The Writing Bag, or A Bag of One's Own

Mama's got a brand new bag.

It's a spiffy blue tote bag with a whimsical painted illustration: a charmingly eccentric man in glasses chasing down flying books with a butterfly net. I found it for about three dollars at a local library sale not long ago. (If I had a working camera, which alas, at the moment I do not, I would put a picture here. Instead you get a word picture. Think of it as a mini workout for your imagination!)

I love tote bags. Tote bags that look pretty or whimsical and have lined pockets inside them, deep enough to really hold things...even better.

We have zillions of canvas totes all over our house. We use them for carrying books, art supplies, groceries, whatever the need. But the whimsical blue bookish tote has a life of its own. It's my writing bag.

I don't know why I never thought to have a writing bag before. You would think that after all the times I have misplaced my current writing notebook/journal (amidst the piles of work and homeschool stuff) I would have figured out before now that having a special one-of-a-kind bag just for my current writing work would be a brilliant idea.

I love that I can always find it and know what's inside -- pens, current notebook(s), sketch book, whatever books I'm reading to help provide writing inspiration. (At the moment, that would include Annie Dillard and Orson Scott Card.) The bag is light and portable -- I can swing it onto my arm and schlep it to the kitchen when I'm cooking dinner, squirrel away with it in the bathroom or when I'm curled up in bed, or take it with me when the sweet girl and I go for a walk. I love being able to just grab a pen and notebook and jot furiously/joyfully for ten minutes ~ when I can find ten minutes. I'm doing a lot of that lately (finding and treasuring ten writing minutes...)

A room of one's own? Sorry, Virginia, I can't manage it. Maybe never will. But a corner, yes, or a small piece of cluttered kitchen table. And this delightful blue bag full of writing stuff.

Trying to Count Birds and Blessings

Today was just a hard day. Plain and simple, just hard.

There's no deep reason for me to say that. Nothing terrible happened. I was overtired, overstressed, trying to get too many things done but somehow still enjoy time just to be with the family. But we all had the grumbles and seemed out of focus and out of step with each other most of the day.

Late in the day we headed to a park for a few minutes of counting birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count. I had been looking forward to this, but we'd had a misunderstanding over the family schedule (did I mention we were just all off today?) and weren't going to get much time at the park. There were recriminations and scoldings and frustrations and tears (the sweet girl did the tears, though I was close) and it was really cold at the park. I fed the birds and pretty much did the counting by myself.

Later there were apologies and hugs. D. and the sweet girl headed to a friends' house -- our monthly cluster group. I was feeling tired and achey and just on the edge of congestion but mostly in dire need of alone time and quiet, so I stayed home. I didn't feel like cooking anything so munched leftovers and lay on the couch and read P.D. James.

Then I got up and did a bit of writing and a bit of work pulling together stuff for World Mission Sunday. Tomorrow I get to share with the congregation a beautiful testimony to God's faithfulness written by missionary friends in Uganda. I was so thankful to read that again today as I prepare to share it tomorrow.

You know, it's funny, but when I was younger -- lots younger -- I used to dream about how I was going to grow up and do radical out of the ordinary things for God. Things perhaps not unlike what our friends in Uganda are doing. And now that I am middle-aged, I am realizing that perhaps the most radical thing I can do most days is to slow down, to admit my failures and mistakes, to love more, to deepen my trust in God, to find places and spaces of gratitude in this tiny, very ordinary, sometimes very gray little town where God called our family to serve him. Maybe discipleship doesn't really look all that different here than there.

And maybe, even on days when I just feel tired and like I've failed too many times, I can learn to rest more in his deep, deep love. If the blessings in my life were counted, they'd far outnumber the birds.

Highway Song for Valentine's Day (Luci Shaw)

This is one of my favorite Valentine's poems. Sharing in honor of the day!

Highway Song for Valentine's Day

(“Kim, I love you – Danny” roadside graffito)

On overhead and underpass,
beside the road, beyond the grass,

in aerosol or paint or chalk
the stones cry out, the billboards talk.

On rock and wall and bridge and tree,
boldly engraved for all to see,

hearts and initials intertwine
their passionate, short-lived valentine.

I’m listening for a longer Lover
whose declaration lasts forever:

from field and flower, through wind and breath,
in straw and star, by birth and death,

his urgent language of desire
flickers in dew and frost and fire.

This earliest spring that I have seen
shows me that tender love in green,

and on my windshield, clear and plain,
my Dearest signs his name in rain.


~Luci Shaw

The Week in Review (8): Jane Yolen Recommends Joy and Woody Gets Whimsical

I've been remiss about posting links to my book and film reviews. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, though blogger's on-going link weirdness isn't helping.

I'm trying to review more these days so probably will only post the highlights in any given week, rather than trying to share everything! The past week's fun includes:

My review of Jane Yolen's Take Joy: A Writer's Guide to Loving the Craft -- a perfectly delightful (and often funny) book about loving writing and writing well.

I also reviewed Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris -- a very surprising film for me. If one can break up with an artist, I broke up with Woody years ago. (His "lover's quarrel with the world" was very different from mine, and his anger at women during a certain era of his film-making just left me feeling ragged.) I am so glad I decided to catch this one though. With it, Woody returns to whimsy in a way I wasn't sure he ever would again. A lovely movie. And a perfect fit for my ongoing enjoyment of all things 1920s.

Happy reading and viewing!

Lindbergh, Paper Airplanes, and the "Nakamura Lock"

Yesterday's homeschool group found us learning about Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. I loved preparing a timeline of the flight and talking about it with the kids, because Lindy (who lived in "my era" as my husband calls it) has long been a subject of interest. I followed some rather extensive reading trails into the Lindberghs' lives a number of years ago. It would be a lot of fun to come up with a whole unit study surrounding aviation during that time period.

A few fun facts about Lindy's flight that the children seemed to enjoy:
~Lindbergh took only five sandwiches and one canteen of water (4 quarts) for the whole flight.
~The flight took 30 hours and 30 minutes.
~ Because of the placement of the fuel tanks, he had no front windshield and could only look out the side windows.
~He kept the windows open, even when it got quite cold, to try to keep himself awake. He struggled particularly in the first half (or more) of the flight with sleeplessness, partly because he'd slept so poorly the day/night before he took off.
~He only cleared the telephone wires by 20 feet when he took off at Roosevelt Field in New York.
~At one point he attempted to yell to passing boats for directions, but no one was on deck.
~Despite navigating with only a compass (no radio) he was only a few miles off course when he finally came in over land again after his long journey over the Atlantic.

Looking for craft ideas, I hit upon the not so novel notion of having the kids make paper airplanes. It struck us moms as somewhat hilarious that we get to encourage our kids to throw paper airplanes in class. The joys of homeschooling!

I've never been a very good paper airplane maker, so I was very happy to find this page on the Exploratorium magazine website, where I learned to fold a paper airplane using the Nakamura Lock. That special little fold is named after the origami artist who created it. In addition to helping the planes fly better than most of the paper airplanes I've tried in my life, it made me feel like I was in a Star Trek episode. Doesn't the Nakamura Lock sound like some sort of test they'd put you through in Starfleet? Like the Kobayashi Maru.

If you've got budding aviation experts at your house, you might also enjoy this pdf file of connect the dot pictures of famous aircraft in history. The Spirit of St. Louis is, of course, included.

Re-Reading Wrinkle (Chapter 2, Mrs. Who)

I love how Madeleine does so much with so little. The entire chapter is entitled "Mrs. Who" but we really only spend time with her for two or three pages near the end. But what delightful pages! And what a character!

I've always loved Mrs. Who. She's so memorable in so many ways. Her glasses, her quaint voice, her facility with languages, the way she speaks in epigrams and quotations. As a young reader, I was fascinated that she spoke in quotes, and felt a little bit in awe of all those different languages spilling over the pages. It took me a number of years, and a number of re-reads, before it dawned on me how brilliant that bit of characterization was. It showed both an encyclopedic range of knowledge/memory and a struggle to verbalize in the "local dialect." These three ladies are struggling to fit in/adapt to their new environment, a recurring theme for L'Engle (here and elsewhere). It mirrors the kids' struggle to do the same thing. That theme of "not fitting in" is one reason why I loved her work as a teenager.

And speaking of "not fitting in" we get more intimations of otherness when Charles lets Calvin know Mother's "not one of us" and Meg's "not really one thing or the other." Those lines still make my skin prickle, and even after multiple re-reads I'm not always sure precisely what Charles Wallace means. Just how different is he, and how does he know how different he is?

I also enjoy how Madeleine uses "stock props" and stands them on their heads. In the first chapter, it was that war horse opening line "It was a dark and stormy night." In this chapter, it's the haunted house...which isn't really scary at all because the three Mrs. Ws are just making it look haunted for their own amusement.

The moment that moves me most here is probably when we meet Calvin, that brilliant, awkward, courteous boy. He and Charles are enough "alike" in their differences to hit it off immediately, but he kindly tries to direct his conversation toward Meg as much as Charles, a tiny bit of characterization that made me love him almost immediately.

As for lines I love ~ "He wasn't my idea, Charlsie, but I think he's a good one." That's Mrs. Who speaking about Calvin. What a wonderful sense of call behind the line. This is just one way that L'Engle lets us know the children have been chosen for the adventure/rescue mission on which they're about to embark.

Happy 200th, Mr. Dickens!

It's rare to see so much publicity around a literary anniversary, so I'm fully enjoying the attention Charles Dickens is getting today. From the fun tribute on Google to informative articles like this one from NPR, he seems to be everywhere.

I've not read enough Dickens. Besides A Christmas Carol (which I so love) I'm only perfectly sure that I've read two novels in full -- Hard Times, and A Tale of Two Cities. I've read memorable parts of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. I've always been intrigued by The Pickwick Papers because of my love for Alcott's Little Women. And not long ago I picked up David Copperfield at a library sale. Knowing now that Dickens considered that one of his favorites, I think it might be my next Dickens book.

I first read A Tale of Two Cities about six years ago, and I found it truly inspiring. It had been a long time since I'd read Dickens when I picked that book up, and it took me a while to find my way into his prose again. But I'm glad I persevered. As I wrote in my review of the book at the time:

If like me, you haven't read Dickens for a while, you may have to discipline yourself to push through the first two or three chapters of the novel. His long, complex sentences are like an old-fashioned kind of music that our contemporary ears aren't used to hearing. After struggling a bit through the first few chapters, I got attuned again --I found my feet and felt as though I was waltzing or skating along to a wonderful tune.

This is not a "plot driven" book, which is what we postmoderns are used to. Dickens doesn't mind taking detours to describe, in huge amounts of detail, landscapes or scenes that are important to the story in symbolic or metaphorical ways, although they don't advance the storyline in a linear cause and effect way. One thing you can almost be sure of is that when he lingers, it's not just for the pure enjoyment of writing such masterful prose (though no doubt he felt that way too) but because the scene is important to the heart of his story.

I ended up loving A Tale of Two Cities. I don't know why I haven't made more room/space in my life for Dickens in recent years.

So tell me, what's your favorite Dickens? I'd love to hear what it is and why you love it.