1970s in its picture of sexism. But I think Emma and her anger will have grown on me.
  2. Let That Dream Die, by Veronica Roth (author of the Divergent series) on tennis, writing, and how to keep going after early success, when you’re back in the day-to-day muck. I’m always interested in alternatives to having goals. I have a hunch that goal-setting is not where it’s at for me, but other paths are harder to understand.

Monday Magpie

sidewalk repaired with concrete inset with multi-colored glass marbles

This Texas Monthly piece from April has been on my mind. It reminded me of the older women I’ve known who have their hair done for years and years by the same person, or who have their routines and never use the shower or the whirlpool bath or whatever at their own houses. I feel fondness and respect for this lady’s generosity in sharing a small adventure.

With Salons Closed, an 89-Year-Old Houston Woman Washes Her Own Hair for the First Time in Decades

(ETA: just reread the scene in Ramona and Her Father about Mrs. Swink and the tin can stilts. Same energy!)

More recently, the Yuletide collection opened! My favorite fic from the kidlit canon so far is this one:

The Queen’s Lover [authors are still anonymous]
Fandom: The President’s Daughter series, by Ellen Emerson White
F/F, General Audiences [I would rate it Teen], Beth Shulman / Meghan Powers, Best Friends, Falling in Love
4138 words

The tough-as-nails dialogue expressing unshakeable love while remaining extremely cool is spot. on.

must dash

wooden library shelving cart with a stenciled 18 and a taped-on printout of the alphabet in capital letters

I concluded that the alphabet is laminated and staff mark it up… but for awhile I pictured people shelving until all the letters looked weird and they forgot the alphabet and needed a cheat sheet.

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Happy Labor Day! Being a little bit active in the AAUP is one of the few things I’ve done that’s felt usefully political in the Trump years—when elected representatives seem unlikely to keep or change their positions in response to my phone calls, and donations seem like a miniscule drop in the political-money ocean. Last week I sat in as an observer during bargaining; the union believes things go better when as many of the people actually affected as possible are in the room, even silently. (Even reading a book or typing away on a laptop. Donuts were also involved.)

We do interest based bargaining, so for the entire hour I was there, they were at step one of seven, framing the problem to be talked about. It’s easy to see why bargaining starts in the summer even though the contract’s not up til the end of November.

Not all chapters of AAUP are negotiating collective bargaining agreements; I enjoyed this account of guerrilla organizing by adjuncts in my hometown.

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Unusual that two pieces in one week would make me think anew about dashes—

em dash compared to a semicolon in this one, as in

I thought hanging out would be great—a chance to finally see the city, just like Aunt Lillian wanted.

I thought hanging out would be great; it would be a chance to finally see the city, just like Aunt Lillian wanted.

And here, an en dash for a relation that isn’t numbers or dates or place names, like author–editor relationship or either–or, and how it differs from a hyphenated adjectival construction:

Amir was an Asian–British scholar and something of a polyglot.

Amir was an Asian-British scholar and something of a polyglot.

In the first example, with an EN DASH, Amir’s Asianness and Britishness have equal weighting. In the second, with the HYPHEN, ‘Asian’ is modifying ‘British’ and carries less weight.

Things to keep an eye out for in the wild, anyway.

 

Donkeys; plus Monday Magpie, disability & neurodiversity representation edition

Yesterday I happened to see an announcement for a Paideia class to be held on the front lawn of the college, about packing with donkeys! I had been planning to take a walk down there anyway, so Sang and I went to see some donkeys. They were wonderful! Vera and Hattie, mother and daughter, did not want to be more than a few yards away from each other. They accepted as much petting and brushing as they could get and let people lead them around. Donkeys, their human Jessica said, are a good “starter equine” because in place of a horse’s instinct to spook and run, their instinct in the face of fear or uncertainty is to brace their legs and stand still until it’s sorted. They’re unlikely to buck or kick or rear, and can carry 80 pounds each pretty easily.

Vera is named after Vera Katz, the Portland mayor who signed the ordinance allowing livestock in city limits. Two donkeys per household is the limit in Portland, and really the minimum non-zero number as well, since a solitary donkey would be sad and lonely. Unfortunately, this climate is a bit wet for them– the lush green grass will give them something like diabetes, and standing on wet ground all the time is hard on their feet. They need dry quarters and hay to eat, here.

I was so glad I went! The rest of the weekend was good too– Bookherd hung around the house with us, and we watched all of season 3 of The Good Place in two days, and ate winter foods like tuna mac and scalloped potatoes.

This morning the ALA Youth Media Awards and American Indian Youth Literature Awards were announced. So many books I haven’t read! But I did know a few:

  • Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales, won the Pura Belpré Illustrator Award. Her amazing photo essay about how she made the book
  • Hey, Kiddo, by Jarrett J. Krosoczka, won the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. He did the ink washes and digital spot color in burnt orange himself because the book was so personal and he wanted it to be all by his own hands.
  • Front Desk, by Kelly Yang, won an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. I have a soft spot for books about kids living in a hotel/motel. And the way this kid gets things done is cheering despite the slightly unrealistic ending.
  • I didn’t realize the AIYLAs were every two years. Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline (Metis), was published in 2017 and won the Young Adult category.
  • Darius the Great Is Not Okay, by Adib Khorram, which I think I’ve already talked about here a couple of times, won the William C. Morris award (debut book for teens) and an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature!

My Monday Magpie selections, geared toward writing and representation:

  • The Fries Test: Does a work have more than one disabled character? Do the disabled characters have their own narrative purpose other than the education and profit of a nondisabled character? Is the character’s disability not eradicated either by curing or killing?
  • Autism From the Inside. Katherine May nails down why first-person narratives of autistic characters written by non-autistic people have come out so untrue. Short list of books by autistic authors at the end.

morning bike commute notes and Monday Magpie

morning bike commute notes:
I was cyclist #498 westbound at Tilikum Crossing– usually I’m a half hour earlier and in the 500s. It’s a shame, because it’s a beautiful morning with a touch of frost and more than a touch of sunshine.
today’s theme: people unexpectedly in suits, like, while jogging (not just to the bus stop), or with a backpack.

Monday Magpie:
ahahaha, Gifaanisqatsi

Monday Magpie: Iris Dement, Atul Gawande, cool art projects

Things I’ve liked recently on the internet:

  • Just today I started listening to Iris Dement. I was raised on country music and can’t believe I missed her entirely til now. This one made me tear up– I feel like I know several people just now who are feeling diminished, but who mean so much to the people who love them.
  • An interview with Atul Gawande by economist Tyler Cowen that’s not in the New Yorker, so maybe you missed it? Has sound (which I haven’t tested) and transcript. I liked this bit:

COWEN: Do you feel you’ve underachieved in life?

GAWANDE: That’s a hard question. [laughs] I know objectively that it’s kind of ridiculous that I would think I’ve underachieved, and that I’m proud of all the random things that I’ve been able to be part of. But I bear a kind of chronic dissatisfaction and sense that I’ve got much more to follow through on than I’ve managed to. So yeah, I think “underachieved” is the wrong word, and yet I don’t feel I’ve achieved nearly enough, and that half of what I’ve achieved, I wish I could go back and fix.