Poetry Friday: It's That Time of Year . . .

Yes, folks. It's mid-July. You know what that means. It's bathing suit season. Yay!!!! Time to go swimming!

What's that you say? You're not in bathing suit shape?!?!?!?! Oh, please, you are just SO up tight!

Don't you know that God gave you a body to enjoy? Can you really not remember that grand feeling --  the cold-shock feeling of a lake consuming you from the ankles up? Can't you remember the blue splash of a pool grabbing you cold and hard as you dove in? And what about that giddy can't-get-me feeling as you tried (and failed) to keep the ocean waves from freezing your knees and then your tush and then your belly (ah, your cold cold belly).

Seriously. No one cares that your old, old belly isn't quite what it used to be. And, well, never mind about your hips.

Just. Jump. In!!!!!!


homage to my hips


the hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

                    -- Lucille Clifton

After you towel off, be sure to check out the rest of the Poetry Friday offerings over at A Year of Reading.

And then, take a gander at some of these well-known writerly types and their swimwear, courtesy of the folks over at Flavorwire:

Hunter S. Thompson. (Look at him writing! We're very impressed by his work ethic!)

F. Scott & Zelda (Be sure to catch them in the new movie Midnight in Paris. Really quite fab!)

Lotsa Papa (Hemingway)

Eugene O'Neill (looking remarkably fit, don't you agree?) with his wife, Carlotta Monterey

Clive Bell & Virginia Woolf (Really,why wouldn't you be afraid of Virginia Woolf in this get-up?)

Tennessee Williams. (We're just so glad men's beach wear has evolved!)

Sylvia Plath.(Beautiful Sylvia.)

(Sort of) Woman of Wednesday: Patsy Ann, Official Greeter of Juneau, Alaska

It’s not often that someone becomes famous for being a volunteer but that’s exactly what happened to Patsy Ann. Our volunteer had no family name and no family. Like Blanche Dubois, she depended on the kindness of strangers.

Patsy Ann was a purebred white bull terrier born in Oregon in 1929. She had been sent to Juneau, Alaska by ship to become the pet of two little girls.

Unfortunately, Patsy Ann was born deaf. According the British Bull Terrier Club: “Totally deaf Bull Terriers …often find it very difficult to adapt to a normal life, are extremely difficult to train and will often not make suitable pets.”

Evidently this was the case with Patsy Ann. She was given to another family but that placement did not work out either. Soon Patsy Ann was roaming the capital city, living on handouts and bunking with the sailors at Longshoreman’s Hall.

Once Patsy Ann was on her own, she attached herself to the entire town. She was welcome in every home, shop, theater, and saloon. She gained weight from eating handouts.

Dock workers discovered that in spite of her handicap, Patsy Ann had an important skill. She could tell when a ship was on its way. No one knows how she knew but suspect she was able to discern the vibration of the ship’s engines. She would head to a dock and begin pacing, long before the ship was visible. She was never wrong. The mayor of Juneau named her the town’s official greeter.

Juneau’s citizens became very proud of their Patsy Ann. She was memorialized in post cards, on t-shirts, and eventually, a book about her life.

In the mid-1930s Juneau passed a law requiring that all dogs be registered and tagged. Some of the locals pitched in and bought Patsy Ann a beautiful collar and paid for her tag. Patsy Ann wore it briefly but got rid of it as soon as she could. The town knew better than to try and argue with their honorary greeter. Patsy Ann was given an official exemption to the law.

Patsy Ann died in 1942. She was given a sea burial in the Gastineau Channel. Fifty years later, a group raised funds to have a statue of the bull terrier created to honor her memory. Artist Anna Burke Harris of New Mexico was chosen to sculpt the statue. She writes:

“My ancestry is mixed, with a lot of Indian, Lakota and Cherokee. From these ancestors, who love and respect the earth and all its creatures, came the belief in "Spirit Pieces" whereby adding a piece of your spirit into the finished work will attain a small bit of immortality. And thus the bits of fur and hair from those who knew of Patsy Ann. They were honoring their own selves and their beloved animals. These pieces were pressed into the wax before the final bronze casting.”

Today visitors to Juneau are urged to visit the sculpture and "greet her and touch her and in leaving, carry with you the blessings of friendship through your life's journey".

To read more about Patsy Ann’s story and her statue go to:
http://www.patsyann.com/story/ and

http://www.patsyann.com/statue/

Mentor Monday: Why We Do What We Do

I recently asked a few professional writers for children the following question: Would you be willing to share, in one or two sentences, why you (like to, want to, have to) write for kids?

The question had been buzzing around my head because I’ve been reading Daniel H. Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Pink’s book is geared more to the business owner who is trying to find a way to increase production while keeping employees interested in their jobs. But the book speaks to us right-brained creative types, too, because it’s obvious that as a group, we’re certainly not motivated by money. The term “starving artist” has no equal in the business world. (Starving computer software developer? Starving hedge fund manager? I don’t think so.)

In fact, when I asked the “why” question of my fellow writers only one mentioned financial benefits:

“I write specifically for very young children because they inspire me. They are little strangers in a strange land where most everything is a discovery. They are magical thinkers open to any and all possibilities. Little winged ladies will give you money for your teeth. A fat, bearded man will bring you presents while you sleep. The monster in your closet will get you eventually, regardless of what your parents tell you.

Besides, you can make a TON of money doing it.” Andrea M.

Tongue-firmly-in-cheek, of course! Until J.K.Rowling wrote her Harry Potter books none of us had ever heard the following words strung together: Billionaire children’s author. Frankly, I would have filed that phrase under “imaginary” or “oxymoron.”

Still, there are hundreds of thousands of us who sit in front of key boards every day, willing to devote hours to a creative task that will most likely result in little or no financial benefit. Why is that?

Janet B.’s reply came closest to how I might have answered my own question:

“…I want to write for kids partly because that’s the teacher part of me—always wanting to be teaching something. I love language, too. I like the challenge of taking something very three- dimensional (characters, scenes, plot) and turning it into the linear (sentences). Especially challenging to make them resonate…”

Daniel Pink’s book explains the reason so many of us do what we do without promise of reward. It’s not only the writers and artists and actors who labor without guarantee of fame or fortune. There are also the summer baseball players, the church choir members, and the people who mentor FIRST competitions. Money and celebrity are extrinsic rewards. And, surprisingly, studies have shown that extrinsic rewards are not the way to get people to do their best work. Marcia L.’s answer to my question hinted at the reason we do what we do:

“I write for kids because I love to write, more than anything else, and I can’t imagine a better audience.”

Extrinsic rewards, Pink writes, evolved from the criteria required for our ancient ancestors to survive: i.e. food, shelter, sexual reproduction. As humans became more social and technology evolved, we developed the need to cooperate and, later, produce goods. Most of what we did for work was based on a system of rewards/punishments: Work well, get paid. No work, no pay. Work really well, get a bonus check.

But technology has advanced so much that most mundane tasks have been taken over by machinery. It’s harder to motivate ourselves and studies have shown that extrinsic rewards most often don’t produce better results. It’s time to look at why people produce when no reward is promised or even implied.

Join me next Monday for the conclusion.

Poetry Friday--"Things"

Not only do we have the need to name things, we also have to give things human-like features and emotions. This poem by Lisel Mueller explains it all:

Things

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.

Can you come up with some other examples besides the obvious corn and potatoes? I'll go first: pipes have elbows, wine has a nose, and power cords have a sex. Your turn...

The Poetry Friday Round-Up is being hosted this week at Wild Rose Reader. Do stop by.

--Diane

Clock photo by raysto.

Women of Wednesday--The Andrews Sisters

We coming up on the 70th anniversary of the U.S. participation in World War II. In December there are sure to be many events commemorating the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States' official entrance into the war.

There are three women who played a vital role in the war effort by recording popular songs that entertained Americans throughout the war years. They are LaVerne (b. 1911), Maxene (b. 1916), and Patty (b. 1918) Andrews, otherwise known as The Andrew Sisters. The hit record, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" will always be associated with their name and the war. Another hit, "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," too, can't be heard without thinking of the sisters and the war. The Andrews Sisters are cultural icons.

If you're not old enough to remember them or their songs, here's a video which exemplifies their skill and energy as entertainers:



In their career, they sold over 75 million records and recorded more than 700 songs! During the early 1940s they were the most popular entertainers in America, and, highly paid!

Besides producing popular records, the sisters served the war effort by entertaining the troops around the country, in Europe and in Africa, at the Hollywood and Stage Door Canteens, and by recording special V-discs for the troops. They also were active in Bond drives which were vital in paying for the war. (Imagine selling war bonds to pay for the Iraq or Afghanistan wars--both wars would have ended within a month!)

The Andrews Sisters appeared in 17 movies including Private Buckaroo from 1942. You can watch it below, but be aware it's more than an hour long.



The Andrews Sisters were three admirable women who made it big through hard work and enormous talent. They also had big hearts and helped shepherd America through a period of great fear and uncertainty.

--Diane