A few good gems

Less than two weeks till Christmas! I'm 88% finished with my Christmas shopping, and 100% fired up for the big day. Our best gift will be a Skyped conversation with our daughter in France. I hope I can hold it together and don't turn into a sobbing mess when I see her. I'm giving sobbing mess a 94% chance.

But there's still time to seize the season, so to speak. Here are a few good gems in case you need a little inspiration.

via Shutterbean.com

So, it's pretty much decided. I'm making this awesome peppermint bark as my friend & neighbor gift this year. Still need to find some cute containers.

I absolutely love this little kindergarten girl. She signs her entire holiday program for her deaf parents. She's a doll, and for some reason it made me kind of teary that she was translating the entire thing for them. 

via SweetPaul

For your holiday dinner -- antlers on placecards! What could be better?

Remember when I posted about Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge? Read about the books that meant the most to Elizabeth Strout in 2013. Really the entire series, of A Year in Reading: 2013, is undeniably cool.

Without doubt, O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" is my favorite Christmas-time short story. I've forgone Madeline's Christmas and most of the kiddie Christmas books in our collection, but I do require an annual reading of this book. We have this illustrated version. But you can download the story (along with other O. Henry classics) here.

Check out this NYT's article on how to minimize the material aspects of Christmas -- how to have a great holiday with LESS STUFF. Be sure to check out the comments where other parents weigh in.

That's it guys! Have a great weekend. Stay warm!

Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful?

Yesterday, when I SHOULD have been working, I accidentally found myself reading a novel. That happens from time to time, and I'm considering seeking professional counseling over the matter. I was reading Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, which I picked up the other night at Barnes & Noble. Guys, I should have waited. I have Amazon Prime, which means I could save myself five bucks by ordering rather than buying it on the spot. But I also have a problem with delayed gratification, so I bought it on the spot.  I wanted it mostly because the protagonist (does anyone still use the word protagonist?) lives in the little town of Crosby, Maine. You see, I have a slight Maine fantasy going on in my head -- a fantasy placed there in my adolescence by one Hawkeye Pierce. (MASH, anyone?) Also, Olive Kitteridge is a Pulitzer Prize winner (2009), so I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

The Pulitzer Prize citation pages says that Oliver Kitteridge packs a "cumulative emotional wallop." And really? I'd whole-heartedly agree. The book is actually comprised of a series of short stories, all set around the same characters in idyllic Crosby, Maine. Most of the action, however, swirls around Olive, and as she approaches her 70s the narrator reflects on a long-ago played soccer game:

There was beauty to that autumn air, and the sweaty young bodies that had mud on their legs, strong young men who would throw themselves forward to have the ball smack against their foreheads; the cheering when a goal was scored, the goalie sinking to his knees. There were days--she could remember this--when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middled-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it. But she had that memory now, of something healthy and pure.

I was so struck by this. Am I in my prime? Is this the best it will ever be? I felt both suspiciously proud and slightly terrified. But even more importantly, I knew that these are the moments to be quietly joyful. Yesterday, when the four of us were in the dark car on the way home from Church, and we stopped at Sonic at 9:00 pm for drinks, and the radio played softly in the background while we laughed at Rebecca's joke, I thought to myself, Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful?

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See a list of Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction here. 

Like Calvin and Alice

Calvin Trillin's ode to his wife, About Alice, remains one of my favorite snapshots of a marriage.  Alice was a frequent feature in most of Trillin's writing and a muse and lodestar in his life. This slim, unabashed love letter of a book makes clear that he was smitten in a very real, long-lasting way. It's not a weepy, maudlin elegy but a funny and poignant tribute to the woman he clearly adored and still does.

He writes, "I once wrote that tales about writers' families tend to have a relation to real life that can be expressed in terms of standard network-television fare, on a spectrum that goes form sitcoms to Lifetime movies, and that mine were sitcoms. Now that I think of it, maybe they were more like the Saturday-morning cartoons. Alice played the role of the mom--the voice of reason, the sensible person who kept everything on an even keel despite the antics of her marginally goofy husband. Years ago, at a conference of English teachers where we were both speakers, the professor who did the introductions said something like 'Alice and Bud are like Burns and Allen, except she's George and he's Gracie.' Yes, of course the role she played in my stories was based on the role she played in our family--our daughters and I sometimes called her T.M. which stood for The Mother--but she didn't play it in the broad strokes of a sitcom mom...she was anything but stern. She had something close to a child's sense of wonderment. She was the only adult I ever knew who might respond to encountering a deer on a forest path by saying 'Wowsers!'

"There was one condolence letter that made me laugh. Naturally, a lot of them made me cry. Some of those, oddly enough, were from people who had never met Alice. They had become familiar with her as a character in books and magazine pieces I had written...about traveling or eating or family life. Virtually all those letters begin in the same way, with a phrase like 'Even though I never really knew Alice..." I was certain of what Alice's response would have been. 'They're right about that,' she would have said. 'They never knew me.' 

"...Still, in the weeks after she died I was touched by their letters. They might not have known her but they knew how I felt about her...I got a lot of letters like the one from a young woman in New York who wrote that she sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought, 'But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?" 

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- This made me wonder: Who are your lodestar couples--the ones you maybe aspire to be like, as Calvin and Alice were for the young letter writer? Are they real or fictional? Do you know them personally or from afar?

- Listen to Calvin Trillin's interview on About Alice 

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p.s.  On a personal note, I'm celebrating with a happy dance in the kitchen and an afternoon of novel reading just for fun because last night I sent in 70 pages of my dissertation to my advisor! (Technically, it's part of the dissertation proposal but will also be the substantial literature review of my dissertation itself.) Just had to shout that from the internet rooftops. I'm beginning to think maybe this really will happen, folks! Except on the days when I'm ready to throw in the towel, that is. It's a toss-up these days (just ask Sarah, who lets me vent about it on an almost daily basis).

Standing out

Gena Young Mabee. BYU. 1989.

Some of my best memories my freshman year of college were made in conjunction with a spunky California-girl named Gena Young. Man that girl was headstrong. She knew what she wanted, and she was focused. Also? She was a ton of fun. Gena and I took an American Sign Language class together, and as part of the class we entered a sign song contest -- wherein we had to pick a song and then sign the lyrics (you know . . . happy hands). Sterling, my then boyfriend (who actually knew American Sign Language), helped us put together a hilarious routine to a song I can only remember being called "The Goat Song." We practiced signing about this crazy goat in the community bathroom, watching ourselves in the mirrors over the row of sinks. And we won! We were such great goat signers that we won first prize. And really, once you've signed about goats with someone, you are pretty much bonded for life.

Gena and I (and our dates) before Preference. Dude, I totally married my date!

My girl, Gena Young Mabee, has written a book! It's a YA memoir called Standing Out: Sometimes Alone, and it documents Gena's experiences in junior high through the first days of college, focusing on those often painful adolescent experiences centered around 'fitting in.' Two things to know about Gena -- she is Mormon and she's black, and those identifications, obviously, shaped her growing up years. The book then, is also about how Gena navigated the teenage years while staying true to her religion and to her own sense of self -- not an easy task for anyone.

Gena & I on the front row. I have no idea why I'm sticking my leg up in such an awkward fashion. Geez.

What I love about the book, aside from the fact that Gena is fabulous, is the big picture perspective it offers. Gena writes about feeling left out, alone, confused, determined, happy, depressed, loyal . . . just about every teenage (and human) emotion really. I've handed my copy over to Rebecca (my 16 year old), and I'm dying to hear what she thinks. It's tough being in high school where there is such a mixture of goodness and friendship, betrayal and temptation. I want my kids to know that it's good to stand your ground. Decide what you believe in and what you want and never deviate. Gena's book talks ALL about that. My feeling is that the book will be overwhelmingly comforting to Becca -- to read about another person's hardships, disappointments, and successes that are really so very similar to her own. I know I felt comforted, and I'm 42. So hey! 

And, as a bonus, I'm in the book! I won't tell you where. Just know that I'm going to swoop in and save the day in a very heroic and stylish fashion.  

Currently the paperback book can be bought on the StandingOut website. The Kindle edition is available through Amazon, and a little birdie told me that Amazon is stocking the paperbacks starting next week. It would be a great Christmas gift for any teen.

Congrats to Gena. I'm so proud of her! 

The Brothers Green

If you have teenagers, chances are you've heard about the Green brothers, John and Hank.  After all, they do have over 500,000,000 (yes, that's 500 million) combined views on their projects so even my shoddy statistical reasoning leads me to think some (or most?) of you have probably come under the Green spell. But if not, you're in for a treat for you and your kids. 

John Green is a popular YA author whose most recent book, The Fault in Our Stars, was both a critical and popular cross-over hit that is being made into a movie. (I think Maddy just read it again for the third time, actually; we suggest it for 15+ since it has some mature themes and a bit of language.) 

Hank Green is an entrepreneur, musician, and vlogger who created the Lizzie Bennet Diaries series, a modern-day adaptation of Pride & Prejudice we mentioned in our weekly Gems a few months back (and it went on to win an Emmy, you guys!).

Now he's back with a new interactive series called Emma Approved based on, you guessed it, Jane Austen's Emma with the modern-day Emma re-imagined as a "bold, smart, idealistic, and audacious young female entrepreneur in life coaching and matchmaking." There's a youtube channel that airs the video episodes and Emma also tweets, has a Facebook page, and a Tumblr. Here's the first episode:

The two brothers also have a hilarious Vlogbrothers channel on YouTube where they leave video messages to each other several times a week and entertain the rest of us in the meantime with their smart, nerdy-cool, fast-paced dialogue on whatever they're thinking about at the time--science, health insurance, maps, animals who stopped sporting events, jokes, etc. For your Monday entertainment,  please enjoy one of Hank's joke challenges:

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Books for Momma

I've been reading a lot lately -- some for professional work and also a good stack for my own personal reading pleasure. I do have a reading sickness -- where once I become interested in a book, I can hardly focus on anything else. Combine this weakness with my iPhone and the siren call of Netflix, and I'm pretty much good for nothing.  There are rare moments when I discipline myself long enough to fold a load of laundry and write a page or two. But then there are those multitudinous other moments where I just give in to the power of the story. I can't help it. I'm a weak woman.

Right now I'm finishing up Kelly Corrigan's The Middle Place. I ordered this book thinking it was about something else entirely (not Corrigan's crisis in facing breast cancer), but her writing style is so funny and engaging that I pretty much devoured the book in about four hours. Also, she has a lot to say about parenting and relationships that I find both hilarious and instructive.

Last week I read Elizabeth Smart's My Story, an account of her nine-month abduction. At the time of Smart's kidnapping and rescue I was a tiny bit obsessed with the story. Her being a young, naive Mormon girl snatched from her bedroom hit just a little too close to home. I'd seen the made-for-TV movie, but, come on, that can't be a fair shake. Her own account is riveting. I can't say it's good -- because it's tragic and heartbreaking. By the end, even though I knew she would be rescued, I was bawling my eyes out. It's actually quite disheartening to hear up close and personal about such evil in our world, but Smart's faith and spirit is an impressive counter. I think she is fabulous.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was reading E. M. Forster's Howards End. I selected Howards End because I was thinking about the idea of home as place -- and how that space shapes and influences us. It's a fabulous read in it's own right, but it didn't let me down in the consideration of home. I especially like it when Mr. Wilcox explains that "a house in which one has lived becomes in a sort of way sacred." So true.

It's been a year or so since I last read Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, but it's sitting on my pile of soon-to be-read books. I think I'm drawn to the book because of its slow, beautiful pace -- the description of the English countryside, Steven's complete dedication to his work, and his insights on what remains of his day. It's thoughtful and revealing -- makes me think. Also, there are funny moments -- well, probably only funny to an irreverent American. Here's one of my favorite lines:

I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land [Great Britain] apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout about it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.

Love it. 

Also on my re-read list (but farther down) are Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries and Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. 

What about you? What are you reading? 

A few good gems

Happy Friday! I'm pretty darn happy to not wake up at 5 AM come Saturday morning -- my eyes feel so scratchy and tired! Plus, I'm super excited to see my BYU Cougars play University of Houston -- live and in person at Reliant Stadium. I've got my game day shirt all ready to go, and I've been practicing the BYU Fight Song for days now. Rise and Shout!

But before I go, a few links for your weekend perusal. . . 

via Darling Magazine

A monthly food swap? Sign me up. This one is beautiful. 

Here's a fascinating book review on Claudia Hammond's Time Warped. She actually proposes that we can control how we experience time: "We construct the experience of time in our minds, so it follows that we are able to change the elements we find troubling." I'm totally into this because when I'm waiting in line or in traffic, I'm practically crawling out of my skin. Also, I might want to lengthen out those moments I'm on a deadline, or reading a book in bed, or eating donuts. And . . . who isn't interested in mind control? Seems like a good middle age (parent of teenagers) hobby.

This is a must-read NYTimes article on how to deal with (and avoid) teen drinking. There are so many differing opinions on when and how and if to introduce drinking to teens. The article is careful to mention a number of teen drinking philosophies. Interestingly, there is statistical evidence that encourages postponing the first drink as long as possible -- that later start dates actually encourage more moderate drinking practices in later life. So there. No drinking kiddies!

I just happened upon this site, so I haven't had time to give it a proper shakedown. But it looks like it could be a good resource for YA fiction. 

While I can't recommend the ABC series, Nashville (what the heck are they doing to Tammy Taylor?), I am a fan of teen singers Lennon & Maisy. This is my latest find. I'm campaigning to have Becca learn to sing it. It's soooo good.

Like Annie, I'm thinking about Christmas over here and browsing through Etsy for interesting and beautiful gifts: 

• Love this print. And these mid-century beauties.
• This gnome pattern (But I'd have to make it myself, which ISN'T happening.) 
• These Christmas cards. Since my people are all over the place, this could replace the family photo. She only allows three people on the card, but I could try begging. 
• Becca gifted Maddie one of these when she left for college. More for Christmas! 

But while I'm waiting for Christmas, I really need these donuts. Someone. Please.