...not very deep, but very icy...

In the last two days, the Seattle area has been hit by snow and then a blast of arctic cold that shut down most of Western Washington. On Monday evening, the usual 45 minute – 1 hour bus commute for my husband took 5 hours, and he ended up getting off the bus that wasn’t going anywhere and walking the last 5 miles home in the icy cold. He was prepared for the walk, since it has happened once before, a few years ago. And he kept calling me, so I knew where he was and what he was doing, although I was powerless to help out. So, needless to say, we have been home for these two days before Thanksgiving, and have enjoyed our unexpected Snow Days!

This fall has been the busiest of my teaching career.  All the new duties and expectations imposed on the elementary teachers by my school district have taken a toll on my time and energy, and ultimately on my reading time. The only books I’ve finished in the last 3 months, have been my Read Alouds to my second graders!

So, I have spent much of this gift of time reading, and there’s nothing more healing to my tired mind and self than some quiet reading time and a cup of tea.

The book I chose for my quiet days at home was by an author I love: W. H. Hudson.  I discovered his works a few years ago, (read my posts about that discovery here and here).

This book was called Dead Man’s Plack and An Old Thorn, and contained two long stories, both of which completely transported me to long-ago England, because Mr. Hudson was such an extraordinary storyteller.

Joseph Conrad, a fellow writer who had the highest admiration for Hudson’s abilities and style, eloquently described Hudson’s writing as:

…writing so simple and yet so charged with the beauty and wonder of life, as artlessly “atmospheric” as the atmosphere itself, indivisible and incalculable as an element. A page of one of his books is like a draught of Spring water, in which we feel we are drinking the crystal quintessence of the deep heavens and the green earth.

It’s no wonder, then, that reading this little book ‘quenched a thirst’ I had for reading something beautiful, and was a soothing antidote to such a stressful stretch of time.

Note:

• Conrad’s words about Hudson’s writing are described more fully in a 1922 NY Times book review written by Richard La Gallienne. You can read it here.
• Dead Man’s Plack and An Old Thorn can be downloaded as an ebook from Project Gutenberg.

It must be Fall! I say that because, once again, I have just finished reading aloud to my second graders E.B. White’s exquisitely written book for children of all ages — Charlotte’s Web. I wrote a post a few years ago about the joy of sharing this book with a group of children. I’ll repeat parts of that post here, because it’s a teaching experience like no other. This book turns children into readers because it touches their hearts and they want to be able to read this book to themselves, over and over.

Filled with humor and pathos and lots of common sense, the second graders think it was written specifically for them, but I know that Mr. White wrote it specifically for me. It’s that personal and intimate connection that I so love to share with the 7 and 8 year olds in my class each year. In the early chapters of the book is a wonderful description of a barn. I use that description to teach the reading strategy of “visualization,” to teach the children how the best writers use words that paint pictures in their brain. They close their eyes as I read this passage to them, and then they draw their own version of the barn. Their barns are wonderful, creative and full of life, and I never get tired of looking at them.

“The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay … It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows … It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope … It was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitchforks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps. It was the kind of barn that swallows like to build their nests in. It was the kind of barn that children like to play in.”

It must be my age, my time of life, but this is a time of reconnections. It used to be that when you lost contact with someone, there was very little you could do to find them again. Now, in the age of the internet, reconnecting is literally big business. But the actual happenstance of reconnecting with someone you cared about long ago is powerfully emotional, and it puts you back in touch with yourself — that person you used to be, and still are, but with changes. That’s an amazing process!

In the last few years, I have reconnected with some very important people from my life long ago. Last January, I wrote a post about some friends I hadn’t seen for 38 years, and what a joy it was to meet them again. I’ve mentioned my exchange student “sister” from Argentina, whom I’d lost contact with and haven’t seen since 1968!  She found me a few years ago via the internet, and it’s been delightful having her back in my life. And I’ve been searching for another Argentine friend for many years, and through the miracle of internet connections, I was able to find her two weeks ago, living here in the U.S., and we are becoming reacquainted by phone for now…and how interesting that the voice and the sense of humor is still the same after all these years!

My return to the book blogging world after taking a 4-month break is another interesting reconnection for me, and I’m touched by the warm welcome-back messages I’ve received from blogging friends.  This recent detour in my reading journey is due mostly to new duties at work which consume so much of my reading/writing time and energy.  So I am trying to reconnect with my reading self, to make more time to get back to my books. And in terms of writing and blogging about books, I am not yet sure which new road this detour has put me on, or where I’m headed. But that’s okay, because for me, my reading journey has always been an adventure.

There is such an empty feeling when I’ve finished a book and am at a loss to know what to pick up next. That’s especially true if the book has been long- suffering and/or violent. Driving home from an errand, I realized the little book sitting on the seat beside me may be the very novel to read next. And it turns out I was so right.

Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, by Harriet Scott Chessman, is a little book Robin gave me several years ago. I’ve had it with me in the car to enjoy when I  have a few minutes to wait. Oh, such a contrast from the long mystery I had just finished!

A gentle read… Tender moments between the Cassatt sisters, Mary, the painter, and Lydia, her model. Lovely paintings to enjoy along with the story. Susan Vreeland, author of The Girl in Hyacinth Blue, says it beautifully: ”Laying down each sentence with exquisite delicacy, Harriet Chessman makes palpable the fragility and futility of desire in the face of monster mortality. For me it achieves the sublime.”

I picked up the mystery and took it from the room. In it’s place is Lydia Cassat Reading the Morning Newspaper, a novel to enjoy any number of times. A delightful read!

Lois

A brief break from blogging at the beginning of my summer turned into a 4 month silence. I’m not sure where or how to begin again, except to say that I missed you and missed writing about books, and so I am returning to dust off this neglected blog. Blogging breaks are important, and after blogging incessantly for 3-1/2 years, it must have been time for some quiet reflection.

All is well. There was just a lot of life that happened that continues to keep me very busy. This 25th year of teaching has been the busiest of my career, with the District adding an unbelievable amount of change (new math curriculum, new grading system, new style of conferences, etc. etc.).  So those new demands have eaten up my usual reading time and energy, and I am just now reaching an equilibrium with it all and getting back to my books.

So what happens to a book blogger when silence reigns? Reading does continue (at least it did during the summer!).  My favorite read of the summer was a beautiful little book by Pam Muñoz Ryan, The Dreamer — a fictional account of the childhood of poet Pablo Neruda. She captured the spirit of poetry in telling the story of his difficult childhood, and I loved the illustrations by Peter Sis. Not wanting to leave that dreamlike world of poetry she created, I spent much of my summer time with Neruda’s poems themselves. The last stanza of his poem, “We Are Many,” seems fitting for my return from silence to voice:

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

Salt Lake City roses...

As those of you who live in the Northwest know, it’s been a very cool and wet spring and we’re not convinced that Summer has actually arrived yet. I just returned from spending some time with my mother in Salt Lake City, where it really WAS summer, including 96+ degree temperatures! The temperature in Seattle, when I returned home yesterday, was a full 30 degrees cooler!  It was a lovely trip and I enjoyed my mother, the sunshine, and the gorgeous summer flowers everywhere.

Books were very much a part of this visit, too. Mom bought 3 books while I was there and has already started reading The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Reed.  While I was there, I read The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. Discussing books over dinner, my sister-in-law recommended Life Class, by Pat Barker, and Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, so I downloaded them onto my Kindle. My cousin (whom I hadn’t seen in 25 years!) told me she is looking for a copy of a book she’d heard about called, Abraham Lincoln, God’s Humble Instrument, by Ron L. Anderson. Sidney Poitier’s book, The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, was sitting on the nightstand in my mother’s guest room. I wished I’d had time to read it.  Wild Swans, by Jung Chang; The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton; The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson; and Visual Basic, by James Foxall, were books being read by the people sitting nearby on the airplane during my return flight. So it’s safe to say that everyone seems to be enjoying their summer reading!  I hope you are, too!

“Knit on it?” Kelly repeated with a smile. “What do you mean?” “Well, whenever I need to think things over, I sit down and knit quietly for a while. It calms my mind, so my thoughts become more ordered or something.”

School’s out!  My classroom is closed up for the summer, my desperately needed summer break has finally arrived, and my summer reading has begun!

So as soon as I finished in my classroom, of course I headed for the bookstore right away. But a side-trip to my favorite yarn shop yielded not only a new summer knitting project (a baby blanket for a friend who is in the middle of the adoption process), but also a fun summer read:  Knit One, Kill Two, by Maggie Sefton.  What a fun store–gorgeous yarns AND fun knitting mysteries!

It was the perfect way for this tired teacher to spend the first weekend of summer break. Now…if only our Pacific Northwest weather (setting new records for a gray, cool, rainy June) would cooperate and let the sun shine so it can feel like summer!

A few more hours and I send those sweet second graders home for the summer. They’ve been my favorite class — that’s out of 24 years of teaching! We’ve had so much fun together, but the real delight for me was watching them turn into passionate readers. One day the spark happened, and they all decided that they were “READERS.”  We’ve shared many books since that moment!

My end-of-the-year gift from their parents is a gift card for the local bookstore (a sizeable amount!) so that I can expand the class library! And yesterday the kids generated a wishlist of books for me to purchase. We’re hoping to spark next year’s second graders so that they can also discover the pleasures of reading!

Nathan Coulter, is the first of the Port Williams books written by Wendell Berry.  Mr. Berry, farmer, poet, professor, novelist, philosopher, created the world of Port Williams, Kentucky, and populated it with wonderful characters and a vivid sense of place and history.

I’ve read a few of the Port Williams books already (click here to read my post about his book, Remembering), but decided that I’d like to read them all, and in order. This book is a beautifully written beginning to the series.

Mr. Berry speaks to me in his books, reawakens memories from my own life and brings back memories and stories that were shared with me by my father and by my grandparents. That memory view extends back a number of generations.  His characters are like people I have known. The passage of time and the comings and goings in life fill his stories — they are funny and sad and full of the real everyday details of life.  Familiar.

We follow Nathan Coulter as he grows from a boy to a man, through his changing relationship with his brother, through the death of his mother and having then to live with his grandparents because his father couldn’t take care of the two boys, through his growing ability to work on his father’s farm, through his expanding awareness of the community in which he lived.  The people around him are kindhearted and connected. He is raised as much by his village as by his parents and then by his beloved grandparents, and his life is tied to nature and the growing seasons.  I cried twice in this book, with the poignancy of the story and the beauty of the writing.  Mr. Berry is a poet whose words are eloquent.  His stories are reminders to cherish what is most important in life.

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes.
Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we
need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to
be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

~Wendell Berry