96 Hours

I have had a really lovely last 96 hours, from Friday, when I went to the free Cassandra Wilson concert at SummerStage in Central Park, to now, when I'm home from Chicago and typing up this report in my apartment. Odd as it sounds, I love waiting in line in Central Park, at least in summer: I always take my grass mat, pillows, manuscripts, and a small picnic, so I'm never without comfort and entertainment, and I treasure the beauty of the park, and the shimmering anticipation of the event, and the wonderful ephemeral communities formed in line with my fellow fascinating New Yorkers, so the waiting never seems as long as it actually is. The concert started at 7; I arrived at 3:30 and was third in line; and when they let us in at 6, I secured seats in the center of the fourth row for me and Ben (who kindly brought falafel for dinner). It was 75 degrees, a light wind sparkling the leaves of the sycamores around the playfield, an orange-tinged moon rising overhead -- a perfect night.

If you too saw the end of "Before Sunset" and mourned that you would never have the chance to hear Nina Simone live, go see Cassandra Wilson. She sang "Lay Lady Lay," and "Time after Time," and "Brown Sugar," and every bit of her performance was funny and sexy and full of life -- she absolutely undulated across the stage as she sang, and delivered the songs with that extraordinary mahogany-timbred voice and exquisite sense of timing. Her backing band was equally fantastic, and as Ben observed later, she worked so intimately with each one in turn that it was as if they were making musical love onstage. It was the best two musical hours of my year so far, and I repeat, if she comes to your town -- go.

The next morning I flew to Chicago, where we were staying at the W. If the Holiday Inn is meant for Midwesterners seeking the wood paneling of home, and the Ritz for Park Avenue matrons with a taste for gilt and mirrors, then the W is meant for people who love west elm and really, really nice bedsheets. It was far too cool for me, but I liked pretending. I got to spend time with Lisa and present her with the first bound copy of her novel Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time, and she gave a terrific reading at our literary brunch and had the longest signing lines afterward. I talked to a few librarians about my beloved Legend of the Wandering King (which got a starred review in Kirkus last week, hurrah!) and Absolutely Positively Not (by fellow former Northfield, Minn., resident David LaRochelle -- though he went to the other school). We had a Harry Potter prepublication party that included cake and (butter)beer. I met John Green, author of Looking for Alaska, on whom I have a total literary crush, and who is just as cute in real life as in his book-jacket photo -- but I immediately did the oh-my-lord-it's-a-hot-guy-I'm-going-to-blush-and-stammer thing, and anyway he also is far too cool for me (and engaged as well). The Newbery/Caldecott dinner was enjoyable, if long, and we got to ride in Ford Excursion limousines going there and back. And in general it was a just a fun weekend of hanging out with lots of great children's book people. Yay Lisa! Yay Scholastic!

(P.S. And to complete my felicity, two great movies from my youth were on cable: "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" and "Annie." So here is the wisdom for the day: Party on, dudes. The sun will come out tomorrow. )

Cause for Celebration

Posting quickly here to brag that I ran the 3.5 miles of the Chase Corporate Challenge tonight in a Cheryl-record 34 minutes and 48 seconds. The Scholastic team had great It's Happy Bunny t-shirts that said on back, "I may be slow, but I'm in front of you," which inspired us all to run fast and mock the people behind us. Yay me! Yay Scholastic!

Also a fun link from Katy: http://www.chiasmus.com. I don't know about you, but I, personally, would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

And lastly I saw a preview for the new "Pride and Prejudice" movie starring Keira Knightley before "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" last night. It looks dark, brooding, and romantic rather than crisply sunny, funny, and sensible -- Jane Austen in Bronte clothing, basically -- but it comes out the weekend of my birthday, so do I care? No. I am going to go out for a fabulous dinner with my friends, drink lots of wine, and go see this movie.

Happy Summer!

"all that," by Charles Bukowski

the only things I remember about
New York City
in the summer
are the fire escapes
and how the people go
out on the fire escapes
in the evening
when the sun is setting
on the other side
of the buildings
and some stretch out
and sleep there
while others sit quietly
where it's cool.

and on many
of the window sills
sit pots of geraniums or
planters filled with red
geraniums
and the half-dressed people
rest there
on the fire escapes
and there are
red geraniums
everywhere.

this is really
something to see rather
than to talk about.

it's like a great colorful
and surprising painting
not hanging anywhere
else.

Yes I said Yes I will Yes

Happy belated Bloomsday!

A request for help: In October I am giving a workshop for the Rocky Mountain Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators called "The Rules of Engagement." My focus is on writing great beginnings -- the qualities of voice, character, plotting, and pacing that get readers hooked on a story -- and I'm trying to collect a wide range of good, published examples so I can point to them and say "See? Do this!" It's more than just having a great first line. . . . My working thesis is that there are voice beginnings, where the voice is so enrapturing you're hooked (cf. If on a Winter's Night A Traveler; Pride and Prejudice); mystery beginnings, where the promise of a story to be told draws you on (cf. The Golden Compass, The Hero and the Crown); and character beginnings, where the character is someone you want to follow for purposes of either entertainment or edification (Emma; Middlemarch; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, where it's great fun being snobby toward the Dursleys). But these all cross over each other, I know, and the thesis will doubtless evolve as time goes on. In any case, if you have a suggestion of a great beginning or three to share, I would love to hear it.

Why spend $11.00 and two hours of your life on a movie when you can watch a 30-second synopsis re-enacted by bunnies?

Vocabulary lessons of the day: for love; for everyday (or at least Scrabble).

If you have Quicktime, you can see a fun video of Arthur (my boss) and Barbara (the president of Scholastic Books) talking about the new Harry Potter here. I appear at the end looking very smug. ("What? Cheryl smug about Harry Potter?" I hear you all say. "Impossible!") You can also watch Charlie Brown dancing to "Hey Ya."

I saw Batman Begins and Howl's Moving Castle this weekend -- both visions of great beauty, though one of them wore a Batsuit. Yeah. No, I found Batman not entirely satisfying, partly because we were following beautiful Mr. Bale out of that prison and through the wasteland before we had a reason to give a damn about him, and though the movie gets into its groove somewhat in the middle, it misses out on that opportunity to slip us inside Bruce Wayne's head so we could share his mania for justice (and therefore, apparently, running around Gotham in black body armor and a cape). But it was all right. Howl is deadpan, rich and strange, and also not entirely satisfying in its convoluted narrative logic, but very much worth seeing for the imagination and visuals alone.

I also finished the aforementioned The Big Love by Sarah Dunn, which was the best piece of "romantic fiction" I've read in a very long time -- partly because it was honest rather than romantic about romance, and partly because it dealt with the emotional and especially religious aspects of sex (having it if you were raised religious, I mean), which is not common in romantic fiction. This would be the first novel I can think of that's done it at all, as a matter of fact. Also highly recommended.

All right. Here's wishing you all a week filled with euphrasia and typhlobasia!

Cranberry Chicken Delight

I've made this cranberry chicken dish for two friends in the last two weeks and it's been greeted with ecstatic delight each time -- as well it should be, not because of my cooking prowess, but because it's easy, fast (especially if you have someone to help you with the chopping), low-fat (only 5g per serving), and delicious. The leftovers also reheat well for lunches later.

2 tsp olive oil
1/4 cup shallots or onions, minced
2 pounds boned and skinned chicken breasts (eight 4-ounce halves)
2 Tbsp vinegar, balsamic or raspberry
16 ounces (1 can) whole-berry cranberry sauce
2 cups green apples, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup dried cranberries
4 Tbsp walnuts, chopped
2 tsp curry powder

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray large shallow baking dish with vegetable oil spray. Add oil and shallots/onions to baking dish and bake uncovered for 5 minutes.

Pour vinegar into the baking dish and stir. Add chicken breasts, basting tops with vinegar/shallot mixture. Bake uncovered for 10 minutes.

Mix together cranberry sauce, apples, dried cranberries, walnuts and curry. Cover chicken with sauce and bake an additional 15–20 minutes until the chicken is cooked and the sauce bubbles. Serve with white rice and white wine. Serves four.

Links 'n' Navigator

I get to work at home all day tomorrow like a real grown-up editor, so I'm taking this evening to remove any possible distractions from my all-day editing session -- that is, I'm washing my dishes, scrubbing the bathroom, sweeping the floor, and now, updating my blog.

Meet Feral Cheryl! "This 34 cm vinyl doll runs barefoot, dreadlocks her hair with coloured braids and beads, wears simple rainbow clothes, has piercings and a range of tattoos, and even a bit of natural body hair. . . . Her motto is "Live Simply, Run Wild". Her only accessories: a bag of home grown herbs, a sense of humour and a social conscience."

(No comment on those herbs. Or the tattoos, for that matter.)

Here's a cool baby name wizard that charts the popularity of your name in an interactive Java line graph.

The conservative newsletter Human Events asked a panel to choose the "Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries." #1: The Communist Manifesto. #2: Mein Kampf. #4: The Kinsey Report. #7: The Feminine Mystique. #10: Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Communists, sex, feminists, tax-and-spend liberals -- all common conservative bugaboos, as far as they go (though the fact that they condemn the government running up deficits and our $8 trillion debt while they support George W. Bush is a hypocrisy of the first order, albeit entirely typical). But the longlist includes Silent Spring. Silent Spring, for heaven's sake! These people are actually for poisoned air and water! I wish we could open up a hole 100 years in the future to an alternate dimension where there's never been any environmental movement at all, shove these panelists through, and see how they like it. Take that, Phyllis Schlafly.

On a similar note, I considered adding the following quote to my quotation file recently:

"A democracy requires...embracing the vast diversity of humanity, and doing it with humility, listening as best you can, not just to those with high positions, but to the cacophonous voices of ordinary people, and trusting those millions of people, keeping out of their way...The word we have for this is 'freedom.'" -- Ronald Reagan

I loved the "vast diversity of humanity," the "humility" and "listening," the "cacophonous voices," all of that, but the "keeping out of their way" gave me pause because Reagan meant it as let's-negate-environmental-controls-and-call-it-populism, not genuinely keeping out of Americans' private business. And the doubletalk of that made me uncomfortable, which made me dislike the quotation (Quote #213: "A fact is not a truth until you love it" -- John Keats), which kept it out of the Quote File. Which is okay, because I didn't particularly want Ronald Reagan in there anyway.

I interviewed two editors from American Cheerleader magazine today as part of a feature for our book Blister. They were quite adamant that cheerleading is a sport worthy of everyone's respect, and when you see how hard those women work and how athletic they are, I certainly agree; but I have to say they aren't helping themselves be taken seriously when they have a section called "Beauty and Style File" in their magazine.

(And having made that comment, I immediately think "So okay, Cheryl, do you mean strong women aren't allowed to be pretty, to worry about their hair or nails or how they look? Or that women who do shouldn't be taken seriously -- in which case you shouldn't be taken seriously?" And that's not what I mean. But I don't think a women's basketball or volleyball magazine would be concerned about "cute colors for fingers and toes" at those sports' camps. . . . Lord, Phyllis Schlafly doesn't need to worry about us feminists taking over -- we're too busy self-analyzing little things like this.)

I've recently started to read a smart literary-life blog put out by one Maud Newton.

Lisa sent me to this cool aura test: http://www.auracolors.com/test.htm. I think I was Sensitive Tan or Sensitive Blue -- whichever one scores almost exactly the same in both thinking and feeling.

My mother's last full-time day of work in the Missouri school system was yesterday -- in other words, she retired! But no one believes my mother can actually stay retired and not be running something, so we're just saying she's never going to work full-time for the Missouri schools again. Next week she participates in a three-day, 60-mile breast-cancer walk in celebration of her retirement and memory of my grandmother.

All right, to bed for me so I can work well tomorrow. Hope all's well with all of you!

Book Tag!

Gacked from Lisa: a book tag meme!

1. Total number of books owned? Fewer than you'd think, thanks to limited shelf space in my small apartment and the resultant constant culling. Maybe 200? Numbers, bah.

2. Last book bought? The Obituary Writer by Porter Shreve, though I'm thinking of trading it in for The Big Love by Sarah Dunn.

3. Last book I read? As in "read every word, not skimmed" and "more than picture-book length": Into Love and Out Again by Elinor Lipman.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. As soon as I read this book, I started to try to model myself after Sara Crewe: imaginative, thoughtful, kind, polite, charismatic, long-suffering, uncomplaining, proud. I am not sure how well I succeeded. Eighteen years later, it's a comfort book for me; when I am tired or lonely or sad, I crawl into this book and pull its covers up over my head (to steal a line from another book I'm very fond of, The Beekeeper's Apprentice).

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. My very first Austen, read in a week (for the first half) and a night (for the second). My subsequent passion for Austen's novels went on to influence the college I chose (I took Carleton much more seriously after I saw that it offered an Austen course), the major I pursued, my friendship with Katy, my love life, my editorial taste, and my entire philosophy of everything, frankly. Pay attention always; laugh at what you can, but never ridicule what is wise and good; say things well, because language matters; all of it has roots in Austen. P&P is also the basis for my only extended creative-writing projects ever, the romantic-nonsense fanfiction I wrote when I was in college. (Actually I am fairly proud of those stories -- my big two were an alternate-reality story set a year after the Darcys' marriage and a modern reinterpretation with lots of Ella Fitzgerald lyrics -- but not so proud that I will link to them here.)

Possession by A. S. Byatt. I went on a date with a guy in February -- this was the 38-Year-Old, for those of you playing along at home -- and we started talking about books, and I mentioned this as one of my favorites, and he said "Possession? That's a terrible book, I hated that book." And I looked at him and thought, "You are dead to me." All right, not quite (I gave him another half-hour), but I do deeply love this book for its bookishness, its cleverness, its thoughtfulness about literature, criticism, romance, and sex; I love it because I always discover new things in it, which makes me feel clever in turn. And the writing is simply gorgeous. . . . Whenever I go outside after a thunderstorm, I think of the last line: "It was the smell of death and destruction and it smelled fresh and lively and hopeful."

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling. I started to read this in the back of the Beebe family's white Dodge Dynasty as Katy and I drove up to Minnesota for our senior year at Carleton. Katy was reading it too at the time, and we promptly began stealing the book from each other whenever one of us was foolish enough to put it down (an experience we'd also had with Possession during sophomore year). I bought Sorcerer's Stone with my college textbooks, read Chamber of Secrets over Christmas break, was in line at midnight for Goblet of Fire seven months later, and started my job with Arthur two months after that.

Millicent Min, Girl Genius, by Lisa Yee. (And I'm not saying this just because Lisa reads my blog.) This was the first book I felt like a proper editor for, the first one where I truly played a major role in shaping the book and making its publication happen, and I am very proud of the result. It can also be connected to all the other books I've listed here: It's a children's book (like A Little Princess) with an Austen narrative structure (heroine realizes she's made a terrible moral mistake and corrects her error); it includes a Possession-ish profusion of literary documents, and it's published by Arthur A. Levine Books, just like Harry Potter.

Good stuff, all.

Book Business

As mentioned, I have the following books available for giveaway:

• Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin. Trade paperback. A very dryly funny slim novel about a man's search for parking in New York City.
• Her First American by Lore Segal. Mass-market paperback. An excellent if somewhat elliptical novel about a young Jewish woman who falls in love with an unreliable older black man.
• Into Love and Out Again by Elinor Lipman. Combining my critiques of both of the previous novels: A collection of short stories that are often too elliptical to be totally emotionally (read: romantically) satisfying, but which are nonetheless dryly funny and insightful and unfailingly well-written.
• Ariel by Grace Tiffany. Advanced Reader's Edition. A reimagining of The Tempest in novel form, with special focus on that pitiless force of the imagination Ariel.
• Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata. Hardcover. This year's Newbery winner, about two Japanese sisters growing up in Iowa and the Deep South.
• Dixieland Sushi by Cara Lockwood. Trade paperback. Along similar lines, though much more buoyant in plot and tone, a fun chick-lit novel about growing up Japanese-American, deep Southern cooking, stupid crushes, and Mr. Miyagi.
• I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. Hardcover. A smart, funny young adult novel with an ending that will either please you with its cleverness and heart or anger you with the author's own pleasure at his cleverness and heart.
• South Beach by Aimee Friedman. Paperback. Two teenage girls have the spring break of their lives in South Beach. Excellent guilty-pleasure reading; written by a friend of mine at Scholastic.
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Advanced Reader's Edition. A girl falls in love with a vampire.
• Day of Tears by Julius Lester. Advanced Reader's Edition. A novel in dialogue about the biggest slave auction in American history; a hugely powerful, even painful evocation of the experience of being a slave.

Leave me a comment if you'd like to claim one of these and I'll happily get it out to you -- first come, first served.

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While cleaning my shelves yesterday, I realized that I don't know the present location of my copies of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass (that is, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy). This was a little distressing, as not only do I love the books madly, they're all signed (The Amber Spyglass a signed first edition). So I sort of want to keep them on the radar. If I've lent them to one of you and forgotten about it, will you please let me know? Thanks.

Also, if you follow the link above, don't miss this brilliant essay on literature, politics, and moral education. Beyond its crystal-sharp writing and general wisdom, it has provided me with a new goal in life: "to shine with superior Lustre and Effect, and inform private circles with Sentiment, Taste, and Manners." Mr. Pullman quotes this particular epitaph again in this enjoyable conversation with Tamora Pierce and Christopher Paolini on fantasy fiction.

And that is all for tonight. It's May 31, the day after Memorial Day. Welcome to the summer! Huzzah!

Spring Cleaning

Today I am engaging in the happy-sad process of spring cleaning: happy, in that my apartment is achieving a soothing neatness and coherence it hasn't had for at least the last month; sad, in that I am an inveterate pack rat and I'm throwing things out. These include a collection of single socks I kept in hopes their mates would miraculously materialize from under my bed or somewhere; MoonPies almost a year past their expiration date -- a horrible waste, but the taste isn't worth the calories at this point, and it's my own fault for not treating myself to them more often; a purse with a broken handle I've always meant to resew, but then I don't love the purse enough to bother; books* I'm never going to read, let's be honest, or don't like enough to justify the space on my shelves; and so on and so forth. And then sweeping, and hanging up summer clothes, and putting sweaters in bags to take to the dry cleaner, and organizing things to send to friends . . . My apartment now has the almost painful cleanliness of a new haircut or freshly clipped fingernails; I have to adapt to suit this new perfection.

But for now, I'm done, and running out to play in the Brooklyn sunshine. Enjoy the weekend, everyone!

* When I have more time I'll try to list these in case one of you would like to adopt them.

Sithing Ducks

I went to see "Revenge of the Sith" on Friday. As much as it pains me to deviate from Anthony Lane's opinion, he got it wrong here, and for a most unusual reason for him: He missed the emotional core of the movie, the dark bind that twists Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. And most surprisingly for George Lucas, who thus far has seemed to be interested only in the coldly soulless and mechanical, that bind is love. Anakin loves Padme; he has visions of her dying in childbirth; the Dark Side promises to teach him to protect her and their unborn child(ren) from death -- and a little moral wrestling and many lightsaber battles later, the saturnine Darth Vader rises and takes that first sucking, ominous breath.

While this may sound obvious and programmatic on the page, it went a long way toward redeeming the first two prequels for me: I finally understood why George Lucas included all that godawful emotionally telling dialogue in "Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" -- he had to set up Anakin's love for his mother and Padme and obsession with loss, and the only way he knew how to do that was by having Anakin say it right out in some of the worst dialogue ever typed. (No matter how good Lucas's ideas are, he still has no excuse for not getting an intelligent scriptwriter to convert the ideas into speakable English.) Still, here at last was the emotional and moral complication that has been missing from the enterprise thus far, and I was surprised and impressed.

There are other pleasures in "Revenge of the Sith" beyond this sudden growth of complexity: the lightsaber battles (especially any involving Yoda); some breathtakingly gorgeous land- and starscapes on the various planets of the Republic; the John Williams score; watching Sidious/Palpatine, Vader, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Luke, Leia, and R2-D2 and C-3PO move into their assigned positions on the stage for Episode IV, feeling them click into place with what we already know will happen. I was surprised again by how immediately Anakin and Obi-Wan darting among the Sith ships in their star cruisers took me back to the excitement I felt when I was six years old watching similar scenes in the original trilogy. And the editing was terrific, particularly in the climactic sequence where Luke and Leia's birth is contrasted with Vader's.

There are other annoyances, too, beyond the dialogue: Natalie Portman is given nothing to do but literally sit around and look pretty as she swells with child; Anakin's final capitulation to the Dark Side happens a little too quickly for all the agonizing that has come before it; the acting seems to be almost deliberately wooden, as if Lucas wanted to mute Ewan McGregor's natural charisma and deny Hayden Christiansen any expression besides "brood"; and the Jedis, the Sith, the clones, the Republic, the Empire, the Senate, the proto-Storm Troopers, the Wookiees, the droids -- I found it impossible to sort out their aims, leaders, or alliances, or to care. But on the whole, I recommend "Revenge of the Sith." May the Force be with you.

(And if you like organic food or can't get enough Star Wars, check this out: Grocery Store Wars.)

Buenos Noches from Belton

I am at home in Missouri right now, in the room I spent my college summers and holidays in, in the house I tumbled through all my adolescent joys and agonies in, in the state where I passed the first twenty-two years of my existence, more or less. My family is wonderful. The food is good (and oh-my-lord plentiful). Rest is nice, and so is open space and driving and barbeque.

But it is always odd to be home because I essentially become the high school version of myself again, 1990s!Cheryl, except with no homework or extracurricular activities to do and even less of a social life. I go to church; I unload the dishwasher; I watch TV with my family; I'm the last one up reading. Tomorrow will offer two shocks to this system: I'm seeing baby Phoebe Amelia Blair, the month-old daughter of one of my best high school friends, and my mom is having a retirement party to mark the end of her twenty-five years with the Raymore Peculiar School District. Time does go on. Still, beyond my family I feel unconnected here, floating, ghostly; it is comforting to follow all the rituals of my former life, but even more comforting to know I get to escape them.

An Eyeful

Katy Beebe made Art, courtesy of an unknown sculpture and me. Taken at MoMA, December 18, 2004.

Miscellany

Having a bad day? You need to pop some bubble wrap.

My sweet Anthony has reviewed Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Truly I don't feel this is one of his better efforts this spring, as apparently there's just so much he can expend his wit upon that he cannot vary his tone or restrain himself in the slightest; this review amounts to one long sneer. (Nor is there anything to match his immortal line from the Episode I review on Anakin's seemingly virgin birth: "I believe we are in the presence of a Religious Parallel.") Still, he gets some good shots in, so it's worth a read, especially if you hate George Lucas.

Jeremiah, Meredith and I went to a Scholastic preview of "Madagascar" tonight -- more of the typical Dreamworks Animation reference-, celebrity-, and stereotype-driven hooey, though it does have some funny penguins. Bad movies, bah. And then we watched the season finale of "Gilmore Girls," which had infinitely more depth, heart, suspense, and characterization but of course leaves us waiting till next September for the answer to the last line of dialogue. Spy Mommy is back on "Alias" this week, so I'll watch even though I haven't seen the last five or so episodes.

(Speaking of "Alias," I will happily accept this shirt for my eight-month birthday in four days. Also this one or this one, thank you very much, and this -- The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, my lord -- if you're feeling really wonderful and generous.)

I finally finished my edit notes on The Tenth Power today and sent them to Kate, plus I reviewed the book blues for Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time -- so I got a MoonPie. Also I made this not-bad chicken with blue cheese sauce last night, and I have started, really this time, The Brothers Karamazov. Plus I have taken the comforter off my bed, dragged out my summer clothes and sandals, and registered for a playing field for the New York Carleton Club's July picnic and Ultimate Frisbee event, so summer is on its way.

And that is my life du jour. I am going to post a picture now and go to bed.

In Living Color!

I downloaded Picasa and Hello today, and as a result -- pictures! These were taken at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, a fabulous barnlike drinking hall where my group enjoyed sausages, potatoes, sauerkraut, pretzels, pigs' knuckles (only one of us), the sight of men in lederhosen, the music of the in-house oom-pah band, and of course beer. I had doubts I could down an entire liter mug, but as the pictures attest, I rose to the challenge.

I shall try not to abuse these programs and deluge this blog with pictures, but they make it so easy that you may end up seeing my entire catalogue. (I took 212 pictures in Germany alone! Aren't you so excited?)

Hurrah! Or as one says in German with a large beer in hand -- prost!*

* pronounced "proast"; actual spelling may vary from that given here, and actual pronunciation with the size of the beer. :-)

Before . . .  

and after. Note that the hair is considerably less restrained. :-) 

Rebellion

I have to finish my editorial notes for The Tenth Power or suffer the wrath of a production editor, so I am at work on a sunny Saturday. And thus I am wasting time and making a quick post in rebellion. Ha! Work! I laugh in the face of work!

And then work crushes me, which is what I get for laughing at it.

A terrific and surprisingly sweet article from the Onion: Cupid Shooting Spree Leaves Dozens Infatuated. "Amateur video shot at the scene shows the apple-cheeked cherub firing bolt after heart-tipped bolt into the crowd. Those hit reacted immediately by clasping their hands between their knees, casting their eyes downward, and digging their toes sheepishly in the dirt. In some cases, the victims hid their eyes altogether and grinned vacuously at absolutely nothing. "

My dear friend Melissa is going to go to Edinburgh and interview J. K. Rowling on the weekend of July 16th! (That is, the weekend of the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, for those few of you who do not regard it as a virtual Holy Day of Obligation.) No one deserves to do this more, and she'll be brilliant. Yay, Melissa! And my newly graduated cousin Hans is also newly engaged, to the lovely Megan! Yay, Hans and Megan!

All right, 12:30. I am going to work now. Bah. I will try to say more interesting things the next time I'm procrastinating.

And no one in Park Slope either

Nobody Dies in the Spring

Nobody dies in the spring
on the Upper West Side:
nobody dies.

On the Upper West Side
we're holding hands with strangers
on the Number 5 bus,
and we're singing the sweet
graffiti on the subway,
and kids are skipping patterns through
the bright haze of incinerators,
and beagles and poodles are making a happy
ruin of the sidewalks,
and hot-dog men are racing
their pushcarts down Riverside Drive,
and Con Ed is tearing up Broadway
from Times Square to the Bronx,
and the world is a morning miracle
of sirens and horns and jackhammers
and Baskin-Robbins' 31 kinds of litter
and sausages at Zabar's floating
overhead like blimps--oh,
it is no place for dying, not
on the Upper West Side, in springtime.

There will be a time
for the smell of burning leaves at Barnard,
for milkweed winging silky over Grant's Tomb,
for apples falling to grass in Needle Park;
but not in all this fresh new golden
smog: now there is something
breaking loose in people's chests,
something that makes butchers and busboys
and our neighborhood narcs and muggers
go whistling in the streets--now
there is something with goat feet out there, not
waiting for the WALK light, piping
life into West End window-boxes,
pollinating weeds around
condemned residential hotels,
and prancing along at the head
of every elbowing crowd on the West Side,
singing:

Follow me-- it's spring--
and nobody dies.

-- Philip Appleman
Courtesy of "The Writer's Almanac"

Hurrah for Hans! & Listserv Mania

Because I am a bad cousin and have not yet sent a graduation card, a quick hurrah here for my cousin Hans, who graduated from Iowa State University on Saturday with a degree in Landscape Architecture. Rumor has it he will shortly be bound for this coast to work in preservation, so watch out, Eastern Seaboard: The blond Kleins are taking over. Yay Hans!

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This has nothing whatsoever to do with Hans, but I am subscribed to six listservs (between work and home) that give me a daily dose of news, beauty, insight, and humor, and might be of interest to others:

• A.Word.A.Day -- the original and best; a word and quotation per day.
• The Writer's Almanac -- from Minnesota Public Radio, a daily poem (usually contemporary, which has introduced me to wonderful poets like Stephen Dunn and William Stafford) and "this day in literary history." May 9 was J. M. Barrie's birthday, for the record.
• Weeknight Kitchen from The Splendid Table -- also from MPR, a weekly e-mail with great recipes. Some of them are more complicated than others (the Balthazar macaroni and cheese requires four different types of cheese, for example), but they always sound delicious, and those I've actually made have unfailingly proven to be so.
• child_lit -- for anyone interested in contemporary children's literature and related topics, which in the recent past have included book banning, religious conservatism, libraries, theatre, the Gates, sports mascots, and stamp collecting. Philip Pullman is a member, and it's always a pleasure and shock when he posts: like having God suddenly speak in the middle of a church service (inappropriate as that simile may be for him).
• Unshelved -- I get weekly digests of these cartoons about life in a public library. So-so art, but terrific writing and a very funny cast.
• FoxTrot -- Bill Amend may be only the second-most-brilliant comic-strip creator named Bill, but *he's* still around, and no one's better at parodying present pop culture (especially geekwise).

The Happy List, Germany edition

If you've already heard me talk about the trip or gotten a postcard from me, much of this will be familiar, but here goes:

• On my first night in Germany, a bath in a gorgeously deep, long European bathtub, with my Henning Mankell mystery novel and towels heating on a towel-warmer. Afterward I put on my pajamas, snuggled under my duvet, watched MTV2Pop and the BBC, read more of the Mankell, and wrote in my journal: the perfect ending to a day that began with an eight-hour international flight, and more significantly, what felt like the first time I'd relaxed in nearly four months.
• Smart cars and many Minis
• Eating "seemans labskaus" for dinner in Hamburg -- that is, "seaman's lobscouse," a dish Jack and Stephen eat in Patrick O'Brian (which of course is why I ordered it). It consisted of pureed beef, potatoes, and beetroot, if I remember rightly, with two fried eggs on top. As a dinner it lacked variety, but I could see how it would be the perfect sailors' meal: easy to make in large quantities, heavy, warming, and pure protein.
• Shooting south from Hamburg to Stuttgart and later Stuttgart to Munich on those brilliant European bullet trains: comfortable, warm, fast, quiet, good onboard cafes with real china and silverware -- the very antithesis of Amtrak.
• Those marvelous timetable-announcement signs clicking as they flipped from one destination to another
• Beating the editor of the Horn Book at Scrabble, thanks to BEAVERS, JO, OX, ZIP, and most significantly BURQA on a triple. It was a really good game -- I would have been happy even if I lost (though less happy, I admit). And we played on his Palm Pilot, which has me thinking I need to get a Palm Pilot . . .
• Many wonderful dinners spent discussing publishing, books, politics, sights to see, and other topics with nice German editors and foreign rights people. One of the best of these was at the Unicorn pub in Esslingen, which had been there since, I think, 1671.
• The fine Stuttgart and Munich public transportation systems, especially the Munich trams
• Stopping by G. W. F. Hegel's house in Stuttgart. All the displays were in German, and nothing in the house was original except the structure, so it didn't do me much good knowledgewise; but the very act of visiting pleased my Quiz Bowler's soul.
• Getting to know the many smart, booky people on the tour with me -- not least Roger Sutton, the aforementioned editor of the Horn Book, who I ended up liking very much.
• The uncanny: Hearing a cover of the Garth Brooks song "If Tomorrow Never Comes" in a taxi in Stuttgart; seeing commands in German on the same kind of office copier we use at Scholastic; the sweeter taste of "Coca-Cola Light" (Diet Coke)
• Visiting the Hofbrauhaus, a large barnlike structure in the heart of Munich, filled with tourists and Munich residents alike drinking one-liter glasses of beer, eating various kinds of sausage and potatoes, and occasionally singing along with the in-house polka band. I polished off an entire one-liter myself -- definitely the most beer I've ever drunk at one sitting -- and enjoyed it enormously.
• Purchasing a "disco shirt" -- a black tank top with a large rhinestone butterfly fluttering across the front, hotcha hotcha -- at a store called "The New Yorker"
• Dancing in two very different Munich nightclubs
• Getting hit on twice (once per nightclub) -- neither was my type (or spoke English, for that matter), but a little admiration never hurts
• The long walk along the canal to Nymphenborg Palace, and later another long walk through the almost too perfectly manicured palace grounds.
• Radler -- this delightful combination of beer and lemonade; especially delicious when sipped outside at a sidewalk cafe
• Ludwig II's castles. Linderhof and Neuschwanstein. The poor man obviously had to create fantasy worlds for himself because he didn't have any real friends, but what fantasy worlds they were -- especially the Byzantine throne room and the Wagner-inspired interiors at Neuschwanstein.
• The Maypole and May Day folk dancers in the village below Neuschwanstein
• Men in lederhosen and women in dirndls
• The Alps -- beautiful peaks and valleys dusted with bright yellow dandelions and edged with tall white birches; hills practically alive with the Sound of Music
• Drinking at the Chinescher Turm beergarden with a nice young Canadian I met on the castle tour. We need more beergardens in the United States, I've decided: outdoor cafes in parks where people can sit outside on a summer night and enjoy cold drinks and good conversation.
• The African drumming circle in the Englischer Garden on Sunday evening, which reminded me fondly of the African drumming circle in Prospect Park on Sunday afternoons
• Reading the International Herald Tribune over a gigantic continental breakfast: muesli, yogurt, cheese, salami, rolls, chocolate pudding, croissants with European Nutella, orange juice, and tea
• Sitting at the fourth-floor window of my charmingly shabby pension in Munich, the Hotel Jedermann, and writing postcards
• Coming home hugely satisfied from an interesting and productive trip