Over the Fourth of July weekend I visited my son (Louis, 21) in Iowa City. (He had a summer research job at the University of Iowa.) We went on several hikes and toured the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library—and just before I left, we struck gold at the Salvation Army. (Louis was very patient with me. Some moms spend hours shopping for the just-right pair of shoes or draperies or lamps or whatever. I'm not one of of those moms.) Here are some of my big finds: Birthday Bath! It's a snow globe AND a music box. It's a clown in a tub with a rubber duck, a boat, lots of bubbles, and a faithful dog companion. Here is another inexplicable music box. This one didn't come with a name, but when I look at this mysterious couple I hear "Androgynous" by the Replacements. I'm not sure what bothers me most about this earnest gal. Is it the missing piece of arm? Or is it the idea that if she were standing up, her arms would probably hang well past her knees? A rooster/polar bear that was NOT hand carved by anyone in any particular country. Which makes it all the more confusing. That does it for the Iowa City thrift store adventure, at least for now. (I'm saving a few special seasonal treats for later.) But here is a local find: I promised you a silver giraffe, didn't I... On a super-hot day in early July, I discovered a menagerie across from the Shopko in Windom (MN). Of course I had to take a closer look. And there you go. A silver giraffe.
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In April 2016 I moved to St. Paul. Moving can make a person feel disoriented, but I felt a little more grounded after discovering these butterflies on the sidewalk outside Riverside Library. And there's a reason for that. This blog by my friend Karen Henry Clark explains it all. Years ago, someone decided that a little sapling in the lawn would be allowed to live. It would NOT be pulled up or mowed down. That is one lucky, plucky tree. I love the colors and textures here...seeds and stones. Not sure if this is funny or creepy. Real church for real "people." Hmmm...Those quotation marks make me a little nervous. What kind of people are we talking about here? The best for last...I was walking along Winslow Avenue and was absolutely delighted to discover a short poem stamped in the sidewalk. And then I found some more! Turns out the poems are part of an ongoing public art project by the city of St. Paul. Here's a link to the Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk page.
A little less war A little more peace A little less poor A little more eats.
I'm kind of glad I didn't know about this project beforehand. Coming across these poems totally out of the blue—what a surprise and a joy!
I discovered this armless lady-dude cookie jar at the Good Will in West St. Paul. Was tempted to buy it, but $19.95 was too many cookies for me. Don't you love this? How often do you see an "official" sign with a sense of humor? Found at a rest stop in Iowa along I-29. Stick horses are still a thing in Nebraska, apparently! As well they should be. A toy that requires imagination AND movement. Speaking of imagination and movement...Here we have a cat looming on its hind legs like Sasquatch, reaching for a ball of yarn on a bouncy spring. We have a plate of what looks to be cheese. We have a supine companion. And—what's this? Sasquatch Cat's tail is resting on a book. WHY??? This sign was on the wall at my dad's nursing home in Windom. So just who is this Positive Dog? Does it live inside us or among us? Maybe it doesn't matter. The sign definitely makes me want to smile real and laugh big, so mission accomplished. I found this in the Good Will Outlet in St. Paul. The outlets are crazy places—big bins overflowing with all the stuff that didn't sell at the regular Good Will stores. And yet, in all the shabbiness and chaos, little messages of hope are everywhere. Proving yet again that you never know what awaits you when you open a door...This horse was in one of the classrooms (not mine) at the Rochester Technical College, site of the Young Author, Young Artist Conference I took part in recently. I later found out that the classroom was used for veterinary science, so the horse makes perfect sense. If I'd been a child in that room, though, I would have been sorely tempted to climb on top. Some of my happiest times as a kid were in our grove, pretending that an old fuel tank was my trusty steed.
I might have an eye for oddities, but I don't have a good camera or any particular photography skills. So awhile back I entrusted some of my Weird Things to my friend Terri DeGezelle, a fellow children's book author who's also a photographer. Enjoy! Girlhood/Womanhood Manhood Poultryhood Cathood
These pics were all taken in my small hometown of Mountain Lake. (I lived there with my mom from July 2015 to April 2016.) Ice-crisped branches. A dazzling sky early in the morning. The water tower near my mom's house, swallowed up by a cold, dense fog. Train tracks in the early evening (February 16) and in the early morning (February 26). Here is a leaf that would not let go of its color, all the way through winter. Something about the color and glow of that narrow strip of meltwater captured my attention. It seemed like a rift, a portal into someplace Other. Sky and metal, color and geometry I have a walking buddy when my son, Louis, is home on breaks from college. The next few pictures were taken on the path around Mountain Lake. (The lake, not the town.) What caused the snow to melt in a perfect circle like this? I like how the blue sky and brown grass set off the lovely variations of green in the trees. (By March we Minnesotans are pretty hungry for color.) Curtains of water by the old dam. A frozen oil or gas spill. Kind of cool how the colors separated out. Just for fun I enlarged the image and upped the saturation. Pretty.
Today I want to a little evangelizing: a great big shout-out to the Letters for Kids program! Letters for Kids is a very inexpensive subscription program that connects kids with writers. Twice a month, a child receives a physical letter written by a children’s book author. Kids can then write back to the author if they’d like. Usually the featured author also offers a signed book as a giveaway prize. This is brilliant. Writers get a chance to speak directly to their readers–not just about the “writing process” stuff but about anything the writer wants to share. Kids get a sense of who the writer is as a person and are given the opportunity to respond. They will see that the writer’s own experience of life isn’t all that different from their own. And they will learn that their own thoughts and ideas have value. As an added bonus, they’ll know the thrill of getting an important letter in the mailbox, with their own name on it! I recently took part in this program myself and am so glad that I did. I’d spent the previous months slogging through some difficult and decidedly un-inspiring writing assignments. But in this letter, I got to write about the walks I take with my dog, a beagle named Dorie. I got to share all sorts of pictures and spend some time thinking deeply about the things that mattered to me a lot more than the other work I was doing…things like super-long shadows and an odd shoe in the snow and a broken jar of pickles on the sidewalk. Writing was fun again. Letters for Kids is managed by The Rumpus, a coalition of sorts for literature enthusiasts. (Note that the site itself is for grownups.) From The Rumpus website: We know how easy it is to find pop culture on the Internet, so we’re here to give you something more challenging, to show you how beautiful things are when you step off the beaten path. The Rumpus is a place where people come to be themselves through their writing, to tell their stories or speak their minds in the most artful and authentic way they know how, and to invite each of you, as readers, commenters or future contributors, to do the same. The Rumpus also manages a program called Letters in the Mail, which is like Letters for Kids except it’s intended for adults. All sorts of well-established and intriguing writers have contributed: Padma Viswanathan, Rick Moody, Margaret Cho, Marie Calloway, and Stephen Elliott, to name a few.
But back to the actual kids. If there are children in your life who like books–or who don’t, yet, but could use a little nudge in that direction–consider subscribing to the Letters for Kids program. Consider giving a subscription as a gift to your child’s classroom. Consider donating a subscription to an underfunded school. Imagine how all those letters, over time, could create a world of possibility in a child’s mind. Near the end of the summer, I saw this sign at a coffee shop in St. Paul: Wow. Talk about unexpected. These words aren’t cheerful. They’re not intellectual. They’re not even cool or quirky. But I find myself still thinking about them weeks later. MAYBE YOU'RE WRONG. This isn’t a finger-wagging, confidence-destroying YOU’RE WRONG. And it’s not a timidly asked question we can easily dismiss. It’s a simple statement of fact that applies to virtually everything we think and do.
Maybe you’re wrong. Usually we receive the opposite message. We’re told to stand up for ourselves, believe in ourselves, celebrate ourselves! Snap judgments and arrogance are OK. Uncertainty is not. We don’t try to fully understand people or issues; instead we look for proof that we’re right and stop the search a few inches in front of our noses. We dig in our heels. (Anyone thinking of Congress now?) Consider this article by Marty Kaplan, “The Most Depressing Discovery about the Brain, Ever.” Here’s the gist: In Kahan’s experiment, some people were asked to interpret a table of numbers about whether a skin cream reduced rashes, and some people were asked to interpret a different table – containing the same numbers – about whether a law banning private citizens from carrying concealed handguns reduced crime. Kahan found that when the numbers in the table conflicted with people’s positions on gun control, they couldn’t do the math right, though they could when the subject was skin cream. The bleakest finding was that the more advanced that people’s math skills were, the more likely it was that their political views, whether liberal or conservative, made them less able to solve the math problem. Yup. Totally depressing. Of course it’s important to have convictions, and to live by them. And we can’t constantly be reevaluating our beliefs. We’d never get anywhere that way. What we can do is make a conscious choice to leave the window open a crack–whether that means double-checking an address, taking more time to listen, or allowing ourselves to have a more nuanced approach to important social issues. Maybe You’re Wrong isn’t catchy or cute. We’ll never see it on a T-shirt or cross-stitched onto a sofa pillow. But it wouldn’t hurt to paint it on our walls. Presenting to schools as a visiting author means keeping track of a LOT of stuff. For a series of school visits I did in April in rural Minnesota, this meant: a laptop; projector; flash drives; power cords; books to sell or give away in drawings; bookmarks and postcards to hand out; directions, schedules, and contact information–plus all the usual things like a comb, cell phone charger, and reading glasses. (I think my next pair will be bright red, so I can keep track of them.) That’s not even counting the suitcase with practically all the business-casual clothes I own. Minnesota in April? Could be 30 degrees. Could be 80. Since I’m one of those people who can’t talk and do much of anything else at the same time, I knew it would be hard for me to be simultaneously friendly and organized. To make things a little easier, I made up a comprehensive list. Every item was assigned a location (backpack, tote, etc.) and a number. I would simply go down the list–everything would be in its place and I wouldn’t have to tax my brain too strenuously. My system worked great…until the day I completely dropped the ball. Or rather, I left behind the elephant. I’d had a fun time of it in Minneota. Because of testing schedules at the school, all four of my presentations were in the wrestling gym—floor-to-floor mats that required all of us to take off our shoes. I enjoyed that, actually. It was relaxing to pad about in front of the kids, instead of clicking about on low heels as I normally would. One of the kids pointed at my feet (I was wearing black nylon knee-highs) and asked, “Why are your feet that color?” And Nancy Dilley, assistant to the media specialist, was a very pleasant guide as she took me about. At noon she brought me to the nearby senior center, where lunch was a fundraiser potluck. I might have been back in my hometown church basement–my favorite potluck foods from childhood were all there. When my last presentation was over, Nancy offered to help me bring my things to the school library. I put my orange tote on her cart and off we went. One of the kindergarten teachers had bought the Scholastic version of The LAST Day of Kindergarten for her entire class, and I signed each copy. Then I just had to look at the art projects that were on display. The 5th and 6th graders had been given the best assignment ever: to make a diorama for a favorite book, using Peeps. No art museum could have made me happier! When it was time to go, I casually glanced through my things and didn’t bother to get out my checklist. I drove off to my hotel in Granite Falls, about 40 minutes away. As I was unloading my car, it hit me: My orange tote was back on Nancy’s cart in the Minneota school library. The most important things in the tote were some very old books and a homemade stuffed pink elephant. In my presentations, I’d been sharing my experience of helping my parents move off the farm a couple of years ago. I explained how I’d discovered a stash of books and toys that I remembered very well even though it had been more than 40 years since I’d looked at them. “The books you read when you’re kids,” I told them, “become a part of you, especially the books you read over and over. They live inside you, whether you’re aware of it or not.” At the end, when it was time for Q & A, I brought out the pink elephant that my mom made for me. The kids tossed the elephant around the room, and whoever caught it got to ask a question and then toss it to someone else. I always warned them that if things got too crazy, we’d do questions the usual way. But the elephant worked just fine and it was fun to see it flying about the room. I had four presentations in Granite Falls the next day. I really, really wanted those books and that elephant! I called the school, but it was after 5 by now and no one answered at the main office. I debated driving back anyway, because the school would probably be open for sports activities. But would the library be open? Not likely. Would a custodian be available? Maybe…but I would be driving an hour and a half to take that chance. So I called Nancy Dilley on her cell. She was in a meeting in Marshall, but even so, bless her, she offered to pick up the tote and drive it all the way to my hotel. I told her that I would be happy to do the driving if she could just access the tote. We decided to meet roughly halfway, at Hanley Falls. I was totally embarrassed by the whole episode, of course. But after a while I was able to put aside my mistake and simply enjoy being on the road. The sky! Great thunderheads were churning above the prairie. I marveled at the colors–the blues and golds shimmering and shifting as if being twirled about on a painter’s brush. Soon I was driving alongside one of the biggest rainbows I’d ever seen. And then a second rainbow appeared. I reached our meeting spot and gazed at both rainbows until they faded from the sky.
Nancy arrived with my orange tote; she, too, had seen the drama in the sky. I thanked her, impulsively hugged her, and we both went on our way. Like the well-remembered books from my childhood (and the pink elephant), I’m pretty sure these rainbows have become a part of me, too. August 25, 2014–I was delighted to be a Blue Ribbon Author at the state fair this year! The Alphabet Forest was started by author and illustrator Debra Frasier in 2010. It’s a spot at the fair that offers games and crafts relating to letters, words, and books. You could say it’s Midway for the Mind! A Minnesota author is featured each day of the fair. My activity was based on my book, Baby Wants Mama. Since Baby is about a family sitting down to dinner at the end of a busy day, we made place mats, using fruits and veggies to stamp cool patterns. The kids had fun and I think a lot of the parents did too. How often do adults get the chance to play with food? Here are some awesome-looking place mats (and proud kids). Note Amy’s feet/wheels in pale pink. I believe those were made with key limes. The wheels on the bike were made with apples, and the sky was made with broccoli. Nice work! In the morning, Karen Henry Clark was my assistant. I wish we had gotten a picture of us together. Karen is the author of a lovely adoption fairy tale called Sweet Moon Baby; she was a Blue Ribbon Author at the state fair last year. Beth and Brenda were my afternoon assistants. They helped wash hands, pass out paper, and restock veggies. By the end of my shift, the fruits and veggies weren’t smelling all that great. (I blame the cauliflower.) But I was so transfixed by the wonderful mix of colors that instead of tossing them in the trash, I brought them back home with me in my cooler and gave them another day in the sun. (To the left you can see my beagle, Dorie, slinking away from the table. She’d just swiped a carrot.) On my computer, the pictures looked so pretty as thumbnails that I took a screenshot to share with you. A feast for the eyes. And how about a blue ribbon for this celery rose!
Carpe diem. Seize the day. I don’t normally care for this expression—to me it’s always seemed either idealistic or scolding. Lately, though, a couple of incidents have made me realize that to seize the day might just mean to bear witness to someone else’s best moments. Earlier this summer, my mom had been mowing the lawn—zipping along on the garden tractor as if she were still on the farm. My dad, who has Alzheimer’s, was on the deck. The peonies were poking through the deck rails and he was picking them off, thinking they didn’t belong there. Mom finished the mowing, parked the lawn mower in the garage, and checked on Dad. He wasn’t on the deck anymore, but she figured he was close by. Crumpled peonies littered the kitchen floor. Dad wasn’t close by. He’d wandered down to the end of the street, and man named Vern Hooge had seen him and gone outside to see if he could help. Vern was in his mid-80s, and even though he lived fairly close to my parents, they’d never met. Dad could tell Vern his name, but not where he lived. So Vern contacted the police, found out where Dad belonged, and brought him home just as Mom realized that Dad really was missing. Mom thanked Vern profusely, called him an angel, and asked him to come over for coffee sometime. A couple of weeks went by. Mom’s days as a caregiver were full and tiring. But she kept thinking about her invitation to Vern, and one day she made herself ignore the dusting and sweeping and she picked up the phone and called him. And what an enthusiastic response she got: “I’ll be right over!” said Vern. In a few minutes they were chatting over cake and fresh raspberries. Vern offered to come over and watch Dad once in a while if my mom needed to go out. By the time Vern left, Mom’s burden seemed a little lighter. A neighbor was becoming a friend. Less than two weeks later, Vern died unexpectedly from complications of surgery. And my mom was so thankful that she’d made that call—and so glad that Vern had accepted her invitation so readily. A relationship had started and ended in that one afternoon. One pleasant, neighborly, hopeful afternoon. Now for the next story. Last April, I was getting ready to drive to southwestern Minnesota for nearly a week of author visits at elementary schools. It was a gorgeous day and I debated whether I had time to take my dog, Dorie, for a walk. I was tired and stressed and I didn’t want to end up driving in the dark, but I decided to go for it. I knew I’d feel better about leaving Dorie if we’d had a nice outing. And like I said, the day was gorgeous. Bright and blue and warm. In Minnesota, bright and blue and warm is the thread that tugs us through winter. I had moved to St. Louis Park just a few weeks earlier, so every dog walk yielded new discoveries. That afternoon, I ended up on a path between some tennis courts and an apartment building. In the distance I noticed a tree that seemed to be sparkling. When I got closer, I found that the tree was covered in garlands of beads. It was bedecked, festooned. It was gorgeous. Who had decorated the tree? And why? I took out my phone and took a few pictures. I wanted to remember this. That night, at my hotel, I added a picture of the tree to my PowerPoint. It was a perfect example of something I wanted to share with the kids: that stories are everywhere. (And that you should always take the time to walk your dog on a beautiful spring day, no matter what.) The kids liked the beaded tree. But I never got the chance to tell them this: A couple of weeks later, Dorie and I walked that same route. And the tree was gone. At first I thought I had gotten the location wrong—that it was behind a different apartment building. I walked this way and that, hoping a glisten would catch my eye. When I got home, I checked the background of my photo. The tree was indeed gone. I still don’t know who decorated the tree. But I have a pretty good idea of why. This picture has been the log-in screen on my computer for months. I see it nearly every day. Now, though, the beaded tree makes me think of my parents’ neighbor. A gift of kindness shimmering in the sunlight…then gone. But oh, the joy in having seen it. |
Nancy Loewenis a children's book author, editor, tutor, mom of two adult children and one feisty cat, and collector of weird things. Featured Posts
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