Time to begin again

It seems I’ve been on blog vacation for a while now.  I didn’t really decide to take said vacation, I just didn’t feel like writing for a while.  I guess I got busy with other things.  Now I remember that once I quit writing, the words build up so much that I lose track of what I might write about.

The first thing that kept me from writing was the massive decluttering I began.  (It may not be finished for some time yet.)  I had been talking about it for a while, and finally I just tore into a closet, and then a dresser drawer, and it took off.  One day I decided I was sick of trying to figure out how much I would owe next for the mini-storage unit I rented 2 years ago.  I corraled my son into helping me empty it, and then spent a couple of days going through all of the treasures I’d put there.  Fortunately, there was a big donation day planned for the victims of the recent fires to pressure me, and I managed to get rid of at least three-quarters of it.

What surprised me was how much emotion is attached to the stuff I collect.  For example, I finally decided to part with a favorite dress.  It was quite expensive when new, and I loved wearing it, but hadn’t done so for several years.  I kept it mainly because I remembered that my dad loved that dress; he thought it looked great on me.  As I put it into the donation box, I thought “Oh, but Dad loved this dress…Wait!! Dad died in 1991.  Even he would say enough is enough.”  So into the box it went.  On and on like that.

The next big purge was my books. That was really painful.  Even though I knew I would never reread all those books, it was really difficult to let go.  One day I invited a friend over to see if he wanted any of them.  As he picked through the books spread out on the bed, I heard myself dissuading him from taking the ones he wanted.  “I don’t think you’d like that one.  It’s fiction.  That one?  Well, maybe but maybe not.”  After he chose 8 or so, I had to tell him that if he found he didn’t want them, he could just bring them back.  My goodness.  I’m glad he persevered through my obstinancy and took some. In the end, I took three big boxes of hard-backs to the library, and traded in four more of trade paperbacks at the used bookstore.  Whew!

Now I have only the last quarter of the mini-storage stuff to deal with, and should probably make another pass through the whole house.  I’ll just open a vein and donate!  Who knew it would be so hard?

Take me out to the movies!

Yesterday Mayaoel and I went to see Mamma Mia!, on its first day.  The theater was packed, which surprised me for some reason.  It’s a sappy musical which probably meets no standards for great films, but I loved it.  To see Meryl Streep jumping on the bed, and singing ABBA song after ABBA song just tickled me for some reason.  The setting is beautiful, a funky hotel on a gorgeous Greek island, and the cast is stellar.  Pierce Brosnan doesn’t sing all that well, but he does it, and Streep is really quite a good singer.   Everyone sings and dances and it’s generally silly with a little story line. There are a couple of slightly raunchy parts, but they are just funny, nothing over the top.  I can’t tell you that it is a deeply affecting movie, but I can say that I loved it.  I’d watch it again, I think just for the fun of it.  One reviewer captured the gist of the movie, I think: “it’s at once dorkily wholesome and proudly slutty.”  Yeah.  That’s what I thought.

“Mama Mia!” was in sharp contrast to “Mongol” which I went to see twice this week.  (Why you ask?  I get why, but probably can’t explain it to anyone.)  Mongol is an epic movie, which supposedly gives a historical perspective on the childhood and young adulthood of Genghis Khan.  It is subtitled, which oddly enough I quit noticing after a while.  The plot kind of hangs on an early quote by the young Termudgen’s father in which he says, in effect, that if you try to change tradition you will turn the world upside down.  Termudgen, who became Genghis Khan did both.  He changed the customs to which his people were accustomed and of course, turned the world upside down.  Or at least half of it.  I was so interested in the structure of the plot development that I had to see it twice.  There are several battle scenes which include splashing blood - lots of swordplay, scimitars flashing, etc.  I squinted through those parts.  You can tell when to look again because the clanking of metal on metal, the yelling and the visceral grunts cease.  I am not at all a bloody battle scene lover, but I still loved this movie.

I don’t go to that many movies, and am pretty picky about those I see because I don’t want to waste my time or money.  (This is not to say I have good taste in movies, I’m just choosy for my own reasons.)  I was driven to see both of these, though, and am glad I did.  So I recommend both of my movie choices this week.

ADDENDUM:  One reason I loved “Mongol” is that it is a love story, believe it or not.  His dedication to his wife was steadfast, and she was a powerful force in his life.  I just listened to a show on NPR from New York Public Radio which had a segment about DNA, and it seems that Genghis Khan has millions of descendants all across Asia, Russia, Mongolia: follow his trail.  The hosts of the show spoke with a historian who has studied him and verified that he was extremely prolific in his sexual encounters with the women of the villages his army plundered.  Apparently there was a rule that the “pretty ones ” were to be saved for the boss, Genghis Khan himself.  They said that most men who lived in that time period would have approximately 800 descendants who carry his DNA. (See Link to National Geo article.)  The Khan has over a million.  WHOA!!  Truth be told, I’m disappointed in him.  My impression was different from this.  If this is part one of a trilogy, it looks like I’ll have to go see the others.

Letting go is so messy

I have decided I need to do some big decluttering in my life, beginning with my home.  Valiently I began this effort two days ago, and plowed through my bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.  Today I worked on my office: the binders, books and papers that were stacked in various places.  By the end of the day I was unglued.  It seems like all I can do is move stuff.  The more I try to get rid of thingsthe more things I find that I don’t know what to do with, I can’t seem to just let go.  Like what do I do with the DVD burner I bought and never used?  I don’t feel I should take it to the Salvation Army.  Save it for my classroom?  I don’t know - will I ever use it there, or will it just be clutter there?  The binders and dividers can definitely be used in the classroom, but there isn’t one yet so they are stacked up here.  That beat goes on and on.

Then once I go through stuff, I start seeing other things that I just don’t need to hang on to.  Things to which I once attached value, but which I no longer even look at.  And then after I go through it all once, I feel braver and want to go through it again and lose even more stuff.  I couldn’t bear to part with my grandmother’s mink jacket.  Yet I absolutely know I will never ever wear such a thing.  The quilt batts?  Those are going to a neighbor.  I know that if I ever quilt again, I’ll just buy a new batt and the old ones will still be taking up half of a closet.  For all I know they are full of mice and moths.  I haven’t looked at them for years.  YEARS!  But they are a relic of a different time of me.  A time when I did art and was good at it.  I know I can still do it, but I don’t.

I thought it was just stuff, but there’s so much emotion attached to this process.  No wonder they say clutter holds your dreams.  It’s true, on a variety of levels.  I can’t walk through parts of my house because of all my stuff, yet letting go of it feels like letting go of part of myself.  I know that it is just things, and I don’t think I’m a person who is especially attached to things, but there it is.  I think I should also be detoxing my body, to declutter the inside as well as my environment, but that is completely beyond me this week…deep breath.  I can take this slowly.  It doesn’t have to be all done this week does it?  I think not.  I can even schedule carpet cleaning for a couple of weeks from now.  NBD.  Deep breath…

And now for the list…

I’m home from the AVID Institute, and ready for four weeks off.  The time will fly, and I feel like I need to plan it to make the most of it.  I need to clean my house, and get rid of a lot of clutter that congests it and myself.  Vickie White said that “Clutter holds your dreams.”  That strikes a chord in me.  I think that the stuff that clogs up my space holds me back.  If I have to wend my way around old stuff, be it physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual, I can’t go on with my life in any new direct way.  I have no room for anything new when I’m hampered by the old.  So decluttering is in order.  Cleaning and scrubbing corners.  When the house is clean enough for carpet cleaning I feel free.  Maybe I should schedule that now to put some pressure on me to meet my other goals in these short weeks.  Schedule a yard sale?

I’m going to the gym with greater regularity.  I will definitely continue that, trying to ramp up my workouts.  It’s funny, I hold myself back from a grueling workout because I fear not being able to do it, then feel a little disappointed when I’m not sore from the workout I do.  My goal at this point is to be able to go to and complete an exercise class - any exercise class!  I have four weeks to find the rhythm of this, and combine it with my goal of eating locally, organically.  I am doing rather well in this area, actually.  Hurray for me.

I have to write a book review and make some progress on the novel.  Yesterday Mayaoel was commenting on how some writers frustrate her, because they won’t even sit down to write.  She was excited when I told her I plan on doing some work on the book this week.  She was full of ideas, wanting to discuss mine.  I keep wondering why she cares so much about it.

I need to move my stuff out of my old office.  They are eager to clean off my computer so they can move it downstairs to their office.  I wonder why, as it is a 3 year-old PC that I brought with me when I came to work there.  I was planning to take it with me to my new school.  Just transfer it to that school’s inventory.  Why do they want it so much?  Are they checking to see what else I’ve got packed?  The demeanment from that arena just reaches out looking for me, it seems.  I have to plan my classes for next year.  Seventh and eighth grades I’ll be teaching.  I’ve written about that ad nauseum, I know.  The time is looming.  I also have to prep four days of professional development for the district.  Getting ready for starting school on my birthday, possibly for the first time ever in my life.  Shall I take cupcakes?  Maybe so.

I guess I’ll be doing well to get stuff cleaned up and cleared out in this time.  I hope I can fit a couple of days at the beach into the equation.  I am going to a storytelling festival if the woods aren’t on fire.  Maybe I’ll take a little trip to San Francisco to see the Frida exhibit at the SFMOMA. I will definitely make a new altar or two in my home.  Hang the prayer flags.  Make a new string of beads.  Keeping things moving…

My NaNoWriMo Editor

Last October I received a reminder email from Chris, reminding me that I’d wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo in November, telling me that it was time to get ready.  I did, and in November I joined the fray, so to speak.  I told everyone I was going to do it, to create some pressure, and I dug around in my journals to find the story, and on November 1, I took off.  Unfortunately I had to travel for about a week that month and didn’t have time to write my 1667 words a day.  In the end I wrote only 25,000 words.  After November ended, I didn’t look at it again for about five months.  I felt stuck, no idea where I should go next with it.  In April my 8-year-old granddaughter asked me to read my novel to her.  Sure that she’d be bored with it, I read a couple of pages aloud and stopped.  She looked at me expectantly and asked, “So… is the story going to start now?”   Assuring her that it started in the very next paragraph I gulped and wondered if it really did, or if I had spent way too much text on the background information.  She asked me to read more, so I did,  stopping after every few pages, asking if she’d heard enough yet.  She insisted I keep reading.  When I tired of the read-aloud, she asked if she could read it on her own for a while, until I was rested and could continue reading.  Keep in mind that this is not a children’s book, or even a young adult novel, although it contains nothing objectionable to either age group, so far.

When I finally finished reading it to her, she stopped and thought for a while.  Then she asked me what was going to happen next.  I admitted that I had no idea, and she said she knew what the protagonist needed to do next.  “Here, let me write it down for you, so you don’t forget.”  On a napkin she wrote that the protagonist needs to go to town on an errand and meet with someone.  Her advice made good sense.  It will allow me to include a new setting and some new characters to a story that threatens to become permanently stalled.

Throughout my story one of the characters has a blog which is receiving some angry comments, the writer of which has not been revealed yet.  After telling me what the protagonist should do next, she asked me, “Who is writing those blog comments?  It seems like it is this girl character, Tracy,  but I think it should really be her boyfriend Jordan, instead.  It fits his personality better and would be better for the story.  Surprising, and it would make sense.”  She wrote that down for me also, and told me to go write for a while, to see if I could find the thread again.

The kicker about all this for me is that she is absolutely right.  Her ideas are excellent, and I intend to follow them.  Now we talk about writing quite a bit, and she often urges me to go work on the novel so she can read some more of it.  She is hungry to continue with the story.  Who knew my editor would be this thoughtful, highly verbal but not precociously literate eight-year-old?  We seem to have discovered an emerging talent!

Morelianas

Morelianas are a type of tostada which were first made for me by a friend from Morelia, Michoacan.  Hence the name I suppose - I guess they are a regional dish.  Here is what is involved in making them, starting at the bottom:

Layer One: Crisp tostada.  Pericos or Guererros are good if you don’t want to make them yourself.

Layer Two:  A thin -very thin- coating of refried beans.  You can make these yourself (Boil them, smash them and simmer until a smooth paste), or buy a can of Rosaritas.  Think of buttering a piece of toast.  That thin.

Layer Three:  Cook some potatoes and carrots together and smash them up with a tiny bit of olive oil.  This does not mean puree - just fork smash.  Spread a thin layer of these next, on top of the beans.

Layer Four:  (Optional - good, but not needed) Shredded chicken.  Just cook it in a little seasoned water until it is tender enough to shred.

Layer Five:  Thinly slice tomatoes (and onions if you like) and marinate them for a while in lime juice.  Put a couple pieces of tomato on next.

Layer Six:  Chilled chile verde sauce.  I make this of lots of serrano and jalapeño chiles, tomatillos, garlic, onion and cilantro.  Roast all the vegetables first, boil them until soft, blend and add cilantro and sea salt at the end.  Chill this.  You can add cut up avocado if you wish.

Layer Seven:  Thinned sour cream, lightly.  The cream cuts the burn of the chile verde.

Layer Eight: Shredded lettuce.  Iceberg works best, or very thinly sliced white cabbage. If you didn’t put avocado in the chile verde (See layer seven) it is good must under the lettuce - thinly sliced.  Guacamole is not necessary - too many flavors make it a wasted effort!

Top: Crumbled queso fresco.

I know, it sounds like a lot of work, but the beauty of it is that you can make it all ahead of time and then just get it out to make the tostadas right before you are ready to eat.  It’s a hot weather dish, because it’s all cold when you eat it, and you make it in the morning when it is still cool.  The blend of textures and flavors is heavenly.  Enjoy your day!

The Latehomecomer: A book review

Today I posted this review on the NWP ELL Network Discussion Listserv, and I want to make sure those of you who are not on this listserv have a chance to learn of this book as well.   It is truly a special book:

Today I’d like to tell you about an eloquent book I read recently about the Hmong.  For the past several years I’ve looked for such a book, one that would inform people who don’t know the story of the Hmong.  I also wanted it for my students who were born and raised in the U.S., as well as for those students for whom Ban Vinai Refugee camp is a distant memory.  Many of my Hmong students have expressed their wish to know more about their own history and culture.  There are other books that have been written about this group of people, but this is the one I have wished for.  It is called The Latehomecomer, by Kao Kalia Yang.  What distinguishes this book, apart from the beauty of the writing, is that the author is Hmong and the story is that of her family: her beloved grandmother, her parents, siblings and herself.

Beginning with the first paragraph she had my undivided attention:  “From the day that she was born she was taught that she was Hmong by the adults around her.  As a baby learning to talk her mother and father often asked, “What are you?” and the right answer was always, “I am Hmong.”  It wasn’t a name or a gender, it was a people.  When she noticed that they lived in a place that felt like it had an invisible fence made of men with guns who spoke Thai and dressed in  colors of old rotting leaves, she learned that Hmong meant contained.”

The story begins in Laos, during the Vietnam War.  She tells of her parents efforts to escape the certain death that awaited if they stayed, and their capture and imprisonment while en route.  The story continues through their crossing the Mekong River to Thailand, and their life in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. where the author was born.  It continues with their relocation to the United States and their efforts to fit into their new life in Minnesota.  She deftly weaves into the story historical information with cultural practices.  The writing keeps the reader gripped from the first paragraph to the end.   Every few pages I found myself putting little post-its to mark memorable lines.  (Which was of questionable value since I had borrowed it from the library and had to take them out prior returning it!)

I will end by saying that if you are interested in the Hmong, or if you wish to add an excellent resource to your multicultural library, take a look at this book!  You won’t be disappointed.

I will let Kalia’s words end this review:

“I dream that one day soon my book will be published, and it will show the world one more way into words. I dream that this book will have the power to give value to all the dreams I’ve collected along the way, not just my own, but those that were planted inside of me by my grandmother, my people, and the hard lives we’ve had all along history’s forsaken trails. I dream the writing dream: to live in language forever, to unravel the human story and grant it the power to change human life.”

To read the rest of this essay go to:

http://solbooks.com/blog/?p=12

To visit the author’s webpage:

http://www.kaokaliayang.com/home.html

The Latehomecomer

Kao Kalia Yang

Coffee House Press

27 North Fourth Street, Suite 400

Minneapolis, MN 55401