Back on the Chain Gang

It is a fallacy well-tended by those outside of academia that teachers and professors get summers off. Well, OK, I did get last summer off, but that only occurred through careful planning (and a good deal of Ramen noodling during the school year). You know a humanities professor is gunning for a summer off when they start to get excited about staff and faculty meetings, volunteering for them and the like. We aren't actually having a curriculum planning renaissance; instead, we just know that there's free food.

Anyway, while summers off are a myth or the result of sleight-of-hand, professoring does bring one absolute joy -- big long, Christmas breaks. If my friends and family dug a little deeper, they might realize that my passion for Christmas is not a reindeer obsession or for the little lump that forms in my throat when Linus reads from the Book of Luke. Instead, it's the thrill of having four full weeks with, literally, nothing to do. It's downright European, and they have the right of it.

The problem with four whole weeks off is that is seems so long at the outset (and you convince yourself that finals were so damn harrowing that you deserve a little time to yourself) that we inevitably come to the second week in January when we realize what we conveniently forgot, between Fa-la-las and realizing we have 12 hours before the last four quarts of Egg Nog go really bad (what's a girl to do? Salut!) -- that we have 3 business days in which to plan the next four months of our life. When the next four months of your life involve being surrounded by late-stage adolescents, you begin to wish you had gone into Economics like your parents wanted you to.

My peeps who work in public education on the K-12 level are rolling their eyes now. The Manda is searching every corner of her brain to try and remember if she ever saw a single official lesson plan in the decade we shared the space under a rock in Brighton. The answer sounds as full of shit as the excuses I'll begin to accrue the day my first set of assignments come due -- I'm not really a planner. I usually teach by the seat of my pants, and I've spent almost two decades doing that really successfully. But, things change. As my butt is no longer the right size for the kinds of clothes I like to wear (iwillnotwearmomjeans....iwillnotwearmomjeans.....iwillnotwearmomjeans), my teaching style, I have discovered, no longer fits the training my students have come to expect.

I always enjoyed being the weird one in many of my classes at Wake. Lest I give false impressions, I was a Democrat even then, so I was destined for the role. Shaving my head wasn't exactly necessary for being different at a school where few people wore Polos outside of the approved color spectrum. This isn't a diss on my peers; they all make a lot more money than I, so maybe I should have shut up and stuck to pastels. That's all I'm saying.

My "being weird" in classes just meant trying new things. I tried to break out of the mold of traditional literature discourse. When you are taught Shakespeare by a guy who could have been one of the Bard's friends, you sort of give up the delusion you are gonna wow him along the traditional paths of enquiry and try new things.

Like many of my students today, I tried really really hard to get my professors to give up what they really thought about the issues, books, and authors we studied in class. My students take this information and use it to write me technically strong papers agreeing with my thoughts. I never think of my students as dumb, but I have to ask, "How dumb is that?" I always took the position polar opposite to my professor. With the exception of that Southern Lit dipshit (Bill? Ben? Who the hell was he?), this worked very well.

See, most people like it when people suck up to them. They like people around them to be deferential and accommodating. Not so much the typical 21st century American academic. We like discussing things in the abstract, and when everyone agrees, it's not a discussion; it's a rally (which we also like, but only when we are apart from it, on the sidelines, being superior and snarky. Don't judge -- many of us gave up health care benefits to do this job; let us have something here). So, when students mirror my thoughts back to me, they are essentially telling me what I already know, and they are saying it in a way I find inferior to how I would say it (because, you know, it isn't me saying it).

When they disagree with me, on the other hand, it makes me think. It clicks on something in my head that starts the engines turning and the pulse racing. It reminds me why I got into this gig in the first place (other than the four whole weeks off at Christmas, of course). It's the Academy's version of street fighting, and it's why professors gave up the idea of world domination and ever getting an office larger than a half bath or with any sort of view at all in the first place.

But, I'm beginning to believe that all the fighters are already on this side of the desk. Students believe the fight is about the grade, not the topic. They want to challenge the result, not the process. I'm not willing to give up hope that the tide will turn back towards the life of the mind, but I'm preparing to hunker down until that happens.

So, until that day, I'm doing what I never wanted to do. I'm cheating on my idealism.

I'm making checklist rubrics.

Reading Journal (as promised):

I checked two items off my list. The first is the YA novel Hacking Harvard. While fairly easy in terms of vocabulary and style, this does clock in at 321 pages, so it wasn't exactly a one shot, before-bed feat. I'm fascinated by the culture of college admissions, by the look of superiority on the faces of my incoming freshmen every fall. They seem to feel as if the hard work is over. They have proven their mettle by gaining admission. Wasserman details this process quite admirably. Although it's not in the book, he seems to imply just what I discover -- my students have spent, literally, 12 or more years preparing to be admitted to the university of their choosing, but they have absolutely not been given any sort of road map concerning what to do once they get there. I picture them, acceptance letter in hand, standing at the top of Everest. What they haven't been told is that, goal achieved, the descent can be as fraught with pitfalls as the ascent was. To make matters worse, their "permanent record" is just now becoming truly permanent.

I often ask my students to avoid summarizing books as a whole and pick out one particular passage to reflect on (this is easier if you write WHILE reading rather than just summarizing, but hey, it's a YA novel and I do read 125 pages a week rather than 25, so it's a challenge). Here's the passage I picked:

Back when we were kids, Harvard Square had all these little stores and restaurants that were famous just for being in Harvard Square -- greasy diners and skanky bars and funky thrift shops. Then the rent rose too high, they went bankrupt, and got replaced by B&N, Starbucks, Baskin-Robbins, and Abercrombie. I guess some people have this idea of Harvard Square as a quaint little college town, because that's the way to make it look at movies -- but these days, in real life, it's more like Disney World.
You know how Disney World has that fake main street? On the outside, the buildings look all old-fashioned, like Ye Olde Chocolate Shoppe and Smitty's Apothecary -- but then you go inside and they're all selling the same crappy Donald Duck dolls and Mickey Mouse ice-cream bars? Well, just substitute tacky crimson sweatshirts and Starbucks lattes, and you'll have a pretty good grasp on Harvard Square.

Having spent the better part of my first year in Boston "trying to soak up the charm" of all the major neighborhoods, and having a big brother who lived in Cambridge, I spent a fair amount of time around Harvard Square, and this section made me laugh out loud. Harvard has sold out to all the major brands. I hit this part, ironically enough, at about the same time I was watching House Hunters on HGTV when a guy moving to Boston almost wet himself to find out he qualified for Boston's "affordable Housing project" and was going to get a "steal" on a shitty one bedroom condo four or five non-elevatored flights up near Harvard Square -- all for the bargain price of about $350,000. Thanks, Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick. Glad to know you guys remember the little people and still have our backs.

I also finished Scrabble. Well, I as finished it as I'm going to. I give my students the authority to reject books when they have outgrown their welcome, so I finally resorted to giving myself permission to skip out on the last 60 pages or so. Nothing Fatsis could conclude was anything I really cared about hearing at this point. That doesn't mean I'm not copying chapter two as an example of profile when we get to that point in AWD. The book DOES start off strong. It just becomes epic, and it is, in the end, about Scrabble. The battle, I will concede, may BE epic, but the writing about them need not be.

Post Holiday Wrap-Up

One of the great mistakes one can make is to put themselves in a position of vulnerability. When you are a writing professor, the ultimate position of vulnerability is letting anyone stumble across your blog of writing and reading.

I made such a mistake, and then promptly got caught up in a Fall semester of way too much moving and packing, just the right amount of frenzied reading, and all the other detritus that comes from getting sucked into books and keeping the magic all for myself rather than thinking about it on paper in addition to in my head.

Every semester, I give my students one hugely general assignment -- they have to read. It isn't a lot (well, they think it is, but I hold it isn't) -- 25 pages a week of something, anything. It has to be a book and it has to be in English. Other than that, they are free to choose anything they find interesting.

To my new students, or any from last semester who called me on my lack of posts, students who have completed my classes at Mount Ida have come to me to tell me how not overwhelmed they are by the reading requirements of their literature classes. Ah! Proof of the goal behind such torture. If you are a new student reading this, it DOES get better.

I promise, on the other hand, to read 25 pages a week from something, anything, PER class I teach (6). This means that while they "suffer" through 25 pages, I "force" myself to get through 125 pages a week. No, I don't stop for holidays.

This semester, I will do my best to keep track of my own readings, much as I do theirs. I'll start with "What I Read over Summer Vacation" and go from there.

Christmas holidays means a nice long break from grading and the like, but it also means a 16+ hour drive from the tundra to the Ponderosa in SC. During the semester, I commute over an hour each way. This means that in addition to my reading reading, from which my 125 pages a week is entirely composed, there is also an audio component to these entries.

So here's the list since December 21st:

Audio (mostly on the trip down and back, but since as well):

City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau -- Wicked awesome. Fun YA novel.
City of Sparks by Jeanne Duprau -- Sequel to City of Ember -- also cool. Will check out the rest of the series from the library when it is in.
Hissy Fit by Mark Kay Andrews -- it killed time on the drive. I won't be expanding on her writing until the next 16+ hour drive.
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell -- Hours of my life I will never get back. Skip it and see the movie, unless the movie sucks too

Books (in the order I put them into FB, not necessarily the order in which I finished, or heaven help me, started them):

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi -- Fantabulous. Student Fair Warning -- this is now a part of my curriculum if I have to change my curriculum to make it fit.
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart -- I thought it was cute. The puzzles were fun. A little too young to interest my students. I gave it to my neice with hopeful expectations.
Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix -- I waited a LONG time for this one to come out in paperback. I adore MPH. I finished it, and my nephew scooped it up the very next day and had it almost finished by Christmas. Good stuff.
The Angel Experiment by James Patterson -- My first free download to my kindle. Worth free.
School's Out Forever by James Patterson -- 2nd in the series and the third is hurtling toward my local library as we speak
Already Dead by Charlie Huston -- another free Kindle download. Worth free, and maybe a little more. Nice Vampire/ turf war kind of thing.
Murder Takes the Cake by Gayle Trent -- free kindle download. Maybe I need to start paying for downloads. This kind of bit, but it didn't take long to get through.

Currently Reading:

Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession Among Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis -- this is my albatross. I am forcing myself to read at least some every day until I finally damn finish it. It started great and then I lost my taste for it. I just stopped caring, and I don't know why.
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan -- I'm loving it so far. A colleague lent it to me. The only problem that keeps me from being cuddled up right now with it is that she loaned me one with a slightly torn cover and I have to handle it gently to avoid harming it further. It's always on my mind when I'm reading it. Otherwise, highly delightful and will download or get the rest from the library. Long, for those for whom that matters (not me!).
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell -- Terrific, but one I'm reading in spurts which is funny since it has no chapters (the main reason why I didn't assign it as group read this semester).
I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson -- why have I not read this before? Bill is totally my boy.
Hacking Harvard by Robin Wasserman -- my current YA of Choice. Good so far -- nice description of Harvard Sqaure as Disneyland made me laugh out loud.
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations by Clay Shirky -- If Scrabble is my albatross, this is my Everest. I've read almost all of this but keep getting turned around by other more interesting things. That said, I actually use the second chapter in my AWD classes. My goal is to kill this one and Scrabble by Valentine's Day.
Life After Genius by M. Anne Jacoby -- started at Christmas and working my way through. It's too soon to tell, but it's looking good so far.

I'll leave the list of what's on the shelf for when it gets off the shelf, but I have to finish something before I get into all that.

So, there you have it. A Christmas spent in the service of reading. Not a bad way to spend a month under the snow. There will be more soon, let's hope.

I have created life

OK, calm down. I'm related to that side of the family, but I don't share their need to have enough babies to warrant having them in a box under the stairs rather than in a hospital.

And, for once, I'm not talking about my cichlids either. (Insert to add that the offer still stands..... free juvenile fish to a good home)

No, the life I have created is in the handy dandy urban vegetable garden (read: a container garden) on my back porch. I am currently the proud creator of cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers. The jury is still out on the peas, but things are looking good.

For many, the thought of growing vegetables is no big deal. For others, the thought of growing vegetables holds little appeal. I've been in both categories during my life. I never got excited over Dad's harvests, and I certainly never thought to have my own until this year (see earlier posts on Barbara Kingsolver) Still, seeing those little beginnings (like puppies and kittens, baby vegetables actually ARE cuter than the adult versions) that used to be seeds in a pouch and a bag of dirt thrills me beyond measure.

The Crimefighter is out of town today, so he didn't get to witness the joy. Since a day on my own means I don't feel the need to look busy because the Crimefighter is working, I was able to spend countless hours celebrating my success. Now, night has fallen, and I finally remembered some of my friends might require photographic proof. So witness the pepper:

Shout out to the tomato:

And behold the mighty cucumber:

I'll also update an earlier post since I have my camera out and all. I posted pictures on facebook of tiny Danny, the frye my nephew discovered and then promptly named after himself. I had reservations about this because cichlids battle to the death over the safety of their eggs (or any eggs for that matter), and the moment the babies hatch, they forget they have them and, usually, allow all their young to be eaten. I love my fish, but I find this practice very..... Republican of them. This is why I wanted the frye to be called George. That way, when he became a midnight snack, I would get a good story out of it. Then again, sometimes even Republicans surprise you. Here's "little Danny Frye" today (big white one on the top in the middle. He used to be the size of the new frye in white down on the bottom):

• Because all these new wonderful things are coming into my house, I thought it only fair to keep (at least in spirit) the promise I made to my partner in Crime concerning the stack of books. The read ones are stacked on the floor and now reach the top of the desk so here is a list, if anyone wants one. Remember: free shipping, just buy me a beer the next time I'm in town. Or send me one of your old good ones back. That works too.
  
  Yours to Have, if you Want them:
  
• Briggs, Patricia. dRaGoN bLoOd -- I like Patricia Briggs. I keep her Mercy Thompson books myself. This is an earlier series. I probably have dRaGoN bOnEs (that first one) somewhere.
  
• Brown, Sandra. The Devil's Own. Dear God, take it. This book sucked. I'm not a fan of Sandra's early work. My sister tells me she got better, but this one was clearly low-budget, rent-is-due time for her.
  
• Coyle, Cleo. On What Grounds and Through the Grinder. These are the first two in the coffeehouse mystery series. I liked them, but I found these at a yard sale, and I'll look there for the others. I will give her this -- this is less formulaic than most mysteries. Just because someone was a big thing in one book does NOT mean they won't take two between the eyes later.
  
• George, Jean Craighead. My Side of the Mountain. A children's classic. I loved it, even though I never read it as a kid. Good for middle schoolers.
  
• Knight, E. E. Way of the Wolf. First in the Vampire Earth series. I'll probably read the rest, but I'm in no rush. Nice rethinking of Vampire mythology. Do not read at bedtime if you are prone to bad dreams where things swoop down on you.
  
• Lavender, Will. Obedience. It's OK -- If I ever taught a fiction writing class, I would assign all but the last chapter and make my students write an ending. Big overture, sucky show.
  
• Leroux, Gaston. The Phantom of the Opera. I hear the Andrew Lloyd Webber thing is done terribly well. This book, not so much. I get what Leroux is trying to do, and he does it well. It's just that... well..... I don't like authors who write like that.
  
• Moore, Perry. Hero: A novel. I thought it was really good. The superhero in question IS super, but he's also the gay son of a disgraced superhero and a mom who disappeared, which can mean a lot of different things if you are a superhero.
  
• Nevins, Thomas. The Age of Conglomerates. Dystopian life is so.... fun! I liked it.
  
• Nimmo, Jenny. Midnight for Charlie Bone. Harry Potter rip off. Then again, if you have kids who like Harry Potter..... maybe. I also have the second one in the series somewhere.
  
• Picoult, Jodi. Keeping Faith. I loved it. Not as much as Plain Truth, but it's interesting, specially if you like Jodi.
  
• Pierce, Tamora. Alanna: The First Adventure. I loved it and got the rest of the quartet from the library. AWESOME writer for younger girl readers. This is Song of the Lioness, Book One.
  
• Roberts, Nora. Daring to Dream, Holding the Dream, and Finding the Dream. I have the whole trio. They're typical, and I liked them. Early Nora stuff.
  
• Robillard, G. Xavier. Captain Freedom: A Superhero's quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity he so Richly Deserves. Freaking hilarious, to a dork like me.
  
• Tropper, Jonathan. The Book of Joe. October Road the book. It's OK.
  
• Young, Wm. Paul. The Shack. Someone recommended it to me. Um.... it's sort of The Gnostic Gospels, as your preacher interprets them. If you like Joel Osteen, you'll eat this up.

Books you can Borrow. but I want them back:

• Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. If you haven't read it, you should.
  
• Moore, Christopher. Fool. Not his best; still better than most you'll read. Moore's take on Lear. Because "there's always a bloody raven" and "there's always a bloody ghost."
  
• Jones, Abigail and Miley, Marissa. Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival at a New England Prep School. Sad statement about what the disembowelment of the women's movement at the hands of Conservatives have done to decimate out girls. Oh, and methinks the kids of Milton Prep overestimate their worth on the larger college market. Just saying...... it isn't like it's Exeter.
  
• Roose, Kevin. The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner at America's Holiest University. A freshman at Brown does his "semester abroad" at Liberty University (the "school" that Falwell built) and it is one of the most surprising and uplifting books I've read in a while. Not a hatchet job but a serious look at Fundamentalism pre and post Falwell. Would be my recommended read of the summer.
  

As and they shall be yours.

Trash Day

Today was trash day. I like trash day, and not just because it means I can stash Boogie's "offerings" in someone else's to-be-picked-up trash instead of hauling it all the way home to befoul my refuse either (although I do walk him extra early for specifically this purpose as trash pickup is at 8 or so).

I haven't had a neighborhood neighborhood since I moved from the south. People here stay local in terms of friends, even if they move. If you didn't play pee wee hockey with them, it's seemingly pointless to even try. Still, people fascinate me and trash day is a little voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of people who are probably more interesting than they even know.

These are the things I discovered just today:

• The people who live next door to Old Mrs. Hurvitz (the second) either lost a hamster this week (the cage was in the trash, not the hamster) or upgraded one to better digs. I find this funny because they are the one house that complains when Boogie poops on their lawn (I ALWAYS pick up -- it's the law, and it's conscientious). Seriously? You have a rodent living IN YOUR HOME, and my dog's poop for a split second on your lawn is gross? Whatever.....
  
• The old threesome who lives at the end of Union St. has not died. They do not have a car, and I worry about them. I haven't seen trash since the summer began, and I wondered. Today, finally, they had one bag.
  
• The people who live just before the trashless old people on Union street (who are very nice and have the funniest looking terrier mix I have ever encountered -- and I'm the sister of a vet who collects and passes on the motliest of the motley dogs you can imagine) must have either a much more vivid social life than the Crimefighter and I, or else they are RAGING alcoholics. They had 2 recycling tubs filled with half gallon whiskey bottles. Then again, the economy is harsh right now, and sometimes drinking at home is the most one can afford. My suspicion is the former.
  
• The old guy who plays his banjo on his porch on summer nights (and reminds me of my grandfather who often did the same thing playing the same songs) buys Vienna Sausages in bulk. I do have to wonder what kind of person does that.
  
• The kid on the corner of West and Union (the one with the swing set I have to drag Boogie by quickly for hygienic reasons) has graduated from diapers to pull-ups. Yea for you, little man.
  
• The Crimefighter and I are not the only ones in the neighborhood who produce more recyclables than trash. With the exception of my delusional neighbor, almost everyone on all 5 streets Boogieman and I traverse had at least twice the amount of recycling containers as trash containers.

Which begs the question..... why the hell aren't our taxes going down?

Kiddie Lit and a Rainy Tuesday

The calendar says it is June 9th, but apparently someone forgot to tell the weathermen in New England because I'm still in my old Crossroads for Kids sweatshirt which now seems to be my summer uniform and wondering just what that third pot of coffee (The Crimefighter was home for a time this morning, so I can't take credit for more than half the first pot. The second pot, however....) will do to a girl my age.

It's also raining and is scheduled to be just that way from now until forever, so I'm trapped inside with just me, my books, and two quite stir crazy animals. Not as much fun as it sounds. The Crimefighter is also on hiatus from the office for a few hours, and this always throws my schedule for a loop. I know I waxed all poetic about taking it easy this summer, but it's still hard to look at a man who really is busting his ass from over the top of a book I don't have to be reading. I'm escaping to my office for a time. I love my penniless freedom, but flaunting it during working hours seems a flavor of ass-hattery I wouldn't enjoy being on the receiving end of, so there you have it.

I've reached a reading lull this week. My brain feels sort of fried from all the stuff I'm trying to force into it (Book by Book by Michael Dirda and The Foie Gras Wars by Mark Caro) and all the stuff I'm trying to let seep out (The Devil's Own by Sandra Brown -- whoever recommended that one to me.... really? What did I do to offend you?).

I have a plan in place for when this happens though -- kiddie lit!

Note: I also retreat to kiddie lit when I'm feeling especially put upon by the process of being an adult. Bill paying days and health insurance calls always send me scampering for a little Tamora Pierce, Louis Sachar, or, in happier days, J.K. Rowling. There are others, but these are the names I can read from where I perch at this moment.

I have not only an obsessive history with books, but also a long one. I'm the child of a PhD in Reading who professed (professored?) during the heyday of the emerging young adult market. Unlike most kids, I all but shoved my mom out the door on "business trips" because, unlike my Dad's business trips back to Connecticut which only meant the family was eating out every night he was gone (we'll save the story of my mother's relationship to the kitchen for another, significantly shorter, entry), when my mom returned from her conferences in children's lit, I got swag.

My absolute fondest memories of my childhood would be when my mother returned from those trips. See, this was a different world. I have a cousin who is a children's book author now, and she views conferences as ways to increase sales. They are the literary version of movie press junkets. She sets up a booth and judges her success by the sounds of the cash register and how sore her hand is from signing copies.

In he 70s and even the early 80s, the children's book market was a different animal entirely. My mother returned from these semi-annual jaunts absolutely loaded down with editor's copies and pre-releases of all the greats, most of which she received gratis. Some of my earliest deities, the men and women who would help shape the woman I have become as surely and completely as my folks or any teacher (for good or for ill), would be in attendance. When you have a big old dork for a daughter, as my mother did (and does), shooting the shit with Betsy Byars, Judy Blume (yes.... THE Judy.... I KNOW!!!!) , or Paula Danziger can produce more awe than going up on the space shuttle.

She would arrive home with bags upon bags of books, and I would dump them all over my bedroom floor. Hours would be spent ranking them and piling them into stacks in order of necessity. My parents knew that for the next weeks, no amount of calling would bring me to the dinner table any faster and that it was probably a good idea to put the oldest sheets on my little twin bed because odds were that I was going to burn a hole in them with my flashlight.

These were the days when kids were expected to read and were considered as wide and diverse a market as their adult contemporaries. We had all the types of lit that our parents and teachers had at their fingertips -- from the very very good (yes, I received a first edition of Forever by Judy Blume -- the one with the locket on the front -- at age 8. That might explain some things.) to the very very not so good (Harlequin put out Caprice classics, a line of formulaic romance novels, and Silhouette had a junior readers romance line as well -- in the end, the girl got her boy and her first kiss, thus becoming a woman). I even know that the very first Silhouette series romance was called P.S. I love you and featured a girl vacationing in Palm Springs who gets the bumper sticker (p.s. meaning Palm Springs) but has a romance with a guy named Paul Something-that-starts-with-an-S who gets cancer or something and dies, but she'll always remember him..... there was a sequel too where she meets someone new and falls in love again, but that didn't happen for many many books.

The point is that while many of these books were bad (oh, so bad, and taking up space still in my crowded head), it didn't matter. They were new adventures. I had a lot of advantages as a kid, but my most treasured possessions are my autographed copies of The Cat Ate my Gymsuit and There's a Bat in Bunk Five (which actually says, "Suzy, I'm so glad you liked Cat. Hope you like this one too -- Love, Paula" .... if you just got jealous..... I KNOW!!!)

The closest I can come to that kind of brush with people I admire is a ten minute chat with Pat Conroy (contents of said chat are unmemorable) when my Mom took me to a professor thing when he came to speak at her school when I was in high school -- neither of us impressed the other since his glory days, I even knew then, were over, and I was, you know, a high school kid. He'd written all the weird out of himself, and I knew it even then. There was also my cringe-worthy gushing when I met Greg Mortenson at Northeastern last fall. I think I might have scared him a little -- but then again he was kind of wearing that look whenever he talked to anyone in the room, not just me. I think he wanted all of us to stop talking, take out our checkbooks, and send him the hell back to Pakistan so he could build another school.

Anyway, these were the magicians of my childhood. Danziger taught me to accept my flaws (and to care about others as much as myself, at least some of the time) and Blume taught me what it meant to be a strong woman. The truth about Forever.... is that it doesn't last forever, and you have to be able to look at the girl in the mirror when Forever is over.

I've read some older children's lit and some written recently and tried to see what has changed. Turns out, a lot. A lot of people complain that books today treat children like adults, but I've come to realize that isn't the problem. Books today DO place children in very adult situations and claim to be "writing what the kids live," but books of the past come far closer to treating children like ACTUAL adults, and they are, often, stronger for it.

First I should say that I'm not talking about the best children's books out there. The best have literary merit all their own, and I believe they will hold up and speak to future generations. What I'm talking about is the mediocre books of this generation versus the mediocre books of my generation. This is where comes the great imbalance. The crap of today is truly crappier than the crap of my youth.

So, if a kid reads the best, they will have the same advantages as the kid who read the best of any successive, or probably future, generation. The problem with the top of the heap is that it is, always, a loosely populated area. Not too many books get to live in the poshest literary zip codes.

The ones who suffer are this generation's kiddie dorks, much like myself a few decades ago. We cannot live on a half dozen books a year. We might as well try to live on a few breaths a day.

Perhaps there is a place for the gritty realism found in much of contemporary mediocre fiction. The formula for today's mediocre books seems to be the poorest of the poor neighborhoods or the richest of the rich. I guess that's always true, a popular literary device for children, but the Deus ex Machina always present in the formulaic doesn't seem to work when the starting place is so dire or exclusive. There's a disconnect I'm still trying to piece through (so bear with me -- I concede I'm still trying to grasp it).

Let's take the ever popular arena of boarding school -- popular throughout time for it's reliance on the classic Home - Away - Home Again tool. By necessity, much of children's lit must take the child out of direct supervision of the adult world in order for him or her to come into their own. Becoming an adult most often occurs away from the eyes of actual adults.

The Boarding School (Mediocre) fiction of my youth may be seen in The Girls of Canby Hall series, while today's is in the Upper Class, It Girls, or Private series. In the eighties, the boarding school device was solely to separate children from their parents (how do we relate to each other when there is no adult to set the rules? How do we make decisions that are good when we won't get busted for making bad ones? Do we do the thing that is right or the thing that is easy?). Today, the focus is on the financial meaning of boarding school (I am in boarding school which means I have money and power, and I don't have to be nice. Let's talk about how hard it is to be so rich.) Sure, in the 80' boarding school addressed the issue of money -- we met the scholarship girl, and we learned that good people like people for who they are rather than what they have. Then we moved on to the next installment which might feature a girl who parties too hard who either learns her lesson or suffers. Then, we moved on to something else. The issues of money, drugs, and sex are the ONLY things boarding school books today focus on. Over and over with the same issues interspersed with shopping trips and girl-on-girl backstabbing.

I'm not saying there weren't problems with Canby Hall and other series of my youth. Mediocre books of my youth were always overly moralistic, for one thing. Good girls didn't have sex because sex always had negative consequences (one of the reasons girls of my generation passed around copies of Forever until the damn glue came off the binding). Good girls never drank or they would automatically be shunned for their destructive behavior. They were also a little bit too Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm at times -- once the three girls became friends at Canby Hall, they never had to question each other. Best friendship was a vow that equalled the call of the convent. We all knew that smelled a bit like old fish.

That said, the pendulum has swung WAY too far in the other direction. In today's boarding school books, your best friend is, dollars to doughnuts, going to be your worst enemy at least once before it's through. Best friendship vows are now ALWAYS trumped by a cute boy. The lessons of feminism have, to say the least been taken out to the woodchipper never to be heard from again.

In Canby Hall and others of that ilk, the bitch got hers, and you cheered when she did. By the end of the book, you could rest assured that karma would out. Then, you lay back on your Strawberry Shortcake sheets, grabbed your Cabbage Patch Doll, and tried to figure out how you could be the nicest person you could be because SHE was the one good things happened to.

Today, the winner is simply the one who gets the stud. You COULD try to be the nicest girl in the bunch, but the more efficient route is just to go to the gym and beauty parlor. You know, and then put out.

I just finished the memoir Restless Virgins about the oral sex scandal at Milton Academy in 2005. It reads kind of the same. I don't think that's a coincidence. I haven't read nearly enough to determine whether it correlation or causality, but I know, for darn sure, it isn't happenstance.

So, our books were mediocre, and today's books are mediocre, which leaves us to ask which kind of crap is preferable. I gotta hang on to the well-aged crap. Maybe it sent me out into the real world with an overly sunny view of what I was going to encounter, but it didn't turn me into the kind of girl, like those of Milton Academy 2005, who believed that bad behavior towards your best friend was just the way things were, and that giving 5 boys blowjobs at the same time was just their due, "part of the social contract" (the authors' words, and they went to Milton).

I could care less about the behavior of the girl at Milton Academy. If you want to give 5 blowjobs to 5 guys, more power to you, but the culture that says boys determine your place in the social soup line is ludicrous. I may have had to learn the painful lesson that no boy on the planet was going to be as sweet and perfect as the boys in my books, but no one ever had to sit me down and tell me that boys didn't necessarily deserve to get whatever they wanted from me simply because they had a penis, and the penis ruled the world.

Know what? Boys in the books of my adulthood are still better than the boys I know in real life (yes, even the Crimefighter, sad to say, although he's closer than most). That's why I read! If I wanted a thoroughly normal type of good boy, I'd hang out with one of my many really awesome male friends or spend time cuddled up to the Crimefighter. When I want more than that (and more than I could ever expect) I open up my books and meet once again Roarke or Daemon or Heathcliff on the moors. I don't expect real men to be the men in novels, as they are the epitome of what could be. Experience shows us what is possible and what is fiction, but starting high and always keeping an eye on that ideal means somewhere in our heads, we always know we DESERVE the ideal, and settle for the close.

That's not available if your formative romantic heroes are those found in today's teen mediocre boarding school literature. There seems to be a desensitivity to what girls deserve. If the prevailing ideology they learn is not to aim for the stars (yes, only to be crushed when they realize no man is Rochester, even Rochester himself) but simply to embrace the popular, what can they hope to wind up with?

The unavailable types of boys of my teenage books grew up to be the unavailable types of men in my adult books. THAT is why the juvenile lit of my youth, even the stuff that was just average, treated me more like an adult than the average young adult novels of today.

There will be more later, I'm sure, but right now there seems to be a ruckus downstairs...... so I bid ado to Mr. Darcy and go see what the hell has the Crimefighter using bowling words in the house......

Consequential Endeavors

It's smack in the middle of the day on June 4, and I'm wearing a sweatshirt and drinking from my second pot of coffee because it's too chilly to drink anything cold and too early to be mixing a drink, even for me. There's something unholy about that, but I won't complain. I believe there's a limit to the amount of complaints the world can hold in a given day, and I seem to be the source of so many that I'm afraid what adding one more will do to the planet.

When I embarked on my little quest to be the housewife from the 50's (with a boyfriend playing the role of "husband" while not actually supporting me and a Boston terrier, Siamese cat and a parade of fish in the role of "the children," mind you) this summer, I expected there to be a good bit of ribbing. That's sort of the role I play in a lot of my relationships, and I'm good at taking it on the chin (or, more often, tuning it completely out).

I think I'm pretty good at taking minor criticism in the form of snubs. When friends from high school give me the sad eyes filled with pity because the Crimefighter and I aren't married, a mutual decision arrived at by two people who set their stock in the path of least resistance, I let them think what they will. When a family member who needn't be mentioned by name feels the necessity to qualify a reference to Ernest Hemingway with "you know, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises" despite the fact that I've had pretty near close to a quarter of a million dollars worth of literature education pass through if not become lodged in my head over the years, I say nothing. There's a modicum of resentment, yes, but I fight the battles that can be won, most of the time, and this is a field I abandoned years ago.

Still, what I didn't expect to find about my self-imposed/ self-selected hiatus from the working world is the anger it would inspire. I truly get the feeling that an awful lot of people find it personally and morally reprehensible that I've chosen to explore, for a limited time, the me aside from the me that punches a time clock (well, OK, not literally) during the school year.

First off, I should say that I don't consider myself entitled to this summer off. Most people in my profession have summer things they do. The fortunate have summer things to do that aren't demeaning and degrading. For two summers, I hauled my butt out of bed five and sometimes six days a week at 5 or sometimes 6 to drive the reverse commute (still a drag) down I-93 to the South Shore and the Cape to register little kiddies into summer camp so they wouldn't be stuck in the hood all summer starting fires, joining gangs, or being glued to the television set. I did it with a song in my heart because I felt there was a purpose. It helped others at the same time that it kept me in Iced Coffees and other niceties.

That came to an end as the economy ground to a halt, and I no longer had a summer thing I felt made a contribution to my state or my world. I don't think I could muster the same commitment to getting people fries with that. I'm not too good to wait tables, but I'm also not good at it.

I also realize I am fortunate in that I have a certain situation that allows me a financial freedom most people don't have. I gave up an $850 a month (my half, mind you) crappy flat in the city and hauled my cookies to the burbs for the sole purpose of not contributing thousands of dollars a year to the conglomerate of Nordblom management who seemed intent on using my money to turn my apartment into a bat sanctuary. (I know the bats might have been an endangered species, and I don't care. Maybe they BECAME endangered because they refused to roost in a place they were wanted. At the risk of sounding all 1979 Camaro, ass, grass, or cash, no one stays for free.)

And, no, I don't pay The Crimefighter rent at this time. The reason is not because I'm a freeloader. The reason is because smart women do not move in with men they are not married to and then become financially dependent on them. I needed a few more years to become truly free and clear, debt-wise, as private education and graduate education is never free, even when you are on full graduate assistantships (which I was), at least not in the Humanities. Timing didn't allow me to wait, and our agreement was that I would break the rules and use what would be rent to get to my position of financial independence that much faster. That and I would take full responsibility for cleaning the tub, cause DAMN.

I won't even bring up that The Crimefighter owes me and the Manda a solid from a time way before this when he needed digs in Boston and didn't have to pay for a hotel room for three months. I will also not bring up the fact that I donated way more than he would have charged me for two years of rent in his name when I moved here. I had, what some might call an obsessive amount of stuff. The Manda gets her ceiling fans installed, and I get to claw my way out of debt.

I think there are some parts of his life that are better now that I'm here. He had the typical bachelor's food stores when I moved in, and he hated going to the grocery store. He no longer has to do that. One of the things I've discovered over the year and am trying to hone now is a love of cooking. I'm a little more experimental than he cares for, so sometimes my dinners hit the metaphorical wall like Mr. Magoo playing Jai Alai, but for the most part he has a meat and some vegetables waiting for him when he comes home from work. This is a far cry from the steady diet of granola bars and goldfish crackers he used to subsist on.

The tub looks better. A LOT better.

The dog only rarely spends the whole day in the bucket, and usually gets a walk and a dog park visit every day, so he isn't a little freakazoid when Daddy gets home.

The fish get fed so steady that they are breeding. REALLY breeding. Seriously. Anyone want a cichlid?

But as usual, I digress.

What I never expected was to make people angry when they ask me what I'm doing, and I say I'm not working. I wonder if stay-at-home moms get this too. I bet I'm an even bigger sinner in the eyes of the workforce, because a Boston Terrier and a Siamese cat really don't need my constant presence to survive.

Still, it isn't like I sacrificed a virgin to the Underworld to be able to take the summer off, and it isn't like I'm living off Gerry. I did it the old fashioned way. I spent nine months asking myself every time I was in a store whether I wanted whatever it was I wanted more than I wanted the summer off. For the most part, I always wanted the summer more. Now, I have it, and I'm a pariah to some.

I still buy all the food for the house. I do conserve it a lot more and use leftovers when I can, but aren't you supposed to do that all the time? I have more time, so I shop at farmer's markets and rely on fruits and vegetables rather than meat, which also lowers my bill. To me, it's a matter of choices and priorities. I made these, and I don't know why that infuriates a few folks.

It's opened up a whole way of looking at my life, by making me defend the choices that most people say they would make "if only they had the time." I HAVE the time, I made the choices, and I must say I'm happy so far with the outcome.

Here's what I get to do:

• I spend a lot of time with my pets. The dog was expensive, and when I'm working, I never get to just hang out with him other than on the weekends. He's a better pet for my troubles. The cat was free, but he's getting up there in years (I lost his sister in March), so I'm happy to have time enjoying his company. He's on a dog cushion just by my right shoulder at the moment. A little writing, a little nuzzling my cat. That is what life should be.
  
• I'm growing vegetables for the first time in my life. It's thrilling to watch my tiny little seeds become tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and peas. So far, I'm really thrilled I don't suck at it.
  
• I write. This is something I used to do all the time, and it got lost along the way. Getting back into writing, just for myself, will actually make me better at my job; at least I hope so. My plan is to do a NANOWRIMO (50,000 words in 30 days) month in July. Maybe I'll do June 15th through July 15th. I kind of have an idea now. It's the same feeling as having a crush on someone you think might like you back. You walk around all day thinking about it and smiling.
  
• I clean my house. It really isn't that bad if you only do it a little bit a day (and refuse to let the Crimefighter into the rooms you just cleaned -- pretty soon, he'll be relegated to the half bath downstairs!). The house, right now, looks pretty damn good.
  
• I give myself projects and force myself to do them. I'm in the process of digitizing my past, and it is fascinating! My family is really cool. I know that now in ways I didn't before.
  
• I go to yard sales every Saturday morning. Gives the Crimefighter and I time to miss each other, and sometimes I get something cool for a dollar. I also do a little volunteering in the process. My aunt works as part of a Historical Society that raises money through a Christmas bazaar every year. They take donations of people's used Christmas stuff and sell it. I collect it from people who don't want to haul it back into their attics or basements when it doesn't sell at the yard sale.
  
• I teach an online class to 6 students. It doesn't even feel like work. I have time to help each and every one of them the way I wish I had time during the school year. These folks can write some business memos -- and their resumes will be phenomenal. It reminds me what teaching could be if it weren't a business.
  
• I read. This one I actually do a lot of during the year too, but I'm averaging more than a book every two days. It amazes me that people tell me they don't have time to read. Yes.... you do. I will concede that children and jobs may mean you can't take your dog to the dog park every day or grow vegetables in your backyard, but you CAN find time to read. The Crimefighter works ridiculous hours, and he still manages to get through a little Clive Cussler (ew... yuck... I know! But what are you gonna do?) every night before bed.

I guess my larger question is why I even feel the need to justify this? I've gathered a real appreciation for the things we could do if we let ourselves while I'm out of the rat race this summer. It probably does take a hiatus from a job to be able to do everything I get to do (and I do feel fortunate), but every person could find time to do one of these things, if they wanted to. Even after I go back to school in the Fall, I know I'll keep reading, if slower. I hope I'll keep writing. Gardens and Yard sales die with the snows, but the dog walks can continue, if I force myself.

It isn't laziness. It's a realization that your self-worth should not be judged by how much you contribute to the gross national product. I'm made far better by my learning to have patience with my dog than I would be getting someone a drink before dinner. I'm made a much better person by reading Charlotte Bronte (or Nora Roberts for that matter) than I would be ringing up sales in some store somewhere.

We seem to collectively think that our worth is determined not by our productivity but by our financial productivity. I no longer think that is the case. There may be something noble in working, but that work needn't be something others can see.

And I do think we could all do this. How will I be able to take my dog for a daily walk during the school year? By getting up 30 minutes earlier, foregoing checking my email in the morning, or (most likely) by giving up one television program a week. In some ways, DVR is the greatest gift to man since..... the invention of television.

So, I'm done apologizing. I love my summer life. I miss my students a bit, but I know that, come September 9th, I'll be in a better place to help them than I would be without this summer. I fully intend to spend the next three months doing nothing of "consequence," and I think it might just be the most consequential thing I could do.

About a Girl

I'm starting to feel like the narrator from About A Boy. My day is also beginning to be divided up into units that seem to repeat themselves, although mine have a tendency to be lengthier than his. As a shout out to one of my favorite writers, here is my day, or some of it, in units:

• Wake up, 1 unit
• Let the dog out; make coffee; unload the dishwasher, 1 unit
• Drink coffee; plead with the dog to be quiet while the Crimefighter (who actually goes to work these days rather than working from home) catches the end of his slumber, 1 unit
• Walk the dog, 2 units
• Feed the dog; Load the dishwasher; clean up the kitchen from the night before, 1 unit
• Check email; kick ass in mafia wars; general computer assing around, 2 units
• Check in with my summer school class; grade papers; send emails asking where the papers due last week are, 4 units (only 6 students in this class)
• Read in a thoroughly useless but fun book, 1 unit
• Scan next set of family photos, 4 units
• Dedicated cuddle my cat time, 1 unit
• Read another chapter in useless book, 1 unit
• Something domestic, 1 unit
• Break for lunch

Most of this is self-explanatory, and I'm doing much better now that I've tried to carve some semblance of a structure into my day. My house even looks better now that I've decided to do something but not everything every day. Most of what's left to be done requires some assistance from the Crimefighter before I can get to it anyway, so I feel kind of off the hook.

Scanning pictures seems to be the most interesting thing I'm doing these days. Several years ago, my Dad and Uncle decided to rent out my grandparents' house after my grandfather passed away and my grandmother, who has since passed away, moved permanently into a retirement home. It was kind of a funny experience that highlights my dad's family quite well. They had to force me to take the small television, because no one really wanted it, but all the grandchildren went 20 rounds over the paper turkey my grandmother used to put on the table every Thanksgiving. There was a lot of nice stuff in the old house, but my prized possession was the old wooden board my grandmother used to have with her at all times. One side for baking and the other for playing solitaire or doing the daily crossword puzzle (which she finished every day well into her 70s).

Although my grandparents were not very sentimental people on the surface, I'm starting to realize they may have been a little more so than they appeared. I was shocked to discover just how well documented my father's family is, at least in photographs. When we cleaned out the house, I took all of the family photos and promised to put them together in some sort of order.

Yes, that was years ago.

I did actually do SOMETHING with some of them. My dad's people were farmers right up until, well, my Dad. This means that there are some very interesting pictures of a new England farm (and my family with all the animals you might find on a New England dairy farm) spanning, literally, generations. It all started with a hilarious picture of my great great grandfather standing in a suit, chomping a cigar, and watching a horse drink water. Somewhere in that image, an idea began forming.

My sister is a veterinarian. I've mentioned before that this is something she always knew. I don't remember her ever wanting to be anything else, except for that brief summer she discovered hot rollers and wanted to be a cosmetician. After seeing that picture of my father's great grandfather, I began to think that maybe having love for animals in her blood wasn't altogether that strange.

I went through the photos and found 6 generations of Richards (from that original photo through my sister's kids) all surrounded by various animals. This was pre-llama, so the pets don't range to the exotic or semi-exotic, but I bought one of those pre-made collages and filled it with these photos for a Christmas gift for her. I thought it would look good on her office wall, sort of make her look bona fide or something. I even went through old photos of my mom's side of the family. They aren't as multi generational, but while the love for animals doesn't span so long, it is no less intense. Let's just say I'm glad there was never a situation where my Mother's father had to choose whether to save his dog Heidi or me from a burning building.

The grouped photos were meant to be something to hang in her office. I swear I didn't mean to make her cry on Christmas morning. I can't tell you how much it pleases me that those two photo groupings hang on her wall in places of importance. They even survived her move to Virginia and found a place on her new walls.

When I discovered that I would have much time and little money this summer, I dusted off all those boxes of photos (I did at least store them well) and decided to do something about them. So, for the past weeks, since Mount Ida let out, I've been scanning not just the pet photos but all of my family history. I'm almost through the Richard side, and hope to be done with both sides of the family before the leaves change. My eventual plan is to burn multiple copies of DVDs and give them to everyone for Christmas.

Somewhere around photo 200, I realized something. No one is going to appreciate it. None of them will do more than, MAYBE, look through them once. They will grasp the amount of time it took to gather them and transfer them to electronic format, and they will say thank you, but they will all, somewhere in their hearts, consider it a colossal waste of time and one of those things that Suzy places too much importance on. A frivolous thing, really, and not at all important.

Around photo 250, I realized it didn't matter. This was when I started to realize that it would be their loss. There's nothing I can do about that. Let them eat cake; I'm enjoying learning what was never spoken of in my family.

To sum up my families: Richards don't fight. Cables fight about everything, none of it of substance. Richards don't really talk. Cables snipe and gossip. Richards don't complain if their legs fall off. Cables blame others for a hangnail.

It's not really that bad, but sometimes it seems so. I grew up knowing there was nothing that was going to make the Richards get outwardly angry with me, but there was nothing that was going to make them more gregarious with me either. Spartan stoicism through and through. I also grew up knowing that, at some point, I would be an outcast among the Cables, but it didn't really matter because we were all a round robin of whipping boys, and the scorn passed to another if you just kept your head down and did nothing.

These photos are telling me I might have had it all wrong. I haven't gotten to the Cable photos yet, but I'm hoping to find a similar situation there. Here's what I've learned about my Father's family through photos:

• They were not poor. I grew up hearing stories about tough times, but even Depression era pictures show my Dad in new and fashionable clothes. No one was fat, but no one grew leaner either, probably caused by self-supporting and back breaking farm work and a lack of knowledge about the existence of the stock market.
• They were joyful. I never thought of my Dad's family as ever having fun, but they really did. While I might find pictures of my Dad's father and mother behind the King and Queen Neptune facades at a cheesy tourist spot in Florida mildly disturbing, they truly seem to be having a ball. That's not something I ever saw all that often.
• My grandparents were in love with each other. I met them when they were already an old bickering married couple. Other family members often claim that my grandfather was an ass to my grandmother all the time. Still, pictures on their wedding day show two people giddy in love with each other. Crusty old Swedes are not actors. They couldn't have been faking it. They were gone over each other.
• They were a tight and loving extended family. My grandmother remained incredibly close to her sister and brothers throughout their lives. I see them grow up and grow old, always together. My grandfather always lived within a mile of his siblings. I love my sister and her family, but I'm not sure we could live in peace that close for that long.

It's hard sometimes to remember that we meet our grandparents when they have already lived an awful lot of life. Douglas Coupland once said something about our parents living entire lives without us. It's hard, he says, to imagine our mothers smiling in the arms of a man who isn't our father. Same goes for our grandparents; something I'm just now learning. But it is true, and somehow I find comfort in it.

So, if no one appreciates the hours I put in and doesn't care to look at the product, that will be OK. For now, I'm enjoying my mornings with coffee getting to know some really interesting people who lived and loved long before I.

One of Those Days

Ever have one of those days where everything on the schedule screams "Suck!" but yet the day itself turns out pretty nice? If no, hope for them; they're good.

I woke up this morning with the following agenda: walk the dog who is getting WAY too overweight thanks to heartworm treatments and overindulgent parents, go to the Dentist all the hell the way in Marshfield, stop into the old summer job to pay for my health insurance for the last time, and then try to time dinner to when the Crimefighter gets home starving even though he invariably forgets to call me to tell me he's on his way home even though his come home times vary drastically.

The dog walk was pleasant, mostly because my old friend/nemesis, who I call Mrs. Hurvitz simply because she reminds me of the REAL Mrs. Hurvitz from the Corey road days who I miss, is on vacation. Mrs. Hurvitz (the second) is one of those anomalies you only get in suburbia. I met her a few days after we got Boogie. I was taking him on one of our first walks, trying to bond Cesaer Milan style, when the door of a house I must have passed a thousand times alone flies open and an older lady in a hastily thrown on housecoat comes tearing down the walk. With little fear of imminent danger (I'm not tough, but I figured I can take on a septuagenarian in a housecoat), Boogie and I waited patiently. She immediately threw herself down on the ground beside my dog and began to squeal with delight. Unlike the original Mrs. Hurvitz, she had little to say to me. What can I say? My boy is a ladies' man.

Within a week, she had purchased dog treats to give to Boogie every morning and afternoon on our walks. Boogie is strictly a Science Diet/ Iams boy, so the treats soon became the reason he woke me up every morning for his walk. I have nothing against Snausages, per se, but they do pose a problem when your dog's system is used to genetically perfected dog food formulas.

Explosive diarrhea. And gas.

Within two weeks, The Crimefighter and I almost had to move into the spare room. From his place conveniently in between the two of us and often under the blankets, my boy was a lethal weapon.

This put me in a quandary. This little old lady bought my child treats. She adored my boy, and he loved her treats if not her (but probably her too - my boy, he loves the ladies). Still, my bedroom was becoming a gas chamber. Fortunately, pretty days in Massachusetts, they do not last forever. When the cold weather came, I shortened and changed my longer summer route, and the Crimefighter and I once again slept without the constant fear of methane poisoning.

I haven't decided what this summer will bring. So, for today at least, crisis averted.

On to Marshfield, a city on the South Shore where I once wasted a great deal of my youth.

Allow me explain... no. Is too much..... Allow me sum up:

My first dentist in Boston was hot. Achingly so. This is not why I chose him, but it is not a reason to stop using a good dentist. At the same time, I was dating someone who could not understand why I "needed" to have such a good looking dentist. As if my oral hygiene were a thinly veiled attempt to cuckold him.

Seriously? I know my strengths and my flaws. I grew up without benefit of fluoridated water. The inside of my mouth does NOT send men, least of all dentists, into a frenzy. It is NOT my most attractive feature. I do have Swedish teeth, which is good, but I also drink coffee and soda incessantly. You do the math.

Continuing summation: My then boyfriend (to protect his identity, we'll just anonymously call him "The 175 pound mass of drunken buffoon") wheedled and cajoled until I agreed to go to his mother's dentist, a kindly older white haired man. I needed some work done, so voila, new dentist.

Imagine how hard it was not to smile when I was told that I would not be seeing said kindly older, white haired man but his son who is about the DB's age and significantly more attractive.

INTERJECTION: My dentist is a lovely man with a lovely new husband. These are things I knew about 10 minutes into my first visit. Once you have dated for 20 years AND attended English graduate school in literature, you kind of get a sense of the men who want to play, don't want to play with you, and aren't even aware the game is on. And this is not information I ever presented to the DB. You want to drive yourself crazy with paranoid fantasies you have no reson to create? Knock yourself out. But I digress.

The DB came and went in a series of ugly confrontations, only some about the dentist, but I kept the dentist. He's funny. I figure it's easier to find a new boyfriend than it is to find a good dentist. Turns out, I was right.

What I love about this dentist is that somewhere along the way, it became as important to talk about the books we were reading as about my teeth. Sure, I get a good cleaning (gold star today -- the $100 toothbrush is worth it!), but I have to laugh when he comes in at the very end and the first thing he tells me, before the X-rays and the tooth stuff, is that he's reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I thought it was cool because I have listened to the book on audio (pretty cool, but weird even for Ishiguro) and because I teach an article at Northeastern that relies heavily on his Remains of the Day.

And, no, I didn't ruin the surprise.

All in all, I no longer feel as judged when I go to the dentist. Maybe this is because I get to do a little judging myself. And, for the record, both he and I did well.

PS -- The DB? No clue since he Step Nine-d me (that's an AA thing where you make amends for the people you have wronged).

I told him not to worry about it. I got the dentist, and I've got the Crimefighter.

All in all, I traded up.

Ooo... Just started Captain Freedom: A Superhero's Quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity He so Richly Deserves by G. Xavier Robillard, and it's knocking my nerdy socks off.

Also about 50 pages into The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America by Willi Kleinknecht. I still have much to go, but Ronald Reagan may have been a douche.

Rules of the Road in Reading Recommendations

How's that for alliteration?

As weeks go, another week of concentrated reading time hasn't been bad. I'm tempted to say that I've not accomplished much, but if my goal of the summer is to read down my stack of books, I'm actually doing well. I've completed almost a book a day since Mount Ida let out, although, to be fair, I wasn't always on Page one of the books I was reading.

I thought of being what I considered "responsible." My reading was preferenced with library books and then books others got me because they felt these books would change my life.

I don't mean to be ungrateful, but I don't think many people really have a clue what I'm about. And I'm not sure a lot of people I know know what recommending books is about.

I have a lot of friends who are very smart and very literary, but recommending books is a lot like matchmaking people,and it often goes about as well. Sometimes the ass or the boobs ARE enough to hide a multitude of sins, but if you are looking to create lasting, meaningful relationships, you have to do more than pick any two people at random and slam them together on the grounds that "they both know me and like me."

I should say that I do inhale books, and when you inhale books, you eventually have to spread out your topics and fertilize more than one section of your brain. I do that with aplomb. When I'm reading, I constantly make connection between the books that I read and the people that I know. I take recommending reading to people seriously because I genuinely think that people who like to read enjoy life in a myriad of ways that others do not. That said, I have a lot of friends who have never gotten a reading recommendation from me because I haven't met their soulmate yet.

I should say that I tell every person I talk to what I'm reading. I tell them what I am thinking about it, and it's usually positive because I toss more books out from lack of interest than many people read in a lifetime. Hundreds of thousands of books are published every year. There is something for you and something for me, and life is too short to read Moby Dick because you think you owe it to yourself or anyone else.

Still, this line of conversation is NOT a recommendation. So, here are some rules of the road:

1. While books can change lives, no one book changes every one's life (least of all, The Secret). Don't be angry when your favorite book gets a review of, "Meh...."
2. Focus on matching interests with readers. I adored Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but I would never recommend it too any of my students or to anyone I know living in a high rise in the middle of Boston. People living in a New England urban environment aren't going to appreciate a book about living off the land in Kentucky. While they might enjoy it, it could very well leave them feeling at a loss about how to improve their diet. Simply put, New Englanders in apartment buildings can't turn their homesteads into a farm, so why suggest they are inadequate when there's not much they can do to change things? Instead of recommending the book, I decided I wanted to see if organic food really did make people feel better. I invited people in the area to come with me on different weekends to go to a local farmer's market. The message was there, and we found some yummy stuff. No need to drag books into it.
3. Avoid books on spirituality, money, or self-help. It's just preachy. People's emotional and spiritual health is their business -- the section is called SELF-HELP for a reason. Everyone knows where the section is in Barnes and Noble -- they'll go there (probably without you) if they want to improve themselves. That doesn't mean that any book on the topic is taboo. It's , again, about sharing enjoyment rather than dogma. I have two recent reads that might better illustrate. I adored Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as one of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or almost all) of it Back and The Other Preacher in Lynchburg: My Life Across Town from Jerry Falwell. Hailing from the Deep South, it should come as no surprise that I know a lot of people who consider themselves highly religious people. For most of them, I would recommend neither book. For those who really love reading about religion, I would cautiously recommend the second, but not the first even though the first is, in my opinion, the stronger and more impressive book. Why? Because the second is an impression of one man by one man and is written with several disclaimers. The first, while not a hatchet job, is far more antagonistic towards the religious right. I believe the author of Crazy for God is right, but I don't like proselytizers, and I don't aim to be one.
4. Don't recommend a book on a subject that the recommendee is an expert on. Instead, recommend a book that offers a unique perspective on the subject. I don't recommend how-to gardening books to my Dad who is a much better gardener than I. I read the novice books and ask his advice, but I don't recommend he read them -- he'd be bored senseless. Instead, I recommended The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden. I also recommend fiction where the main character is a gardener.
5. Don't be put out when the book you recommend sits on a shelf for a long time. It doesn't mean the person you gave it to disregards your opinion. Let them have it forever, if they need it. This isn't a race. I've fallen into books on my first attempt at reading them, and others on my seventh attempt. Sometimes, you just aren't in the mood for a particular book. Better to wait until you know you can love it the way it needs to be loved. Books will wait for you to need them. It usually takes me a few false starts and stops to get into a Tom Robbins novel. He writes slow, though, so maybe that's a good thing. I bet I started Skinny Legs and All a half dozen times. Sixth time was the charm, and now it's part of my soul. It would not have been if I'd forced myself through it on my first attempt.
6. Understand your weirdness. There are authors I love who I love in the closet. No one else would understand. There are many that I prize who I only recommend to die hard readers with the disclaimer that it takes a while. I'm a fantasy novel junkie. I devour Anne Bishop, Patricia Briggs, and others even when they aren't doing their best work. The Manda is the reading-est friend I have, and I have never recommended a one of these to her. Why? Because her weirdness just doesn't cover orcs and dragons and magical magical lands that I find enthralling. If you love books, you can love them without corroboration. She doesn't ask me to delve into The Economist, and I keep my trolls and dryads to myself.
7. Know that books are about more than content. You also need to pay attention to style and length. My partner in crime is wicked smart, but an 800 page book would turn him off. It isn't that he couldn't make it through and enjoy it. Call it fear of commitment. He wants something he can finish in a set period of time, and he doesn't want to develop back problems from lugging it around.
8. Don't try to "expand" someone's repertoire, unless they ask you to. If they like fiction, they don't need The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the Good Life and Good Society. If they like Nora Roberts-esque happy endings, don't give them Anita Blake novels. You aren't their teacher; you're their friend. Come to think of it, I AM a teacher, and I try to avoid it when I can.
9. Be careful with "funny" books. Try to match senses of humor between reader and the read. Christopher Moore makes both me and The Manda pee a little bit. I love Christopher Moore too much to recommend him and then hear, "Meh...," so I only recommend him sporadically.
10. Recommend an author's second best book, if you are matching author to reader. That way, if your recomendee likes it, the rest of the reading won't be a freefall into lesser works. It's a simple formula -- second best, best, and then you have them hooked and they will tolerate earlier or not quite on the mark books. So, if you want to try Christopher Moore, start with Fluke, Practical Demonkeeping, or Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story and ease into Lamb:The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. You won't be disappointed.
11. Don't recommend blockbusters. They have enough PR. Look into the corners for undiscovered gems. Plus, lots of blockbuster novels suck.
12. Don't recommend books on reading. There are a lot of good ones out there, but it's kind of redundant.
13. Know when to break the rules, as I will at the end of this blog post.

So, the Golden Rule is that the only people who should recommend books are those who love their friends and books and want to get them together. Your job is not to improve someone but to give them a few hours of pleasure in reading something. While I do believe in the power of books to change lives, it's been my experience that the books that change a person's life are usually stumbled upon rather than recommended by others. Most people aren't looking for their lives to change. Most people just want a pleasant way to spend the occasional free afternoon or ten minutes between getting into bed and the REM cycle.

That said, I do have some that I recommend without hesitation. These are guaranteed NOT to change your life or make you feel like you ought to be climbing Everest or achieving world peace singlehandedly. Here's my list of time wasters that won't waste your time:

• Mystery -- Naked in Death by JD Robb. Futuristic/ female cop mystery series. There are about 30 books in the series. If you like this one, you'll finish the series before you hang your Christmas lights.
• Sci-Fi/ Fantasy -- Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop. Fantasy. Hands down the most intricate and imaginative world I've ever encountered. 6-7 books in the series. A disclaimer: there's a lot of disturbing images in the first book. All I can offer you is that there's a Roald-Dahl-esque justice by the end of the series. First one is hard to read, but everything comes up roses by the end of the third, except the stuff that doesn't, you know.
• Children's -- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling. There's a reason it's a blockbuster and a new classic. Sometimes the masses do speak volumes.
• Non-fiction, recent -- The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the 21 st century by Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Scwartz. I liked it. It tried to explain some of the things I find discouraging about the world.

Now, what do you have for me?

There's something about summer.....

Since I turned in my grades Wednesday morning (right on time, thank you very much -- I bet the registrar is shocked), I've officially had 5 days completely to myself. Thanks to a lot of very (in my opinion often overly) specific rules about online classes and application thereof, my summer school online course in business writing has been all set to go. A quick welcome letter and answering the 6 question quiz at Kingdomality (our "get to know you icebreaker," not that that's redundant) meant I'm ready to jump into summer school tomorrow.

I know, on the outside, 5 days off sounds like a dream, but apparently I'm not cut out for it. Don't get me wrong -- I know how much of a blessing 5 days off would be for someone with children or vacation plans, but I have neither of those. Frankly, I'm too unstructured and the result is that nothing is getting accomplished except for way too much time on Facebook and resulting carpal pain nightmares.

So, in an attempt at forcing structure where none exists, I dragged the laptop up stairs and plugged it into mission control, finally. A few printer drivers and software bits later, and I'm actually at a desk writing. It will look like structure, even if it isn't. Fake it til you make it, right?

I ask my students every semester what they would do if they won the lottery. Would they stay in school? Would they work? Would they do something other than their planned career path. I've always been amazed how many of them say they would quit school and do nothing. I can officially say now that it sucks. No... really.

My first day of unemployment (right after I typed in grades and hit "send") was amazing. I did nothing. I tuned in a little Maury AND a little Oprah. I took the dog on two walks and to the dog park. I finished The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher in peace and quiet. When my partner in crime came home and asked what I did that day, I got all Office Space and said, "I did nothing. And it was as good as I thought it could be."

Then came Day Two. Incapable of sleeping past seven am (and not wanting to learn since I do have 8 o'clocks in the fall) I made coffee, kicked some ass in Mafia Wars on Facebook, gave an old friend whose daughter is looking at colleges some advice, and walked the dog.

It was 8:30 a.m.

I went to the gym, planned a menu and bought the groceries. I potted the remaining of my heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers. I rearranged the ENTIRE upstairs bathroom closet (see former posts about reed baskets and matching cloth liners).

It was barely noon.

I started - and finished - the book on Generation Y. It just made me mad.

I started and finished a Miss Julia book. It just made me realize that a sassy Octogenarian in North Carolina has a more culturally stimulating life than mine. Then again, I know a whole bunch of octogenarians from the South, and I think more than a bit of Ross' fiction is just that.

I know there are things I could do. I have some basement organization that desperately needs to get done, but I was saving that for the middle of July when the basement is the only place worth being in the heat.

I could finally put all that stuff up on ebay I've been meaning to get up there.

I could scan the 30 million pictures I have in a box before I forget who they are of.

The point is that I have the whole summer to complete the things I have to do (and I will), but I find that hard to get started on when I still hold on to the thought that there ought to be something I really WANT to do. We spend so much time rushed and hurried thinking "if only I had the time."

Maybe that's just wishful thinking, because I HAVE the time, and without having to "fit" it all in, I'm getting a graduate degree, already, in the lost art of time suckage.

I need a schedule. My thought was "one crappy thing I have to do every day and then one fun thing." Unfortunately, I can't really seem to get enthused about even the "fun things."

What scares me is that before I know it, I'll be parking in renaissance garage, printing out my syllabus, and this summer won't have one good story to tell my friends at our start of term meeting.

So, here's one more thing. 5 more books I've finished that are up for grabs. Most are OK, if not stellar, and they are something to do while I get back to Maury and the search for inspiration.

The Book of Joe (Jonathan Tropper) -- think October Road, the book. It's better than the TV show, but that's sort of like being the valedictorian of summer school.

Obedience (Will Lavender) -- big overture; little show. Know how sometimes you struggle through the book until the end makes the struggle worth it? This is kind of the opposite. The entire book had me on the edge of my seat, and I found the end unsatisfying and forced. But you might not. If I taught creative writing, I might assign all but the last three chapters to students and have them write their own endings. I bet one would be better.

Hero (Perry Moore) -- superhero book. I thought it was a hoot. Thom Creed is the son of a pair of superheroes. Mom has vanished (which has a lot of potential meanings in superhero world) and Dad was disgraced when he bungled a save many years before (think the opening scenes of The Incredibles). Now, the book's version of the Superfriends wants him..... but for what?

The Age of the Conglomerates: a novel of the Future (Thomas Nevins) -- dystopian future where "Coots" (those whose age makes them a social and financial burden on society) are all relocated to government designed communities in the Southwest. Kids can be dumped into the sewers and replaced with genetically superior (and better behaved) specimens. Cahoots and chaos galore! I liked it, but then again I'm a dork like that.

Keeping Faith (Jody Piccoult) -- if I'm in a Jody place, I love her books. I'm not in a Jody place all that often. I liked this one, and I really liked Plain Truth but I really have to be in the mood.

MY READING:

Just finished Non-fiction : Rich Like them: My Door to Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America's Wealthiest Neighborhoods (Ryan D'Agostino)

I liked it -- It's not so much a "how to be wealthy" book as a "how to make your life more enjoyable and stop being so hung up about money" book. Bottom line: most of the people who make a lot of money don't do it by making money their primary focus. Interesting.

Just Finished Fiction: Unplugging Philco (Jim Knipfel)

Imagine if George Bush had his way..... very Wag the Dog. Full of a lot of pop culture references, although they could be a little more subtle. Dystopian future where the government (really a corporation) enacts its will by convincing the populace that they are under threat of namelss, faceless terrorists. You know.... after The Horribleness (and who created that is up for discussion). Sound familiar?

NOW READING Fiction: Fire Study (Maria V. Snyder) Currently: p. 68

Third in a fantasy series -- not blown away by it, but it's the final in the series, and I feel compelled to see how it ends.

NOW READING Non-fiction: The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the Good Life and the Good Society (J.D. Trout) Currently p. 56

Interesting look at combining what we know about people's psychological makeup and how we can explain the lack of compassion an increasing lack of real empathy in some and almost hysterical levels in others. Attempting to define what it is we feel or should feel compelled to do to support our fellow man -- nice addendum about how we look at life differently from Western Europe/ Scandinavia.

The first 5 are free to you to keep if they look appealing. The four on my current list are all library books. Hoping to turn both in by Wednesday.