Alina's Adventures

Every day, I miss my mother.

Prophet sneaking into our morning bed...

 

Describing grief is like allowing a bathroom stall to open as you pee-- to permit the stream to continue, pee anyway. No one knows how to respond or help.

Should they step up and close it?

Should they hide you?

Is there something inappropriate in the witness of others?

I think of Rilke, run his words through my teeth like a bit, a formal restraint on what I might say or feel in public.

"You said live out loud, and die you said lightly,
and over and over again you said be."

The mention of Mom at odd intersections, junctures between chocolate and winter coats. Last year's coats she purchased. Red wool dress coats with black velvet collars, a vestige of elegant and the fear that the girls will grow, outgrow the memories of her nurture and care. This world we walk into, soldered. The sundriness of year-old grief.

Last year's coats, her purchase: red wool dress coats with black velvet collars, a vestige of elegant and the fear that the girls will grow, outgrow the memories of her nurture and care. This world we walk into, soldered. The sundriness of grief rings hidden inside the heartwood of a tree.

And Audre Lorde, on what a poem can be about:

… that to put myself on the line to do what had to be done at any place and time was so difficult, yet absolutely crucial, and not to do so was the most awful death. And putting yourself on the line is like killing a piece of yourself, in the sense that you have to kill, end, destroy something familiar and dependable, so that something new can come, in ourselves, in our world. And that sense of writing at the edge, out of urgency, not because you choose it but because you have to, that sense of survival — that’s what the poem is out of, as well as the pain… Once you live any piece of your vision it opens you to a constant onslaught. Of necessities, of horrors, but of wonders too, of possibilities.

The possibility that she is wandering through Greenland, snapping those photographs of a melting world, and this frozen girl need to find her....

That poetry book in the pipelines.

Gnome and the King discuss "is" and "ain't".

I haven't been blogging as much, and I miss it. I miss the soft chorus of voices and faces from around the world. The wisdom of other mothers. The creativity and ingenuity of fellow females.

One big reason for the diminished blogging involves my first poetry chapbook coming out in March. It's called Objects In Vases, and many of you will recognize not my only voice but also, I think, your own inside its pages.

I am grateful for a generous, kindhearted, and (yes yes yes) homeschooling editor, as I am grateful to the publisher, Anchor & Plume, for making this such a beautiful experience in a challenging year.

At first, I wasn't sure whether to blog this book-- partly because I fall prey to the suspicion sometimes that poetry is extraneous, a luxury, an aspect of life we don't need, a facet of leisure. That is what I think.

But it's not what I believe. I know better than my cultural conditioning which tells me poetry doesn't matter. I know the first written history began as poetry and that poetry, whether in the form of psalms or sonnets or lyric, feeds a space in us that no sitcom or self-help book or video game can oblige. A space that is aching to be spoken and engaged.

So this is my first poetry book. It comes from the "wrack" (to borrow from poet, Mary Ruefle) and glory and ruin of homeschooling my children. It comes from the giant slalom of daily married life. It comes from the negotiations between my Alabama self and my native Romanian. It comes from the ordinary and everyday menu of successes and strife. It is a story of what it means to be a female- and a question. It is about you. And me.

I would be honored if you considered sharing it with others. You can pre-order a copy for $9 right now and it will magically appear in your March mailbox, just in time for spring. I will also have a free poem study handout/activity available on this website in late April to use with one of the more lyrical poems from the book. 

Your support means more than I can say. Or write. Please consider supporting other amazing authors featured by Anchor & Plume as well. Thank you. And thank you. For being a face and a name in a world of beautiful stories, a moment on our planet's wild heart.

Rock on, Bunica.

I don't believe spirits rest in peace, mom.

I believe you keep on dancing and giggling and getting lost when the sun hits your eyes.

I believe words will make sense again.

I believe there may be something worth saying.

I don't believe I will ever be able to say it all. Even if you had lived for 30 more years, I would never be able to say it all. Even if I knew you were about to die and I had the chance to tell you everything that mattered, I would say the same thing I said to you the day before you lied: "I love you."

And you would respond the same way you responded to my text: "I love you more."

What else, mama? Ce mai?

Tomatoes, crusty bread, and feta cheese: A poetic combination.

And the truth is the first girl I ever kissed, tasted like tomatoes.

And I know this, because the second girl I ever kissed tasted like pepper.

It wasn’t unpleasant.

It’s just that I was expecting tomatoes.

 (Excerpt from Koyczan's "Tomatoes")

A poetic feast of tomato poems...

"Cherry Tomatoes" by Sandra Beasley
"Tomatoes" by Shane Koyczan
"Ode to Tomatoes" by Pablo Neruda (plus riotous illustration)
"September Tomatoes" by Karina Borowicz
A shape poem variant on a tomato poem by Victor Hugo
"Patio Tomatoes" by Krista Lukas
"Tomatoes" by Stephen Dobyns
"Roma" by Matthew Dickman
"After Tomato Picking" by Maria Garcia Teutsch
"Fried Green Tomatoes" by Pris Campbell
"Diary from a Tomato Cannery, 1912" by Sandy Solomon
"Tomato Hornworm", a great teaching poem
"I Used to Like Tomatoes" by Flora Veit Wild

Image source: Gathering Books

"The heart of a woman" by W.B. Yeats- and the way it rubs me wrong.

Lingering in the bed a little too long this morning reading poetry. Joined by two lovely sprites to take the edge off a poem by Yeats, the kind of poem that requires me to close the book and revisit my assumptions.

THE HEART OF A WOMAN

O what to me the little room
That was brimmed up with prayer and rest;
He bade me out into the gloom,
And my breast lies upon his breast.

O what to me my mother's care,
The house where I was safe and warm;
The shadowy blossom of my hair
Will hide us from the bitter storm.

O hiding hair and dewy eyes,
I am no more with life and death,
My heart upon his warm heart lies,
My breath is mixed into his breath.

A child's body keeps us sometimes from acknowledging the budding heart within. It is easier for me to treat her like a "little girl" than to acknowledge the seed of the woman in her smile. 

When she pulls close to me and rubs my elbow- the way she self-soothes since her fond relationship with my breasts ended- I never forget to ask her what's wrong. Being her source of comfort makes it easy to know when to ask the pointed questions. 

She rubs a little harder and faster; the sensation moves from a tickle to a scouring. Her lips tug her cheeks toward the pillow. "Mommy....." she begins carefully. 

"Yes?" 

Her eyes hide behind the unusual sentiment of not knowing quite how to parse a question that might be obvious if our lives were not limited by the minutes and hours of the day. 

"Are you still gonna be my best friend on the next day- too?"

Unsure of my words, I reach for something solid- the twine necklaces we made together, strung from seed beads and then tied around our necks, our "best friendship necklaces". I take her little fingers and run them over the beads around my neck.

"I'll be your best friend for as long as you let me," I reply, knowing full well the day will come when this honor will be bestowed upon someone else. Gnome smiles. It is enough. Our necklaces, and "mommy's arm", the same arm she claimed as a future bridegroom when Little B. and Prophet demanded who she "wanted to marry". 

I want to tell Gnome that her "soft heart" is the strongest heart of all- the sort of heart that doesn't fear the weight of love, or find reasons to avoid empathy. I want to warn her that romantic love is limited by the available leisure time; and that love of every kind is usually defeated by the expectation of profit or return. I want her to know that love requires courage- and that true love does not oppress or create victims. But the words are too heavy for these few minutes we share in the bed. 

"I wish I could have a little bead just like that freckle above your lip...."

"Why, mommy?"

"Because then... I would put it on my necklace and touch it whenever I wondered what you were doing or playing."

She smiles and rolls over to greet her sister. I wonder this once, again, how to give them a love that does not valorize self-abnegation. The conversation between sisters continues.

Will D. Campbell, a man unlike any other.

The first time I heard Will D. Campbell's name was in the context of a conversation with an elderly neighbor whose voice churned confetti and fireworks as she described her favorite "bootleg preacher". I was intrigued- but all that breastmilk-induced oxytocin erased the name from my memory until I ran across it again while reading a book of conversations with Walker Percy. And then again when researching the life of Clarence Jordan.  

Like Clarence Jordan, Will knew what he was up against in racism- a form of excusable disgust and hatred which preachers sought to justify using scriptures and traditions. For Will, it would not be enough to decry the hatred for other races. Instead, he would have to learn to love even the most unlovable human beings.

"I have seen and known the resentment of the racist, his hostility, his frustration, his need for someone upon whom to lay blame and to punish," Campbell wrote in his first book, Race and the Renewal of the Church. 'With the same love that it is commanded to shower upon the innocent victim of his frustration and hostility, the church must love the racist" Therefore, in 1969, on the night before Bob Jones, the Grand Dragon of the North Carolina KKK was shipped off to federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, for contempt of Congress, Campbell was there in the Dragon's Den to celebrate communion with a bottle of bourbon. Later, Campbell talked with James Earl Ray, the man who had murdered Campbell's friend Martin Luther King. When people asked if he really expected to save the souls of such men, Campbell allowed that that would be presumptuous: "They might, however, save mine." (Source: Lawrence Wright)

Given his extensive career in the Christian church, Will often surprised people by confessing that his faith came to him much later than his memorization of scriptures. Though a preacher, Will claims he actually became a Christian when his friend, Jonathan Daniel, was murdered in 1966. Daniel had come from his Episcopal seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to register blacks to vote in the notorious Lowndes County. After walking into into a country store with a white priest and two black friends, Daniel emerged holding a Moon Pie and a soda pop. A sheriff's deputy named Thomas Coleman found this Moon Pie to resemble a threat and decided to resolve the matter with the help of his shotgun. Daniel gave his life for the civil rights movement.

When Campbell heard about Daniel's death, he was visiting his friend PD. East, the colorful and defiant editor of the Petal, Mississippi, newspaper called The Petal Paper.

It was East, years before, who had badgered Campbell into giving him a definition of the Christian message in ten words or less. “We're all bastards, but God loves us anyway," East recalled. “Let's see if your definition of faith can stand the test. Was Jonathan a bastard?"

Campbell was still in shock and deeply grieving for his friend. Mainly to get East to shut up, Campbell admitted that Jonathan was a bastard. “Was Thomas a bastard?" East asked. It was easy enough to agree to that.

Then East pulled his chair around, put his bony hand on Campbell's knee and, staring directly into Campbell glistening eyes, whispered, “Which one of these two bastards do you think God loves most?"

This was the turning point in Campbell's life. He describes it in his memoir, Brother to a Dragonfly.

I walked across the room and opened the blind, staring directly into the glare of the street light. And I began to whimper. But the crying was interspersed with laughter.

He was laughing at himself: ”At twenty years of a ministry which had become, without my realizing it, a ministry of liberal sophistication. An attempted negation of Jesus, [a ministry] of human engineering, of riding the coattails of Caesar ... of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshipping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making an idol of the Supreme Court, a theology of law and order and of denying not only the Faith I professed to hold but my history and my people - the Thomas Colemans."

I never got over Campbell's Brother To A Dragonfly, which I read en route through the entire opus of Walker Percy. Unlike Percy, Campbell didn't need to play dress-up in order to reveal the nakedness of modern man. Like Wendell Berry, Campbell's sense of "place" oriented his characters in a way that is familiar to anyone who was born in Romania and raised in Alabama, between one place and out the other.

Passages like this one found a nook, a place to sit and simmer, in my mind:

I said something about Hitler taking over the world and none of us being free.

"Brother, nobody is free. Freedom is how much you're willing to do to get people to leave you alone."

"And patriotism? That's just something they sold us. How can you love a country? A country is nothing but a big piece of geography. I love that eighty acres of land up there in Amite County where we were raised. But I can't love three million square miles."

As a piece of southern history, Will's book is unsurpassed. It breaks the heart while mending it. Though Will passed away several years ago, his influence continues to ripple outwards. Here are a few selections from those who knew him...

"Rev. Will D. Campbell, Maverick Minister in Civil Rights Era, Dies at 88" (New York Times)
"Bubba to a gadfly- remembering Will D. Campbell" (Ken Carder)
"Reverend Will D. Campbell, southern racial reconciler" (Southern Spaces)
"The first church of rednecks, white socks, and blue ribbon beer" (Rolling Stone)
"The tragedy of the redneck" (Joel Rieves)
"Apostle to the rednecks" (Phillip Yancey)
Brother to a dragonfly (The Contrary Goddess)
"Brother to a dragonfly" (Paul Greenberg)

DIY woodland tea party cards.

Since their valentines to E. and A. would travel by mail, the kids buzzed and begged to make "different valentines" for their further-away friends. So we created these woodland tea party cards, which can serve as a valentine or just a special way of connecting with treasured friends by mail.

SUPPLIES

cardboard or cardstock
scissors
glue stick 
watercolor paint
paintbrushes
water
newsprint paper (or another thin kind of paper)
stickers of various woodland creatures
stickers of tea party set (or cut-outs from magazine)
plastic bags and mailing labels

PAINT

Start by using the newsprint paper as a place for a painting frenzy. Arm all with paintbrushes, watercolor paints, and a little glass of water. There is no rhyme or reason to the painting- just the impetus to add an assortment of colors and brush strokes. When finished, set aside the painted paper to dry.

PICK

Now have the kids go through their sticker collection, looking for stickers of woodland animals. At this point, I should add that the kids revised my original idea by including stickers of toadstools and flowers, in addition to the requisite tea party pot and cups. If you don't have tea party stickers, then flip through magazines and cut out a few pictures of tea cups and kettles. Your friends can use a glue stick to add them to the woodland tea party scene.

Stickers were chosen and put into plastic baggies with a label and a name on the front. 

EXPLAIN

Finally, the kids included a message to their friends, instructing them to create their ideal woodland party tea scene with the added request that, perhaps, at their next meeting, they might act out the woodland tea party of their dreams.

As she sealed the envelopes, Prophet told me that she "loved making the kind of valentine" she "wanted to get." My "me, too" went without saying.

A brief dip into my Romanian family history circa 1934 and 1935.

The year was 1933. My grandfather attended the Boys and Girls National Dance Festival in Sibiu, Romania. You can see my grandmother in the third row from the bottom. Her smile is the bright one lighting the 5th face from the right.

In September of 1934, my grandfather sits in the front with his brother, Parsifal, standing to his upper right. Parsifal was killed by the American planes that bombed Bucharest at the end of World War II. 

Despite the misery of war and the loss of his only sibling, my grandfather still found a way to enjoy sailing on the lake at Parcul Herestrau, one of my favorite haunts in Bucharest.

Returning to an old love at 35.

My calves ache. Each time I lean forward, a burning sensation tunnels up from my ankle. The small muscles above my knees throb when I bend to pick up a book. My inner thighs feel like they felt after the first time I tried to do a split. 

But my body doesn't ache enough. You see, I can still walk and talk and laugh. I can empty the dishwasher painlessly. I can even car-dance, which is exactly what I did while driving home last night with Lady Gaga's "Do What You Want" blasting from the minivan speakers. 

My first two classes at Ballet Arts and Fitness brought back all the old love for ballet- for the way it impresses your body into the service of disciplined movement and measure. The way the sweat emerges- more like a sheen than a river- after barre. I've forgotten the technical names for the positions, and yet the flowering persists like an inarticulable memory in which I find myself moving without knowing exactly how this movement became so natural.

After ACL and MCL complete reconstruction in my right knee, after herniated discs and years in which even driving a car was impossible, being given the freedom to dance again is such a precious gift that I can't bring myself to stop doing it. So I danced in parking lot of Target with The Eldest. And I danced in the front yard as Angie watched from inside the house. And I danced in the living room as the little folks joined me. And I danced in the bathroom as I pondered whether to take a bath. 

Dancing is a language my body can speak. Unlike the lumbering gait of softball, those days when I stood anxiously in the outfield, hoping the ball would not come my way to find me tripping over anthills to catch it. I was never good at softball. My body didn't do "home runs" or "good throws". But whenever a melody wafted through the air, my mind grew silent while my body responded, beginning a conversation as unique and fascinating as the song itself. 

To be able to dance is to be able able to speak, again. It is to be able to have those conversations with pieces and tunes. It is to lose my own voice while discovering the facile articulation of the arms, legs, hips, ankles, and shoulders. It is something Rainer Maria Rilke might have called "sublime", if the taste for dance pulsed through his veins. It is a wonder and a mystery. And it is the place where I always find the missing pieces to the parts of the day that went awry. I am so very grateful.....

Love letter #111: Ringo Atelier, a French hub for the artistic output of little people.

I fell inlove with Ringo, and thought I'd share a few of the lovely how-to's, accompanied by my "creative" translation of the French instructions. Yes, this means I'm of the "translate the spirit rather than the literal word" school... Forgive me when I misread the spirit. 

Ringo's cardboard garage

Imagine your garage as cardboard. Now cut a shape that will be a roof. Give free rein to your desires and your imagination. Imagine the shift from ground to roof to create a park on the terrace. Add a large window with a little transparent plastic. Then cut cardboard shapes and fold them to fashion columns and a gas station. As you make your cardboard garage, remember that it is possible to design and build something from 100% recycled materials. 

Ringo's still life 

More appropriately translated as "dead nature", Ringo's still life project focuses on broad color blocking and expressionism. To begin, choose an object that you will observe for your still life. Think fruit, plant, bouquet, cups, etc. Then select three or four colors of thick pastel crayons in flat. The colors don't need to match the color of your object; instead, focus on making sure the colors go well together. Then draw what you see!

Ringo's sack clothing

Look around the house and studio for plastic bags, brown bags, crepe or tissue paper, and other packaging or wrapping papers that include patterns. Cut small scraps or shapes of colored paper in basic shapes. Also assemble colored stickers, scissors, and glue sticks. Now create your own outfits from the found materials. Have fun inventing matching characters.

Ringo's balloon portraits

Blow up a few balloons and use permanent marker to sketch faces on them. For a dinner party, consider drawing a portrait of each person and attaching it to their chair as a placemarker.

Ringo's marker blot dots

Have fun with your pens and blotting paper. Place a colored felt on the blotter. When it permeates the blotter, create mixed colors by asking other markers next to the first "spot". This mix will have a pretty and aged effect. Continue creating colored dots until you have a pattern you like or until the dots resemble a specific outline or evoke a feeling.

Ringo's folded paper circles

You will need one sheet of colored paper (or leftover paper bags) and one sheet of plain white paper. Starting at one end of the colored paper, fold it over to create a crease that measures about 5mm to 10mm, then fold it againso as to bring it forward. Continue doing this all the way along the length of the paper at 5mm intervals. Then cut two half circles from the folded sheet; now cut each half circle into two halves. you découperas in two. Compose a circle and then glue it on the white paper while varying the direction of the folds.

Additional inspirations from Ringo

Confetti-covered tshirt 
In the manner of David Hockney 
In the manner of Josh Blackwell
Sketch the rest (with printable PDF)
Your own design book (with printable PDF)

Thoughts on Mr. Lookadoo's approach to "self-empowerment".

"Mom," Micah whimpers, her eyes still moist, "It's like I'm just not dateable. I mean, none of the guys want to go out with me... If I was allowed to wear makeup, then at least I could compete with the other girls." I shake my head, trying to find a way to respond. But Micah continues, wailing, "All I want is to be DATEABLE..."

So goes the scene I imagine in my head after reading the R U Dateable website. It's not a pretty picture.

What if Micah's biggest goal in life is to be "dateable"- to be desired and wanted by men? What if my competitive, ambitious, super self-conscious middle child decides the most important thing she can be is wanted by some man? How much more pathetic an aspiration could we find for existence?

A preface and a few disclaimers

In what follows- my grappling with "dateability"- the narrative will not attempt the impossible task of remaining gender-neutral. Because Mr. Lookaboo's worldview is so incredibly gendered, I will try to explain why it fails to make the world a more beguiling and beautiful place for our children rather than present compelling arguments against a gendered interpretation of human relations (arguments to which I fully subscribe). Note that gendered accounts are precisely what keeps the "war of the sexes" running. If we approach other humans as individuals, we are less likely to rely on gendered cliches to explain and understand the behavior of what turns out to be just another human being. 

Given the heteronormativity of every single word uttered by Mr. Lookaboo, I won't try to explain why such a narrow understanding of human sexuality is poisonous to individual flourishing (one reason why I reject heteronormative accounts). It's too big and breathtaking to bring in; I can't do it justice and still explain what bothers me so deeply about this emerging dateability paradigm.

Instead, I'm going to stick to the narrow, nasty picture painted by Mr. Lookaboo- a picture in which girls should "accept" being girls while guys should remember that they are on top, the world is theirs to "lead", destroy and pillage without regard to so-called feminine virtues like empathy, compassion, and honor for human life.

"Dude, that girl is sooooo dateable...." and other forms of empowerment

For the record, friends, it is not a compliment to say someone is "dateable". Not for those of us who prefer to be respected as individuals rather than prototypes. In fact, I'll go so far as to suggest that Justin Lookadoo might have done us all a favor by revealing "dateability" and the teenage dating world for the misogynist entry-level meat market that it is.

That said, I feel that Lookadoo's brand of uplift is humiliating for men, women, girls, boys, and human beings in general. The only thing that gets lifted is an oversexualized valuation of females that encourages duplicity, manipulation, and lack of personal integrity. Granted, guys get to pat themselves on the back for maintaining the double standard that requires girls to pay them homage for acting like douches.

Being a guy is good. Dateable guys know they aren’t as sensitive as girls and that’s okay. They know they are stronger, more dangerous, and more adventurous and that’s okay. Dateable guys are real men who aren’t afraid to be guys.

Obviously, given these sorts of assumptions, Mr. Lookaboo is relieved to have been born a "guy". I can't imagine hearing those words and thinking somehow that being born a girl is anything other than a twisted form of slavery or punishment. Unlike yours truly, Compassion International, a well-known Christian nonprofit, celebrates Mr. Lookadoo's approach to empowerment on their website:

Justin Lookadoo's witty, off-the-wall-style of writing, nails reality "slab dab in the middle," as translated in Justin's native El Paso lingo.

He leverages current and relevant cultural twists to show teens that biblical Christian values are actually cool rules to live by.

He says, "Everything I do wraps around two themes: identity and purpose. Who am I? Why am I here? These are the challenges that face young people today."

When it comes to young adults, Jason is a certified specialist in the field, having served as a juvenile probation officer, crime and drug prevention specialist for six years.

I'm not sure that Jason/Justin assisted juvenile offenders in understanding why rape or sexual assault are unacceptable violations of human dignity. Mr. Lookadoo's advice to young girls overemphasizes their sexual presentation to men and then holds them responsible for the effect. For example:

“Please, please don't tease us. To show us your hot little body ... and then tell us we can't touch it is being a tease. You can't look that sexy and then tell us to be on our best behavior.”

Is it so hard to go from this to the presumption that a girl who is raped was "asking for it"? How does Compassion International interpret this statement in light of its primary mission involving compassion for other human beings? Mr. Lookaboo is radically compassionate in that he reserves his compassion for girls in burkas. Wouldn't it be better if he just reminded guys that girls do not exist for the purpose of their sexual arousal or pleasure? Just because you see a girl that looks attractive does not mean you have a "right" to look at her or fantasize about her. Nothing that a girl puts on her body gives you any rights over her body. The only rights you have with respect to another human being are those explicity communicated by word of mouth.

Oddly, this sort of market-driven approach to the female body poises Mr. Lookadoo to be an excellent would-be critic of consumer culture, advertising, and modern capitalism- except, of course, that this is not the direction in which he plans to take us. Not at all. That's because Mr. Lookadoo wants us to buy his dating books and his "hip" persona as an alternative to so-called popular mainstream culture. 

“Ladies, I’m going to say this in the nicest way possible….you are the most horrible, awful, vindictive creatures this planet has ever seen.”

How would you feel if you happen to have a vulva and have to listen to this without being able to stand up and respond? Unfortunately, I feel more empowered by listening to a Chris Rock stand-up routine than I do by listening to Mr. Lookadoo. At least Chris Rock doesn't wear the Christian brand on his shoulder.

Come to think of it, Lookadoo leaves the same taste in my mouth as watching Bill Maher- a gross disgusted taste which makes me more conscious of my "fleshly goods" than my spirit, independence, or individuality. The female body is America's most inflated, liposuctioned, labioplasted commodity, with Lookadoo, Bill Maher, and Hugh Hefner acting as a few of its greatest salesmen.

Guys should be honest, but girls should master the fine arts of salesmanship and deception

Mr. Lookadoo's divergent advice for guys and gals expresses the differing power relations accorded to sex and gender in the present day. Guys, as the power-holding group, can afford to be themselves and to express their feelings (or lack thereof). Meanwhile, girls, as the powerless, must play to those in power and try to trick or manipulate them into tossing a few token crumbs of respect in their direction. It's a nasty charade- one we can only hope to finally bury.

Be honest with girls. Dateable guys don’t use the truth to their advantage. They know that girls read into things so they don’t use that for their good. They are honest and not manipulative.

Boys tell it like it is. But girls need to tell it like the boys want to hear it. If reading Lookaboo's rules for dateability makes a girl feel manipulative and twisted, that's because this is precisely what Lookaboo reccommends.

Part of being a Dateable girl means you really see people. They matter, and if you don’t look them in the eye then you will never see them and they will never know they matter to you. Look ‘em in the eye. They are valuable.

It's an old salesman's trick- connect with someone by meeting their gaze and holding it. It's the best way to disarm a person, to cuddle up close to their mind without physically touching their body. And, yes, looking into someone's eyes is exciting, suggestive, and erotic- it's the sexiest way to kiss and make love; it's the source of swoons for Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. But for Mr. Lookaboo, who doesn't really believe in uncontrived, romantic love, looking 'em in the eye is key to a succesful sales pitch.

God made guys as leaders. Dateable girls get that and let him do guy things, get a door, open a ketchup bottle. They relax and let guys be guys. Which means they don’t ask him out!!!

The sales pitch matters because Lookaboo believes a woman's job is to manipulate a man into wanting to marry her. The dateable girl knows how to sell herself to a man. The more a girl can make a guy feel like the stud, the more likely he will bloom into the true stud that God intended him to be. So when a guy doesn't want to change the diapers, you can bet there is a woman to blame- a woman, maybe his wife, that doesn't "let him lead". 

Need him. Dateable girls know that guys need to be needed. A Dateable girl isn’t Miss Independent. She knows we are made for community. Needing each other is part of faith. She allows him to be needed at times, knowing he was called to serve just as much as she was.

But you can't blame an aspiring dater for being confused... not when the next suggestions from Mr. Lookaboo involve hiding your interest, feelings, enthusiasms, passions, and thoughts from the very person you're supposedly pretending to "need". The suggestions for fakery and dishonest self-presentation undergird every aspect of Mr. Lookaboo's rules for girls. Like the old Madonna-whore dichotomy, a girl is asked to play two different drums at the same time while admitting to not having played either. 

The sexiest thing on a girl is happiness. Girls try so hard to add beauty and sexuality to themselves with clothes and make-up, but the truth is it’s your spirit that makes you hot. Your outlook on life, your happiness factor. Dateable girls aren’t downers, they love life.

Pretend to be happy. Smile all the time. When you don't feel it, fake it.

Be mysterious. Dateable girls know how to shut up. They don’t monopolize the conversation. They don’t tell everyone everything about themselves. They save some for later. They listen more than they gab.

Pretend to be shy and "mysterious"- as if being yourself, a unique and fantastic human being, isn't mysterious enough. Nod when a dude speaks, and don't get in the way of his fantasies about you by allowing him to get to know the person over the prototype.

Dateable girls know that confidence is hot. And the cool part is that no one knows if you are confident but you. Confidence isn’t how you feel, it’s how you act. Act confident and people will think you are.

Pretend that you are the bee's knees- because you're not the bee's knees. You're actually just another girl trying desperately to "win" a guy's attention. You don't have to love yourself- that's not what you need to be working through during those teenage years. No, save the self-love for later. Right now, just focus on pretending to love yourself so you can get a guy to love you.

The best girl is one who fakes it

But then, just so you don't too comfortable, remember...

Dateable girls don’t lie to themselves. They don’t say stuff like, “His girlfriend just isn’t good to him, that’s why he’s seeing me on the side.” Or “She started it so I’m going to get even.” The Dateable girl let’s God run the world, and tells herself the truth–that all she can control is herself. She doesn’t imagine things to be more than they are.

(Note: All spelling mistakes belong to Mr. Lookaboo- I'm just doing as a dateable girl should do, namely copying and pasting the formidable wisdom of a male leader.) So dateable girls don't just sit and listen to a motivational speaker disparage them on the basis of their sexual organs. Instead, a dateable girl

So we find ourselves back in the Garden of Eden. Back to the paradise where a man blamed a woman's independence for his own course of action. Eve didn't let Adam lead. See what happens when a man follows a woman? Personally, I'm more inclined towards Jacques Ellul's reading of the Eden story, one in which God decides to let women bear children because they're the ones who can be trusted to think of a future bigger than themselves (rather than looking for someone else, to blame for the choices they've made). 

This "dateability" bull-poop prepares a woman to blame herself for her partner's future infidelity, should she be one of the odd 50% of marriages in which such an event were to occur. Up next from Mr. Lookadoo... the book R U Sexworthy, a how-to guide on ways to keep a wild, adventuresome, undomesticated man from cheating once he discovers that marriage is an institution intended to pay lip service to the dignity of two individuals (as opposed to their "adventuresome" inclinations). Okay, so I made up that last bit about the book. 

But here is what I'm not fudging. I'm not fudging the fact that Mr. Lookaboo and his crew should never be allowed to present their ideas in a school as a speech or lecture. The only context in which Mr. Lookaboo should speaking to teenagers is in a debate, where opposing paradigms are given equal time and students have a chance to come to their own conclusions. 

7 FAST REASONS WHY UNDATEABLE PEOPLE ROCK

1. Undateables will not allow another person to disparage them on the basis of their sexual organs without pointing out to said person that such insults are unacceptable. And when men like Mr. Conservative call their response an "attack", undateables point out that their response would me more accurately called a "counter-attack".
2. Undateables focus their energies on learning how to love themselves rather than constructing a false self they hope will be loved by others if they can manage to get the sales pitch just right.
3. Undateables revel in flexible constructions of gender that allow them to thrive and flourish without resorting to fakery.
4. Undateables don't have to worry about remember "rules" that have no bearing on personal ethics or integrity.
5. Undateables prefer communication to duplicituous manipulation.
6. Undateables don't blame victims for the crimes perpetuated against them.
7. Undateables are capable of compassion and empathy for persons who don't fit in the dating box or the conventional categories.

Now read what others have to say about Mr. Lookadoo's message. 

The Christian Science Monitor's Modern Parenthood blog responds
Jamie Clark-Soles responds
Make Me a Sammich responds
Matthew L. Skinner looks at the Biblical side of Lockado's and Lockadon'ts
Not Black and White Thoughts responds
Taylor B. Allen responds and shares her petition
Happy Nice Time People's satire of Lookadoo
Christopher Zara on Lookadoo's connections to gay conversion therapy

A story by Tom Waits on parenting.

A little story from Tom Waits that bears repeating. In an interview, Tom remarked that his kids “starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads". They wanted to know why he didn't just have a regular job or regular life like everyone else. And he told them this little ditty:

In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.” 

Nick Cave and his Ship Song Project.

It's one of that songs that always raises the tiny hairs on your arms.

Thus, being able to listen to so many wonderful artists combining their voices in a tribute to Nick Cave's extraordinary song forces me to confront the existence of little hairs on the back of my neck as well. Stupefying. 

The strings and the violin solo at the end- wow. In 2010, the Sydney Opera House recorded a version of "The Ship Song" as a tribute to an iconic song and an iconic building. You can watch the documentary on the project online.

This version of the song, which combines the voices of Concrete Blonde, Eddie Vedder, Nick Cave, and others, is one of my all-time favorites (though Lissie's acoustic version figures up there as well). 

Love letter #92: Literary tattoos.

Oh what a fantastic way to relive good books. Contrariwise introduces more literary tattoos than you have shelving space. Also browse-worthy is Unique Tattoos From Around the Globe,  Needles and Sins, Bailey Hunter Robinson, Meditations in Atrament, Allen Tattoo, Swallows and Daggers, Tatoologist, and Tattoo Road Trip.

A few of my favorite inkings from today's brief foray, the kind that won't come unstuck....

Among my favorite tat subjects right now:

Edward Gorey drawings
Egon Schiele sketches
Emma Goldman
Dr. Seussisms
Unicorns and narwhals
Kurt Vonnegut quotes
Hannah Arendt quotes
Still life black and white pen drawings
Wittgenstein quotes

And, of course, there's the partner tattoo.

Love letter #97: 10 "best" music albums everyone should own.

RABBIT SONGS by Hem

"Restless stars through the trees 
Enough to fall to our knees 
Make no sound so no one sees" 

Idle (The Rabbit Song) (mp3)
Download Hem's newest single for free.

TUNNEL OF LOVE by Bruce Springsteen

"It ought to be easy ought to be simple enough
Man meets woman and they fall in love
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough
And youve got to learn to live with what you can't rise above
if you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love.."

Tunnel of Love (mp3)

S / T by David Pajo

 "How far you are when close
How near to me when gone
The dark is full of ghosts
That howl into the dawn
That howl into the dawn
The sky has opened
The power is down
Deserted in this town
High lonesome moan"

High Lonesome Moan (mp3)

THE TRINITY SESSION by Cowboy Junkies
+
 THE CAUTION HORSES by Cowboy Junkies

"There's something about an afternoon spent doing nothing
Just listening to records and watching the sun falling
Thinking of things that don't have to add up to something
And this spell won't be broken
By the sound of keys scraping in the lock..

Maybe tonight it's a movie
With plenty of room for elbows and knees
A bag of popcorn all to myself,
Black and white with a strong female lead
And if I don't like it, no debate, I'll leave..."

Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning (mp3 from The Caution Horses)
Dreaming My Dreams With You (mp3 from The Trinity Session)

I CAN HEAR THE HEART BEATING AS ONE by Yo La Tengo

"Feeling like a kid again, my eyes are glued to the floor
I hope I mumbled goodbye as you walked out the door
The damage is done"

Damage (mp3)

 MIDNIGHT DRIFTER by the Whiskey Folk Ramblers

Moanin' Rag

THE LION'S ROAR by First Aid Kit

I'll be your Emmylou and I'll be your June
If you'll be my Gram and my Johnny too
No, I'm not asking much of you
Just sing little darling, sing with me

Emmylou

 THE TRAGIC TREASURY: SONGS FROM A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS by The Gothic Archies

"The Gothic Archies is the Gothic rock-bubblegum pop band of celebrated songwriter Stephin Merritt, also of The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, and Future Bible Heroes. Merritt is the only member although he hopes to acquire more soon. What makes this band different from The Magnetic Fields is that any glimmer of hope is absolutely extinguished. The current Gothic Archies project is The Tragic Treasury: Music for "A Series of Unfortunate Events", a compilation of theme songs written for each of the 13 volumes of Lemony Snicket's "Series of Unfortunate Events" book series."

Smile! No One Cares How You Feel (mp3)

 HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON by Serge Gainsbourg with Jane Birkin

Nothing compares to Serge and Jane. They are the best of the best. And this album influenced so many musicians from Beck to house- it deserves its own space on your shelf. The layers of beats and sounds, the textures, are intoxicating.

 

Cargo culte (mp3)

 

Please sample the tunes and enjoy. Some of them exist in a format that doesn't allow me to use the webplayer, so you just have to download to sample. Then hop on over to iTunes or your preferred indie music distributor and get the pay to play so this poor mother doesn't get into any financially excessive trouble.

A date with Adrienne Rich.

 I stayed up late last night arguing with the ghost of Adrienne Rich. Or, rather, arguing with her brilliant text, Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution. We had so many things to say to one another.

I use the word "argue" affectionately, since Adrienne and I agree on most matters and the only hairs we tend to split emerge as marginalia. Perhaps the most important part of being a woman, a mother, a lover, a partner, a friend, and an individual is the continuing dialogue with oneself- and with other women.

In this ongoing conversation, I refuse to feel guilty for reading or writing, for expecting my children to entertain themselves, for assuming that they can wait for that drink or that snack, for providing them with an understanding of me as a person with her own dreams, desires, and interests. I also do not believe that being at home with them is any less valuable an occupation than one with social access and pedigree. Accepting the status of martyr might just be the worst example that one can give a child. 

I do, however, believe very strongly that as women we should not settle for the current divisions in our lives and loves. The "solitary confinement of full-time motherhood" is only necessary in a society which pits life and work or family and self-realization against one another.

We, as women, are just as guilty as men in agreeing to this arrangement and keeping it in place. Until we learn to build communities in which children play a part as human beings (rather than pests), until we forge less gendered conceptions of family roles, until we assume that a man who can mow the lawn is also capable of nurturing a child and comforting them, until we agree to stop expecting so little of male partners and treating them like children with fragile egos, until we stop idealizing the power structures that oppress others in the name of "success", until we stop equating a stay-at-home father with a man who does "women's work", we will continue to see the same arguments, frustrations, and lack of common ground between men and women.

When "you sound like a woman" is not spat out as an insult, we'll know things are moving in the right direction. 

On single motherhood: To bear an "illegitimate" child proudly and by choice in the face of societal judgement has, paradoxically, been one way in which women have defied patriarchy. 

On raising sons: If we wish for our sons- as for our daughters- that they may grow up unmutilated by gender roles, sensitized to misogyny in all its forms, we have also to face the fact that in the present stage of history our sons may feel profoundly alone in the masculine world, with few if any close relationships with other men (as distinct from male "bonding" in defense of male privilege). When the son ceases to be the mother's outreach into the world, because she is reaching out into it herself, he ceases to be instrumental for her and has the chance to become a person. (I promise, Max, that I will not ask you to be the powerful male I never got to be.)

On twilight birthing: No more devastating image could be invented for the bondage of woman: sheeted, supine, drugged, her wrists strapped down and her legs in stirrups, at the very moment when she is bringing new life into the world. This "freedom from pain", like "sexual liberation", places a woman physically at men's disposal, though still estranged from the potentialities of her own body. While in no way altering her subjection, it can be advertised as a progressive development. 

On the guilt of motherhood and its results: It is all too easy to accept unconsciously the guilt so readily thrust upon any woman who is seeking to broaden and deepen her own existence, on the grounds that this must somehow damage her children. That guilt is one of the most powerful forms of social control of women; none of us can be entirely immune to it. A woman whose rage is under wraps may well foster a masculine aggressiveness in her son; she has experienced no other form of assertiveness." 

On Infanticide: The Church had much to do with creating the crime of individual maternal infanticide by pronouncing all children born out of wedlock "illegitimate". Until the eighteenth century or later bastards were largely excluded from participation in trades and guilds, could not inherit property, and were essentially without the law. Since the "sin" of the child's father was more difficult to prove, it was on the unmarried mother that the full penalty fell; as the eternally guilty party, she was considered by the Church to "be the root of the whole sex problem". 

On anger and frustration: In a living room in 1975, I spent an evening with a group of women poets, some of whom had children. One had brought hers along, and they slept or played in adjoining rooms. We talked of poetry, and also of infanticide, of the case of a local woman, the mother of eight, who had been in severe depression since the birth of her third child....Every woman in that room who had children, every poet, could identify with her. We spoke of the wells of anger that her story cleft open in us. We spoke of our own moments of murderous anger at our children, because there was no one and nothing else on which to discharge anger. We spoke in the sometimes tentative, sometimes rising, sometimes bitterly witty, unrhetorical tones and language of women who had met together over our common work, poetry, and who found another common ground in an unacceptable, but undeniable anger. The words are being spoken now, are being written down; the taboos are being broken, the masks of motherhood are cracking through.

On early motherhood: For centuries no one talked of these feelings. I became a mother in the family-centered, consumer-oriented, Freudian-American world of the 1950s. My husband spoke eagerly of children we would have; my parents-in-law awaited the birth of their grandchild. I had no idea of what I wanted, what I could or could not choose. I only knew that to have a child was to assume adult womanhood to the full, to prove myself, to be ‘like other women.’

When President Bill Clinton awarded the National Medal of Arts to her in 1997, Adrienne refused it, citing the administration's “cynical politics.” She believed art and politics should not be separate, and she felt accepting this award would be to dishonor the many Americans injuried by economic and social inequality as institutionalized by the US government. Getting richer in a good way:

"The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" by Adrienne Rich
Alfred Haskell Conrad (Wikipedia) 
Michelle Cliff (Lambda Literary)
Pablo Conrad's tribute to his mother (YouTube) 
Why she stopped writing when she got married (The Guardian) 

Our valentine.

Love. Amazing, life-changing love. That's what the kids decided that Valentine's Day should be all about for us.

And when we sat down and thought about love in our lives, one little love stood out and took the cake- Isla. She rang in the new year on January 2nd with her surprise arrival, and she continues to steal hearts left and right with her squawks, squeaks, and even a first smile awarded to the mommy who adores her more than language allows.

So we have a question and a "first valentine" (to be delivered this weekend because mommy is too cheap to FedEx anything ever) for our Cousin Isla. 

Unfortunately, this simple question developed into a conversation....

A conversation in which even the subconscious spoke....

And everyone pled their case...

Everyone, including canine species...

And now, as we wait for your valentine to dry (made from watercolors that we painted which dried yesterday and were cut into triangles to make a heart where the paste is still wet), we would like to know your decision. This might just be the first and most important decision you've ever made apart from the one to prefer your mommy's breast to just about anything else in the world.

We have no yummy breast to offer you but we've made our question clear.
Please burble out an answer and prove you'll be our dear.

Love letter #90: Fellow female homeschooling bloggers.

Sometimes, when I reading the blogs of my fellow human beings, each telling his or her story in different words under different pretexts, I am awed by the sheer beauty, courage, and humility of many homeschooling women who have embarked on this journey without the comforts and conventions of a road-map. I know that many, like myself, probably never imagined they would educate their children at home; we grow into the stages of our lives and make treasure maps when we remember how much each moment mines.

I love Jessica (Only Small Things) for her unihibited willingness to learn from her child- to throw away each theory when it proves incorrect. She embodies all the wonders and beauties of a love for learning as it LIVED rather than merely lip-synced. She also reminds us that breast cancer is (and will be) a part of life for many of us, and courage is not an abstract quality but a very real and powerful force.

I love Heather (A Handmade Life) for her inspiring commitment to natural foods and foodways- for the way in which she continues to educate me in spite of my lazy, convenience-minded selfishness.

I love Clare (The Green Gate) for the way in which inadvertently changed the course of life in such a way that I did the impossible and (gasp) got married. Her faith and patience cannot be purchased or bottled- and it's nice to be awed by such things.

I love Kelly (Freeflowing Ways) for the way in which she reveals the beauty of the world and the wild. I never read her blog without remembering that I should be outside capturing, observing, and even laughing alongside the wonders around me.

I love Brenna (Cobbled Together) for reminding me that my dibble-dabble-tinker-and-move-on mentality is an appetite and a desire that needn't be hidden or bemoaned. Brenna is the reason I tried my first plant-dyeing experiment. And she is also the reason I give myself for the value of trying many different things without insisting on becoming an "expert" or "specialist" in just one. 

I love Lucille (Mamaroots) for everything she teaches me about the values of storytelling, and how narratives shape every moment of our lives. Stories matter- they are the way in which we make sense of joy, wonder, beauty, and sorrow. My life is a more habitable turf since I started sharing and creating daily stories with my kids.

I love Sarah (Consider A Field of Lilies) for that time she told me that she needed God to tell her WHY- that she wasn't going to settle for anything less intimate. And the look on her face when she said it. I love her for her courage, her faith, her mothering, her hope, her frustration, and her endless source of crafting exploration. I love her for her seeds which brought delicious life to our garden last year- and food for our table. Maybe I'm secretly eyeing those lotion bars with more than appreciation. I love her with a looking-forward-to kind of love...

Who knows how long each of us will continue this specific journey? Who knows if we'll be online documenting it next year? What matters is not so much any stiff-necked script for our lives but the way in which we (all these constantly-changing ladies some of whom know each other and some of whom we know only by electricity) enrich, inspire, and offer hope to one another as we continue on our separate ways.

Love letter #43: Stitchspirations from Jane Eyre with Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Charlotte Gainsbourg has the voice of a dove and the kind of beauty that never passes for merely "cute" or remotely pretty. Watching Jane Eyre (1996) last night left me longing for capes, cloaks, and long frocks that brush against my ankles. And a little Charlotte on the playlist. 

La Collectionneuse- Charlotte Gainsbourg

From the capelets to the long cloaks and the gorgeous white dressing gowns or nightgowns, the opportunities abound. 

For the tutorials and how-to's....
Sew a walking cloak (The Jane Austen Centre)
Knit cool cape (Pickles) 
White sheet hooded cloak (Mermag) 
A cape for all seasons (Imagine Childhood) 
Upcycled kids capelet (Project: Project) 
Little riding capelet (The Black Apple)
How to sew a capelet with pattern (Prudent Baby) 
Sweet little capelet (Sew Mama Sew) 
Audrey cape tutorial (Project Run and Play) 
Multi reversible cape (Lia's Space) 
Lacey bolero (Joy Folie)
Blair waldorf capelet (Ruffles and Stuff) 
1830's corded petticoat tutorial (Historically Dressed)
Capelet collar pattern (Sew Stylish) 
18th century style cloak (Romantic Historical Clothing) 
1820-1840 corset ( Koshka the Cat)
1790's wrap-front gown (American Duchess)
18th century petticoat (Koshka the Cat) 

For inspiration and admiration....
Poison ivy hooded cape (Stitchophrenia) 
A capelet for sister (Pretty Ditty) 
Corded petticoat (Koshka the Cat)
Boulevardier capelet (BHLDN) 
A Most Peculiar Mademoiselle 
Embroidered regency dress with pink spencer (Koshka the Cat) 
c. 1810 silk dress (Adventures of a Costumer) 

Love letter #42: Illustrators of the curious.

I've been known to tear pages from the books of Edward Gorey and Shel Silverstein, frame them, and put them on the walls. Something about those fantastic illustrators of the curious and uncanny appeals to my imagination. So a brief little love letter of images and links to inspire and excite the most unimaginable imaginings by these illustrators of the curious...

EDWARD GOREY
Edward Gorey's Elephant House  
2012 Edwardian Ball 
Edward Gorey documentary 

SHEL SILVERSTEIN
Uncle Shelby Silverstein 

AUBREY BEARDSLEY
Aubrey Beardsley 

JEAN GIRARD (aka Moebius)
The Official Moebius website
quenched consciousness 

Love letter #41: Must-make baby quilt tutorials.

Dreaming up a keepsake quilt for my sweet niece, Isla, who is due to make her out-of-womb appearance in early January. Basically, a baby quilt is a mini-quilt. Unless you are hamstrung without exact measurements, you can adapt any quilt tutorial to make a baby quilt. Here is what I have in my head right now. Choosing is sure to be a pickle.

Baby bunting banner quilt tutorial (Little Birdie Secrets)
Cheerful quilted playmat tutorial (the purl bee)
 Cutest quilt in a day (Sew Crafty Jess)
Dinner date block quilt tutorial (Film in the Fridge)
Dresden strip quilt tutorial (Reanna Lily Designs)
Feather bed quilt tutorial (Anna Maria Horner) P
 Firefly baby quilt tutorial (Canoe Ridge Creations) P
Heirloom cut chenille quilted baby blanket tutorial (Aesthetic Nest)
Katie's go-to quilt (katie did)
Missoni inspired baby quilt tutorial (Modern Quilt Guild)
 Modern chevron baby quilt tutorial (You Had Me At Bonjour)
Modern monogram baby quilt tutorial (Ucreate)
Neighborhood baby quilt (A Quilt Is Nice)
Pick up sticks quilt tutorial (Paul's Block Party)
Quillow tutorial (A Cuppa and A Catchup)
Quilt as you go strip quilt tutorial (A Cuppa and A Catch Up)
Scrap triangles quilt tutorial (Stitched In Color)
Stripey rag kids quilt tutorial (The Sweeter Side of Mommyhood)
Windowpane whole cloth baby quilt tutorial (the purl bee)
Wish come true quilt (Blooming poppies)
Wonky baby quilt tutorial (Moda Bake Shop) 
Wonky log cabin tutorial (Ellison Lane Quilts) 

And don't miss the free motion quilting tutorial and video from Prudent Baby. Or how to make rounded corners and straight line quilting tips from A Quilt Is Nice. You see, the truth is I would never have decided to sew a quilt for my niece if I had not been so inspired and encouraged by all the beauty beheld at the links above. Thank you.

Love letter #40: Rilke on prayers that "lose their leaves".

How well I understand those strange pictures in which Things meant for limited and ordinary uses stretch out and stroke one another, lewd and curious, quivering in the random lechery of distraction. Those kettles that walk around steaming, those pistons that start to think, and the indolent funnel that squeezes into a hole for its pleasure. And already, tossed up by the jealous void, and among them, there are arms and legs, and faces that warmly vomit onto them, and windy buttocks that offer them satisfaction.

And the saint writhes and pulls back into himself; yet in his eyes there was still a look which thought this was possible: he had glimpsed it. And already his senses are precipitating out of the clear solution of his soul. His prayer is already losing its leaves and stands up out of his mouth like a withered shrub. His heart has fallen over and poured out into the muck. His whip strikes him as weakly as a tail flicking away flies. His sex is once again in one place only, and when a woman comes toward him, upright through the huddle, with her naked bosom full of breasts, it points at her like a finger.

There was a time when I considered these pictures obsolete. Not that I doubted their reality. I could imagine that long ago such things had happened to saints, those overhasty zealots, who wanted to begin with God, right away, whatever the cost. We no longer make such demands on ourselves. We suspect that he is too difficult for us, that we must postpone him, so that we can slowly do the long work that separates us from him. Now, however, I know that this work leads to combats just as dangerous as the combats of the saint; that such difficulties appear around everyone who is solitary for the sake of that work, as they took form around God’s solitaries in their caves and empty shelters, long ago.

                        - [The Temptation of the Saint] by Rainer Maria Rilke

This week..... #1: A love letter of sorts.

Inspired by An Everyday Story's "This Week" Series to ponder the past week and relate it in images to family and friends. Like a nightcap, a good recap soothes by putting all the spare pieces of the week into place and linking them in a beguiling narrative.

Like nostalgia, it belongs in a love letter.

She comes with superlatives and sophisticated, highly detailed concerns.
The best I can do sometimes is to stitch some lace to it.

It was nothing like Senator Tankerbell's pioneer show.

Watching him grow leaves something undone.

The relevant craft fair is Saturday from 9 am to 4 pm at St. Mark's Methodist Church in Northport, Alabama.

Just outside the front door, fall reveals its own flower.

Make, sew, paint, organize.... prepare.

Somewhere else to wander.

How we get from here to there.

Love letter #39: Apologies, from average to evanescent.

I'm sorry we don't always see things the same way. 

Damon interviews Elizabeth to learn more about how she raises those lovely chickens, posted with an underwritten apology to our hens who passed away.

"Sorry David David I Am So Sorry", a poem by Francesca Chabrier and Emily Hunt

"Sorry Was in The Woods", a poem by Michelle Taransky

Sorry, the game we play

Sorry Everbody, an experiment in the politically personal

"The Six Most Insincere Apologies of All Time" at Cracked

"State Apologies and the Transformation of the International Legal System", a paper by Azuolas Bagdonas

"Apologies" by Mosaik, the sound

4400 Apologies

"Apology to Roadkill" by Shaun Gladwell, the photos

Apologies for war in ancient Chinese sacred texts

Artist Park Reece with "apologies to the duck people"

Shazai, the art of apologies in the Japanese tradition

Apology and forgiveness how-to with English and Finnish subtitles

How a whispered apologies comic gets made

"The Art of Apology: Teaching kids the power of I'm Sorry" at Portland Family

"Cultural Con/texts: Apologists vs. Apologies", an exhibit

Apology letter for hurt feelings template

"The Earthy Paradise: An Apology", a poem by William Morris

Apology letter for pet behavior template

Love letter #37: From the minds of local Alabama authors and literati.

Last thing I remember before being wheeled back to my endoscopy.

Anything Can Be A Leprechaun, the blog of Gin Phillips
The Edifice Project, David Ainsworth's votive for Milton  
Brian Oliu Internet Presence 
The Creative Writers Collaborative, a project manned by BJ Hollars
The Lit Pub, the blog of Elizabeth Wade
Thoughts from Nanci Kincaid, the woman who wrote,
"I want a man who is born happy so it isn't my job to make him that way..." 
Hobart for a little Sam Martone and anothers
Gay Talese's official website, for a plethora from hats to histories
The Seasons Bear Us, the blog of Jeanie Thompson
Roy Hoffman writ Roy at South Writ Large
Rodney Jones' bio and poems at the Poetry Foundation 
James Braziel needs no title 
Sena Jeters Naslund's blog 

Since even love letters have unchased butterflies or words which got away...

Chapter 16's moment with Michael Knight is as close as it gets.
Norman Jetmundsen goes from from Vulcan to Soulbane.
Ralph Fletcher keeps writing for children with parents who love children's books.
Robert Inman storytells and stages.
On a sad side note, R.I.P. Madison Jones.
And what we missed of Wilmer Mills. 

Love letter #35: String gardens.

Leave it to string to turn my day into a weaving, twisted, knotty joy. Trying to find the best support for our Atlanta-born snow peas, I was inspired by a fellow community-gardener's beautiful string scaffold. But when I went online to search for "string" and "garden", I entered a different dimension of gardening.

Inspiration comes in spurts. But this dimesion of cool creativity is a mouse-click away. Look, learn, and play.

Kokedama string garden how-to (Craftzine)

 

Suspended string garden (Apartment Therapy)

Coconut husk hanging plant (Dale Mackey)

Hanging moss garden how to (Dale Mackey)

Language games.

Love letter #53: Edith Nesbit.

"I couldn't help wondering as we went down to the garden, why Father had never thought of digging there for treasure instead of going to his beastly office every day."

E. Nesbit, The Story of the Treasure Seekers

I love Edith Nesbit and the way in which her writing for children illuminates the imagination. We are reading The Story of the Treasure Seekers, which you can enjoy for free online, and find myself guessing which passage Max must be reading when I hear his amused guffaws and chortles.

A sketch of Nesbit from the Kitchen Sink Dramas website.

Nesbit was a feminist at a time when most women were content to remain "the angel in the house". She even sported a Liberty dress, chucked her corsets, and made fashion statements supporting The Rational Dress Society (which I've always secretly admired as the forerunner of upcycling and Etsy-dom). Trying to convey what it is exactly that makes Nesbit's books such a treasure at the Coryell Castle is no simple task. But I think Gore Vidal sums it fairly well in his by-no-means-current review for The New York Times Book Review:

As a woman, E. Nesbit was not to everyone’s taste. H. G. Wells described her and Hubert Bland as “fundamentally intricate,” adding that whenever the Blands attended meetings of the Fabian Society “anonymous letters flittered about like bats at twilight” (the Nesbit mood if not style is contagious). Yet there is no doubt that she was extraordinary. Wanting to be a serious poet, she became of necessity a writer of children’s books. But though she disdained her true gift, she was peculiarly suited by nature to be what in fact she was. As an adult, writing of her own childhood, she noted, “When I was a little child I used to pray fervently, tearfully, that when I should be grown up I might never forget what I thought and felt and suffered then.” With extraordinary perceptiveness, she realized that each grown-up must kill the child he was before he himself can live. Nesbit’s vow to survive somehow in the enemy’s consciousness became, finally, her art—when this you see remember me—and the child within continued to the end of the adult’s life.

E. Nesbit’s failure in the United States is not entirely mysterious. We have always preferred how-to-do to let’s-imagine-that. In the last fifty years, considering our power and wealth, we have contributed relatively little in the way of new ideas of any sort. From radar to rocketry, we have had to rely on other societies for theory and invention. Our great contribution has been, characteristically, the assembly line.

I do not think it is putting the case too strongly to say that much of the poverty of our society’s intellectual life is directly due to the sort of books children are encouraged to read. Practical books with facts in them may be necessary, but they are not everything. They do not serve the imagination in the same way that high invention does when it allows the mind to investigate every possibility, to free itself from the ordinary, to enter a world where paradox reigns and nothing is what it seems to be; properly engaged, the intelligent child begins to question all presuppositions, and thinks on his own. In fact, the moment he says, wouldn’t it be interesting if…? he is on his way and his own imagination has begun to work at a level considerably more interesting than the usual speculation on what it will be like to own a car and make money. As it is, the absence of imagination is cruelly noticeable at every level of the American society, and though a reading of E. Nesbit is hardly going to change the pattern of a nation, there is some evidence that the child who reads her will never be quite the same again, and that is probably a good thing.

The only disagreement I find with Mr. Vidal is his assumption that only the child "will never be quite the same again". This woman finds herself quite un-same and rather tickled with joy. 

Love letter #51: Citizen science.

Citizen science is a term used for the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis. Individual citizen science volunteers or networks of volunteers, many of whom may have no specific scientific training, perform or manage research-related tasks such as observation, measurement, or computation.The use of citizen-science networks often allows scientists to accomplish research objectives more feasibly than would otherwise be possible.

Citizen science is one approach to informal science education. To capture these multiple meanings of citizen science, some workers in the field now refer to "public participation in scientific research."Citizen science is related to long-standing programs employing volunteer monitoring for natural resource management, and is often employed as a form of education and outreach to promote public understanding of science. Technology is credited as one of the main drivers of the recent explosion of citizen science activity.

(Source: Wikipedia)

This article is a great place to start in understanding how citizen science is changing our landscape as well as our learning habits. The Great Backyard Bird Count stands as an excellent example of effective citizen science. More thrilling citizen science projects that get this lady's heart beating like a DC techno beat:

The International Boiling Point Project

eBird

The Human Genetics Project

World Water Monitoring Day

Project Feeder Watch

Nest Watch

Bird Sleuth

Global Water Sampling Project

The Global Sun Temperature Project

The Square of Life Project

The Bucket Buddies Project on March 7, 2012

The Noon Day Project

Life at Hurricane Creek, a local citizen science project through Project Noah

Love letter #45: 10 things I will make in the month of February.

And if I don't make them, at least I'll have actively dreamed of making them and noted my dream in a way which allows me to return and re-dream it. A thank-you to all the creators linked below who take a few minutes to show me how.

1

Embroidery hoop organizer baskets

2

A poetry portrait- a poem about a person which describes and delineates

3

A woven winter fork with the munchkins- maybe we'll leave it out for the local giants to use

4

A Julia-Gunther-inspired stripey girl

5

A kudzu basket

6

Pocket pals

7

A medieval shade pavilion

8

A Kandinsky-inspired tree collage

9

An upcycled cashmere toddler dress

10

Upcycled patched sweater slippers

Love letter #43: Things to put on the walls that can only make you happy.

From the hands of Katie Daisy.

Placenta art from the Birth Balance blog.

The art of Ryoko Ishii.

Love letter #42: John Rombola.

Captivated by this book. John Rombola's lively whimsical colors and lines are daydreams waiting to happen. Kudos to an artist who invites us to inhabit the fantastic.

A sheet with Rombola's drawings discovered by bink & boo.

Rombola's tendrilous aliens.

Walking a dog composed of thick parallel lines.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at Rombola's parade.

Or a seal at his circus.

Love letter #41: Listography.

For the mind perpetually cluttered with new ideas, thoughts, daydreams, and words, listography proves irresistible. So I didn't resist. I opened the door to listography. In the process, I found list-makers even more cloud-headed than myself.

classic album covers cool enough for frostbite

25 days of writing

words strung together to make a necklace of wisdom

bad customer services experiences

packing list for illinois

life goals

heart warmers

Love letter #40: Holiday scents and smells.

Tino smelled like a bonfire after burning trees and leaves on the job yesterday.

Frasier fir all over the house, decking the doorways and covering the mantles.

Little ones out in the perfect weather with baby sweat on their brows, the scent of little chicks.

The pungent plastic-y smell of scotch tape and wrapping paper.

Love letter #39: Happy Whimsical Hearts.

I love all the wonder and whimsy in the blogosphere. And I love all the bloggers who sprinkle sparkles that brighten wet, cold autumn afternoons, like Happy Whimsical Hearts. Her love for Anne of Green Gables peeks out on every post.

As an Australian mom to Master D and Little Miss Q, Happy Whimsical Hearts aims "to fill their childhood with magic, through imaginative play, homemade toys, the great outdoors (or our backyard), crafts and baking". Her inspirations in the blogosphere include "Waldorf, natural parenting, arts and crafts for children and adults alike, as well as simple living".

Now for how she inspires me:

 Felted pixies and Christmas fairies

Gnomes and fairy doors

Stained glass with kids 

A recipe for fairy wands

Beeswax "echidnas"

Flower peg people

Bottom print butterflies

Knitted bunny for kids

And here is my little inspiration thank-you for her.

Love letter #30: Trends, tastes, and little habits I picked up in Romania.

Creative uses for ikea stools via my cousin Filip's groove-crusted apartment.

• Moonlight Breakfast, a band fresh from the Romanian streets.
• Mathilde, a great design label from Brasov (available in Bucuresti at Hippie Hippie Shake).
• Patterned leggings and tights with everything.
• Florence and the Machine via my cousin Filip.
• Books from The Dalkey Archive, thanks to Anthony Frost English Bookshop in Bucuresti.
• The Soft Moon via my cousin Alice.
• Mayonnaise.
• A hardcore respect for traditional folk embroidery.
• A recovered penchant for laying on graves.
• Eating soup at every meal.
• The use of red tassels on horses to frighten away evil spirits.
• Multiethnic democracies and dual-language street signs in Transylvania as a hopeful future for the US in these anti-immigrant times.
• The hypnotic compositions of Anatol Vieru.
• Romanian car seats beat any car seat I've ever purchased for comfort and design. Milla loves her new throne.

Love letter #23: Romanian particulars.

The exchange rate in Bran is scary.

Everyone seems shocked and perturbed that I am still nursing Milla. I do so appreciate their heartfelt concern. And I love how you can tell where they pluck their eyebrows when I tell them that I plan to do it as long as possible.

The cultural programming on TV last night included a goat-milking contest.

A young Romanian girl advertises Charles Stanley's latest book with the promise that Stanley will help you discover a giving God-- a God with access to the world's treasures, a God that does not want you to suffer or feel fat.

The bookstores don't have a self-help section.

Talking about homeschooling with Romanians is like talking about esoterics with a pragmatist- it does not compute. 

Snow flakes as big as my fist falling right now.

The Romanian girls on the Romanian version of Top Model rival their American counterparts for stupidity. 

Romanian food so fresh- every part of the animal is used for stomach soup, sausage, tongue soup, what have you. Romanians are natural recyclers. Our version of green living seems almost like an excuse for a shopping spree in comparison.

People don't smile all the time, so when someone smiles at you, it means something special.

No one is required to smile or reflect a positive "feeling" as part of their job description. 

 Every little moment and movement has its ritual counterpart. Fascinating.

Love letter #20: Ponchos.

Preparing for a lot of travel through airplanes, Eastern European cars, trains, metros, buses, and even the occasional horse-and-buggy has got me thinking about ponchos. Glorious, multi-faceted family ponchos for the Coryells. In my head as I prepare to stitch.... (To download the mp3, just right click and save as.)

Reversible car seat poncho tutorial (Pattern Schmattern)

How to make a fabric poncho or a Mexican poncho (EHow)

Poncho with panache printable tutorial (Bernina)

Homemade super hero poncho cape (Filth Wizardry)

Poncho tutorial (Tilda)

Fleece poncho (Drummond News)

Plus various ponchos for sale found with the help of google to inspire colors, shapes, and texture...

Love letter #19: Projects writ large.

I love projects, the projects you read about on one page and then decide you must somehow knead through. The projects that inspire you to start your own community-building project. The projects that make the world a better and more beautiful place.

(A glimpse at the Magic Feather Project.)

The Inhabit Project.

The Fibershed Project.

The Sketchbook Project.

The Magic Feather Project.

The corresponding Whispering Feathers activities and crafts.

The Storytellers Project.

Trash for Teaching. 

Timeslips, a creative storytelling project.

Blarter, an online bartering project.

The Druid City Garden Project.

Thousand Kites, a national dialogue project on the criminal justice system.

Love letter #17: Hunts, treasures, and mysteries with kids.

A photo taken at the Columbus Zoo earlier this week.

SOFT SOFT SOFT- The Mural and the Mint (mp3)

I love a good hunt- the kind with clues, thorns, grass stains, and head-scratching moments. This love letter is devoted to good hunts, mysteries, and findings.

Letterboxing, sport and glory.

Good ole hide and seek.

Host your own green scavenger hunt.

A riddle from the Grimm Brothers.

Mystery food taste test (Let's Explore).

Geocaching, another recent love story at the Coryell Castle.

Backyard photo scavenger hunt (No Time for Flashcards).

The Armchair Treasure Hunt Club.

ABC scavenger hunt, a printable for the weekend.

Group scavenger hunts, like this printable photo scavenger hunt. 

Krummuz, a free google maps based program for authoring and following treasure trails and treasue hunts online. Includes iPhone application. 

Leave it to the knitters in Portland to dream up something so cool.

A nature scavenger hunt printable checklist.

Or a more detailed, touchy-feely nature scavenger hunt that engages all the senses in exploring and observing.

Go on a squirrel nut hunt.

A recycle scavenger hunt printable checklist.

A graveyard scavenger hunt printable checklist. I'm loving these.

The University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt has a reputation.

Internet scavenger hunt (Education World).

Search the clouds or stars for a story. Then tell it.

12 days with my dad: A love letter.

Now that we are back from our visit with my dad and his wife, I find myself missing the man who raised me and kissed me and hugged me and told me what a beautiful Roman nose I had been given to frighten off the barbarian tribes.

A good father is a daughter's first love, her first hero, the primary lap in which she rests and retreats from a world which overwhelms and terrifies her. I watch Micah and how she relates to Patrick- how she seeks comfort from his arms, a solace with a different flavor from the one I can provide- and jealousy is quickly scuttled by awe and nostalgia for my own father and for the world of my childhood in which there were no demons, monsters, or robbers that his mere presence would not slay.

When Carla and I got lice and had to be shorn like sheep, "daddy" (that's what we called him) allowed us to brush, style, and braid his comb-over. Some call it silliness; I saw it as the courage of a man happy to inhabit his own body and unconcerned with the gendered conventions of that cacaphony that is American culture. He was cool enough to sport a rainbow speedo on the beaches of Alabama. He loved knights and pirates and adventures and history and writing dedications which read like epic poems in every book he ever gave to me. I've yet to meet anyone who can draw a three-circled cat as quickly and effectively. He is the wise custodian of the dangerous "Iron Fingers which crush and destroy". And he is the master of the Omeletta Regala. He is glitter and giggles on the memory map of my childhood.

I've gotten used to life without daddy. I've adapted, grown into maternity clothes, widened my reach, learned how to scare away monsters and demons for my own children, discovered my own ways to clean the castle moat. But being with him again leaves an open, raw space that I worked very hard to landscape out of my life as a mother and wife. The first man to reveal the beauty and magic of Alina in his love and doting, in the millions of family videos, in the flowers he still sends to me on my birthday- how can I thank this man for the freedom which he has given me to love myself and others in the world? I can only miss him and love him and delight when he nuzzles Milla as he used to nuzzle me and Carla. 

Daddy, I hope your winds are strong, straight, and true today. And that the weather on the Chesapeake blows your way. I love you more than words can ever weigh.

Love letter #16: Making pretty things from twigs and branches.

TIME OF THE PREACHER- Willie Nelson (mp3)

Travel paper plane mobile (Ruffled)

A gnome house (Something Made)

A wildflower weave (Child In Harmony)

A twig flower pot (Nini Makes)

A driftwood city (Alisa Burke)

Twig candle holder (Spearmint Decor)

Sparkly mobile (Shelterness)

Rustic wood star roasting sticks (Factory Direct Craft Blog)

A story stick (Butterfly Jungle)

Stick men (Red Ted Art's Blog)

Wooden sun craft (Wabi Sabi Wanderings)

Twig coasters (Martha Stewart)

Twig push pins and wall hooks (design sponge)

Twig picture holders (Re-Nest)

One bright branch (Shelterness)

Willow twig table (Instructables)

Love letter #15: Family trees, leaves, and ripening.

FAMILY TREE - Howling Owls

I love the word "ripening" as a descriptor of how our homeschooling is "progressing", mostly because it is not linear (like the word progress, which assumes a definite desirable end). Yes, my little ones are ripening. Thank you so much for asking. Are you ripening? 

I love Let's Explore's 10 ways to play in September printable, especially since it is not focused on the supposed autumn leaves which have not arrived in our neck of the woods. Fall still seems so far.

I love The Artful Parent's leaf and fern print tshirt how-to. So timely.

I am made slightly giddy by Jenny's thrifting finds and hoping to find some tasty Ohio thrifting during my visit.

I love this tutorial for making Montessori baric tablets. I wonder if Patrick will make these for us while we are on our little trip to Ohio.... I have a feeling he is reading this as I type.... Patrick, I love you and I hope your lips aren't chapped.

Love letter #13: Tom Waits, Bela, Mr. Max, and links to love.

The marvelous Mr. Max.

NEW COAT OF PAINT - Tom Waits

The play play play page is up and waiting for additions. I plan to update it every time I stumble across a new way to play that I shudder to forget.

NPR "reconsiders" the banjo's historic roots. Just more proof that everyone needs to watch Bela Fleck's Throw Down My Heart.

If they asked me, I could write a book about this awesome writing about the history of writing. Great inspiration for a unit study.

Hummel's crochet tree cozy keeps making me laugh when I should be very, very serious about the "disorder" in our home. One day, when I have a home that looks like this, disorder will assume its own aesthetic potency.

I am madly inlove with That Artist Woman and the exquisite art she shares with kids. Wow. 

The Nurture Store does not live on another planet. Or, rather, she when to bring other planets home. And when to use Star Wars to teach literacy.

Love letter #12: A photo, a tune, and appropriations.

Milla basks in bubbles.

HOT SMOKE AND SASSAFRASS - The Bubble Puppy

I love this Flying Felties tutorial from the Living Crafts blog. What a great toy.

I love the postmodern poetry at eratio.

I love the history of children's collectives, though I understand why they were anything but a source of empowerment for parents living under a totalitarian system. Any system of childcare that does not respect the parents as primary caregivers and lovers of each child is based on weak foundations. The German stay-at-home dad wasn't a social institution that took well in GDR soil.

I love all the free downloads for Romanian literature, culture, and history available at the Prodan Foundation website.

I love the fantastic imaginings of Farmland World.

Love letter #11: A picture, a tune, and some hearts.

 

Micah wearing the Neko Case tshirt dress I upcycled for her.

MISFIRE - Neko Case and Her Boyfriends

A garage sale for an adoption means Max and I will get to make "as-we-go" maps (rather than "how-we-get-there" maps) early in the morning. I love our Saturday expeditions. And I love making maps to explain where we went rather than maps that attempt to "get us somewhere". Goals are not always a good thing.

I love family journeys and families that journey. 

I love bonding.

I love the National Wildlife Federation's Eco-Schools Program, and I wish it were more accessible to homeschoolers.

I love imagining how Max will respond to Rube Goldberg machines when we discuss them next week. 

I love playing the Consumer Consequences game with the kids and realizing that I am a loser in more ways than one. 

And I love Homeschooling Belle's nights from around the world idea. 

Love letter #10: A picture, a song, and lovely links.

Milla and Vanilla scope each other out.

BANJO-PICKIN' GIRL by the Carolina Chocolate Drops (mp3)

I love Sandra Dodd's take on sleeping. 

I love imagine childhood's better than opposite day, and I think our afternoon will be devoted to making our own one-minute sculptures. 

I love the free little girl and mushroom stitch pattern from oneredrobin. So pretty.

And I love Natural Suburbia's cloth pad tutorial. Because they really do feel better. Why spend loads of money at Victoria's Secret for nice panties when the materials you put inside or next to your private parts are just toxic, bleached cotton made in China? Pretty on the outside, ashamed of the inside. I'll confess that tampons have always seemed a little gross to me- part and parcel of the manufactured self-loathing in being a woman. Which is just to say something like, "Don't bother to burn your bra if you assault your private parts with toxic tampons". If you disagree, I'd love to know why. My own opinions are just that-- and subject to change.

I love the hum of our dilapidated fridge as it struggles to keep the food cold. When we get a new one, I doubt it could possibly have so much character.

Love letter #9: A picture, a song, and lovely links.

 

MELODY (mp3) by Serge Gainsbourg

I love Nature Mom's Blog, and the Alina-friendly posts which cover everything from the benefits of garage sale and second hand home decorating, the case for once-a-month cleaning, and six benefits of eating locally grown foods. 

I can't get enough of Let the Children Play. Anyone who loves Reggio Emilia has already scored high in my book, but this great post on playing with wood has been added to my plans for the week. And 10 ideas for rainy day outdoor play makes so much sense when it feels like a steam room on rainy days. Surely playing in the rain in our hot Dixie summer is therapeutic.

I am currently loving Live and Enliven's free music playlists. Each has its own mood and flavor.

I love the graffiti-covered furniture idea from DIY Kids (pictured above).

I enchanted by the History of the Modern Comic Book course of study which includes links to printables, slide shows, media, lecture podcasts and more. 

Love letter #8.

I love a little Milla sleeping on our bed.

An ACT OF GOD - Kent Eugene Goolsby

Working on getting together a rich list of local treasures has made me more aware of how many localisms there are to love here in Alabama.

I love the Interfaith Environmental Council doing great things in Birmingham. And I love that my husband's employer, RBC Bank, donated $35,000 to the IEC and the Cahaba River Society to make a difference for the environment in their communities. I wonder if RBC would be willing to do the same for our dear Hurricane Creek.....

I love Martha's Needle Eccentricities in Florence, Alabama because even her smile is quirky.

On a different, non-local note, I love la girafe verte's whimsical illustrations. And I love the tiny house revolution in which living small is celebrated. Patrick and I have been so much happier in our down-sized life than we were in our large-scale life.

I love Knit Whit on the Prairies' "Where are you from?" as a space between naps. In fact, I'll be there later today.

Have I mentioned that I am enamored with Captain Crafty and her twins and all the cool things she does and shares with her pens?

Love letter #7.

Patrick and Milla at the Berry College Farmer's Market.

"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are?

We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children."

Pablo Picasso

I love all the links and inspirations at One Pretty Thing. And I love Rachel for adding my boho piano bench cover tutorial to her weekend round-up.

I do so love Michael Rosen's readings of his limericks and poems for children. 

I love Clare's new banner for her blog. It's been too long.... The last time I saw Jack, he was still nursing.

I love Kerry's inspiring quote (posted above) from the Always Unschooled yahoo group. And I love learning to respect my child as a special, unique creation who makes lots of noise and exudes exuberance. The world will enforce its own standards and soul-crushings on my munchkins; that is emphatically NOT my job.

I love Sawdust and Paper Scraps' play and store toy mat tutorial.