Horn update

Missing horn still missing.

Horns on roof still all gunky.

Babysitter pulled out of the driveway yesterday, stopped, rolled down her car window and and said, “Umm… Are those horns on your roof?”  She thought maybe they were some sort of primitive good luck charm.

Horns on the roof

If you drive by my house any time soon, you may notice that there are cow horns on my roof.  It’s okay. I know about them.  They’re not some rural prank or satanic threat. I put them there.

I’m preparing a school presentation for my MG historical novel Spitfire, which is set during the American Revolution.  The main character carries her father’s powder horn throughout the story. It’s etched with his drawings and maps and is an important symbol in the book, so I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I made a real powder horn to show kids?”  I mentioned this to the life science teacher at my school, who also raises heifers in her spare time.  Last week, she showed up at my classroom door with a bag of bloody (and still quite hairy) cow horns that she had just removed from some of “her girls.”  (I thought only bulls had horns, but it turns out that’s not true.)  She put them in my little refrigerator (“Don’t worry, they’re triple bagged,” she said.) until I could take them home to boil them, which she thought would probably take care of all the gunk still inside.

I boiled them in a big pot on my grill burner for two hours, but the gunk showed no signs of releasing its grip on my horns.  Thank God for online reenactor groups, because from their bulletin boards, I learned that boiling was not the answer.  I needed to leave the horns outside for several weeks, maybe months, until insects and things ate away the gunk so that I could remove the core (a bit of bone inside the actual horn) and get to work making my powder horn.  So I left my four horns outside in my back yard and went in to put the kids to bed.

The next morning, there were only two horns left.  I’m terribly worried that one of the older women in my neighborhood is going to have a coronary when she sees her dog chewing something and says, “What’s that you have, Buddy?” only to find a bloody cow horn with sinister looking black hair all around it.  But wait – there’s more. 

That morning, I put the remaining horns on the roof (another suggestion from the online reenactors, to prevent animals from carrying them off…. If only I’d read that post the first time.).  The next day, one of the missing horns appeared on my back deck.  No one knows who or what decided to return it.  I added it to the group on the roof, which seem to be doing just fine now.  My husband was putting away clothes in the bedroom when I climbed out the window to put the third one out there.  He just shook his head, probably wondering why he didn’t marry that nice Mary Beth who baked such good cookies. 
Stay tuned.  I’ll let you know how the powder horns are coming along and if the fourth one ever shows up.

Work in Progress Progress!

I’m a huge believer in positive peer pressure, so joining

[info]newport2newport

with the Summer Shape-up was just what I needed to get moving on my current middle grades work in progress.  It’s working wonders.  I’ve written just over 11,000 words in the past week.  What a great idea and a great gift to fellow writers!  Thanks!

Working has made me a little less impatient for the release my MG historical novel, Spitfire, this fall.  The last time I hated waiting this much was when I was a week overdue for the birth of my daughter.  On a happy note, though, Art Cohn from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum sent me a lovely note about the book’s release.  LCMM does an amazing job promoting Lake Champlain heritage and reaches out to school groups with the most lively, innovative museum programs I’ve ever seen.  Museum educators there were a huge help when I was researching Spitfire.  I’m on my own now with the waiting, though…

High Water Walk

   I’m starting my writing night late again because of the gorgeous weather.  Lake Champlain is incredibly high, so much so that a lovely, marshy state park near my house is almost flooded.  On the plus side, it made for great wildlife viewing on an impromptu photo-walk with the kids this evening.  We watched two juvenile muskrats (I think they were muskrats. I kept listening for them to make those high-pitched noises from the end of that song “Muskrat Love,” but it never happened, so I’m unsure…) and a beautiful osprey.

Lots on my calendar right now….  I’m excited about the New England SCBWI Conference next weekend and looking forward to meeting some writing friends there, as well as some folks whose work I’ve admired but haven’t met yet.  And, I just penciled in the Burlington Book Festival for September 16th – the day set aside for Children’s Literature.  It’s an amazing event that does so much to promote literacy in the Champlain Valley.  I’ll be doing a presentation and workshop for kids and families, based on my book Spitfire (North Country Books, September 2007).  If you live nearby, you should check it out. (Even if you don’t live nearby, it’s a great time to visit Vermont!)

It’s Spring!

I know there have been other signs of spring….  Robins and purple crocus flowers and even a few warm days here and there. But this is the real deal.

               

Rasputin the evil groundhog showed up on my deck today.  He burrows underneath (and in fact lives down there all winter, I think) until he decides I’ve probably started planting in my garden.  Then he pokes up that pointy little nose and sniffs out whatever succulent shoots can can scarf up while no one is watching.  He’s early this time; nothing is in the ground yet.  Last year he nipped off every single broccoli plant except one.  There was just that single lonely head of broccoli when the plant grew up, staring around wondering why none of its friends made it to adulthood. 

Rules

I just finished Cynthia Lord’s book Rules (

[info]cynthialord

) , and I can’t say I’ve read too many books that are more deserving of the Newberry Honor.  What a beautifully crafted book.  It’s amazing and fresh to read an author whose voice is so honest and just plain real. 

Rules is about a girl whose eight-year-old brother is autistic.  He runs the family, in a sense — something that parents and siblings of autistic children understand all too well.  My niece Emily wrote an essay about her autistic younger brother Danny recently. “Welcome to the Jungle” was her theme, and she, too, understood that her family was subject to a certain set of rules due to Danny’s disability.  In Cynthia Lord’s story, the main character, Catherine, makes rules to help her brother through life.  “No taking off your pants in public” may sound strange to those of us who have never lived with an autistic child, but I know that Emily would nod her head knowingly at this one.

At the same time Catherine (Cat) is dealing with the struggles of babysitting her brother, she gets to know another boy who attends the same clinic for therapy.  Jason is in a wheelchair and can’t speak, but the two develop a relationship through the communication cards to which he points to express his thoughts.  Cat ends up crafting more cards for him — brighter ones with pictures and snazzier language.

Beyond the issue of autism, Cat has to deal with the same feelings and angst that all middle school kids face:  Am I going to make friends?  Do I fit in?  This book is sweet and funny and clever (I love the references to Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad).  As a teacher, I kept imagining all the great activities that kids would enjoy to go along with the text.  I’m dying to make communication cards of my own and try talking without my voice for a day.  What an interesting concept.  And what a great book. Thanks, Cynthia!

My Writer’s Notebook

This is my Writer’s Notebook. (I know it’s not technically a proper noun, but I love it enough to have assigned it that special status here.)  I remember being a kid and having an author visit my school in third grade, talking about her Writer’s Journal.  She didn’t bring it or describe it, so I imagined her jotting down her notes in a shiny gold-plated diary with gems (emeralds and rubies, I figured – just small ones) on the cover. After all, it was a terribly important book.  I’m sure she’d have laughed if she knew what I was picturing in my head!

My Writer’s Notebook is none of those things — except important — and even that adjective is shaky because it’s only important to me.  Anyone else who opened it up would probably think, “What is this woman trying to say?  These thoughts are all jumbled and disjointed.  And she’s an ENGLISH teacher??”

That’s the beauty of a Writer’s Notebook. It’s your private territory, like those corners of your brain where you think all the thoughts you never say out loud. 

Anyway, my Notebook measures about six and a half by nine and a half inches.  It has a sturdy plastic cover, big rings, and college-ruled pages.  I say Notebook, but really I should say Notebooks because I have a whole shelf of them.  Color doesn’t matter, but they do have to be this same design and feel the same in my hand.  And they have to have pockets in the dividers inside (not pictured – sorry).  That’s because sometimes I go places without my Notebook, and inevitably, something happens or I see something or think of something that wants to be written down and used some day.  When that happens, I use Post-It Notes, hall passes, index cards, napkins, my hand, or corners that I rip off of other papers when I think no one will notice. Then I tuck those things with the notes into the pockets in my Writer’s Notebook (except my hand, which doesn’t fit in there and is attached to me).  I stick other things in there, too — pictures that I want to write about, little notes and funny things that I find. 

The other day, I sat down at my computer at school and found a Post-It stuck to my computer that said 5  50 on it.  5  50???  What’s that supposed to mean.  It was in my handwriting, too.  I put that note there because darn it, it was important.  5  50.  Don’t forget.  I have no idea what it means.  Was I supposed to have been someplace at 5:50?  A 5:50 train or bus?  (If so, I didn’t make it. Sorry.) Do I owe someone $5.50? (If it’s you, please let me know.)   If nothing else, there’s a story in that little pink Post-It Note someplace, so I tucked that in my Notebook, too.  At least I can write about it, even if I never remember what it meant.

Sharing the news~

Now that my contract for Spitfire is signed, sealed, and delivered (it should be there by tomorrow, I think), I decided I wanted to share the news with my 7th grade students at SMS.  Here’s how it went:

Me: (holding up the cd with the digital version of my manuscript on it)  Before we start class, I have some really exciting news.  Guess what’s on this disk?

Student A:  An ultrasound?

Student B: You’re pregnant?

Student C: She’s pregnant?

Student D: Whoa! She doesn’t even look fat yet.

Me: No, No, NOOOOOOO!!

Student A: It’s not an ultrasound?

Me: No.

Student C (ready to try a new idea):  Did you star in a music video?

Student B: Cool!

Student C: Wicked!

Student D: Awesome!

Me: No. No video.

Students A-D:  Oh.

Student B: Did you write a book or something?

Me: YES!!!

At this point, my students were friendly and kind enough to express various levels of joy at my news (even though it wasn’t a music video).  A couple classes clapped.  (Yay!) In every class, someone asked if I was going to make a lot of money.  (Well, no…) And in every class, at least one person wanted to know if they could come back next year to have their copy signed (Absolutely.)

Aside from being  a lifelong personal joy, writing has been great for me as a teacher.  I know how mad and lazy we can all feel when we have to revise something (“But I want to be DONE….), so I understand how my students feel on draft six.  I understand how much more fun it is to slog along through the revision bog when you’re not slogging alone (thanks to my online critique group and two local writer friends), and so my students often collaborate in class or through online forums to revise their writing as well.  We get by with a little help from our friends….