Cleopatra

I'm excited about the new biography Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. I bought it for my dad for his birthday, though after reading the first chapter I was tempted to keep it for myself. And my mom might take it and read it before he even gets to touch it. The prose is beautiful, and the fascinating subject is treated in a way that makes this hotly contested, much defamed more interesting rather than less. Schiff does an excellent job of putting the story into context (ie by her time the Sphinx had had to be renovated 1000 years ago...As a Ptolemaic pharaoh, Cleopatra was about as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor) while making her life feel relevant and immediate.

Looking forward to reading this one!

masterpiece classic

One of the pleasures of January is that PBS's Masterpiece Classic returns, and their current new series is Downton Abbey. It promises the grand English manors, concerns about proper suitors for headstrong young women, and worries about inheritance of the beloved Austen novels (it's hard to match Austen's wit, but as far as themes and epic sensibility, we're in at least in the same ballpark), but what fascinates me about this one is when it is set: 1912. It opens with news that the Titanic has sunk and, with it, the heir to the grand estate of Downton Abbey. It can only be passed on to a male heir, of course, and the current heir, who only managed to save his estate back in the 1880s by marrying an American heiress, has only managed to produce three daughters. The choice falls to challenging the entail that guards the estate intact from male-to-male and passing the home and the whole of their fortune on to a third cousin whom he has never met and who, they learn to their horror, is common enough to actually work for a living. Horror! Brewing beneath the drama of this grand estate are burgeoning new possibilities: electricity, cars, women's rights, modern medicine, maids taking correspondence courses to become secretaries...the large serving staff that runs the home are as important to the story as the wealthy owners, all of which makes for fascinating storytelling. And of course, we "readers" know that we are only a few years away from WWI, which will change everything....

Watch the first two (of four) episodes on PBS here.

January

If January were an animal, it would be a thick-furred mammal, oh-so-slow to get on its feet but long on endurance once it's up. In the middle of the semester, January is a promise: whole weeks free? What hope! What opportunities to complete myriad projects! I keep this expectation through the month, but in reality, January is a time of burrowing in, waking late despite efforts to the contrary to discover that there are only 4 hours of daylight left.

I heard that somewhere in central Minnesota a McDonald's was offering a great deal, buy one (whatever), get one at yesterday's noon high temperature. And no, they would not give you money back for negatives. Yesterday, I could have brought a second (whatever) for 7 cents. So I guess it's still somewhat warm out.

I keep trying to write poetry about January but stop because it makes me cold.

That said, the sun today was heavily, and I finally figured out where the county park is. I saw more people on the cross country ski trails this afternoon than I saw all week. And you simply can't beat the peace of it, the snow covered views.

Wishing you a cozy January.

sample poems

Check out the winter edition of The Broken City Magazine for two of my poems. I'm on pages 4-5.

book review

Matt and I read this book aloud to each other in less than a week. So immersing is this account of dogsledding and running the Iditarod that any chance we got, we'd say "how about another chapter?" The prologue and the first chapter reveal the danger and the majesty of dog sledding--of being outside in areas of the woods and wilderness that a person would not otherwise see, in all weather. It is clear that Paulsen is revealing his soul here, and reading (or listening), I feel as though I have glimpsed the awesome world of snow in his writing. Yet, the prologue and opening chapter are also misleading, because they lack one other aspect of the book that kept us turning the pages: Paulsen's fantastic sense of humor. The rest of the chapters had us laughing out loud as he chronicles his "appauling ignorance" in the world of running dogs. He sets himself up as the constant--and comic--beginner, and through his fumbles we see just how hard it is to do this right. It is not a good idea, for example, to hook half a dozen raring-to-go, half-wild huskies up to a bicycle. Or a light sled. They will run wild and drag you through the woods and swamp and you might hug every other tree in Northern Minnesota--all that before you lose the team and have to try to find them again. Running at night in the summer, prepare for your dogs to find and try to eat every skunk in the forest. And there are a lot of them. I feel like I have a sense of what it means to run the Iditarod--enough to know how little I know, and that I would never, myself, dream of going near it. A highly recommended read. We're giving two copies as Christmas presents.

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...