Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is knocking on the back door and it's time to ponder the things I'm thankful for. Here are just a few that I deeply appreciate.

1. My family - a generous, talented and supportive husband and two wonderful, kind sons who I'm proud of.

2. Perseverance - It requires perseverance to succeed at anything. So while I may not be the most talented artist, the most gifted writer or the fastest runner, I do have a strong work ethic and an ability to stick to something and eventually reap results.

3. My health. Though it may sound trite, I took my health for granted until I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Despite being prescribed more medication, my blood sugar continued to spiral upward. I was frustrated until I discovered a better way of eating; I became a vegan. Changing to a plant based diet has not only helped me lose 20 pounds hanging around my waist and hips but helped me bring my blood sugar almost back to normal. I still have another 10 to lose but I'm getting there.

4. Good friends. Sometimes I need a sounding board, somebody to go shopping with or to attend an art opening with. My friends enrich my life in so many ways and I'm grateful for each and every one of them.

5. Books - old books, new books, tomes of poetry and picture books. I love to hold a book in my hands, to run my fingers along its spine and breathe in its slightly musty odor. I especially love the warmth and cozy comfort of a whole wall of books filled with stories upon stories. Keep your Kindle, I still love the old-fashioned, low tech book.

6. Art Supplies - paint brushes, pencils, kneaded erasers, tubes of oil paints and the creamy expanse of a sheet of drawing paper or a length of linen canvas. Whenever I'm around art materials, I practically tingle with excitement.

7. My Parents. Though they're gone now, they live on in my thoughts and in my heart. I miss them deeply and am fortunate to have been raised by two people who loved me and understood the importance of books and education.

Of course there are hundreds of other little things I'm grateful for like Post-It Notes, hot tea served in a china cup or pink peonies, but this is my list of the things that matter most to me.

How about you? What are you most thankful for?

Marathons

For me, November means heaps of leaves, savory home cooked soups, dressing in layers to take a run in the brisk air and of course, The New York City Marathon. Last Sunday we had a NY Marathon breakfast with some friends from our Monday night running group. We gathered around the tv to cheer on some local favorites - Cathleen Kelly, Brendan Barrett and Richard Velazquez - while we tracked their progress online. Meanwhile, my husband made everybody omelets to go along with the fruit salad and NY bagels. Somebody brought pumpkin bread and someone else, mimosa fixings and we were ready to enjoy the morning.

It was great to fun watch the race with a group of people who appreciate running. A tremendous amount of time goes into training for a marathon - months and months, to be truthful. Despite potholes, freezing temperatures, biting winds, rain, shin splits, a side stitch or an overwhelming desire to stop and go home, the runner presses on until he/she crosses the finish line.

As I watched the runners clock mile after mile, I couldn't help but think that writing a novel is another kind of marathon. Like a runner, the author must push on if he wants to complete his book. Of course, there are always distractions - the tv, the internet, the phone, invitations to dinner, a sudden urge to sleep. But deep inside the writer knows that if he really wants to call himself a writer, he must ignore all the diversions and press forward to the end.

This month hundreds - maybe thousands - of writers are participating in NaNoWriMo. That means they've committed themselves to completing a first draft of a novel by the end of November and it must be at least 50,000 words long. It doesn't have to be good. In truth, most of the NaNo novels are far far from polished. The idea is to get it down. Later you can go back and revise it, to shape it into something compelling, into something that perhaps even sparkles.

People tackle other marathons, too - marathons of the spirit and the body, such as disease, poverty and other misfortunes. And like those runners crossing the finish line, there's a wonderful yet painful joy in finally making it to the end, in knowing that they've endured or have accomplished something few others have done. I couldn't do NaNoWriMo this year, due to some pending deadlines on other projects but I may try this on my own sometime, just to see how far I get.

Get Up and Move vs. Butt In Chair

"Do you have a secret that makes you so productive?
Want to know my secret? BIC.
That’s right. BIC. Butt in chair. There is no other single thing that will help you more to become a writer."
-Jane Yolen

As a writer who hopes to one day have her own book published, the most important thing I can do is to write, a task which entails applying my butt to the chair, according to the grand dame of children's literature, Jane Yolen. Often for an hour or more each day. The same can be said for artists, although I must admit, many do stand as they paint. The arts I love mean using your mind and your memory as well as your imagination more than your body.

This is great for my writing and my art; not so great for my physique or my diabetes 2 which I've been battling hard this summer. A few months ago, my blood sugar was spiraling out of control and I was, well, chubbed out. According to all the recommendations for women my size, I was within the normal weight range but I was not happy. I had love handles, felt sluggish and tired and my usual size 4 was getting harder and harder to squeeze into. Something had to be done about it. And soon.

I did some research on the internet and found Dr. Fuhrman's website. Fuhrman is a family MD who specializes in nutrition and disease reversal. According to him, I just might be able to reverse - or improve - my diabetes. So I began following a vegan diet and exercising vigorously 5 days a week. To most people, a vegan diet sounds extreme. In actuality, it's amazingly diverse. Over the course of any given day, I often eat as many as 20 different kinds of foods. For exercise, I either run for half an hour or ride my bike for an hour or longer. The weight came off. Since the third week in July, I have dropped 17 pounds and gone down a size or two. My blood sugar has plummeted and I no longer take as much medication to control it.

My writing and art? I'm still at it. I've learned to apply the same philosophy to my life as I applied to my library when building a collection. Balance. As a writer, an artist, and a diabetic, I need to balance the needs of my body with the needs of my soul otherwise, I may not be around long enough to see any book published.

Six Things On a Saturday

1. Tomorrow we're having Thanksgiving in October to celebrate Derek's homecoming. He's here for a week to attend a friend's wedding and to see his family and friends. He hasn't been home since January. Welcome Back, Boo! I know he missed New York and its yummy pizza - the best in the country.

2. After nearly two and a half months on the vegan diet (at least 95% of the time) I've lost 15 pounds and my blood sugar has plummeted. I'm also taking fewer meds. Yay! I'd like to drop another 10 pounds, if I can. We'll see. Dennis has dropped about 10 pounds and just had his best cholesterol test ever. A vegan diet is the healthiest there is, IMHO.

3. I'm going into my third week of Atelier Armetta and enjoying it immensely. It's such a treat to work on art 4-5 days a week, instead of 1 or 2 - or none. I feel privileged. On the down side, it's not leaving me much time for writing but I hope to work that out eventually.

4. Now that I've lost a fair amount of weight, I'm going out to buy some new pairs of pants. I picked out all my "fat pants" yesterday and, determined never to have to wear them again, placed them in a donation bag. I could take off one pair without unzipping them. Is that a good way of determining that you need a new pair or what? The jeans I ordered online months ago and couldn't pull up over my hips now fit easily. I'm thrilled. I have to say, however, that I've been working out vigorously 5 days a week and when winter comes it will be a mite harder to stick to that kind of schedule.

5. I'm meeting some friends for lunch on Thursday, some still working who I don't get to see much now and one retired (like me). Am so looking forward to it. I don't miss the commute or the administrative crap heaped upon us but I do miss the kids, the books and many of my colleagues.

6. Some members of The Poet's Garage have started An Eyeball In My Garden blog and it looks awesome! Check it out.

An Interview!

Gayle Krause has been interviewing the poets who contributed to our book, An Eyeball In My Garden. This week it was my turn. Check it out, if you get a chance, as well as the interviews with the rest of our gang.

http://thestorytellersscroll.blogspot.com/

Thanks, Gayle!

Remembering September 11th

The following is a copy of a post I originally published 3 years ago. The memory of this day is still fresh in my mind.

An anniversary is coming up, a sad one that's hard to think about. It's a day when I'll always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news. I teach on Long Island and I was at work that day, organizing my card trays. My friend Barbara, ran down to my room. "A plane flew into the World Trade Center!" she announced.

We turned on the television in the library to see a burning tail piece sticking out of one of the towers. A shocking sight, to say the least, but we figured it was probably a bizarre accident. What we witnessed next, though , was even more horrifying -- another plane flying into the second tower. Clearly, this was no accident. For the rest of the day, our school was in lockdown, meaning nobody could enter or leave the building. The teachers whispered to each other in the halls. "What's wrong?" the kids asked. "What happened?" How could we tell them? Would they understand? What if somebody's mom or dad worked there? No, we couldn't tell them -- not yet.

For weeks after the attack, an eerie silence settled the parkways and streets of Long Island. The roads that were usually jammed bumper to bumper with traffic were almost empty. Homemade signs dangled from the overpasses. Pray for the missing EMTs. David come home. Pray for the missing firefighters.

A figure model from my drawing class lost both of his daughters in the World Trade Center. They worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, on the top floor of one of the towers.

A young woman who babysat for our boys when they were small lost her husband. He didn't even work in the WTC. She talked to him on the phone as smoke engulfed the conference room where he was trapped. "I love you," he told her before she lost contact with him forever. He had been there for a one day meeting.

A newlywed music teacher my husband worked with lost her husband. She was in denial about it for weeks, claiming he was probably lost and disoriented but, sadly, nobody ever found him.

A friend of ours had just stepped off the subway when the second plane hit. He worked across the street from the WTC. He immediately got back on the subway and took the train home. Later he found he'd lost 10 of his colleagues, including his golf partner. For a year afterward he had trouble sleeping and suffered from depression.

Almost everybody on Long Island lost somebody that day -- a soccer coach, a fire fighter, a police officer, a cook. A friend of my husband's niece -- a Suffolk Co. Police officer -- was on the site with her cadaver dogs in the weeks following, looking for bodies. She can't even talk about what she found. Let's just say, she didn't find any bodies in tact.

For some strange reason I still think of the time we took a plane from Islip Airport on Long Island to Newark, the first leg of a longer flight out west to ski. It was a small, twin engine plane with about 40 passangers aboard. The pilot decided to give us a thrill and fly a few loops around the WTC. We could see people sitting at their desks working, people standing and talking while drinking their morning coffee. It was strange but thrilling at the same time. Now I often wonder how many of those people later lost their lives and, if they survived, what their lives are like now. I know that ours will never be the same.

We lost more than lives that day. We lost our innocence and the feeling of security we had always enjoyed.

Book Reviews

While finding time to write, exercise and manage household chores, I've been reading steadily - a balance of both YA and adult novels. Here are a couple of books I've lost myself in lately.

The Gardener, by S.A. Bodeen.
The intriguing cover and blurb attracted me to this high concept teen sci fi novel about a breed of genetically engineered children called autotrophs who produce their own food and water. When high school sophomore, Mason, discovers that his single mother isn't simply an overworked nursing home aide with a drinking problem, but rather a former research scientist who once worked for TroDyn Industries - a biotech firm that owns half the town - he delves deeper to uncover yet more startling secrets. In the mean time, he also helps one of TroDyn's experiments -a terrified girl named Laila - to escape from TroDyn. She's particularly frightened of somebody called the Gardener who turns out to be the mastermind of the autotroph project. The novel explores the problem of sustaining an ever growing population but falters with a succession of neat coincidences and a rather greedy, one dimensional villain. Both Mason and Laila are intriguing but not fully realized characters. Although the novel could have used more inspired writing and left off the too neat epilogue, The Gardner is a fast, engaging read that will appeal to teens.

The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson.
A physically attractive man leading a decadent lifestyle as a pornographer and coke addict drives over a cliff one night and suffers painful, disfiguring burns over most of his body. He's taken to the hospital where he hopes to recover well enough to leave and commit suicide, for he is now a monster, both inside and out. While recovering, he meets Marianne Engel, a schizophrenic sculptress of gargoyles. She visits often, claiming that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. At first the narrator, who remains nameless throughout the novel, thinks she's just a crazy woman but over time he begins to believe her as well as love her. When it comes time to leave the hospital, she brings him home with her to live. Gradually, however, he becomes more addicted to the morphine he's been prescribed. Then Marianne tells him she has received word from God that she has 27 sculptures left to complete before her time on earth is finished. A beautifully and powerfully written book about love and redemption featuring stories within stories.

Ash, by Malinda Lo.
A lovely, lyrical retelling of Cinderella. When Ash's mother unexpectantly dies, and then her father, Ash is left in the care of her cruel, bitter stepmother, Lady Isobel, who makes Ash her servant. Her stepsister, Ana, isn't any better. Her younger stepsister, Clara, attempts to treat her kindly but their relationship is hardly sisterly. Ash's only pleasures are rereading the book of fairy tales her mother once told her and wandering the wood by her home. One evening she meets the mesmerizing fairy prince, Sidhean, who promises her a life among them if she consents to give herself up to him. She agrees but soon after she meets the King's huntress, Kaisa, and a relationship blossoms in this LGBT version of the old fairy tale. This was the first time I've read a LGBT YA novel and I wasn't sure what to expect. What I discovered was a story every bit as beautiful and romantic as the classic retelling, but with a more empowering protagonist. I wasn't surprised to learn that Ash was a finalist for the William C. Morris award.