Lois Lowry's Blog

I am leaving tomorrow, with an adventurous woman friend, for first Santiago, Chile, and from there to Easter Island.  For some reason I have always been fascinated with Easter Island...or Rapa Nui, as it is called by Polynesians...but never thought I'd actually get there, since it is the most remote place on earth. That means, I guess, the farthest from any other land. But one day some months ago when I was talking about my fascination with it, my frined Kay said, "Hey, I'd do that!" And so we are.

Just for the record, here's where it is:

...and of course everyone knows about the mysterious structures there, which date back (the earliest ones) to the 12th century:

I was just reading the January/February issue of The Horn Book, and came across, in the list of Best Books of 2010 the title THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson.  I don't know the author and haven't read the book. But something about the title triggered a memory, one of those fleeting things that doesnt go away, but also doesn't step forward and identify itself.

I googled the book and read about it, and nothing was familiar (except that the author and I went to the same college, apparently...far apart in time, though)

Then I had a brief AHA! moment, tracked this one down, and found a very favorite book from my own childhood:

Here in Maine—and rumor has it, in Cambridge as well—the wind is howlng and the snow is flying. Reading in the paper about all the travelers stranded in airports in Europe and the USA, I think we were amazingly lucky to make our way out of Zurich on 12/22 and eventually home by a circuitous route. 

The blizzard began last night, as predicted. But Ben and Lori and the boys were able to be here for the day (Funny Rhys, who had a birthday in early December, said to me on arriving: "I believe when you last saw me, i was only nine") to exchange gifts, have lunch, (and champagne, to celebrate Christmas and aslo Lori's having been named a partner in her law firm), and to watch the Patriots trounce Buffalo (while the boys, 12 and 10, went down to the Magic Lantern movie theater on Main Street to see "Tron: Legacy")  All in all a small-town holiday. Anticpating the snowstorm, I had stocked up on food and flashlight batteries (haven't lost power, though; not yet at least); and Martin and his son Andrew, who is with us, schlepped firewood in from the barn so we were/are all set for the long haul.  Still hoping to get home tomorrow, though, if the weather lets up.

I finished Anita Shreve's new book, "Rescue," on my KIndle, and have started "The Hare with the Golden Eyes" by Edmund DeWaal

At the heart of Edmund de Waal's strange and graceful family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, is a one-of-a-kind inherited collection of ornamental Japanese carvings known as netsuke. The netsuke are tiny and tactile--they sit in the palm of your hand--and de Waal is drawn to them as "small, tough explosions of exactitude." He's also drawn to the story behind them, and for years he put aside his own work as a world-renowned potter and curator to uncover the rich and tragic family history of which the carvings are one of the few concrete legacies.

It is Friday. Christmas Eve. On Tuesday we were in the Zurich Airport, which was thronged with stranded travelers unable to get to their destinations because of weather that caused cancelled fligths and airport closings all over Europe.  Tuesday night, when we should hve been home in Cambridge, we were in a Zurich Airport hotel, using toothbrushes provided by Swiss International Airlines. We had been told that they could get us to Boston on Christmas Eve, 3 days later. Sigh. New toothbrushes are great but 4-day-old underwear sucks, to put it bluntly.

But by Wednesday night, magically and fortuitously, Swiss International had gotten us to Chicago. Not where we had been heading, but still: USA.

And Thursday morning we woke up in Cambridge, MA, able to complete all our errands here and hit the road today for Maine.

No idea where our luggage is. But we are safe and sound and ready for Christmas. The dog is retrieved from his kennel, where luckily they don't charge double for overtime. The car is loaded wiht food and gifts. Step-grandson Bailey is here overnight en route from college in NY to his parents on Marthas Vineyard this morning. We're picking up stepson Andy soon, and then going to New Hampshire to exchange Christmas gifts with daughter Kristin.  Then to Maine, where December 26th Ben, Lori, and grandsons Grey and Rhys will join us and we'll watch the Pats game together.  Anyone who doesn't want to watch will have to sit outside in a snowbank.

Snow predicted, both Maine and Massachusetts, Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday we'll head back here and sometime during that week I think we'll have to go to Logan Airport and try to find a human to talk to about our lost luggage, since only a recording answers the phone. The recording (Swiss International Baggage) has a very nice voice, a wanting-to-be-helpful voice, asking me to leave my number and a short message. But I have left many short messages now, along wiht my number, and I think the person with the nice voice is probably sick of the whole luggage mess and has gone off to ski in the Alps.

I am writing this from Germany, where I am visiting my granddaughter and her mom and stepdad, and where it has been snowing now for several days. We were delayed getting here from Zurich because of a snowstorm...and it hasn't stopped. Airports all over Europe are now closed though it appears that the snow will have ended by the time we leave here, flying out of Luxembourg, day after tomorrow.

Last night, despite the weather, we went to the town of Gorelstein, about 38 kilometers from here, for a chamber music concert in which Nadine's violin teacher was the lead violinist. There was something quite magical about being in a goregous old German church, listening to Bach, with snow falling outside. Driving home...with difficulty (twice we failed to make it up a snowy hill and had to take a different route)...on twisty narrow roads through woods and occasional villages, in the swirling snow, you could almost picture the brothers Grimm creating their tales. Wolves lurking in the snowy darkness didn't seem beyond the realm of possibility.

My granddaughter is a typical teenager who plays violin, and dances, and rides horseback and goes to parties and is working on getting a driver's license (much more difficult in this country!) and who is at this moment working on her calculus homework.  But she is also an imaginative and gifted photographer who recently got a fine camera for her 17th birthday and has been creating some dramatic photos of herself:

This morning I had her do some photos of me for book-promotion purposes but they are the standard author-trying-to-look-scholarly photos, no fishnet or eye makeup!

I finally finished the afghan I've been knitting for 2 months. it's wasn't hard, just large...and because it is large, I couldn't  take it on trips. Somtimes I knit on planes, but not this time.

Day after tomorrow I head to Germany, flying to Luxembourg through Zurich...long trip, always, but a treat to see my granddaughter and her family there.  I'll be carrying a suitcase full of Christmas gifts.  No homemade afghans!  Too bulky!

I was impressed this weeknd by Gail Godwin's essay in the NY Times Book Review: "Working on the Ending"..  She is, it appears, just my age—73—and begins paragraphs in this essay with statements like, "Inevitable for the old writer is the slowdown of word retrieval.".....to which I can relate (and so can anyone who has heard me tell an anecdote dotted with pauses and: "What's the word I'm looking for?") ...but she follows it with the reassuring "...a consolation prize of word delay has been an increased intolerance for the threadbare phrase."  It's true. When you work more slowly, looking for words, you no longer toss off the easy overworn phrases.

She also says—and this made me chuckle—"Now I do a lot of lying around."  I can relate to that, too, and to her observation that the lying-around time is not simple sloth but is actually productive  (as is a long shower, incdentally) ...a period when the brain is actually at work, though the legs and hands and mouth may be taking some time off.

This as the poem that was on the NPR "Writer's Almanac" this morning:

Sins of the Father

by W.D. Ehrhart

Today my child came home from school in tears.
A classmate taunted her about her clothes,
and the other kids joined in, enough of them
to make her feel as if the fault was hers,
as if she can't fit in no matter what.
A decent child, lovely, bright, considerate.
It breaks my heart. It makes me want someone
to pay. It makes me think—O Christ, it makes
me think of things I haven't thought about
in years. How we nicknamed Barbara Hoffman
"Barn," walked behind her through the halls and mooed
like cows. We kept this up for years, and not
for any reason I could tell you now
or even then except that it was fun.
Or seemed like fun. The nights that Barbara
must have cried herself to sleep, the days
she must have dreaded getting up for school.
Or Suzanne Heider. We called her "Spider."
And we were certain Gareth Schultz was queer
and let him know it. Now there's nothing I
can do but stand outside my daughter's door
listening to her cry herself to sleep.

It brings back a lot of memories of childhood cruelty: my own to other children, and that inflicted on me by others.  (I was a nice, good-hearted little girl. Why, then, did I write such a nasty note once to a 4th grade classmate named Ruthie? )

And is it just my imagination, or is it mostly girls who do this? Sure, boys go out and scuffle and punch each other. but it is little girls who are devious and often cruel. I wonder why.

I've just received photos from the Commencement ceremony at St, Mary's College in Sooth Bend, Indiana, where I was given an honorary degree last month.

 It as an outdoor event on a beautiful day and I am glad to be reminded of it by the photos they sent.

I dropped out of my own graduate studies just short, actually, of getting my Master's. I had completed my course work and done the research for a master's thesis  on New England writer Sarah Orne Jewett but before the thesis itself had been written, my first book was published, and I found myself working on a second. Somehow that seemed to take over, and  I found myself less and less interested in my academic career.

Some years later, I got a phone message asking me to call the president of the university where I had done my graduate work (University of Southern Maine. The only thing I could think of (though it seemed odd that the president himself would call) was that they were calling  to tell me that the time limit on completing my MA was running out. So I prepared my lame apologies and excuses, and called back. And he was calling to tell me that they were giving me an honorary degree.

Every evening, before I go to bed, I make a little list of things to do the next day.  Here in Maine, where I am alone and using the solitary time to work, those things are almost entirely work-related. (Okay, occasionally a DUMP RUN notation)  Back home, in Cambridge, there will more often be notes like "Call Nancy about movie time" or "lunch with Susan" or "Dentist"

Today's list had only three things. One, I was to write an short article about Paul Harding, author of the book TINKERS, which recently won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It's a gorgeous book (with a gorgeous jacket; see below) and a well-deserved award.  (And darn; I just inserted the book jacket, which is predominantly (and beautifully) WHITE---and of course it is hard for it to show up against this white background. I'm going to outline it in black—

  And maybe you can get a tiny hint of its stark beauty:

Well.  Company has gone, weekend has ended, and now it is time to begin working. I have had a daunting project on hold since last summer and presumably the wait has been good for it---and me---because surely my subconscious has been at work trying to solve the problems I was encountering with it.

In my very first book, A Summer to Die, written way back in 1976 (published a year later), the protaganist's father, an English professor on sabbatical, was writing, and encountering difficulties with, a very academic book called "The Dialectic Synthesis of Irony." I can still remember dreaming up that pretentious, professorial, and unwieldy title. Late in the book, he emerges from the room where he's been working (on a typewriter---it was that long ago) and announces happily that he has solved the problem of the book's structure, and he has done so because his subconscious had been grappling with it and a solution had revealed itself.

I do believe that that happens. I can only hope it will happen to me with this manuscript.  Last summer I had approached it though two different characters, and ended up with two different (and lengthy) starts. Both characters are intriguing (to me, at least) and they are related, but my quandary in part was the question of which one to follow and focus on. I finally had decided that they could be different parts of the same (probably lengthy) book, but the prospect was intimidating and I set the whole thing aside for a while and concentrated on other, easier things.

Now, today, after some necessary errands to bank and post office, I am going to open up those two manuscripts and decide which to attend to first, and how (eventually) to weave them together.

Here's a picture I took last weekend when we were over on the coast.

I wonder if anyone else in the English-speaking world remembers that old song from the 1950's. Pretty hokey lyrics. I only thought of it today because I am in Maine now—arrived yesterday—and after storms during the night, today it is misty and all the flowers are heavy with drops of water. But it is so beautiful.

This is always a bittersweet time for me because it is the anniversary of my son Grey's death 15 years ago. Martin and I had just returned from a trip to Japan, were recovering from jet lag, when very  early---still dark---on that morning, we got the phone call from Germany  telling us of the F-15 crash that had taken his life. Within hours we were packing for Germany, getting emergency expedited passports for a daughter and grandson who had none, plane tickets (Northwest Airlines: Bereavement fare? No ma'am, never heard of such a thing. That'll be $4000)

It is all a bit of a blur. But the memory of him and his too-short life is not. 

This was taken about a year before he died.

But at the same time, Martin and I are celebrating an anniversary---our 30th---and last night had dinner with the friends who introduced us to each other.

Each year, through the Childrens' Book Committee of PEN New England, this award (named for Simmons College Emeritus Professor Bloom) is given to new New England writers of books for young people..  We had 150 submissions this year and our committee spent a long and fruitful day selecting three winners, whose manuscripts will now go to editors at major publishing houses. The awards were given Sunday evening at a celebratory event to:

Bette Anne Reith for a YA novel called 'GREETINGS FROM THE MIRACLE

Heather Jessen for a picture book text called I WON A ROBOT IN A RAFFLE

This is a very clever bit of marketing in Spain.  The cover of the book looks, as you can see, as if it is called THE GIVER. But in much smaller print, at the top, it says (in Spanish) Book III; MESSENGER.  So it is actually the book MESSENGER, the third in the Giver trilogy.  A little deceptive?  But aside from that quibble, I do like this jacket.  Was a bit troubled, though, to leaf through the pages (I don't read Spanish) and find that the character named Kira has been re-named Nora. Wonder why. Does Kira have bad connotations in Spanish?  And I don't remember seeing a Book II, in which Kira (Nora in Spain) is the main character.  Presumably there IS a Book II (otherwise, why would there be Book III?)---but it will be very confusing to readers if the girl is called Kira in that one.

Well, there are more important things to worry about. World peace. The stock market.

Here's Ingrid (or Ilsa, as she is called in the film*) looking down from the wall of the restaurant Casablanca, in Harvard Square, where we had dinner last night with friends before going to the theater.

*remember that; it will serve you well in NYT crossword puzzles

From dinner we went to the theater where the new musical called JOHNNY BASEBALL was thoroughly enjoyable. And now (Sunday morning. Yes, I work  on Sundays) I am back at work on the story I mentioned yesterday.

I can't tell you too much about this story or where it will end up (by which I mean where it will be published). But because a number of people have expressed interest in the process, I will describe that I know where the story is headed. My task is creating the 3000 words that will take it there. Yesterday I copied the first paragraph and printed it here on this blog. Here it is again:

Alfie had a much needed bath and haircut yesterday, to start him off for summer. And now that I am home, with no more trips till fall, and soon to head to Maine, it does begin to feel as if summer is approaching. I wrote a book once (Gathering Blue) in which seasons were named differently, and there was one period called Summerstart...that's where we are now, I think.

Headed to the theater tonight to see a new musical based on the Red Sox and called Johnny Baseball. Speaking of summer, and the boys of...

But today (Yes, it is Saturday; and yes, I work on Saturdays) I will begin the writing of a short story that I have signed a contract to do. It's a very interesting project which I am not at liberty to describe yet, but it was so intriguing that I signed on the minute it was offered to me.  Sometimes the initial enthusiasm feels misplaced when the actual work turns out to be tricky or difficult.  But I have had this project rattling around in my head, now, for quite a while, and I think that when I start (TODAY) on it, it  should begin to flow with some ease.

"It occurred for the first time in a hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but no one noticed except a maintainance man shoving a broom down the hall at 3 AM. He was startled by it and drew a quick breath, but he had fallen slightly behind and still had the whole OB/GYN floor to do before he could take a cigarette break. So he looked away, nudged a gum wrapper loose from the metal leg of a molded polyurethane chair by the hall window with his broom bristles, and continued methodically on without saying a word. And within the hour he had forgotten it entirely." 

Here is SAM, whom I mentioned in a post yesterday; and here (next) is another boy whose name unfortunately I don't remember---but he was a wonderfully enthusiastic reader.

Their teacher was good enough to send me a batch of photos---I wish I had room to publish all of them.

I am home, at last, and will remain at home until June 2nd, when I head to Maine for the summer---and another kind of home.

Martin had kindly saved the Sunday NY Times crossword puzzle, and we did it together, catching up on each other's news at the same time, before I even took my suitcase upstairs. Okay, correction: Martin carried it up for me.

I started out this latest trek last Thursday in Wallingford, Connectcut, a town I was last in when I had a boyfriend at Choate and went there for a weekend in 1953. When I checked into my hotel, I discovered it was filled with Choate Alumni there for a reunion, so I was in danger of running into an old flame--something that bad movie plots are made of---but there was no danger at all of either of us recognizing the other, after, let me do the math,  55 years.

I spoke that night at the Wallingford Pubic Library to a large and cheerful crowd of all ages. It is an unusually fabulous library, recently expanded and remodeled, and the town is so fortunate to have it and its enthusiastic staff.

On Friday I had to get from Wallingford, Connecticut to South Bend, Indiana, a daunting project. But everything worked smoothly, connections were made, and by nighttime I was in a hotel room in South Bend. On Saturday---a gorgeous sunny day---I received an honorary doctorate from St. Mary's College. The other honoree was Sylvia Earle, marine expert who had come from being Charlie Rose's guest the day before, in a conversation about the oil spill. After the graduation we were each waiting for the cars that would take us to our next destinations---Chicago for her, Indianapolis for me--and had an hour to have a glass of wine together. So what do two women of similar age, each of us with four grandchildren,  talk about over wine? Three guesses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUogr6pduwA

Well, I can't figure out how to make that into an actual link. But if you paste that address into your browser, it will take you to quite a nice interview with David Bradley, the director of GOSSAMER for the Peoples Light Theater in Philadelphia; and with Maggie Fitzgerald, the very gifted 13-year-old who plays the leading role.

I recently was having to write up some autobiographical material for a doctoral candidate in the UK, and so I was thinking about myself at various young ages. At 13 I was shy, awkward, self-conscious, tongue-tied. How do kids like Maggie Fitzgerald become so self-confident and poised, so young? My granddaughter, Nadine, (who is now 16) was also, at 13, articulate and poised.  And neither of them at all obnoxious! I'm in awe of that.

                                                                                          NADINE LOWRY, 13