Mole by Ernest Shepard, from The Wind in the Willows
Fridays are my allergy-shot day. Each week, in late afternoon: poor Scott has to give me three (three!), after which I’m pretty much wiped out for the day. They are potent cocktails. They’re no fun to get—and the subsequently itchy arms are no joke—but these shots have changed my life, rescuing me from what had become increasingly debilitating asthma that turned out to be the Pacific Northwest’s earnest effort to clobber me.
So I’m grateful. I’m a lot healthier. And in a strange way, I’ve come to appreciate the way they’ve blown my old Friday rhythm to smithereens. Since I had a (mild) anaphylactic reaction to my maintenance dose a while back, I’m now forbidden to spend any time outside on shot days. Can’t risk increasing my allergen exposure on the days I get jabbed. And I was sternly admonished to do nothing that elevates my heart rate for two hours before or after the shots.
In the summer and fall, this was a huge bummer: no gardening! No long walks with Scott! But in winter? Mandatory cloistering in a cozy home? Doctor’s orders to hibernate? Happy to oblige.
Now Fridays are a reading day, a writing day, a tying-up-the-kinds-of-loose-ends-you-can-tie-up-from-your-chair day. A knock-things-off-the-admin-to-do-list day. A tuck-yourself-in-bed-early day. A day the world will just have to make do without me.
And then comes Saturday morning, when I always feel like Mole emerging from his hole in Spring. Even in December!
A new idea, or more accurately, an old idea I’m reviving. A collection of passages that caught my attention, warmed me, sparked thought, in my week’s reading. What I’d like to do, and we’ll see if it takes, is come back to update this post as the week rolls out. Or, in a week like this one, I can collect things I’ve marked, saved, or shared elsewhere.
In today’s internet, updating a blog post is an odd thing to do. But after nearly twenty years of stashing words in this space, I know the blog’s most important purpose is to serve as a storehouse of memories. It’s a living (if sometimes ignored for a stretch) record of a thought-life.
Most of the long-term benefits of reading arise not from facts inserted into your brain, but from the ways in which reading changes you, by shaping your sensibility, from which good work and good ideas will later flow. ‘Every book makes a mark,’ says the art consultant Katarina Janoskova, ‘even if it doesn’t stay in your conscious memory.’
—Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals (emphasis mine)
Moominpappa at Sea, chapter 2. The Moomins are in the middle of the sea, searching for the lighthouse island Moominpappa knows is out there somewhere.
“We shall see it soon,” said Moominmamma. Her head was full of little thoughts that she couldn’t really get organized. “I do hope it’s working,” she thought. “He’s so happy. I do hope there really is a lighthouse somewhere out there, and not just a flyspeck after all. We can’t possibly go home now, particularly after such a grand start…You can find big pink shells, but the white ones look very nice against the black soil. I wonder whether the roses will grow out there…”
It’s late August in Moominland, but this passage has such a December ring to my ears. So many small thoughts zinging around. Mind full of shells and soil and roses and lighthouse hopes. Safe harbor behind us, mysterious seas ahead. Island or flyspeck? Reading maps is a risky business.
“Isn’t it just!” I can imagine Little My exclaiming, with relish.
This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links
How is it (U.S.) Thanksgiving week already????
The kind folks at Annie Bloom’s Books here in Portland have a special arrangement with local authors (like me!): if you want to order a signed copy of The Prairie Thief or The Nerviest Girl in the World, you can click this link and order directly from Annie Bloom’s. They will notify me and I’ll stop by the shop and write a personalized inscription before they ship the book to you.
The shop doesn’t have direct-order links to Fox and Crow Are Not Friends or my Inch and Roly series, but if you reach out to them you can probably add any of those to your order.
I have to plan time for making the trip across the river to the bookshop, so if you’d like to give one of my books to a special kid or teacher on your gift list, I’d recommend ordering as soon as possible.
Ordering from Annie Bloom’s is a win all around! You’ll be supporting a truly wonderful independent bookstore, you’ll be supporting my work (and other local authors—check them out!), and you’ll be able to cross some special someones off your shopping list. Easy peasy! Merry and bright!
November 18, 2024 @ 12:44 pm | Filed under:
Bloggity 
Design by Mary Corbett. Stitched by me in 2020.
Great post by Seth Werkheiser of Social Media Escape Club:
Think of the 1,000s of posts you’ve put on social media over the last decade. That. That’s what you’ll put on your site.
Those links you send to friends via text? Yeah, put them on your site and write about ‘em. Same with YouTube videos and albums you find on Bandcamp and Spotify.
All those “image assets” you posted on Instagram that 95% of your fans didn’t even see? Put those on your website.
The interviews, and bits of press you’ve gotten? Put them on your website.
He reminded me of the MANY MANY times I’ve thought: I should start grabbing my old Instagram pics and reposting them on the blog. So consider these grabbed: a few glimpses of November 2020 (because the leaves caught my eye as I scrolled down my own feed).
real leaves I stitched together for fun
Klickitat Street, probably
Reminder upon reminder: the autumn leaves hoop (a beautiful Mary Corbett design that I thoroughly enjoyed stitching) is sitting in a pile with about 30 other finished pieces of embroidery that I haven’t bothered to hang in the new house! Eek. We’ve been here for over a year. Every time I think about it (which honestly hasn’t been often), I’ll think: oh but maybe we should paint that wall first. WHICH wall? I don’t even know. This one, I guess.
There’s a slip of paper I stick on the first page of a new notebook, moving it from book to book as I fill them up.
Dreams
Memories
Zero drafts
Project notes
Obsessions
Feelings
Experiences
Questions
Observations
A list to remind me what the notebook is for. Funny: I forgot to include Quotes, even though all my notebooks are filled with lines & passages copied from things I’ve read. Really my most reliable starting point.
In a recent newsletter, I wrote about Kim Stafford’s four-step journaling process that results in a poem a day for him—a rather amazing output, to be sure, but he is committed to getting something down quickly and posting it as a kind of love letter to the world.
I love collecting the quick-capture habits of other artists, writers, poets. The thinking-out-loud, the learning-in-public. I’ve had periods when that was my habit, too. Write fast and hit publish.
I’m grateful that was my very nearly daily habit (!) when my kids were little. So many stories and remarks I would have forgotten! They tell me they still like to roam through the archives, revisiting their smaller selves there.
Something I’m mapping in my notebook lately: impulses. The course or book or product that tempts me. Why? What is the secret wish it promises to grant? Do I already possess the power to grant it on my own?
Secret wishes, gosh. So many of them. And some not-at-all secret ones, now tucked up for a small window of dormancy, gathering nourishment, fattening up for the season to come.
October 1, 2024 @ 9:04 am | Filed under:
Bloggity 
this evening, probably
Here in Portland this morning, we have almost a San Diego sky—a clear expanse of blue. I can appreciate it now, in the early chill, because I know that by this afternoon, the faint wisps of cloud I spy over the blue mountains across the river will have fluffed out into the illuminated tapestry I love.
I love a fresh start, as I’ve said here so often over the years, and the page-turn to October is one I always especially enjoy. Anne Shirley indoctrinated me early to be “glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
This post isn’t meant to do more than mark the moment: a ‘quick take,’ as we used to call them, back when our blogs—now young adults—were in their infancy.
What I’m reading: War and Peace, still, faithfully, with Simon Haisell’s Footnotes and Tangents year-long read-along. (Next year he’s doing Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety. I’m in for sure—but I plan to reread W&P a chapter a day, same as this year. It’s part of my morning routine now and I don’t think I could do without it. Partway through this year, I started penciling in the date I read each chapter, and recently I’ve been adding a small sticky-note on the previous day’s chapter, on which I jot down a few of that day’s happenings—in my real life, I mean. It’s an odd sort of diary but I like the idea of discovering these notes next year, or in whatever year I revisit each chapter. War and Peace is the kind of novel you can tuck your whole world into.
Ack, I always think I’ll write a quick take and then it becomes anything but quick. Anyway, what else I’m reading is Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, also with Footnotes & Tangents. I’m a couple of weeks behind on those readings. Because—huzzah—this weekend a new Frizzlit Book Club begins, and it’s Flannery! O! Connor! I’m all in. Am reading her letters, rereading Mystery & Manners, and of course reading the stories we’ll discuss in class.
I’m also reading, far too slowly because I care about it the most, ***a secret novel written by a beloved and incredibly gifted writer.***
I’ll be downstairs in a few minutes, I blithely told Scott a lot more than a few minutes ago. Huck is taking a Brave Writer essay class and Rilla has begun her first college!!!!! course—Women in Art—which means that I have some juicy discussions awaiting me downstairs. But first a few (very few) minutes of cello practice. It’s terribly slow going, y’all. Comically slow. But there’s no deadline. Thank goodness.
September 9, 2024 @ 7:42 am | Filed under:
Books 
Got the best compliment of my gardening life yesterday. Our neighbor across the street said, “When your poppies faded I thought the show was over. But no. Every day it’s wave after wave of—” (gestures admiringly) “—THIS. Makes me want to puke.”
August 29, 2024 @ 7:42 am | Filed under:
Books 
Yesterday’s fun: as we kick off a new season of High Tide, I carted a stash of blank notebooks downstairs so Huck and Rilla could each choose one to begin the year with.
[Today I learned: I’m a notebook hoarder.]
[Scott: Um, today you learned?]
Amusingly, this photo, the only one I snapped, doesn’t include either of their picks. For the record, Rilla: a lavender Leuchtturm 1917 (my own favorite, except I like a dot grid and this one is blank); Huck: a blue Kokuyo Campus Smart Ring 60, which is a Japanese spiral notebook that I have no memory of acquiring? It’s pretty swoony, though.
Today’s fun: CHOOSING PENS.
[Today I learned: my studio could easily double as a stationery shop.]
[Scott: Again: this is news?]
July 7, 2024 @ 1:47 pm | Filed under:
Books 
Brave Writer online camp is designed for homeschool parents who need a little extra boost of support!
The day-long camp is packed with useful information about
- homeschooling
- writing
- all things Brave Writer
The Brave Writer team offers a day of free webinars on topics like stress-free writing and learning through literature. And during the lunch break, I’ll be hosting a Poetry Teatime for your kids!
Learn more & sign up here.
