hope plant

This summer I picked up a huge plant with trumpet-shaped purple flowers from a table of free plants someone had put out. I kept it with my other ones, set it on the bedroom window sill where it got lots of sun. Over the course of the semester, I watched its big floppy leaves turn brown and crinkly around the edges. Then the flowers started to shrivel, leaving these sad-looking brown stalks left. I decided to get rid of it.

I felt bad throwing out a living thing. I would have left it for someone to talk, but it's December, and so last week I trudged out into the snow and set it out by the dumpster. Just perhaps, someone would see it and take it before it died, and then I wouldn't be killing it. I walked away, and almost made it to the door I turned around. It was crying. I brought it back inside.

I trimmed off all the ugly brown stems and the large, dying leaves. Underneath were tiny fuzzy new leaves unfurling. I fed it coffee grounds, set it away from the sunlight. In the past week, those new leaves have grown 3 inches, and a new flower, fuzzy stemmed, is just about to uncurl. It's my hope plant. Everyday I watch it grow.

a literary facebook!

Check out this article announcing the unveiling of Figment.com, a space for teens with literary leanings to read and write fiction. Certainly, this is appealing to writers of YA as well...

a message of peace

This morning in church I learned of an interesting example of peace that I'm going to be carrying around in my head this week. In 1944 German prisoners of war who were working on farms in Algona, Iowa--which in itself I find interesting, as I don't think of POWs really being in this country--put their downtime into sculpting an extensive nativity scene. The pieces are half of life-size. When they were able to go home, they left the nativity scene to the town, and a church keeps it up and open to the public to this day. When we talk of enemies at war, we don't think of them as people, let alone as worshipers of God, and certainly not as givers of gifts that remind us of peace. Wishing you all shalom this second week of advent.

Read more about the nativity scene here.

weddings

Some of my students are reading a fascinating book by Asne Seierstad called The Bookseller of Kabul. Set in Kabul, Afghanistan, the book follows each of the family members of a man who has sold books throughout Afghanistan's changing regimes, many of which have rewritten their country's history and banned new sets of books. Fascinating as his story is, the book devotes its time to his family, focusing increasingly at the harsh lives the women in the family lead. (My students often comment on the author's decision not to include herself in the story, though she clearly makes her opinions known through her organization and choice of events--I love inviting students to consider the choices the writer makes in creating a book.) One memorable chapter describes preparation for a wedding, in which the author describes trying to follow two of the women of the family (dressed in burkas) through a crowded market filled with burkas. The descriptions of the following wedding shares some notable resemblances to this Uzbec wedding in Tajikastan that my friend Bethany Gustafson photo-documents here. For example, the bride must not smile, else it will be thought that she is happy to lead her parents' home.

Coming soon: a review of Gary Paulsen's Winter Dance.

Faces of Witness

I am absolutely blown away by Faces of Witness, a gorgeous combination of art, testimony, and human rights activism created by my talented friend Elaine Denny. She conducted interviews about the human rights struggles in El Salvadore and composed pen-and-ink portraits of her interviewees--composed entirely of their own testimonies.

Check out the website and art work here.

poetry in world news

Poetry strikes again:

Chilean Artist Bombs Berlin with 100,000 Poems

I'm back!

It's easy to begrudge the start of school. No more vacation. No more unscheduled, pick-up-and-go summer. Time to write the syllabi. Prepare for the 8 AM class, knowing the students who aren't morning people are equally concerned/in denial about meeting that hour 4 times a week. After a summer of Tevas, back to closed-toes shoes that rub. Back to fitting more than you thought possible into a day--

BUT, yesterday I walked across campus and saw that the freshmen have arrived on campus for their various orientations. They walk across the green, hugging their new notebooks, checking their maps, standing near people they have just met who they hope will be their new friends, wearing the clothes they have carefully chosen to look just right. I remember walking past the English building and catching a glimpse of myself in the window at Williams and just being so incredibly proud, thinking, I'm in college now. You can feel that uncertainty and excitement out on the lawn today.

Leaving the office: the perfect reset button. I am excited to meet my students.