I'm working on it

[For a full sized version of the spread above, click here.]

Okay, full disclosure here. Author-illustrator Deborah Freedman is a friend. I also belong to a marketing group with her*. She's smart, she's talented. Oh and I'm very fond of her picture book Scribble. But what I'm truly impressed by here is her blog, writes with pictures. She's managed to combine art and text in a blog format that reminds me of comics. I love it!

. . . Of course, it doesn't hurt that food is frequently involved. . .

Go check it out.


* That'd be Write Up Our Alley.

Come Fall is available for pre-order at Amazon.com. I am very excited!

Growing up, I always thought of myself as a mathematician, not because I was an original thinker in math, but because I was adept. I loved its beauty and how different branches overlapped in a way I found profound. I can still recall the moment I learned that quadratic equations illustrated slices of a cone. It was as if a puzzle had clicked itself into place -- math, I was convinced, described the world!



I entered college as a declared math major. Over the next four years I explored new areas to me -- graph theory, non-euclidean geometry, topology, number theory, among others. And I took a class in logic -- something to which I looked forward since, as I saw it, logic held all of mathematics together.

The class proved a disaster. Our teacher was the epitome of the distracted math professor. Besides a disheveled appearance and a glancing understanding of hygiene, he did not know how to communicate. He jotted things on the board, mumbled to himself, assigned problems in the book and wandered off. A pair of students frequently made fun of him on the occasions he showed up in the classroom, further disrupting any learning. In this chaos, my biggest weakness revealed itself to me: I learned best from people, not so well from a book. I did okay by the end -- I was adept at solving problems -- but the class left me completely dissatisfied.

I should try a different angle, I thought. The philosophy department also offered a course in logic. Here I'd learn its history, read Aristotle, maybe some Descartes, explore more recent philosophers and logicians, and give me another way to understand the subject.

I was disappointed. This time the professor was a personable, thoughtful, excellent communicator. But I realized too late that he planned to spend the entire semester recreating a basic logical system while teaching the tools logicians use to create algorithms. It was math-lite, too simple for me.

I gave up. Graduation approached, and I had decided to move away from mathematics. Multiple experiences in college had convinced me that math was disconnected from the world we lived in. People were governed by emotions and needs, not by axioms and proofs. In real life, ethical imperatives followed a different kind of track than in the world of mathematics. So I left the beauty of complex, explainable systems for the beauty of our messy, inexplainable society and became an attorney.

Enter Logicomix: And Epic Search for the Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna.



Here is what I had been missing! I read all 350 pages of this book, including the 25 pages of dense notes, in just a few days.

The graphic novel provides a fictionalized biography of Bertrand Russell, the famous mathematician, philosopher, logician, pacifist and public thinker. Although many of the historical details are bent to fit the purposes of the story, the novel gives an entertaining presentation of Russell's real quest to find the logical foundation of all mathematics. We follow his life starting with his repressive childhood through several marriages, to a lecture he gives at an unnamed American university on September 4, 1939, three days after Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II.

Logicomix delivers an approachable history to an area of thought most people think of as unapproachable. With a creative use of text and powerful images, the book makes even Wittgenstein -- unreadable to me -- understandable. It connects the dots between a bunch of big Names I had heard in my school days, in ways that make sense. And it has made me rethink the role of mathematics and logic in the real world. Perhaps they are not so completely divorced after all.



The book is not perfect. Despite a profound and sympathetic understanding of the distracted math professor -- rehabilitating my poor logic teacher in my mind -- it relies on visual stereotypes for nonwhites in the very few panels in which they appear. This bothers me a great deal because the book is otherwise so full of thought and creative connections. It's not often that a story brings the wisdom of Athena to bridge the gap between the power of logic and our messy, inexplainable society, as this book does.

I recommend this book for anyone who likes to think, whether or not they have any interest in mathematics.


Thank you xkcd.com for the "Purity" strip.

Click here to get full view.

The roll over explains: "In the LoTR map, up and down correspond LOOSELY to northwest and southwest respectively."


Thank you xkcd!

Words can hurt.

Forget the nursery rhyme, Sticks and stones. . . Words can cause pain. They can inflict anguish, incite others to cause physical harm, can ruin people’s lives and livelihoods. Words are very powerful.

We don’t often talk about the hurt words can cause. That’s because they are necessary to explain ideas, to expose liars, to create art, and to further Justice and Truth. (Yes, the capitalizations are on purpose. No, they are not ironic.) As I said, words are very powerful.

The authors of the United States’s Constitution understood this power. It was the reason for the First Amendment which says essentially, “Government, lay off speech. It’s not yours to govern.” Good or ill, words belong to the people. A democratic society can only survive if its members have the freedom to use words with all their permutations, in any way they please.

But words can hurt. So we do put some limits on them, even in the United States*, though mostly our government does not intrude—people have a right to speak, even if it’s inconvenient to some or to many. I believe this is a Good Thing.

This is where the second shoe drops.

Two years ago, a horrific multiple murder occurred a few miles from my house. Burglars raped and killed two young girls and their mother and set their house afire. The father, beaten with a bat and left for dead, managed to escape although too late to save his family. Everyone I know in our community either knew the victims or knows someone who knew the victims. The brutality of the deaths has left wounds that are still raw.

Two suspects were apprehended fleeing the property. They are still awaiting trial. The judge issued a gag order preventing all sides from discussing the case until it is over.** But a writer with visions of being the next Truman Capote, I suppose, interviewed one of the prisoners and published a book‡ recounting the crime from his point of view.

Should our town library carry this book? Clearly the author had a right to publish it.‡‡ Does it follow that the library must purchase it?

No. No one has to purchase anything they don’t want.

But wait. Libraries have a special role in our society—and here I mean US society specifically. It relates back to the First Amendment. If we’re going to have this free society where people can speak without government interference, then we need a place to put all this speech, in all its contradictory forms, and make it available to people. The library serves this purpose. It’s a repository of information, all kinds of information, relevant to the community it serves. Its makes sure books, magazines, newspapers, electronic and audio media are available for entertainment, education and research. The librarian spends limited resources to provide the most relevant media to the community.

And so our town’s librarian thought the book very relevant to our community. Unsettling, perhaps, but unquestionably relevant. And some patrons asked for it. So she purchased it. A backlash ensued. Should the book be available? Should it be returned? Why should public funds have been used to buy it? She has been forced to justify her actions and defend the library from people who wish to ban the book from our community.

In principle, I defend our librarian. I will not join the forces asking for the book to be banned. If purchasing the book was a mistake, removing it from our shelves at this point would be a graver one. But if I had the chance, I’d sit down with our librarian over tea and cookies and ask her, was what she did wise?

Words hurt.

In a community which is still raw from the damage inflicted by those burglars, the book’s words only hurt more. The book will be available elsewhere for anyone who wants it. Couldn’t she have waited until the trial was over, allowing at least a modicum of justice to prevail before the hurtful words became part of our community?

I don’t really know the answer to that last question. Am I a coward? Am I governed by emotion here? Am I missing a fundamental harm? I mean these questions earnestly. I really don’t know.

But I do recognize hurt, genuine hurt, when I see it. Especially in our community. And even if she was right, even if she was justified, even if she has furthered our democracy in some way, was she wise?


* You can’t willfully lie about someone to cause them harm. You must testify truthfully in court or be subjected to the criminal sanctions of perjury. You will be held accountable if you incite someone to harm people because of their race, creed, ethnicity or gender. The government can limit pornography and protect children from exploitation in art forms. For brief periods, it can shield voters and patients and mourners from harassment. It can keep official secrets to protect the country’s safety.

** Another instance where the government is permitted to curb speech.

‡ No, I will not link to it.

‡‡ Although I wonder whether a crime wasn’t committed in circumventing the gag order — but I’ll leave that to the prosecutor.

Over at Gizmodo, John Herrman explains how it came to be that countries around the globe use at least a dozen different kinds of electrical outlets and plugs  --- without any hope for a world standard. You can blame Edison, Tesla, Germany, British colonialism, and the World War II, among other things. It's an entertaining and nicely illustrated read.

This Wednesday October 28 at 7 p.m., I'll be presenting a workshop for writers and illustrators at the Barnes & Noble in Manchester, Connecticut with fabulous writer and editor Doe Boyle, and Donita Aruny from the Shoreline Arts Alliance. We'll discuss writing and illustrating children's books and give helpful information about the annual Tassy Walden Awards: New Voices In Children's Literature.

Drop in and say hello!

I recently read two New York Times reviews of Gail Collins' new book, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. It reminded me of a list I created awhile ago. I'm reprinting it here with slight modifications, since I think it's still important.

A list

Just a few of the things you can thank a feminist for:

sportsbras;
playing soccer;
wearing pants;
not wearing a corset;
running races;
being able to wrestle;
contraception;
voting;
getting medical care without having to get permission from your father, your brother or your husband;
being able to open a bank account on your own;
getting a job—the one you want;
writing for a newspaper other than in the Lifestyles section;
being paid equally to other employees;
having a credit card in your name alone;
being allowed to get an advanced degree—in any field you want;
the research done on breast cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, cancer of the uterus;
medical research being done on women’s heart attacks;
your daycare center;
Montessori schools;
comfortable clothes;
any hairstyle you decide you want;
walking alone down the street;
going alone to the museum, the cinema, the theater, if you want;
going to a bar on your own;
being seated at a restaurant on your own;
traveling without anyone’s permission;
opening a business on your own;
getting your driver’s license, your passport, your marriage license,without anyone’s permission;
being allowed up that mountain to ski;
being in that pool room to play;
being in the casino to gamble;
being allowed to drive a car;
owning your own property;
being able to will your property to whom you please;
being able to inherit;
that the money you make is yours to keep;
that you can own property;
that you can buy a car;
that the clothes you purchase are actually yours;
that your children are yours and his;
that if anyone hits you, that’s a crime;
and if, God forbid, you have an ectopic pregnancy, no one but you has to be consulted before they can save your life.

The scary thing is that there are still parts of the world where most of this isn't true.

At Write Up Our Alley, I wrote a blog post about my family's love of tall tales, and a short review of Phyllis Root's Paula Bunyan. You can read the post here.

The only problem with Love and Rockets: New Stories is that it's an annual. Volume 2 was, well, fabulous.

Fabulous.

[I'm savoring here.]

In how many comic books do you have a superhero do laundry with her mother? Jaime Hernandez's Ti-Girls Adventures Number 34 provides both the slam-bam action and a cleverly twisting plot to satisfy any superhero comic fan. It also provides room for introspection. The story illustrates relationships between friends, between mothers and their daughters, and between enemies and partners, while giving us humor and surprises. But maybe what I liked the best was how it made me think about the superhero genre through send-ups of stock characters and an art that blasts all the cookie-cutter stereotypes of female heroines. Seasoning it all were keenly rendered emotions and side-stories, never spoken but beautifully illustrated, providing depth to the characters.

Sandwiched between two halves of Ti-Girls are Gilbert Hernandez's Sad Girl  and Hypnotwist. Sad Girls is the story of one of Luba's granddaughters, an unpaid schoolgirl starlet, nicknamed Killer. In rapid-fire, short episodes over 8 pages, we follow her on again off again break-up with a boyfriend who is never named or seen or heard, yet who is a major character in his own right. The short story is something of a tour de force, rich in both detail and characterization. Hypnotwist, which is referred to in Sad Girls and immediately follows it, is a surreal story of a woman with magical shoes. In 42 pages of wordless text, we explore alternate lives, the fears of motherhood and aging, nightmares and happy dreams.

Both Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez are in full form in this volume. Lucky us.

This recipe for Chili-Dog casserole is one of the funniest I've read in awhile. Even if you're a vegetarian. Or keep kosher. The humor, like the recipe, is cumulative---I started laughing at about the halfway mark. By the end, I was in tears (from laughter, of course).

Enjoy!

Well, some worry anyway. You know, with women actually writing and editing the stuff these days.

But, as John Scalzi says pointedly, "science fiction is founded on girl cooties." After all, since girls have cooties, and the first full science fiction novel was written by a woman, then by gumbo, science fiction is founded on cooties!

Scalzi's rant is funnier than that. And no, I didn't look up the original column he's ranting about---I'd rather not encourage that kind of nonsense.

(By Adrian Piper.)

The size of calling/business cards, they're to hand out at the appropriate moment. Brilliant, no?

Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me is a novel that sneaks up on you, catches you and won’t let go.

Sixth grader Miranda lives in New York City, savvy to its ways. She loses her best friend Sal after he is punched in the stomach by a stranger. Then she starts receiving notes, strange notes that ask her to write a letter and tell her about things that haven’t happened yet. Her mother is bent on winning a TV game show. And Miranda reads and rereads A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

All of these connect.

Set in the everyday of 1978, Miranda has a mystery to solve that requires understanding more than the everyday—the very meaning of here and now, it seems. Along the way, she stumbles and is forced to rethink what she knows. She discovers that unlike IT in L’Engle’s masterpiece, evil doesn’t lie in some dangerous being outside of ourselves, but in the misunderstandings we have of each other.

The book has lingered in my thoughts. It may strike some as realistic fiction with a twist. Others as science fiction with a large dose of realism. Whatever. It made me think about what it means to be a caring human being.

I am a longstanding Calvin Trillin fan. I like his wry humor, his stories, his silly poetry. I still quote from Alice, Let’s Eat, pointing to offending dishes and muttering “Stuff-Stuff with Heavy.”*

I have read about his travels, his love affair with food, his family. And about Alice, his wife. Who died in 2001. On September 11. And somehow the tragedy of that day became all the worse because of this loss. I did not know Alice, yet she was such a constant in Trillin’s writings, it felt as though I should.

A week ago, I saw About Alice on a bargain shelf and snapped it up. Published in 2006, it is Trillin’s ode to Alice. I read the slim volume within an evening.

Now let me be up front. This is a sentimental book. If you don’t like sentimental books, don’t read any further. This won’t be for you. But if you like quirky biographies, where every page reveals the writer’s love for his subject, then this may work.

In a series of lively short chapters filled with humorous and sometimes touching anecdotes, Trillin describes different aspects of Alice. She was a person whom other people loved and respected—because she dropped everything, when need arose, to assist even strangers. She was beautiful, very beautiful—which she understood could be especially useful when facing a speeding ticket. But more than beauty, she was accomplished in the practical things that keep people’s lives together—the business end of things—managing the life of her husband and children, her parents’, and any job she worked on. She fought cancer, winning the battle for 25 years while helping others in their fight with the disease. She was Trillin’s first reader and essential editor, able to tell him what words like “heuristics” meant. And she was a fierce and dedicated mother, refusing to allow her daughter Abigail to reschedule her wedding despite Alice’s failing health and series of hospitalizations, walking Abigail down the aisle in the nick of time.

Though the book is about loss, Trillin made me laugh. He wrote a beautiful love story—with a tragic ending, as so many are. But beautiful and sweet.


*Trillin described this as an English style of continental cuisine where the height of sophistication
Several layers of stuffing were ideal—chicken breast stuffed with a plum, in turn stuffed with an almond, which, if it could be accomplished, should be stuffed with paté.

I read a lot—some books that are good, some that are okay, and some that are. . . well, meh. (There’s a few I don’t finish—but that’s a topic for another day.) It’s not all that often that I get three in a row that I want to crow about.  So before I run into a fourth and find myself hopelessly behind, I’ll start crowing now.

First up today (others in future days): Terry Pratchett’s Nation.



Okay. That’s a shoo-in, you say. It won a Printz Honor. And Pratchett is sooo funny.

Well Nation has its bit of humor—but it’s mostly about a boy who loses everything and a girl who almost loses everything as a result of a tsunami, and how they both survive. It’s also about colonialism and intelligence and love and duty and religion and life. It’s a big book with ideas wrapped in a strong plot and carried by fabulous characters.

I didn’t want to read Nation. Another Robinson Crusoe, I thought. White girl meets brown boy and teaches him white ways. Ick.

So I let others around me read Nation. “It’s great,” they kept telling me. “It’s the best Pratchett has written.”

Okay. I’d give it a try. I could manage a few pages, I thought. Steel myself for the ick. But then I was pulled in. The writing captured me. I am, it is true, a complete sucker for good writing. So, maybe this would be another Robinson Crusoe, I thought, but at least the writing would keep me entertained, and I could write a vicious review.

But it’s not. It’s not about white girl meets brown boy and teaches him white ways. It’s not even about brown boy meets white girl and teaches her brown ways. It’s about communication. It’s about upending your world and seeing it anew.

This is a good book. A really good book. Read it.

. . . for Come Fall. The artist is Tim Jessell. Publication date is July 27, 2010.



Squeee!!!

That's a cheeseburger on a grilled glazed doughnut, folks. With bacon.

As this wonderful article in the Hartford Courant explains,


So besides that Craz-E-Burger pictured above, the Big E will be serving Walk-Away-Nachos, waffles of every variety, and deep-fried. . . well just about anything.  The plan for next year? Deep fried butter. I kid you not.


Photo credit Stephen Dunn for the Hartford Courant

Elizabeth Bluemle wrote an insightful piece for Shelftalker: A Children's Bookseller's Blog (for Publisher’s Weekly) asking us Where's Ramona Quimby, Black and Pretty? She took issue with the publishing canard that white readers aren’t interested in characters of color. She also called on writers, editors, publishers and booksellers to send her titles of modern books with main characters of color where the book isn't primarily about race. The result was an outpouring of information, which she detailed in a follow up entry. She decided to pull together the suggested books on a Library Thing list.

There are many lists and sources of information on the web, like Cynthia Leitich Smith’s website; The Brown Bookshelf; American Indians in Children’s Literature; Oyate; Celebrating Cultural Diversity Through Children's Literature. But the more shout-outs for books with characters of all colors, the better.

Bravo Elizabeth!


[And thank you to Nicole Tadgell for the links.]

I was much amused by this New York Times article about a home gardener's attempt to taste test his bounty against Whole Foods's. He invited friends to dinner, served identical dishes without identifying the source of the food, and had his guests tell him which they thought was better. To the author's dismay, some of his produce, picked just hours before the meal, did not do as well as the veggies shipped days or weeks before to the market. But to his relief, his guests loved his corn. He went on to explain.


What?

As any corn connoisseur will tell you, the true test of fresh corn isn't (shudder) slathering the ear with mayonnaise, cheese and spices. It's husking the ear as close to serving it as you possibly can, dipping it in rapidly boiling water for no more than 2 minutes, and savoring its crisp, tender sweetness. There are other cooking methods, of course. But a light touch is the best. And if you must, you may add butter and/or salt. But the best corn really doesn't need it.

Please!