Soup

I have a cold that has lingered for far too long.

from Dame Dearlove’s Ditties, 1805

I need soup!
 In 1991 I took a children’s book illustration class from Keith Baker. He told us to take other people’s vegetables, but make our own soup.

Yury Vasnetsov Turnip

Good advice! The Russian illustrator Yuri Vasnetsov makes a heady broth, rich in vegetables. I’ll have a sip of that.

Yuri Vasnetsov Magpie

The colors are nourishing in Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert.

Lois Ehlert: Growing Vegetable Soup

Marcia Brown suggests getting the community to help cook. This lesson has stayed with me since preschool, although the story of Stone Soup seems different when I read it now. I had remembered the soup but not the soldiers.

Alice and Martin Provensen are serving a meal to the King of Cats at William Blake’s Inn. Who knows what kind of soup is in the tureen? The drawing contains vitamin E (elegance) and vitamin C (charm).

Mulready’s (1809) offerings in Grimalkin’s Feast might appeal more to cats than to humans.
Eat up!

Old Mother Hubbard -1889

When it comes to soup, as when it comes to anything, Sendak says it all.

I hope my cold is soon gone and that you all are enjoying a good, soupy winter. Bone appetit!

Paschkis papercut

All Hallows

What a strange conglomeration Halloween has become. It’s such a weird mixture of fear, horror, candy, naughtiness, and dress-up.

Though it originated in rituals marking the passing of harvest season into winter, Halloween melded with religious beliefs and became the last chance the dead have to visit the earth, and therefore a day for the living to watch out. But Halloween now has morphed into a day to celebrate one’s alter egos. And eat bucketfuls of candy. Is that not creepy?

Even so, I can’t resist the Halloween spirit. With half a roll of black butcher paper, some colored tissue, a craft knife and lots of tape, I worked fiendishly fast yesterday afternoon to put together some Halloween decor for our front window.

It seemed to be successful. We went through 200 pieces of candy in an hour-and-a-half. One trick-or-treater told me she liked our window.
I said “thank you, I made it myself.” She replied “you must be very artistic.”
I took that as a compliment.

While most of the ghouls and goblins and superheroes who came to our house last night wore store-bought costumes, I most enjoy the home-made get-ups. The Doctor was here.

As were this black fairy and killer bunny. The girl made both costumes. I was seriously impressed.

My neighborhood has some freakishly inspired souls that keep the rest of us on our toes as far as Halloween decorations are concerned. Down the street there is the “Big Scary House” that transforms its front yard into Horrorsville.

This includes two wooden outbuildings, a smoke machine, lights, numerous gravestones, skulls, bones, an entire hedge covered in fake cobwebs, and about fifteen strategically placed statues of horror figures, some of which turn out to be alive and jump out at you when you walk by. It is terrifying, believe me.

When my youngest daughter was little she wouldn’t even walk across the street from that house on Halloween. The screams start at around 6:00 and continue steadily till 10:00.

Then there is a friend of mine who lives a few blocks away. She constructs a facade for her front doorway every year. Past years have featured a robot, an enormous spider, a man-eating plant, a demonic clown (that was super scary), and a giant chicken with a missing leg giving out chicken drumstick candies. This year it was a huge rat coming out of a sewer pipe. A black light brings it all to life in a frightful kind of way (note the severed plastic arm in the rat trap coming out of its mouth).

But if you really want to see who sets the creative bar devilishly high in my neck of the woods, you must visit the Skeleton Theatre – a fifteen minute repeating show that involves animatronics, video footage, professional lighting, and of course, skeletons.

This guy has been seriously bitten by the creativity bug (or zombie). In his day job, he works as a sound designer and composer for live theater, but after hours, he dreams up shows that star skeletons. This year it is the voyage of the Ulna 13. Here’s a preview if you’re curious.

What is it about the gut-wrenching mixture of too much candy and (almost) dead people? If it wasn’t so much fun it would make you sick. I’m not sure I get it, but I still find it amusing. Especially the chocolate.

Almond Joys and Heath bars aside, what I like best about Halloween is the creativity it brings out on parade. That, and having people brave the urban mythology to take candy from strangers. What other excuse do we have to drop in on our neighbors these days and comment on their decor?

Maps: Textiles, Textures, Texts

“Lost Boat” – Leah Evans

I love the Smithsonian. Visiting it several years ago was one of the highlights of my traveling life, and I am feeling the pull of it again. I subscribe to the Institute’s magazine, I get their newsletter emailed to me, and I am swooning this week (I have prolonged swoons) about this exhibit of the work of Leah Evans.

Imagine: Quilt maps! Abstract charts of of soil surveys, lost boats, cranberry farms, satellite photos. All made out of fabric. How do artists do it, keep finding their voices in the most unexpected places?

I admit to loving maps. No matter what material they are made of – from parchment (think Magellan, think terra incognita, think Here be dragons) to satellites in space  (think Google Earth) to textiles (think Leah Evans) to wood (think State Park and “You are here”) to the voice on the GPS device (“In 200 yards turn right on Northeast 75th St.” – if you don’t follow directions think  “Recalibrating….recalibrating…”) maps give us a sense of where we stand – at times literally, at other times metaphorically –  in the world.

I once gave a lecture at the Vermont College of Fine Arts about maps in books (it was really about the importance of setting, but I focused on those wonderful maps on the endpapers) and then I followed the lecture up with a special workshop where we made maps of our works-in-progress. You can read a tidied up version of it in the May 2010 issue of The Horn Book. In the workshop (for writers, not quilters) students studying in the Writing for Children program made maps of their works-in-progress, down to the smallest details possible (“Draw a house plan of the house in your book. How far away is the parents’ bedroom from your protagonist’s bedroom? Through which window does the morning sun come in? Where would the protagonist stand to watch a sunset? How does he or she get to school – what neighborhood places are passed each day? What color is the house at the corner?”)  I’m a great believer in developing setting as a character in a book, asking what the setting wants or demands or begs for from the human characters. Just think of the writers for whom setting was essential: Eudora Welty, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck – it’s impossible to imagine them without Mississippi, New England, the fields and flophouses of the Monterey Peninsula.  Beverly Cleary’s Ramona – how could she live any other place than Klickitat Street? How could Octavian Nothing be anywhere but Boston during the Revolutionary War?

Here is  a stanza from Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Map.” (You can read the whole poem here):

The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador’s yellow, where the moony Eskimo
has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,
under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,
or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.
The names of seashore towns run out to sea,
the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
-the printer here experiencing the same excitement
as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger
like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.

No matter what the medium- yard-goods or words – and no matter what the peculiar genius of the artist/writer, maps bring our focus squarely in on the sixth sense: that of our own bodies in physical space. I think interesting art art is made by people who explore that physicality.

I would love to go see the Leah Evans exhibit at the Smithsonian. As abstract as her quilts seem to be, they converge with maps we are familiar with – we can almost see the satellite photo that the quilt below is based on – is it Manhattan? Is it Cuba?We can puzzle it out, or we can go with just an impression. Art provides a wide berth. When we look at both photos, we “take the water between thumb and finger/ like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.”

————————————————————————————————–[P.S. If you’re interested in that Elizabeth Bishop poem or poetry in general, you can head over to Anastasia Suen’s blog, Booktalking, to see what people are posting for the weekly round-up on Poetry Friday.]

“Green Satellite” by Leah Evans

Satellite Photo of the Caribbean

Horns, Magic, Metaphors, and Me at the Gate

19th Century Austrian Postillon

By way of introducing myself here at BOOKS AROUND THE TABLE, I’m going to share this image of a postillon horn. Never heard of it? Me, either, until I went looking for something to serve as a metaphor for “beginnings” or “openings.” As a poet, I like metaphorical thinking and the sneaky way it makes its point via indirection, in the same way a magician performs sleight-of-hand, making people look at one hand while the other does the actual trick. Look, a dove!

Instinct usually tells me to go with a poem or an image, since one or the other of those will be sufficient. I generally leave explanation to the people who write fiction or non-fiction. But prose is the method of choice for blogs, so let me explain my thinking.

The horn pictured above resides in the Postal Museum in Prague. Postal carriers in the 19th century used it to “give different signals for having the town gate opened, warning the other drivers on the road to give way, calling for help in distress, announcing the post arrival and departure, changing horses, etc.” Note the horn hanging from the neck of the unabashedly jubilant postillon below. Looks like some of those letters aren’t going to make it to their destinations. I hope the news in the telegram was good news – maybe a prodigal son returning? A lost fortune regained? – and not news of cher Mama’s death. That image requires champagne after reading, no?

I don’t expect to toot my horn to warn the other drivers on this blog (Laura, Julie P. and Margaret) to “give way” – I rarely go above the speed limit, metaphorically speaking (Look, another dove!) Nor do I anticipate changing horses very often, though I’ve been known to do it, even mid-stream. But I do like the idea of a high clear note that asks for the gates of the city to open – after all, this blog is about sharing and building community among writers for children, and I hope to hear the hinges creaking, the doors opening and our voices mingling.

At the Gate- Porta Maggiore - Rome

From time to time I might blow the horn as “a signal of distress.” Writing is a strange business, and for many of us it is both exhilarating and exhausting.  There might be an occasional blast on the horn when I’m trying to figure out what keeps postal carriers – I mean writers – going when they’re bone tired. The Frenchman at the Cafe du Postillon pictured below doesn’t appear to be in a Pony Express mood. Maybe he’s a burned out writer. Some of you, I feel sure, have been there yourselves, leaning against that very door jamb.

Cafe du Postillon - Photograph by Aart Klein

Right now, I’m feeling energetic, and I’m here at the town gate with my trusty horn. Hope I’ve got some lovely bit of mail for you from time to time. I wish I could deliver it right to your door, and we’d have tea and talk about books around the table. But I’ll be satisfied with delivering the Books Around the Table part of that scene to your computer screen, 21st-century-style.

Postillon - Neckartailfingen, Germany