Odd and the Frost Giants

After my last few posts, I feel that I need to start this post by quoting Monty Python… “And now for something completely different..!”

It’s been a cold weekend in the Seattle area, and we’ve looked out the window on a beautiful, frosty landscape each morning.  At the library yesterday, I found Neil Gaiman’s, Odd and the Frost Giants, and today I read it in one sitting and loved it! It’s the perfect read for a frosty morning!  It really is one that could become a classic, and would be wonderful to read aloud as a family, or to a group of school kids (my 6th graders would have loved it!).  It’s filled with fun and humor, of course, and is my new favorite Neil Gaiman book…for the moment.

Breaking Tradition: The Story of Louise Nevelson

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.  ~Abraham Maslow

Breaking Tradition: The Story of Louise Nevelson, by Natalie S. Bober, was a fast read and a good introduction to the life of a great artist. Louise Nevelson was a complex personality, difficult in many ways, driven and consumed by her need to create, and a woman who lived her art completely. This book was written in 1984, four years before Nevelson’s death, and was written as an introduction to her life and art for high school students, so it was well researched (with footnotes included) but was more pedantic than Bober’s later biographical works.  I didn’t mind that too much, though, because the personality of the artist was fascinating and her life story equally so.  And I love reading Natalie Bober’s books.

Louise Nevelson was born in Kiev, Russia, in 1899.  Her family immigrated to Rockland, Maine, when she was six years old.  She knew at a very young age that she was an artist, and never lost that focus.

“In the first grade, I already knew the pattern of my life. I didn’t know the living of it, but I knew the line… From the first day in school until the day I graduated, everyone gave me one hundred plus in art. Well, where do you go in life? You go to the place where you got one hundred plus.”

“Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”

She experimented with many different artistic mediums, including dance and song, but finally realized that her true passion was sculpture. She was highly influenced by her father, who was a builder of houses and an antique collector, and she developed a passion for collecting all kinds of objects, especially wood, and she turned those found objects into the most amazing sculptures.

Nevelson was a powerful personality and a powerful artist, and her work was her life.  “I am a women’s liberation,” was her response to a question about her reaction to the women’s liberation movement of the 60s and 70s.  She broke tradition in many, many ways, but was always true to her artist vision. “My total conscious search in life has been for a new seeing, a new image, a new insight.”

“I believe in my work and in the joy of it. You have to be with the work and the work has to be with you. It absorbs you totally and you absorb it totally.”

“I never liked the middle ground–the most boring place in the world.”

To learn more about Louise Nevelson and to see more photographs of her work, click on the following links.

The Louise Nevelson Foundation

The Jewish Museum

Pace Wildenstein Gallery

MoMA

I read and enjoyed this book for the Women Unbound Reading Challenge, and as my final book for Sarah’s Art History Reading Challenge.

Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge 2010

Today, my local library reopened after being closed for months of renovations.  It’s a beautiful library now, considerably larger and more open, filled with natural light, and an inviting place to spend time.  There were many friends and students there celebrating the reopening.

So what could be more fitting a celebration than to sign up for J. Kaye’s new 2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge?  I enjoyed participating in her challenge for 2009, but seriously underestimated how many library books I would read.  Here’s how her challenge works:

There are four levels:

–The Mini – Check out and read 25 library books.

–Just My Size – Check out and read 50 library books.

–Stepping It Up – Check out and read 75 library books.

–Super Size Me – Check out and read 100 library books.

(Aim high. As long as you read 25 by the end of 2010, you are a winner.)

3. Audio, Re-reads, eBooks, YA, Young Reader – any book as long as it is checked out from the library count. Checked out like with a library card, not purchased at a library sale.

4. No need to list your books in advance. You may select books as you go. Even if you list them now, you can change the list if needed.

5. Crossovers from other reading challenges count.

6. Challenge begins January 1st thru December, 2010.

I’m going to sign up for the JUST MY SIZE category:  check out and read 50 library books.  Thanks, J. Kaye, for hosting this reading challenge again!  I’m going to enjoy my new library and my reading!

Virtual Advent Blog Tour: December Celebrations

As many of you know, I teach second grade. Each month of the school year, my students memorize a poem and recite it to the class (or to me alone, if they’re too shy).  Poetry is a very important part of my life, (my grandmother was a poet), so sharing poems and listening to 7 and 8 year olds reciting them is a joyful part of my job.  My students are busy practicing our December poem, and working on art projects that celebrate light during this cold and dark month.

So I want to share with you a little of their art, and our December poem, and wish each and every one of you a very happy and healthy holiday season.

December Celebrations!

Every year at just this time,

In cold and dark December,

Families around the world,

All gather to remember.

With presents and with parties,

With feasting and with fun.

Customs and traditions,

For people old and young.

So every year around the world,

In all lands and all nations,

People of all ages love,

December Celebrations!

(by Helen H. Moore)

Holiday mandalas...

This post is part of the 2009 Virtual Advent Blog Tour, organized by Kelly and Marg (many thanks, ladies!). Click on the button below to find the Advent schedule and links to each of the participating blogs. Enjoy!

The Thanksgiving Day Parade

Watching the Thanksgiving Day parade, 1955

I’m happy that Thanksgiving is here and I have some time to spend with my family! The Grandboy is on his way (over the river and up I-5 to Grandmother’s house…), and we are all gathering to have our first gluten-free Thanksgiving dinner. This will be a day full of warmth, yummy smells from the kitchen, Thanksgiving parades, football, family, and fun.

Sharing a memory with you today of a Thanksgiving Day parade from long ago, with brothers and cousins on a cold day in 1955. This old family photo also brought to mind a wonderful book of poems we used to read to our own children:  It’s Thanksgiving, by Jack Prelutsky. I wish each and every one of you a very happy day, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving Day or not!

The Thanksgiving Day Parade
By Jack Prelutsky

Thanksgiving Day is here today,
the great parade is under way,
and though it’s drizzling quite a bit,
I’m sure that I’ll see all of it.

Great balloons are floating by,
cartoon creatures stories high,
Mickey Mouse and Mother Goose,
Snoopy and a mammoth moose.

Humpty Dumpty, Smokey Bear
hover in the autumn air,
through the windy skies they sway,
I hope that they don’t blow away.

Here comes Santa, shaking hands
as he waddles by the stands.
It’s so much fun, I don’t complain
when now it really starts to rain.

The bands are marching, here they come,
pipers pipe and drummers drum,
hear the tubas and the flutes,
see the clowns in silly suits.

It’s pouring now, but not on me,
I’m just as dry as I can be,
I watch and watch, but don’t get wet,
I’m watching on our TV set.

Women Unbound Reading Challenge

The Women Unbound Reading Challenge has been calling to me. When it was first announced, I thought it was a terrific idea, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on another challenge. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s something I would like to do, for many reasons.

I found myself thinking about what I might like to read and looked on my shelves for books that would fit this challenge. In doing so I realized again that this kind of reading has been an important part of my life for many years now. As so many other women do, I look to the writings of many women to help guide me through different stages of my life. They have been my mentors, and many have become my friends.

So, of course, I am signing up for this new challenge, with the intention of continuing to read the kinds of books that have guided me this far along in my journey.

This challenge starts with a meme — with some very interesting questions to think about…so I share some of my thoughts on the subject with you.

1. What does feminism mean to you? Does it have to do with the work sphere? The social sphere? How you dress? How you act?

2. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why or why not?

3. What do you consider the biggest obstacle women face in the world today? Has that obstacle changed over time, or does it basically remain the same?

I came of age in the late ’60s, and so the feminist movement of that time period had a great impact on my life.  But even more than that, I think the strongest impact on me came from my gifted and free-thinking parents. My father was a gentle and kind man, who considered himself a feminist. Many of his attitudes, beliefs, and actions were way ahead of his time, and he was always supportive and encouraging of my mother and me, and later my daughter, in becoming strong women.  My mother went back to school and became a teacher, and was a strong role model for me as a working woman who took wonderful care of her family and great pride in her profession.  I know that I have had more freedom and more choices in my life than my mother, and I believe my daughter has more opportunity for growth and self-fulfillment than I did.  But we must keep working on opening minds and opening doors for our daughters, and our sons.

Yes, I have considered myself a feminist for all my adult years. I admire women (and men) who are strong and intelligent, compassionate and courageous.  And I support causes and organizations that give women and families support, encouragement, and help.  As a mother and as a teacher, I try to open children’s minds to possibilities, and try to help them learn how to be caring and supportive of each other, and to appreciate differences instead of fearing them.

And as a grandmother now, my hope for my Grandboy is that he have the freedom to become anything he wants to be, and be able to live in a world of equality and compassion. If he is anything like his grandfather and his own father, he will be a gentle, caring, compassionate human being…and a feminist in the best sense of the word.

Some of the books and authors that have guided me thus far (most of these books are still on my shelves):

The Second Sex, and  Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, by Simone de Beauvoir;  The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan;  With Child: A Diary of Motherhood, by Phyllis Chesler;  Silences, and  Tell Me a Riddle, by Tilly Olsen;  A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf;  Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich;  Outrageous Acts and Every Day Rebellions, Gloria Steinem;  The Awakening, by Kate Chopin;  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou;  The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath;  In Favor of the Sensitive Man, by Anais Nin;  The Story of my Life, by Helen Keller;  Journal of a Solitude (and other books), by May Sarton;  The Diaries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh;  The Diaries of Anais Nin;  The Diaries and Letters of Virginia Woolf;  Willa Cather’s novels

And for this Challenge, which runs from November 2009-November 2010, I will sign up for the Bluestocking level:  read at least five books, including at least two nonfiction ones. Here are some books and authors I’d like to choose from, and I’ll add to this list as I find others that call to me:

The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

The Joys of Motherhood, by Buchi Emecheta

The Sum of our Days, by Isabel Allende

Sons, by Pearl Buck

My Mortal Enemy, by Willa Cather

The Tale of Beatrix Potter, by Margaret Lane

Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr

The Ballad of the Sad Café

After watching Alan Arkin in the film The Heart is a Lonely Hunter many years ago, I shyed away from reading the works of Carson McCullers because I thought they would be too sad to read. A person who has such sadness in her eyes must inevitably write sad stories.  This weekend I read her brilliantly written novella, The Ballad of the Sad Café, and it was indeed a sad story, and it left me feeling as gray and sad as this dreary, rainy November day.  She writes about loneliness, and the human condition of loneliness even when you are with others, and of unrequited love, and of people that just don’t fit in anywhere.  The feelings she evokes are universal, a reminder of the ultimate loneliness we all face.  She was a gifted writer, and I’m glad I finally read something by her, but I think it will be awhile before I read more of her work.

This is my second read for J.T’s November Novella Challenge.