If you have not been following along with Gail Konop Baker’s brave and honest Bare-Breasted Mama column, then you are really missing out.

Here, start with this one and then make your way through the rest (I promise you won’t regret it): More Important Things To Do

And while you’re there, why not take a minute to leave Gail a comment letting her know how much ass she kicks?

This photo is of two birch trees at the end of my driveway which are bent over with the weigh of ice. Birches are not very strong trees–they are bendy, they are delicate, which is probably why they are also so beautiful.

We had an ice storm this week–not quite as severe as in the midwest, but enough ice (I think just over 1/2 inch) that by Monday midday we lost power. It came back on Tuesday evening, which is lucky for us as the temps were plummeting. The good news is we are prepared for such things (losing power, being cold) because of where we live. We have plenty of wood and water on hand. Thanks to Allen, I also have ear bags (if you live in the north and do not have these yet–you must get them! They are excellent) and YakTrax (these things are a must for winter sports or even just for walking to get your mail after an ice storm).

Even though we had our power back, Tuesday night was still a rough night of sleeping as there had been no melt. The trees were heavy, the temperatures falling. The wind picked up. All night I listened to the heavy branches of the oak (the one that is too close to the house) scraping against the roof. I waited for the tree to fall toward us, to crash through.

Just wondering.

Here’s what else I’m wondering about: Who ISN’T running for president?

I fell asleep thinking about two things:

1)The Sunshine Family

2) Global Warming

Why these two particular things?

Global warming because it was 65 degrees yesterday in the New England town where I live and it was 70 degrees (or more) in Boston.

On the news I saw that people were shopping on Newbury Street in shirt sleeves. Some in shorts. Allen heard a college-aged woman say something like, “Yeah, it’s global warming, but what are you going to do?” The newscasters were giddy with the warmth! People were dining at outdoor cafes! Everyone was smiling. This warmth seemed to represent a better world than your typical New England January does. One of freedom from the oppression of seasonal changes. One where you can roller-blade along the Charles with your shirt off. It’s all about personal comfort.

Why should we be punished by something so banal as winter? We deserve this warmth, don’t we?

You BET we deserve it! We have created it afterall.

It’s not normal for trees to be budding in January. I can’t imagine it’s healthy for them to be either. I don’t know what the temperature of the vernal pond on our property is but I wonder if it’s warm enough to breed mosquitoes?

Did I mention that my crocuses are popping out of the ground?

The Old Farmer’s Almanac for 2007 features an article entitled “The Good News About Climate Change.” Here’s what they say:

“Warmer Weather is Healthier.” Interesting. Have you noticed everyone is sick this year. Including me–right now?

“Warmer Temperatures Save Energy.” Yes, we are using fewer heating resources this winter–that’s for sure. But what about all of the energy usage for cooling in the brutally hot summers?

“Water is More Abundant.” Well okay, but when it’s flooding your house it’s not exactly a resource you want in abundance.

“Plants Thrive in Heat and C02.” I don’t quite know what to say about this one.

And my favorite: “Arctic Shipping Routes Will Save Time and Energy.” I’m not even joking that this is part of the article! I wish I was! Here’s a quote: “As the ice has melted, new opportunities have opened up.”

Instead of pleasing me–as the almanac urges–the warmth makes me gloomy, fearful. I worry over the ice caps melting and sea levels rising. I worry that we (especially those who are in coastal areas) are living on borrowed time. Already, the barrier island Allen and I used to live on has eroded year by year with harsh winter storms. If sea levels rise, I worry it will be one of those land masses that will be lost and the birds that migrate to the sanctuary there will find nowhere to breed.

Mostly, though I worry about the species that will become extinct–the plants and animals. The human life that will be lost–that is being lost already. The potential wars that dwindling resources may create.

And so we do our best to do our part: we recycle, we compost, we try not to overuse natural resources, we donate to become a zero carbon family. But it feels like an uphill battle–particularly when at one trip to the dump we see our fellow townsfolk lazily throwing their recyclable into the dumpster or we see people standing their cars at their mailboxes instead of walking down their driveways to get the mail.

If you are too lazy to walk your fat ass down the driveway, what do you care about global warming? Do you care at all?

I’m guessing no.

It’s not all gloom. I have many friends who feel as I do and I know they do their part but I also know that many people would rather toss a can out the window of their car (judging by the sides of the road I walk on) than recycle. And I know I’m not perfect. There are certainly things that I buy that maybe I shouldn’t or products I use that are more part of the problem rather than the solution. Yes, there are definitely times when I choose my comfort over the greater good, but I am always willing to do something, however small, to make a difference.

Okay, so what does this have to do with The Sunshine Family? What I comforted myself with last night is that I have to believe that any child who played with my beloved The Sunshine Family (which was apparently produced between 1974-1978)–a hippy-dippy, log-cabin living, clan–will feel the same way I do. I have to believe that at the very least this one group is a group of recyclers and C02 offsetters, of underusers and of believers in what science is telling us (and I also believe every generation must have some toy or book such as this one which will make them believe in helping to halt global warming).

Think about the world that created The Sunshine Family and the popularity of such shows as “Little House on the Prairie”? The circumstances? The horrors of the Vietnam war and the oil embargo may well have been an impetus for creating such a live-off-the-land crew, for teaching children about a happier, brighter, more environmentally-sound tomorrow.

Is life so different now than when I played with these dolls, so much better? Have I helped to make a difference? I wish I could say yes but I can’t. I feel that in many ways time has stood still. Yet I cling to the comfort that The Sunshine Family and their ilk gives me. I believe in their transformative powers. I know that they and those who follow them will do their very best to help turn the tide from now forward. I know you will, too.

I recently finished reading Jane Kenyon’s collected poems which left me missing her and wanting more. And so I picked up The Best Day The Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon written by Kenyon’s husband–the esteemed poet Donald Hall.

While the subtitle of this book is “Life with Jane Kenyon,” I would argue that it is not so much about Kenyon’s life with Hall as it is about her death, her dying. Yes, Hall does recount memories and vignettes of their life together, particularly how it was they came to live in their beloved farmhouse in New Hampshire. Mostly I found this touching book to be about a husband moving through the process of grief, of holding on and of letting go.

This book easily could have been bleak and self-pitying (Hall was in remission from colon and liver cancer at the time of Kenyon’s illness. On top of this he cared for both his dying mother and Kenyon’s dying mother), but instead it is uplifting even though we know how it ends: Kenyon dies and she is too young to die and we all want her and her words back. Throughout the book Hall’s prose is both beautiful and matter-of-fact–as he captures so eloquently the aching monotony of caring for a loved one who is dying:

The days were endlessly the same in the way that the ocean is the same although it moves without pausing. The ocean differs when there is fog or when the sun is out, when a packing case or a patch of seaweed floats by, but differences only intensify the daily nightly sameness. When you are so sick, there is nothing wherever you look that is not sickness.

This book is also about what makes a relationship strong (“Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment”) and advice for young writers:

It is a smart idea for young poets to edit. An editor becomes seriously in touch with the poetic moment. Finding fault with other work, you find the same faults in your own, product of the same moment. You work hard to make good judgments and sometimes you fail: A poem you returned is printed elsewhere and looks good; the wonderful poem you accepted with enthusiasm six months ago reveals itself an embarrassment in print. If you make such mistakes, doesn’t every editor? You learn to take editors less seriously–so that neither acceptance nor rejection seems crucial or authoritative.

In the end, though, it is about what it feels like when the one you love dies and what are those threads that carry you through to this end, what are those threads that bind you:

Poetry gives the griever not release from grief but companionship in grief. Poetry embodies the complexity of feelings in their most intense and entangled, and therefore offers (over centuries, or over no time at all) the company of tears.

This week I also watched the video Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon: A Life Together. It was moving to hear them both read and to separately answer Moyers’s questions. Particularly so in that this was just before Kenyon’s illness and just after Hall’s. The prognosis from his liver cancer was that he would not live many more years.

In one poignant moment, Kenyon tears up as she begins to read a poem she wrote about Hall’s illness. They both thought he would die first. But Hall lives on (“I am old, hobbling through my eighth decade, but I do not fret about dying. I am able to love and to work”), as does Kenyon’s memory–in no small thanks to this loving book.

Here is a link to the new, jam-packed issue of Narrative Magazine for your reading pleasure.

I was saddened to learn of the death of Tillie Olsen–activist, feminist, writer. I do love her stories, but her book Yonnondio: From The Thirties is one of the most powerful books I have ever read (I need to reread it because it has been many years–can it be 20?–since the first time).

Her words, her characters, their struggles, moved me. And what she did is to point her lens on poverty, on class, on the politics of the domestic life. In short, she changed my idea of what is “okay” for a person to write about.

In reading the linked obit, the part which struck me as saddest was this:

But Olsen’s theme – and her fear – was silence, the dream only dreamed. Olsen knew this firsthand. After beginning a novel in the 1930s about a migrant family, her writing career was delayed 20 years for sheer lack of time. She never stopped regretting all the stories never told.

“Well, I’m going to be one of those unhappy people who dies with the sense of what never got written, or never got finished,” she said.

I hope she did not die unhappy. I hope she knew how much her words moved generations of people–women especially–and how they will move generations to come.

Thank you, Tillie Olsen.

Rome has completely won me over. Yes, there’s a lot of gore (I have to cover my head whenever there’s the chance of bloodshed) and sex (ain’t nothing wrong with that!), but also a lot of treachery, and war, and history. At times, you might feel as though you are watching the nightly news.

We don’t have HBO so we watched this series on DVD straight through and were so depressed when it ended–but it certainly did go out with a bang. The good news is that it starts up again on January 14th. Watch it if you can–you won’t regret it.

Here’s an interesting interview with Mary Gaitskill. I liked this bit a lot:

The mind decays, the ability to express oneself decays, and there’s a way in which you give way to the vastness. It’s like you’re this small container, and when that begins to crack, it’s horrible in a way because you don’t want yourself to crack, but on the other hand, you become helpless before something more awesome.

It’s that time again to listen to A Child’s Christmas in Wales :

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

This has been a Christmas mainstay for me since childhood and here it is such a treat to hear this in Dylan Thomas’s voice.

I attended the Tin House Workshop this past July and it was excellent. My instructor was Dorothy Allison, who is one of the most gifted and generous teachers I’ve ever had. She has a way of giving you lessons you don’t even know she’s giving you and damn if she isn’t just fun to listen to. I had planned on applying again this year, but my circumstances are such that I would not be able to make those dates.

Anyway, all this is to say that they start accepting applications for admission on January 1, and trust me when I tell you that you are going to want to get your application in early (they accept on a rolling basis) as this workshop is becoming more and more popular and with good reason: not only is the instruction excellent, and the quality of writing among the students high (not patting self on back, talking about the quality within my own workshop and what others told me), BUT get a load of this line up for faculty and guests (with my notes):

Special Guests:

T. Coraghessan Boyle (would love to be at his reading)
Annie Proulx (Can’t believe I’m missing her!)

Fiction:
Dorothy Allison (see above–love her!)
Charles Baxter (Man, would I ever love to work with him)
Aimee Bender (I missed her lecture because I was sick. Bummer!)
Charles D’Ambrosio (Heard great things about his workshop)
Yiyun Li (wasn’t there last year, but what a great writer)
Whitney Otto (she wasn’t there last year but I met her at a party)
Peter Rock (don’t know much about him, sorry!)
Jim Shepard (Everyone who has had him for workshop LOVES his style of instruction)
Karen Shepard (She was there but not as an instructor–she seems quite interesting)
Colson Whitehead (he was not there last year–I have not read his work)

Poetry:
Thomas Sayers Ellis (sorry–haven’t read)
Marie Howe (sorry–haven’t read)
D. A. Powell (poet–he gave an interesting reading at the amphitheater–a dog got away from its owner and running around in amongst the crowd and I became convulsive with laughter. I am a child)

Non-Fic:
Stephen Elliott (Would love to hear him lecture)
Abigail Thomas (don’t know her work)

Now, you might think that it’s too expensive but I believe you will find that the cost is well worth it as you will hopefully leave the beautiful Reed campus feeling as though you have gotten yourself filled up and ready to write.

So go on and apply and then afterwards, please come back here and let me know about your experience.

With the first day of winter just a few days away, you could say I was shocked yesterday when I noticed that the crocus bulbs I planted in October are starting to come to life. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised because we’ve had many days in the 50s throughout this month and only a dusting of snow.

This weather does worry me. It worries me a lot, actually.

One thing we did this weekend, was tie up our charitable giving for this year–making sure it was at least the same if not more than last year. And one of the places we decided to give to (and likely will each year from now on) is Carbonfund.org in order to offest our C02 usage.

Yes, those childhood winters with snowbanks taller than the school bus were uncomfortable, but they were also normal. Crocuses in December in New England are not normal.