America, Lady Liberty, the Stars

Well, how about that? Two days in a row here at the old blogista keys! Keep on keepin' on, as we used to say back in the day. (I think I'm probably showing my age here!) Yesterday, I gave you a link to my daughter Amanda's poem "Mitosis" on Rattle poetry magazine's online blog from last October. That particular poem was originally published in Rattle 24, the Winter 2005 issue that featured a tribute to Filipino Poets. Although Amanda has been published several times before, including a nation-wide anthology she edited, this was the first time I believe she was published expressly as a Filipino (American) writer. At right is the cover of that Rattle issue, still available for purchase. (Many thanks to Rattle for publishing that tribute to Filipino poets.) I was fortunate also to have a poem in that issue. Here is the beginning stanza of that poem: Chewing Gum Upskirt On the Avenue of the Americas, at noon two weeks ago Tuesday, a nun paced the grimy concrete, robed in black, a starched, white veil framing her stunning face, one-in-a-million supermodel cheekbones. Read more . . . Would you mind clicking on "Read more" directly above and reading the poem on the Rattle website? This opening stanza doesn't really foreshadow the several directions this poem takes: Catholic school in San Francisco, my son under our deck in Iowa, my father in grade school in the Philippines, and throughout the poem the muses women teachers can be to boys. As Nick Carbó wrote in a comment responding to this poem in the Rattle blog: "Female teachers do face a different set of challenges than males, I think ... although they seem to have an advantage in activating their students' imaginations." In the poem, such "activation" leads to political ... whoa, you'll discover that when you read the poem, how chewing gum can represent the lofty themes that title this blog post. Something else Nick said in his comment really moved me: "My late grandfather could have been the soldier packing the spearmint — an unwitting accomplice. I'm sure he'd have shared it anyway though. I'm happy to have thought of him. Thanks, Vince. From the stories my grandpa told, I felt he left a chunk of his heart in the Philippines." One just never knows how what we write, what we say, will touch someone in unexpected ways. Keep on keepin' on, people.

Adventures in Library Land

My daughter Amanda, a recent graduate of Grinnell College, now works in our town's library, the Cedar Falls Public Library. This gig as a Children's Librarian has been something of a dream job for Amanda. Below are a couple of pictures of her reading a book to some gathered tykes and parents. Note also the puppet theatre behind Amanda's storytelling throne . . . that she would be giving puppet shows was the deciding factor between this job and another that would have paid more. Puppet shows are a very important — no, crucial — part of life, as we all know. Or at least as we all learned when we were kids, though perhaps many of us may have forgotten that by now. Not so, Amanda. Another part of Amanda's job is creating book displays to entice children (and those other taller children: parents, grandparents, sundry adults) to read. To rediscover the joy and magic of reading. Below are some views of Amanda's first book display. Books on time travel, with the centerpiece nothing less than a time machine: that steampunk-y TARDIS-looking affair. (Google TARDIS if you're a little lost.) Notice the clock and gears embedded in the side of said time machine. And the sassy gold Jetson antenna on the roof contrasting with the Victorian frou-frou detailing. And the lazy wave-like frieze of moon phases. Lovely, isn't it? I spent a couple of dreamy hours browsing through the time travel books, then settling on a graphic-novel rendition of Wells's Time Machine, which I read from cover to cover. I traveled in time back to childhood when I had read Wells's story as a comic book in the Classics Illustrated series. Thanks, Amanda. Shortly after she started as a children's librarian, the print and online magazine Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century put up one of Amanda's poems: Mitosis When things have bloomed, my mother teaches me to hunt out the dead             Read more . . . A little reminder: you can click on the pics above to see larger versions. Well worth it to inspect Amanda's time machine up close. Oh, also, if you didn't get around to googling TARDIS, it's an acronym that stands for "Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space": the moniker of The Doctor's time/space ship that looks like a London police box (in the British science fiction show Dr. Who). On a meta-front, sorry again that I have been neglecting the blog. I'll try to be better about it. Keeping up the blog, I've just decided, is a new New Year's resolution. Added just now. So . . . see you tomorrow?