The Michele Fund Auction, Part Deux

A very dear and special friend of mine, Michele, is a breast cancer survivor. As another friend says, being a breast cancer survivor is an expensive proposition, so a bunch of Michele's friends got together and organized an auction to help Michele with her medical expenses. The first part is over, but the second part begins Monday, November 6th.

Click here to see some of the items being auctioned off. (I will confess that I completely and totally covet the quilt made by Pokey Bolton, editor of the beautiful Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors magazines.)

I'm hoping you'll see something you love and have to have... or give (the holiday season is nearly upon us).

Report on Rumspringa

Short version: It's excellent, well worth the wait. All of the wait.

Longer version: As it happened, Abundance did beat Rumspringa but by less than an hour. Both came in on Thursday; as soon as Rumspringa arrived, I marched my little self down the street to pick it up.

It's not very long--I finished it at lunch today--but it's well-written and thought-provoking, considering what it means to be a teenager and an adult in mainstream America, as well as what it means to be an Amish teenager and adult. The author seemed respectful of the Amish, their culture and their choices, even though he didn't agree with them personally. My sense is that he recognizes that nothing without value can last as long as the Amish have. (The sect's origins go back to the middle of the 16th century, so we're talking 450 years.)

Weirdly enough, some of the ideas it offered for me to consider are valuable in the context of my fantasy; one of the things he talks about is how its myths and origin stories help to make a society cohesive, a single thing. All the members of a society tell each other the same stories about that society--"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", anyone?--and that common store helps them to identify themselves as members of the society. Clearly something I need to consider as I write...

Rumspringa Redux

Just a short note to say that Rumspringa is once more on transit hold, allegedly on its way to me. It's only been a day, and I'm pretty sure it's coming from a slowish branch, so I figure it should be in on Friday or Monday.

Abundance, by Sena Jeter Naslund, is also on hold, on its way to me. I'm pretty sure I'll get that one first, since I think it's actually in the main branch--I'm guessing that if it is, the "transit" hold is just to keep it from being shelved.

I wonder if I'll read either--I've been returning books unread and DVDs unseen, because time runs out before I can get to them. This is part of the reason I prefer to buy books; if I own it, I can read it when I get to it.

What's on the reading table right now? The Master by Colm Toíbín. It's written in long blocks of narrative, broken up perhaps once every 20 pages with a little bit of dialogue, which is not what I'm used to, yet I find it compelling reading anyway. Perhaps because it's reading more like non-fiction than fiction; I've been on a non-fiction binge lately, so this might be exactly what I'm in the mood for.

At any rate, it's about Henry James, and I'm enjoying it tremendously. I don't know what I'm going to do when I've finished it.

Does that ever happen to you? You finish a book and then have a bear of a time finding something else to read, because nothing else will suit?

Snuffle, snuffle

I really didn't mean to be silent for so long. I've been thinking about a lot of things, but none of them has demanded expression, so I haven't had that impetus to write, and I've been crazymad busy with RWA chapter stuff. I'm still crazymad busy...but I'm pretty sure I'm coming down with a cold on top of it.

Initially, I thought it was allergies--everyone I know is being tortured by his or her sinuses--but now, given the way my eyes and chest feel, I'm thinking "cold." I don't actually mind all that much--I don't get colds that often, and when I do, they're generally like one of those summer storms that comes on fast, looks really ominous, and is gone before you know it.

Anyway, if I'm silent here again, know that I'm snuffling somewhere, coughing and honking and keeping Kleenex® in business...

Lost in a Fog

I've been lost in a fog for the last week or so. I've been trying to think what's kept me so busy I couldn't post, and I got nuthin'. Well, until today I had nuthin'--today I had a migraine that pretty much devoured the day.

But the rest of the week? Where was I? What was I doing? I've been reading Ron Rosenbaum's The Shakespeare Wars, which, as the subtitle Clashing scholars, public fiascos, palace coups indicates, is (basically) about scholarly arguments and controversies surrounding various aspects of Shakespeare's work, things like whether or not Shakespeare revised his work, or which of two or more versions of a given play represent Shakespeare's preference--assuming either does, since all the versions existent are printed versions which may or may not contain a few or more than a few typesetting errors. The book is well-written and lively, and I'm enjoying it, but I'm really only reading it on the bus going home and before I go to bed.

That leaves a lot of time unaccounted for. I've been working on a workshop I'm presenting in November, but I mostly do that on the bus going to work, since I'm freshest then. I'm making a lot of progress, too, but still... I haven't made that many trips to the library--one trip was to pick up the Rosenbaum book and another was to pick up a DVD (HBO's Elizabeth I, with Helen Mirren as Elizabeth and Jeremy Irons as Leicester). Not that I've watched the DVD yet.

I know yesterday afternoon, I watched the Detroit Tigers beat the New York Yankees and advance to the ALCS. It was satisfying, partly because it was the Yankees going down, and partly because it was Detroit--who'd done so well all year long and who'd been abysmal not so long ago. I can't decide who I want to win the ALCS, the A's or the Tigers. I will say I will be happy for whichever team it is.

And I've been working on a contest I'm coordinating--logging incoming entries, ironing out some judging issues, getting ready to organize judging packets. This is my first year coordinating, so I've also been e-mailing the former coordinator every other day with questions. She's been as patient as time with me, and as far as I can tell, I haven't asked a stupid question yet. Well, actually I probably have, but such is her class and grace that I feel as if I haven't.

My best guess is that I've just been thinking, and most of the thinking doesn't necessarily go anywhere and isn't particularly memorable. Yet, for all the aimless wandering, I think it's a useful and important kind of thinking, the kind that lays the groundwork for ideas and insights that flower later. Or it's thinking that's like basic research: you're not aiming for anything other than understanding, so you can be surprised and enlightened by what you didn't set out to find.

Or maybe I've just been in a fog.