Environmental Book Club

Am I actually doing an Environmental Book Club post on Earth Day? Well, it's a Thursday, the day I do EBC posts, when I do do them, and it's April 22, so, yes, yes, I am.

Because it actually is Earth Day I don't want to just write about another book or post another list of books. I want to do something different to mark the day. So, after making efforts to seek out environmental children's literature over the last few years, I'm going to pull together a few impressions.

• Impression 1. Environmental children's literature tends to be nonfiction. Nonfiction, of course, is created to transfer information not to, say, transform it into a world within which readers can live a story line, which is what fiction does. There is nothing wrong with nonfiction, by the way.
• Impression 2. In environmental children's literature, the environment is something that's not part of our general day-to-day life. It's outside children's general experience. They need to learn a lot of facts about. Thus all the nonfiction.
• Impression 3. When children's environmental literature is fiction, it often involves evil big companies vs. small good guys.  Now, some people may say, "Gail, that is reality." I'm open to that. However, in literature it is a cliche. You don't have to read/see many story lines like this before you become numb to them. Also, kids are well aware that in reality they can't fight big companies. Adults think children are our future and will save us, but kids know they need to get things like driver's licenses and degrees and be able to vote before that will happen.
  
• Impression 4. In environmental children's literature, the environment is something that's not part of our general day-to-day life. The only way we can do anything to support it is to fight the large companies that are out to destroy it, which is why we see that in books.
• Impression 5. There's a lot less environmental nonfiction for YAs. Environmental fiction for them tends to be climate fiction. It may turn up in thrillers or could be the barely addressed backstory for a dystopian world.
• Impression 6. In environmental fiction for YAs, the environment is something that's not part of our general day-to-day life. Because it's not part of our general day-to-day life, something terrible is going to happen. Now, some people may say, "Gail, that is reality." I'm open to that. However, in literature it is a cliche. You don't have to read/see many story lines like this before you become numb to them. You don't have to be out of your teen years before you begin to wonder if climate fiction isn't just entertainment, because there's so much of it.
• Impression 7. In children's environmental fiction at all age levels, environmentalism is rarely presented as a lifestyle that is here and part of readers' lives.
  

 

Things I Would Like To See In Children's Environmental Literature

 

More environmental fiction for all levels.

Fiction in which the plot is unrelated to environmentalism but environmentalism is the setting and backdrop of the story.

Setting/Backdrop Examples: 

 

• Family having to find charging stations for electric cars or having to remember to charge.
  
• Neighborhood wildlife getting into the trash and recycling that have been out at the curb and mixing them.
  
• Parents having jobs such as owning companies that install solar panels or working at water treatment plants. 
• Teen summer jobs at nature camps or with landscapers who specialize in native plantings.

These additions would need to support setting or character or some other element of the story, because everything in a piece of fiction must support the story. But, otherwise, they would be treated as unremarkable. 

I'm talking no child characters working to save endangered species and no teenagers dealing with the repercussions of adults trashing the environment in the past. I'm talking characters just living sustainable lives. 

Why Isn't That Happening In Books, Gail?

I can only speculate, something I rather enjoy doing here at Original Content.

• Environmentalism became politicized at some point, and the conflicts that caused slowed the environmental movement on the personal level.
  
• The United States experienced economic recessions in the early 1980s and 1990s and a big one in 2008. Environmentalism may not be perceived as an immediate problem the way losing a job is, and interest in the personal and government changes required to create a sustainable lifestyle may have decreased during those times. 
• Because of politicizing and economic insecurity, environmentalism never become an unremarkable norm in our culture, though we've been talking about it for decades.
• Literature reflects the culture that produces it, thus we don't see an environmentally sustainable lifestyle as a book norm.

In the meantime, children's fiction continues to present environmentalism as something that has bad guys and good guys, not everyday guys kids actually see in their lives.

Feel free to offer book suggestions that contradict my impression of what is going on with environmental children's books in the comments. They could become the subject of future Environmental Book Club posts.

My Postcard Obsession--I Mean Anniversary

According to my bullet journal, I began sending out a postcard a week a year ago today.

I have always been fond of postcards. Family members have even been known to bring packages of them home to me from vacations. I carry an address book with a stash of post card stamps on long trips in order to be able to send post cards to very old and very young family members while I'm gone. Yes, we do end up driving around in strange cities while we look for post offices or mail boxes. 

But what got me started sending them regularly last year was an essay by Peter Wayne Moe I stumbled upon at The Millions. It was called Why I Write Postcards, and it was about...ah...why he writes postcards. At the time he wrote the essay, he'd been sending out a postcard a week for five and a half years. Though, now that I am rereading the essay, I see this guy went way over the top and sometimes sent three, four, or five a week. Thus at the five-and-a-half year point, he had written and mailed out 880 postcards.

It sounds as if he interacts with people who write back and then he writes back to them, meaning I don't think he's sent out postcards to 880 different people. Nonetheless, I think he must know a great many more people than I do, because even though I've sent more than one postcard to cousins and friends over the year, I've had to struggle to reach 52 postcards over 52 weeks. I've only once had anyone send a postcard back to me, though I've had a number of people thank me for getting in touch, and I've received some texts and email responses that were just as lovely as a postcard would have been. They were like metaphorical postcards.

I tend to choose who I'll write to on the basis of whether or not I've thought about them recently. I write something like, "Oh, I was doing such and such the other day and thought of your mother." Or "We went to this place that made me think of you." If nothing else, the desperate hunt for something to say has made me give more thought to the people I know.

Years ago, when Moe jokingly referred to himself as a man of letters, his wife told him he'd better write some then. That's what got him started on the postcard road. I like to think I got started because it was a way of reaching out
to others, because a postcard might bring joy to someone's life. In reality, writing a postcard a week is just the kind of obsessive activity I love. If you're a Facebook friend, you know I recently started my seventh trail journal, because I manically keep track of where we've walked, biked, snowshoed, and cross-country skied. I have been writing a letter a week for the last 33 weeks to a young family member, mainly about the aforementioned walking or biking. (At 8 o'clock this past Sunday evening I was running through the house screeching, "I have to write ERJ4's letter!" And I did.) I've also made close to 95 masks and have more cut out, so I'll be going over the 100 mark soon. Most weeks I pend some time curating photos that have been texted or emailed to me into the array of albums I've stored on my iPad. And then there is this blog. Eighteen years of blogging.

Smallish things I can do over and over and over and over--Yes, that is for me.

My original postcard plan was to make it to a year. I have. I can quit now. Except I've accumulated a lot of postcards, as well as postcard stamps. And I just got a lovely e-mail from a cousin I sent a card to a couple of weeks ago about the outrageous price a local restaurant is charging for Thanksgiving meal kits. How can I stop?

I'm thinking that going forth, I'll send a postcard to my aunt one week a month. My sister writes to her monthly, and I don't want to look bad. That would take care of a quarter of 2021's postcards right there.

So, yes, of course I'm going to keep going.

What Did You Do This Week, Gail? Feb.13 Edition

Hahahahahahah.

I had a couple of appointments planned this week, but what's a couple of appointments in a whole week, right? So Monday started off great with me working on some Goal 2 and Goal 4 and some Goal 7, which involved getting ready for Writers' Group Monday night and then, indeed, going to Writers' Group Monday evening.

And then this happened on my way home.

I was on a multi-lane highway, in the dark, when my car was hit by something. Then hit again. And again. We think from the looks of the car that I was hit three times. And that what hit me was a rogue tire. Though I didn't actually see the tire, either while the accident was happening or afterward, so it's possible that I was being attacked by a giant, invisible creature that had slipped out of another dimension and had no idea what it was doing. We believe it was a tire, though, because of the tire marks on the side of the car, where no tire marks should ever be. The very young state trooper was quite blown away by the sight of it.

Seriously, I was home an hour later, so it's not as if a car accident was all that time consuming. And it was 9 o'clock in the evening when all this first went down. Not my prime work time, anyway.

What happened the next day, though, was I had an appointment in the morning, then I go home with plenty of time to work. But I'd been in an automobile accident the night before, right? So while I did write a couple of blog posts, mostly I spent the afternoon watching two episodes of Fixer Upper, because everyone watches that,  and an episode of Outlander. I'm with Claire about the second season's Parisian setting. I'm not liking it as much as the first season in Scotland. Though I am able to understand a little bit of the French, which is gratifying.

Then on Wednesday I had to go with my husband to pick up a rental car, and then I had to follow him as he drove the damaged car to a shop for repairs. Then one thing led to another, and the only thing I did for work was buy some padded envelopes to mail books in.

And then Thursday I was on the road all day, because that's what I do on Thursdays, whether I've been in an accident Monday night or not.

So that was almost the whole flipping week.

Today is Friday, and I'm back on goal. Hmm. Maybe I'll start using that term here instead of "on task." Yeah, I'm back on goal today, specifically Goal 4.

Two Other Things I Managed To Do This Week

 

 I managed to share some tweets related to Goal 6

• 45  Books to Counter Islamophobia Through Stories https://kitaabworld.com/blogs/news/fight-hate-with-love-45-books-to-counter-islamophobia

• 5 Multicultural #Cybils Chapter Book Nominees, highlights from R1 judge Claire Noland #DiverseBooks #kidlit ow.ly/IcB8308YgzW
• Freedom Over Me  http://blbooks.blogspot.com/2017/02/freedom-over-me.html
• Strange Fruit http://asuen.com/strange-fruit/ via @AnastasiaSuen
• Coretta Scott King booklist and links http://www.hbook.com/2017/02/blogs/out-of-the-box/coretta-scott-king-booklist-and-links/

And I won a copy of Unlocking Worlds: A Reading Companion for Book Lovers by Sally Allen through the blog Book Nation by Jen. Which just goes to show that anyone can win a book at a blog giveaway.

You still have time to sign up for your chance to win Fancy Party Gowns. Go for it. Because it is good to win a book. Especially the week your car has been hit by a flying tire. And you never know when that's going to happen.

A Rerun: The Snowshoeing/Book Writing Analogy

I'm back from Retreat Week where, once again, I made the snowshoe trek to the Slayton Pasture Cabin. Though I am what I'd call an exercise hobbyist, perhaps dilettante, I always find this six-mile round trip trying. I actually worry about it for months and start training in October with some climbs on a small hill behind my house. While I was out on the snowshoe trail last Wednesday, my mind began to wander away from how much I was suffering to how much what I was doing was like writing. I could do a blog post about this, I thought. And then I thought, this sounds very familiar.

That was because I had already had the same idea while making the same trip in 2015 and had, indeed, done a blog post about it. So, people, for your enjoyment, here it is again.

A Snowshoeing/Book Writing Analogy.

Many people who have not written a book may wonder what it would be like to just knock one off. I think if you took a  journey up a mountain on snowshoes, you'd get a pretty good idea of what it feels like to write a book.

Okay, say you're going to head up a trail, and just to make this piece of writing specific, let's say it's the trail to the Slayton Pasture Cabin in Stowe, Vermont. You've been up to the cabin a few times before, and you know it's one of the tougher outdoor activities you take part in. You feel some anxiety about this whole thing. But then you figure, What the Hell? I've done this before.

So you start out and things are pretty easy at first, and you're thinking, What was I worried about? Yes. I have done this before. I've done it successfully. People have liked what I've done in the past. Of course, I can do this.

Then you hit that Hellacious, straight up climb, the part of the job you'd really feared. It is horrendous. You think it will never end. You'll never get through it. You think, I cannot do this again. This has got to be the last time. Is that my heart I feel thumping away in my chest? Have I ever felt that before? Is it going to explode? Is there any cellphone service here?

Then you take that turn and things get better. Since you've done this before, you know some landmarks. You know that nothing will be as bad as that part of the job you just did. You know that the snowshoe trail crosses a ski trail at the X minute point, so you can think of this job as a series of short tasks instead of Oh my God I'm, going to be on this trail for two hours. And that's just one way!

You actually experience one of those break through the wall things that you've heard about with marathoners. You might actually be okay.

And, then...And then, you see the cabin. A chorus of angels begins to sing Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. They all sound just like K.D. Lang. You're going to make it!

Except...you still have to get through the pasture. Sure, this part is easy. But you're exhausted. You still have a ways to go. There's a fire in the cabin. There's food. Can you do it?  "Maybe there is a God," as Lenny Cohen says, because you can!!! You stagger up onto the cabin porch.

And that is what it's like to write a book.

But what about when you're in the cabin? Well, once you're in the cabin, you find that all the other writers, I mean, showshoers aren't wearing old thermal undershirts that are kind of too big for the shirt they're wearing over them. Nor do they wear hats their sons refused to wear. And they're talking about all the great places they've snowshoed and how long it took them to get to the cabin and how awesome it was, and it's always less time than it took you, and it's always far, far more awesome.

And that is what it's like to have published a book.

You come down off the mountain and feel pretty damn fine because it's always way better to have snowshoed than it is to snowshoe.

Just as it is always better to have written a book than it is to write it.

The Vermont Faction*

Last Saturday I attended the New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators' program Designing and Booking School Visits. I'll be discussing that sometime soon. Because I have my priorities straight, I'm going to write about people I met there first.

I arrived late and was seated at the back of the room. During a break or lunch (I don't remember which. Perhaps I was overexcited.), I overheard some people at the table in front of me talking about where they were from. One of them said she was from the town next to the town where I spent most of my childhood. So I shoved my way onto their table, interrupted their conversation, and said, "I grew up in Sudbury!"

Well, it turns out that Marilyn Taylor McDowell has only lived at her present Vermont location for three years. This is important, because I was afraid she was someone I'd gone to high school with and had forgotten. In fact, at one point Marilyn lived in southern Connecticut, she knows Connecticut writers, and she is a former Tassy Walden winner. Yes, that Tassy Walden.

Additionally, she is the author of Carolina Harmony.

So we talked about changes in the town she now lives in, where I went to high school and worked at the Five and Ten. (You used to see books about girls working in Five and Ten cent stores. Not so much anymore, primarily since there aren't any.)

I left those poor people alone and went back to my seat. What happens next? The woman sitting next to me says, "I'm from Milton." That's Milton, Vermont, where I did a school appearance maybe six to eight years ago. This was Jean Taft, whose first book, Worm Weather, will be published in October. She also doesn't live in Vermont anymore, which is why I'm telling you where she used to live, whereas I didn't tell you where Marilyn does live. Because I'm making an effort to be discreet.

Anyway, Jean has French Canadian family. I have French Canadian family. Jean went to UVM. I went to UVM. Jean lived in the Living/Learning Center. I lived in the Living/Learning Center. Jean noticed that large numbers of out-of-state students skied. I noticed that large numbers of out-of-state students skied. Jean's book is being published by a division of Penguin Random House. My books were published by a division of Penguin PreRandom House.

Jean and I got along like a house on fire.

For maybe ten or fifteen minutes out of the whole day, I was part of my own little faction in the back of the room. Except that we didn't have a dissenting political agenda or anything. You could say we were unified by a shared knowledge of place(s).



*The "Allen faction" is the term used by Michael A. Bellesiles in Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier to describe "Ethan Allen and his adherents" in pre-Vermont New Hampshire Grants.

What Was I Dreaming?

Last night I dreamed that I wrote an essay comparing...something, I don't know what, though I think it was related to writing...to the I Ching. I didn't know what the I Ching was in the dream, which makes sense, because I don't know what it is when I'm awake. In the dream, I just read a few screens worth of information about it, maybe the equivalent of a Slate article with a short film. Really short. Then I wrote the essay. I didn't get to the point in the dream where I was submitting the completed piece of writing. That's too bad, because I'd really like to know if there's a publication that would even consider such a thing.

Well, it appears that only in a dream would you find a short piece on the I Ching that would make it possible for you to write anything intelligent about it. (Though I'm trying right now.) Even the I Ching Wikipedia entry made my eyes glaze over two-thirds of the way through the second sentence. 

The best I can work out, the I Ching, known as The Book of Changes in English, is an ancient Chinese text used to tell the future. This makes it different from the zenny stuff I'm usually interested in reading, which deals with staying in the moment so you are not anxious about the future or regretful about the past.

As a general rule, you don't have to have completed psych 1 to analyze my dreams. But I'm at a loss as to where this I Ching business came from. Yes, I attend a tai chi/kung fu school, and those are both Chinese martial arts. And, yes, next Saturday is World Tai Chi Day, and I'm not taking part with my school because I'm going to a conference. And I did get a couple of e-mails about it.

But nobody mentioned the I Ching.

So, today I've been thinking about this and wondering what I could have written that essay on, even though, of course, I didn't really write an essay, I only dreamed I did. In dream world it happened. Here is what I came up with: If the I Ching is about telling the future, maybe I connected it to plotting a piece of fiction. Maybe I came up with a way to use it to work out the future, the plot, of a story.

How easy my life would be if I could find an ancient Chinese text that would do that. 

Now You, Too, Can Give A Reading-Themed Birthday Luncheon For Adults

I am sure you all recall that yesterday I said I couldn't get sick this weekend because I was running a family thing. Well, I gave a birthday luncheon today. Not a party. I don't do parties. This was a luncheon for thirteen women.

You know how this past week your Facebook page was covered with your friends' pictures of their siblings for something called...ah...Sibling Day? Seriously. Where did that come from? Has anyone heard of it? All of a sudden it's here and people were carrying on as if it's Christmas. Well, my sibling didn't get her picture as a little nipper put up on Facebook. She got a birthday luncheon.

My sister has been a member of a book group for around fifteen years. (I think that's about when my own book group fell apart.) I learned today that she's the one who prepares questions for every single meeting. She's also very taken with her Kindle Paperwhite. Thus, while planning this luncheon I used a reading theme.

A luncheon without a theme is like a book without a theme. What is it really about?

I began, of course, with an invitation. No, actually, I began with finding a place to hold this thing. Then I went on to the invitation. Mine looked like the first page of the first chapter of a book. I used the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice as my inspiration.

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of intellect, humour, and sense must be in want of a surprise birthday luncheon. However little known the feelings or views of such a woman may be on the subject, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of her friends, that the mere knowledge of her approaching birthdate is invitation enough to gather.

Of course, others may take their inspiration elsewhere. You just have to remember to work in the details about where this function will be and when.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a rat's patootie about table decorations, but my sister gave me a birthday luncheon a while back and she had table decorations, so what are you going to do? What I did was collect a quotation from authors who had birthdays in April. Because this is April, get it? My sister's birthday is in April? One for each day of the month. I used authors and quotes from Library Booklists. I used the same font I used for the "An Invitation" invitation title. I cut the quotations and author names and birth dates out and glued them to some colored index cards that I found in the office, to be honest. Then I spread them around the table at the restaurant. (Actually, I got someone else to do it.)

I thought the quote decoration wasn't going to go over all that well. It was the kind of thing I could easily have forgotten to put out, remembering the cards half way through the meal. Or they could have dropped like a brick, even though there were members of my sister's book group there. However, my sister liked the idea, made sure everyone had a card, and had them take turns reading them aloud. (She does do parties.) So this went well.

Then for favors for the guests I had reading journals and Pental pens. Let me tell you, people loooove Pental pens. I got 18 of them for $4 on sale at Staples. I mention that because I'm one of those people who has to tell everyone when she gets a deal. Notice that the labels for the journals match the invitations, match the font on the author quotes. Yes, Computer Guy did some of that.


Yesterday I realized I should have tried to get the bakery to make a cake in the shape of an open book. Or I could have tried to do it myself. But that would have been kind of gilding the lily, don't you think?

Now maybe a reading theme won't go over as well for a kid gathering because, you know, no wine. But this worked for my adult group today.

So Wouldn't Selina Meyer's Office Be Hysterical In Publishing?

First off, let me set the stage for you. I've been working in bed, and now on the couch, today because I'm fighting off a cold that I just can't succumb to because I'm running a family thing this weekend that I will probably tell you all about because it totally relates. So while I was soaking in the tub, trying to sweat out whatever is bothering me, I was reading a book review in a popular magazine. The YA book being reviewed sounded pretty ho-hum to me, and the one-line quote? I looked at it and thought, This is mindless B.S. What does it even mean?  What @#!! thought this was something that should be pulled out for promotion? Who the #&** are they promoting to? 

Then I realized I was channeling Veep. I've been binge watching it this week during a TV Watchathon. In fact, I'm binge watching season two right now because of that business of trying to convince my body not to get sick.

What I'm thinking now is Selina Meyer running her own book imprint. The entire V.P.'s staff could be her editorial staff. Instead of Selina always asking Sue if the President has called, she will ask if the publisher has called. The staff can fight with marketing. Selina can fight with other editors over authors. She can try dumping authors she thinks won't earn back their advances onto other editors.

And, get this:  Julia Louis-Dreyfus used to play an editor!

This could work.  

Why I Can Never Benefit From Groupie Groups

Literary crushes and book boyfriends--they're a thing. I was kind of stunned when I first heard about them a few years ago. Various bloggers would carry on about their book boyfriends, a popular one being Mr. Darcy, that narrow-minded stick-in-the-mud, from Pride and Prejudice. Crushes, I always thought, were sort of shallow, not something anyone would admit to. Especially crushes on imaginary people. Especially if you were an adult.

But book people do enjoy them and do like to talk about them, and writers can talk about theirs in Special Features that will get shared on social media and everyone will love reading it. And I will never be able to be part of that because I don't do crushes particularly on imaginary people.

And when I like a really terrific character I don't crush on them, I want to be them. But not Mr. Darcy. And not Elizabeth Bennet, either. Jane Eyre, okay. Jo Bhaer in Little Men, not Jo March in Little Women. I wanted to be Sherlock Holmes when I was a kid. Not so much now.

A Snowshoeing/Book Writing Analogy

Many people who have not written a book may wonder what it would be like to just knock one off. I think if you took a  journey up a mountain on snowshoes, you'd get a pretty good idea of what it feels like to write a book.

Okay, say you're going to head up a trail, and just to make this piece of writing specific, let's say it's the trail to the Slayton Pasture Cabin in Stowe, Vermont. You've been up to the cabin a few times before, and you know it's one of the tougher outdoor activities you take part in. You feel some anxiety about this whole thing. But then you figure, What the Hell? I've done this before.

So you start out and things are pretty easy at first, and you're thinking, What was I worried about? Yes. I have done this before. I've done it successfully. People have liked what I've done in the past. Of course, I can do this.

Then you hit that Hellacious, straight up climb, the part of the job you'd really feared. It is horrendous. You think it will never end. You'll never get through it. You think, I cannot do this again. This has got to be the last time. Is that my heart I feel thumping away in my chest? Have I ever felt that before? Is it going to explode? Is there any cellphone service here?

Then you take that turn and things get better. Since you've done this before, you know some landmarks. You know that nothing will be as bad as that part of the job you just did. You know that the snowshoe trail crosses a ski trail at the X minute point, so you can think of this job as a series of short tasks instead of Oh my God I'm, going to be on this trail for two hours. And that's just one way!

You actually experience one of those break through the wall things that you've heard about with marathoners. You might actually be okay.

And, then...And then, you see the cabin. A chorus of angels begins to sing Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. They all sound just like K.D. Lang. You're going to make it!

Except...you still have to get through the pasture. Sure, this part is easy. But you're exhausted. You still have a ways to go. There's a fire in the cabin. There's food. Can you do it?  "Maybe there is a God," as Lenny Cohen says, because you can!!! You stagger up onto the cabin porch.

And that is what it's like to write a book.

But what about when you're in the cabin? Well, once you're in the cabin, you find that all the other writers, I mean, showshoers aren't wearing old thermal undershirts that are kind of too big for the shirt they're wearing over them. Nor do they wear hats their sons refused to wear. And they're talking about all the great places they've snowshoed and how long it took them to get to the cabin and how awesome it was, and it's always less time than it took you, and it's always far, far more awesome.

And that is what it's like to have published a book.

You come down off the mountain and feel pretty damn fine because it's always way better to have snowshoed than it is to snowshoe.

Just as it is always better to have written a book than it is to write it.

Gail Gauthier Visits James Thurber or Pictures From My Vacation!

Yes, I'm still talking about my vacation. Have I mentioned that I had a great time?

While planning this thing, I decided that I wanted to visit an author's home. Pretty much any author. Seriously. I googled Ohio and authors.

And guess who was born in Ohio and whose early home is open to the public. Yes! Jimmy T! Well, we have more of a Mr. Thurber and Who? kind of relationship.

James Thurber was still a very big deal in my school days. I was quite excited about hitting Columbus and visiting his house. I own three Thurber books and reread what some call his autobiography (I think it's more a collection of memoirish essays, myself), My Life and Hard Times,
in the car last month. No, My World and Welcome To It was a television show.

This is me standing in front of the home Thurber and his family lived in during the My Life and Hard Times period. Sigh. I am wearing the sweater I lost on the road. Hard times, hard times.

Thurber House is a terrific spot. The Thurber House organization both preserves the past and maintains an active present with all kinds of literary and educational programs.

Each room has only one modest sign giving information. But it was terrific information about living in the house. For instance, this is a Victorian era building, but the Thurbers were living in it post 1900. Victorian front parlors were changing by that time, I read. People were using them for more than company. Kitchens and dining rooms were the spots in a home that were most impacted by style changes. And in James' room there was a sign describing how the women's magazines of the era advised mothers to decorate their sons' rooms.

Do you know any of those families that likes to go through museums pointing at things and saying, "We've got one of those at home...And one of those...And look! I've got that thing. But better?" Yeah, I come from one of those. And I married into another.

This sewing cabinet to the left that I saw at Thurber House? I've got one just like it in my office. It came from my mother-in-law who had two of them. Came from some other family member, I'm sure. At the Thurber House, they have a sewing machine on top of it. I use mine for holding stationery. I call it the stationery cabinet. The younger members of my family don't even know what the thing really is.

Then this table to the right, which the Thurber House people have a typewriter on? Interesting story. These things are known as library tables, by the way. I don't know why. Anyway, ours was in my mother's house when I was growing up, but one of my sisters doesn't remember it. Then my understanding was that the table came from my grandmother Gauthier's house. But no one else in the family has any memory of that. Which is why it is appropriate that I should be the one to have the table. No one else.           .

We're using it for a changing table now.

So, anyway, the Thurber House is great. And those educational programs I mentioned? I learned that James Thurber and I had relatives with similar taste in furniture.

I Heard Something Even More Bizarre About YA This Week

On Wednesday, I visited a lovely new independent bookstore. A big store, connected with a state university that's home to a children's literature collection and a good-sized annual children's bookfair. I noticed that the store had a "Teen" section. Then I noticed that it also had a "YA" section. The YA section was large, larger than the Teen section. And I saw what I thought were children's books shelved there.

Well, I was intrigued. No, I was confused. So, since there was no one else there, I asked the woman behind the counter why they had both a Teen and YA section. The Teen section, I was told, was for books that had more sex and violence. The YA section would have less. I said I'd noticed what I'd consider children's books in the YA section. She said, yes, YA begins at third grade. Teen, I believe she said, begins at ninth, though I'm not sure I'm recalling that correctly.

I asked where these designations were coming from. She said, "The publishers."

Now, I'm not a publishing insider by a long shot. But there's been a lot of turmoil regarding YA recently, particularly regarding adults reading YA.  Horn Book editor Roger Sutton did a post on Why Do We Even Call It YA Anymore? because of the number of adults reading it. But that salesperson's explanation was the first I'd heard of YA as a classification for children's books or that publishers were suggesting that it should be.

I know that I get a little obsessive about definitions. However, declaring that the Young Adult category is for children's books, at a time when adults are supposed to be reading them for their adult pleasure, seems to be making this whole situation so confusing that the name Young Adult is going to become meaningless. I certainly don't know what it means now.

Wait. Maybe I Do Have An Idea Here.

When I see John Green do a vloggie for his brother, I realize that there is a reason he is a giant, and I am not. It's not because he's more talented, wittier, or smoother on camera than I am. All those things may be true, though I'm not saying they are. But they're not what makes the world embrace him while the world isn't sure where I am.

No. What makes John Green JOHN GREEN while I am gail gauthier, is that he is nice. Did you see him talk in that vlog about how traveling means he has to be away from his family, as if that's a big drawback? Yeah, well, with Gauthiers that's the number one reason to go on the road. Not so nice, eh?

If my sister and I were exchanging video thingies, we would be bitching...on camera...the entire time. We would be bitching about our other relatives, primarily, but we are fairly sophisticated women and can branch out to the Royal Family, cable providers,  Nurse Jackie (I'm sure you can guess that I love her. My sister does not.), and chain restaurants. A three-minute vlog would not begin to give us enough scope for our opinions, most of which are not warm and fuzzy and John Greenish.

The question of needing a bigger canvas for our complaints is secondary to the one of whether or not anyone would want to sit and listen to two people express them. It would depend on what we were complaining about, I suppose. People listen to Mika complain about Joe on Morning Joe every day. That's pretty much her function on the show. That suggests there is a market for this kind of thing. You just have to know how to tap it.

So maybe my sister and I could put together a bitchlog. I do have a YouTube channel now.

Well, That Was A Disappointing First Day

Today was the first day of a new unit of time, one that I'm calling March Madness Submission Binge. The beginning of new unit of time is exciting. You're feeling productive. I'd been looking forward to doing some marketing research right away. In fact, I'd even started a little earlier this week. My short story files are all tidy and ready to go. Today was the beginning of hitting another one of this year's goals.

And I spent it working on promotion for Saving the Planet & Stuff.

Writers are no different than any other type of worker. We all have to market our wares/services. But, still, when I'm through with a book, I want to be through with a book. I want to be on to other things.

Yup. Gail Went Somewhere Today. She's Going To Be Talking About It All Weekend.

Oh, I love work events. Seeing friends. Meeting people. The whole being part of a community thing.

Yes, I know that is unlike me, but I mention the "community thing" because it was my big takeaway from Crafting a Public Identity: A Workshop for Creative Artists, Writers and Performers on Navigating the Arts Business Maze at the Thomas Dodd Research Center. The Thomas Dodd Research Center is one of my favorite places for work events. Mainly because it's so close to me, but it's also a beautiful place. It's the home of the Northeast Children's Literature Collection, by the way.

This particular work event, moderated by Susan Raab, was developed around the idea that all people working in the arts promote and market themselves and can learn from one another. There was a lot of talk about social media, of course, but, as I said, the sticky idea for me was community, something "social" media is supposed to build on-line so you can be part of a community that isn't in your local geographic area. Artist Sharon Butler was particularly good at explaining how social media helped her meet her goal of being part of a creative community and having a voice within it. Coincidentally, it aided her career as an artist, too.

My experience with being part of a community has been great, though I find that communities are always changing. Certainly the children's lit blogger community isn't as cozy as it used to be simply because it's grown so large. Think of any community you've ever been part of--in school, at work, in a volunteer group. People are always coming in and out of communities, which changes the dynamic. Your needs evolve. The community that was terrific once doesn't seem the same any longer. Another community calls to you.

This is not to say that I'm down on the whole community thing. Not at all. After half a decade of having to cut back on all kinds of community, I'm a bit pumped over the idea of getting more involved again. I do, however, recognize that any community I'm part of is not a static thing that will serve me and that I can serve in the same way forever. I will need to always be adapting.

I had another interesting (to me) thought about Crafting A Public Identity, which I hope to discuss tomorrow.

In Case You Are Shopping For A New House

Are you? Househunting? If so, you might be interested to hear that the Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum is for sale.  Yes, that is Lucy Maud Montgomery as in the author of Anne of Green Gables. And guess who has been there?Yes, that's right. Me. It turns out that I can't give you a lot of inside scoop on this prime piece of real estate, the asking price for which is supposed to be $349,000. I can only give you a little bit of information on the surroundings.

It appears that I only took one interior picture when I was at the museum, and, sorry to say, it was not of the kitchen. And, you know, kitchens sell houses. I have no recollection of the kitchen at all, which is most unusual because I love looking at old kitchens.

This is a bedroom that I believe was done up to look as if it could have belonged to one of the characters in the book. A female character, I'm guessing from that dressie looking thing hanging on the wall.

I don't know how much property comes with the house. At the time I was there, the grounds included the Haunted Woods Trail, which my walking journal indicates is .8 miles. The notes in my journal also say that the trail was the inspiration for the Haunted Woods in Anne of Green Gables. No idea where I got that info. I don't even remember the Haunted Woods in Anne of Green Gables.

Prince Edward Island, the province in which the museum is located, is, indeed, an island. It is accessed by one serious bridge. I mean, a whopper. At Chez Gauthier, we are fond of big bridges. The bigger the better. Tolls do not deter us. In fact, knowing that we were going to have to go over the Confederation Bridge to get to P.E.I. was a real draw, as far as we were concerned. And we got to go over it a second time on our way home! I guarantee you, we have more bridge pictures than we do Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum pictures.

The day we visited the museum we picked up a biking trail somewhere nearby. Again, quoting from the walking journal (which also doubles as a biking/skiing/canoeing journal): "5.9 miles. Maybe the best bike ride we've ever been on. A great mix of meadow, woods, beach, ocean views. It was fantastic and not difficult, either."

Not difficult is always a big plus for me. If you're going to go look at the house, bring a bike.

So there you are, a little information on the Land of Anne, where the Montgomery home is located. 

The 3,000th Post, The 3,000th Post

All weekend I've been trying to come up with some special content to mark the 3,000th post at Original Content. Unfortunately, what's been playing through my mind is the theme song to Gilligan's Island. "The 3,000th post, the 3,000th post."

Yes, this is my 3,000th post. It is very cool that this pseudo landmark should come in the midst of OC's 10th anniversary year. I realized recently that our new look coming in 2012 is an anniversary present. The Time Management Tuesday project is also something different that's happening this year, which, like the cosmetic overhaul, I didn't plan ahead of time.

The year isn't even half over yet, so there may be other things just falling into place here. They will be a surprise for me, too.

Update: We now have a 3,000th Post Theme Song.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

A tale of a kid-lit blog

That started in two thousand two

to start a dialog

The blog content was fresh and new

Original utmost

After ten years of daily work

the three thousandth post, the three thousandth post

The ISP changed our address

The blog could not be found,

But thanks to the toil of Computer Guy

The new blog stayed around, the new blog stayed around.

The blog began to pick up steam

And Gail goes on and on

With book reviews

Blog tours too

Time management Tuesdays

NaNoWriMo

RSS feed and Facebook link

On Gail Gauthier's blog

Lyrics by Computer Guy.

I don't know about that line "And Gail goes on and on." Is that flattering or not?

Another Update: CG got his lyrics from life. "Gail goes on and on" is one of my blog labels. In that case, of course, it's flattering.

I'm Not Going To Fixate On Insignificant Details, I'm Not Going To Fixate On Insignficant Details

In Camp, A Harness, Entrapment, And Friends, author Jo Knowles writes about her experience at this weekend's NESCBWI Conference. So what do I want to dwell on in that entire post? Her mention of Adrian Mole. It was all I could do not to post a comment and say something like, "Hey, Jo, did you notice how much Bridget Jones is like Adrian Mole? And you know Adrian Mole came first, right? At least the teenage books? What do you think of that?"

But I controlled myself because that was not at all what Jo's post was actually about. I am capable of paying attention and getting the big picture. Or, at least, I'm capable of pretending I am.

By the way, I've read somewhere in the last few years that Helen Fielding has said Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole was, indeed, an influence on Bridget. Though I don't recall where now.

Yeah, Like I've Got Time And Energy For This

My very delicately balanced schedule included me doing e-book research on Thursdays, since Computer Guy and I are hoping to republish one of my out-of-print books as an e-book later this year. However, a thread on Facebook and an announcement on my author Facebook page has thrown me off.

It appears that I need to do some major research on this Timeline thing. You know, if I wanted my life story told, I would write it up myself and sell it. My personal wall is filled with angst-ridden posts on the switch, a number of them from writers.

In the immortal words of the Wee Free Men, "Waily, waily, waily."

Will New Legislation Include School Library Funding?

I am always a bit behind on what's going on politically, but today I saw a post at one of my listservs regarding The Elementary and Secondary Education Act and school library funding. ESEA, to my understanding, is what we used to refer to as No Child Left Behind, and it is up for reauthorization and revision.

The ALA has a page up on its site about attempts to get some funding for school libraries into the ESEA legislation. According to the ALA, an amendment that would do just that was proposed but later withdrawn while still in committee because of lack of interest from committee members. If you scroll down on the ALA page dealing with this subject, you'll see that the organization is asking people to contact their senators and representatives to support school library funding as part of the ESEA legislation.

I don't know if the average parent is aware that school libraries have a little different mandate from the public libraries we grown-ups are more familiar with. They are not redundant, providing the same service, because they are supposed to support their schools' curriculum. They are supposed to provide books to support the science program in the school--on all grade levels. The same with social studies and, of course, reading. And if a school board decides to change its science programming, the school library's holdings should change to reflect that.

Your municipal library, which is providing materials and services for preschoolers up through senior citizens, can't funnel a chunk of its budget into providing books on your state's history to support the fourth grade curriculum in your school. That's what the school library does. Conversely, the school library doesn't spend its money on cookbooks or texts on investing for retirement. That's the public library's job.

You can't just assume that the municipal library is already doing what your school library does or that it can take up the slack if funding is cut for the school libraries in your town. For a municipal library to take on all the work of the various school libraries in a community, it would need great amounts of additional funding, not just for materials, but for space.

Notice I'm not even considering the option of not funding school libraries and just forgetting about the work they do. I can't imagine why anyone would want to eliminate outside reading and research for an entire student body. Talk about a situation that would create a divide between the haves and have nots--the kids from families with money for extra educational materials would be getting a much different education than the kids from families that couldn't provide those things. Yet they would be living in the same community and attending the same school.

Haven't Americans always tried to prevent that sort of thing in our educational system?