Next part of the trip

Apologies.  It's been ages since my last post, but between driving, hiking, visiting, and reading natural history material in preparation for our next stop, I have been slack with posting.  But, we've been having a wonderful time so far. 

After a few days of visit mom, we went to Bodie, California, an abandoned mining town which sits at nearly 9000 feet.  It was fascinating.

  

Then onto Manzanar, California, the home of a US Japanese internment camp in the middle of Owens Valley (the place where water was taken from to feed LA; it's the basis of ChinaTown, a movie about how corruption let to 95% of the Valley's water being sucked dry).  Apparently it used to boast being fertile orchard country.

After another long drive, that included a tour through Death Valley before we visited the Grand Canyon.  These photos don't come close to the grandeur...

Then onto my brother Bart's  in Phoenix.  We cruised around Canyon Lake, which I hadn't been to since I was a kid (it's one of the nearby lakes where we used to camp when I was a kid).  We also went to the Museum of Music which is world class, and so well done; it was amazing and well worth a visit if you're in the area.  

When we left Phoenix we headed for more Canyon Country.  The first stop was Monument Valley where a lot of the westerns were filmed.  We also visited Gooseneck State Park.

We've been covering a lot of miles, but every day seems to be a highlight.  We visited Mesa Verde, one of the homes of the Anasazi (a word no longer in use by the way) which totally blew me away.  The drive up and down just about did me away, with hairpin turns and steep cliffs, it sits atop the very high dessert mesa pictured here.

I thought Mesa Verde was amazing.  Then we went to Chaco, New Mexico, another home of the "Ancient Ones" ( 850-1100 AD).  It was desolate and beautiful and amazing.  It's been called the North American equivalent to Stonehenge since the building site is aligned such that light shines through corner openings at specific times of the year to capture solar and lunar cycles.  It was a major cultural centre for the Pueblo peoples and comprised the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century.  It's mainly quarried sandstone, but the Chacoans hauled wood for roofing from as far as 50 miles away... without the aid of the wheel!

Next installment in our Four Corners visit is Arches National Park and  then Bryce Canyon and points north.

Goodbye Seattle, welcome to Reno

  So far, the weather has been lovely.  Had a great visit with my nephew and family in Seattle with gorgeous sunny days.  Visited the Pike Street Market, read books with my grand niece Abby, bounced baby Chloe on my knee, and went out for a fabulous dinner with Brian and Diana.

 After Seattle, we did a long day's drive to get to Susanville, CA where we had fabulous chili rellenos in a family Mexican food restaurant before crashing.  Arrived at mum's place the next morning and have been hanging out for a few days, drinking tea, catching up on family news and going for 5k runs to burn a few calories for the out-of-proportion meals she insists on serving.

Since mum isn't into computers, we are at Starbucks in Reno, Nevada, using WiFi to catch up on email and drinking a London Fog. Not a lot of gambling going on for us though...we walked into a casino but the cigarette smoke chased us away after only a few minutes...I hear there are non-smoking places, but we haven't discovered them so far.

Time to head south tomorrow to visit Bodie, California, a mining ghost town which just might make a really great setting for a novel. I'm hoping so...I've always wanted to write something set in a mining town since my dad was a miner and I grew up in small mining towns.  It never hurts to think of the next book, even if you're only mid way through the first draft of the work in progress.

Sad & Excited

Just said goodbye to my girls after a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.  I'm sad and excited all rolled into one.  I treasure the time we spend together now that they each have their own busy lives, but this leaving was made easier because tomorrow is day one of a month long road trip to the American Southwest where I'll get to reconnect with my mom and sibs, and where I'd love to set a novel (after the one I'm working on now).

This has to be a short and sweet post as I'm on the run to get a million errands done.  My next chore (hee hee) will be to pick out a couple of books from my bedside pile to bring along.  I had planned to bring Inkdeath, the third in Cornelia Funke's Inkworld series but I've decided against it as I'm having a hard time getting into it even though I grew to care about Meggie, her parents and the fire-eater Dustfinger in the first two books.  No worries though...the pile to choose from is BIG!

Returned home from a writing workshop to an almost complete renovation

I returned home from Quadra Island where I spoke to a grade 4/5 class, followed by a two day writing workshop with 5 other Vancouver Island writers. When I left the bathroom was totally pulled apart with renovations taking longer than planned.  The reno is almost complete.  Just waiting on special order part.  In the meantime, I now have a deep, comfortable bath for bubble baths which I love love love, especially after a run.

Canadian Thanksgiving coming up.

Image by bucklava via Flickr

I'll be on wonderful Quadra Island, BC working for the next several days and will be picking my girls up from the ferry on my way back into town on Friday night.  They'll be home for the long weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving) so no posts for a while, especially since I have to make apple, pumpkin and blackberry pie to keep everyone happy!  Not to mention turkey!  Hope you all have a great book to read!

Five K down and it's only 10:30

Here are  my friend Trish (in the blue vest) and I closing in on the finish line of this morning's 5K Run for  the Cure.  Now it's time for a quick cup of tea and a shower, before work.

One more day before Run for the Cure

Image by Barnaby Jeans via Flickr

Only one day before the 5 K Run for the Cure.  Consider donating either your time or $.  Women everywhere will appreciate it.

New short story collection featuring some of my fav authors is on it's way.

Image via Wikipedia (Kate DiCamillo)

I came across some great news today. Haughton Mifflin Harcourt Children's is putting together some of my all time fav. author to create middle grade stores based on an illustration.  Sadly, the book, Chronicles of Harris Burdick, won't be out until fall 2011.  The good news is that Lois Lowry, Walter Dean Myers, Linda Sue Park, Sheerman Alexie, M.T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, Louis Sachar and Jon Scieszka will all have stories in it.  Not to sound too fawning, with a star-studded line-up like that, it's bound to be awesome.

Flaunt Book Banning

Looking for a way to celebrate Banned Books Week?

According to ALA, here are 2009's most challenged books.
Flaunt book banning!  
Read one or more of these great books, and then leave it at a bus stop, subway or other public place for someone else to pick up.  

Out of 460 challenges as reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom 
Some of these are favorite titles.  

1. “TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle 
Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs 
2. “And Tango Makes Three” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson 
Reasons: Homosexuality 
3. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky 
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Anti-Family, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide 
4. “To Kill A Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee 
Reasons: Racism, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group 
5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer 
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group 
6. “Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger 
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group 
7. “My Sister’s Keeper,” by Jodi Picoult 
Reasons: Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence 
8. “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things,” by Carolyn Mackler 
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group 
9. “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker 
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group 
10. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier 
Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Run for the Cure

I'll be doing the 5 K 'Run for the Cure' next week before work.  I'll be running for all women.  You may not be inclined to run, but anyone can donate either your time, or a few bucks at www.cbcf.org.  I hope you'll consider it. I'll post a few pics after the race.

The Book Worm is Reading Waiting for the Whales

For the last several months, The Oak Bay Book Worm has been reading a different book every week, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, Moby Dick are a few of the books being read.  My dog Ruby, aka "the shadow" is checking out what the Oak Bay Book Worm is reading this week; it's Waiting for the Whales!  Dan Bell, the creative horticulturalist behind The Oak Bay Book Worm, and all sorts of other horticultural masterpieces, you are awesome!

By the way, if you like what you see, let the Parks & Rec. Department of Oak Bay know.  I'm sure it would be a treat for them to hear some positive feedback for their wonderful living art, especially art that has encouraged reading.  And, it's always nice to have one of your own books on the Book Worm's reading radar.

David Weisner in Vancouver

Great news!   Author / illustrator extraordinaire David Weisner will be at Vancouver Kidsbooks on Wednesday October 13th at 7pm.  His titles include Flotsam and Tuesday, both stunning books.  He'll be promoting his new book, Art & Max.  Tickets will be limited, so call today.

Books for "Airlift to LA"

A few months ago, I was contacted by Helaine Becker, a writer friend.  She'd been in LA and had visited a school with virtually no books on the library shelves.  Not one to accept the status quo, Helaine decided to do something about it.  That something is about to come to fruition.


The following is a press release she sent along this morning.

Children’s book author orchestrates Canada-wide book drive to stack library shelves of inner city school in Los Angeles.

Helaine Becker’s Airlift to LA highlights the state of Canadian school libraries.

August 23, 2010 (Toronto, ON) Shocked by the empty library bookshelves during an author visit to a Los Angeles-area elementary school, children’s book author Helaine Becker is taking action. She’s started a campaign to put books in the hands of disadvantaged children in LA, and, just as important, is bringing attention to the alarming state of Canadian school libraries.

Becker, an award-winning Toronto area author, has written over 40 books for children, including Science on the Loose (Maple Tree Press 2008), and is known for her wacky, off beat humour for the younger set.

In a recent trip to California, Becker collected over 650 books (most were discards from more affluent schools) for Barton Elementary School, located in an inner city area of Long Beach. Books not up to library standards were given directly to the children and for most of these children, it was the first time they had ever owned a book or even read for pleasure. Now back in Canada, Helaine is spearheading a campaign — Airlift to LA — to stock the shelves of another Los Angeles-area elementary school in the Compton district.

“The three schools I visited were all understaffed, underfunded, and under stocked to the point of breakdown,” explains Becker. “I was completely shocked by how bad the situation was there. The way U.S. schools are funded through property taxes means schools in low-income areas have virtually no ability to meet existing school standards, nor to effectively educate the next generation.

“My hope is that by helping the kids in the Compton-area, we will not only deliver books to kids who need them, but also draw attention to the fact that Canadian school libraries are heading the same way. Our libraries are also dramatically underfunded, in every single province and territory,” explains Becker who recently visited a northern Canadian school whose dusty shelves included books such as The Red Indian and Young John Kennedy. “If you only have a part-time library tech to come in and look after the place one half-day a week, and no funding to restock the shelves with books less than 50 years-old, well, Compton, here we come.”

A long-time advocate for school libraries, Becker sees helping the children in LA as a short-term solution. “The real problem we are trying to address is the systemic problems we face on both sides of the border. Almost none of the school libraries I visit are up to Canadian standards set by the Canadian Library Association,” says Becker who authored a document that allows the public to determine how their school libraries stack up. “If they do the assessment they will see how poorly we are doing and, as a result, why our literacy numbers are going sideways. My hope is that the public will use the results to put pressure on the government to put the funding back where it can do so much good — in a fully-functioning, fully-staffed school library.”
Becker has partnered with Sandra Tsing-Loh, columnist and local celebrity in the LA-area and an advocate for public education, and Rebecca Constantino, founder of Access Books — a non-profit organization which organizes book drives and funding for underserviced school libraries. Last week, Becker shipped approximately 1200 books from over a hundred Canadian authors, publishers and the public to LA. in advance of the book presentation event at Ralph Bunche Elementary School, October 2, 2010.

The event will include author presentations by several Canadian writers including Becker, Wendy Kitts, Rob Weston and Kari-Lynn Winters who will also help refurbish the Bunche school library by sorting and cataloguing books and painting wall murals with the students.

For more information on Airlift to LA go tohttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=121216734588705.

To see how your school library “stacks up”, download the Canadian Coalition for School Libraries and Canadian Association for School Libraries Library/Media Assessment Questionnaire athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/36299260/Library-Assessment-Final-Draft


-30-

For further information on Airlift to LA contact:

Wendy Kitts
info@wendykitts.ca
506-382-4360 or 506-852-1600
www.monctonwriters.ca

Helaine Becker
helbeck@rogers.com
647-985-3682
www.helainebecker.com

To send a book donation by October 2, 2010:

Airlift to LA
c/o Access Books
3622 W. Slauson Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90043

What we need now is level heads and wisdom

Today is the 9th anniversary of 9/11, so I suppose a day to commemorate, it seems to me it is a day desperately in need of greater wisdom and less rhetoric.  I know that it is a day of terrible images that I wish I could erase from my own memory if not the memory banks of the world. I know it sounds naive, especially for someone in their mid-fifies, but I wish we could go back to a world before terror gripped America.  It has made the world a much harsher place for people of all faiths, both in and out of the USA.

Having spent the last few days with my youngest daughter, Katie, I am hopeful that young people will do a better job with world politics than their parents have done. Katie will soon be off to Southeast Asia, and then Australia.  My hope for her, is not just to have fun, although I do hope for that.  But, I especially hope that she comes home a wiser young woman.

Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get to Australia while she's over there.

The Book Worm

This is so cool.  The municipality of Oak Bay always does these very cool garden instillations close to where I live, and close to the local high school, Oak Bay High School.  This summer they did a reading bookwork all created with flowers.  Every Monday the title of the book would change.  It's been Treasure Island, Harry Potter, and lots of other great titles.  This week, the book title was OBHS Course Selection Guide.  Too funny.  I love creative people, and creative municipalities!

Happy International Literacy Day

According to UNESCO, about 774 million adults lack minimum literacy skills. One in five adults is still not literate and of these,  two-thirds are women. About 75 million children are out-of-school and many more attend irregularly or drop out. However, literacy is also a cause for celebration on the day because there are nearly four billion literate people in the world.  


How can you help raise the world literacy rate?  Support literacy in your community through a cash donation or better still, by donating your time.  Buy a few books for a "have not" school in your community, support UNESCO, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and their partners who work at the international level.  


Literacy is the opportunity for change.  Literacy is an opportunity for a better future.  Those of us who are literate take it for granted.  It's easy to forget how lucky we are.

I Have a Dream...

This speech was given 47 years ago, when I was 9; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream..." speech.  It still resonates today.  It still gives me shivers when I hear it.  There are few leaders today who could come close to Dr. King's oratory abilities.  He was a man of vision.  A man of compassion.  A man who, if he were alive today, would, I'm sur,e be speaking out against poverty and injustice.  I've pasted a few lines of the speech below, but I urge you to follow the link and acquaint or reacquaint yourselves with a man whose message is as relevant today as it was all those years ago.

From "I Have a Dream Speech" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

...I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character..."

This and that

It was too cool and windy to have tea outside in the sunshine as usual this morning.  Sure hope that summer isn't over. Will be visiting my friend Margaret today, and she'll want a report on the Mockingjay which I haven't yet had time to read or even pick up for that matter, although I'll try and call into the bookstore before I head out to the airport to pick up a friend returning from Edmonton.  I'll probably bring the book to read on the ferry tomorrow morning since I'm going over for the day.  If I'm lucky I'll get a chance to see my friend Linda Bailey for dinner.  I have her newest Stanley's Little Sister and I want her to sign it before I send it off to my newest little niece, Chloe in Seattle.  Of course I have something for her "big" sister too.

It doesn't pay to disinvite authors, and Mockingjay is out!

Two big news days.  Yesterday Teen Lit Festival in Humble, Texas was cancelled; I gather, due to so many authors pulling out after Ellen Hopkins was disinvited.  I'm sorry to see this happening.  I'd really rather that the decision makers rethought the withdrawal of their invitation to Ms. Hopkins.  In a perfect world I guess...sigh.  So you Humble teens.  You'll just have to get to the library and read.

In other news, today is the release day for Suzanne Collins MockingJay.  I can't believe that my agent Suzie Townsend was lucky enough to get into a bookstore where Ms. Collins was speaking along side of her editor, the equally great David Levithan.  Not only does Suzie have the book, she's already READ it!  I'm not far behind you Suzie.

My idea of a perfect summer day

Yesterday was my idea of a perfect summer day.  Sunny but not too hot.  A lovely breeze.  After a gorgeous bike ride on Lockside trail, a stop a Maddock's farm for ice cream, and a burger downtown, we wandered into Munro's Books along Government St.  I love this bookstore, although I find it dangerous to step through it's impressive (formerly a swanky bank) glass and wood doors.  I think last night's visit set me back a couple of hundred...Yikes.  So many books to read though.  Linda Bailey's new title, Stanley's Little Sister, The Gryphon Project by Carrie Mac (which I've been meaning to read since it won the Sheila Eggoff Prize for YA Literature at the BC Book Prizes), and InkDeath, the last in Cornelia Funke's trilogy which I've yet to read.  So exciting, I'll have to get through these really fast because the fall list will be in soon, and the "too be read piles" will just get higher and higher!