tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42064753441877446092024-03-13T10:49:33.685-07:00Words from the Top of the Worldthe random thoughts of an arctic writerDebby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-10039515126053630242017-10-26T22:31:00.001-07:002017-10-26T22:46:10.880-07:00Not Your Typical Cat Story, Not at All<div style="text-align: center;">
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Now, I’m not much of a cat person, but when my good friend Bill Hess writes a cat book, I have to take note. Bill has been telling the stories of Arctic Alaska and its people for a long, long time and he is good at what he does—<i>understatement. </i>When Bill puts his heart into something, he does so with no holds barred.<br />
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Bill tells stories with his photos and creates pictures with his words. And he always tells the stories that touch us the most: Iñupiaq stories that go straight to the heart of the people and the culture.<br />
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His photos capture those special moments in the lives of people, their relationships, their families and their communities. Like this photo of a little boy, aspiring to the be an Iñupiaq drummer as his elders perform...<br />
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Or this one of Robin Demoski of Utqiaġvik, caught (with some pretty fast footwork) in the act of taking a photo of the photographer...<br />
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Or this one, which caught the eye of the world: Malik, one of our greatest whalers, saying goodbye to the gray whale trapped in the ice off the coast of Barrow in 1988, the story that inspired the movie <i>Big Miracle.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Malik says goodbye.</i></td></tr>
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On his blog Bill narrates the story of this amazing photo with simple prose that gets right to the heart of the both the story of the photo and the larger story of the rescue. Bill writes:<br />
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….all the hunters, save one, turned and left. It was Malik who stayed. I knew I would be safe on the ice as long as I was with Malik. The picture I knew was coming had not yet happened. So I stayed with him. When Crossbeak rose, he was there to greet it.</blockquote>
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Then, with his hallmark prose, Bill follows the string of photos that culminates with this photo, telling the story of the great whaler and the trapped gray whales, frame by frame, caption by caption:<br />
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Malik walks alongside the whale, talks to the whale.</blockquote>
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Together, they move farther along. Malik never ceases his conversation. He speaks Iñupiaq. His voice is calm, quiet.</blockquote>
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Malik and whale reach the end of the hole.</blockquote>
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They turn, and start to come back. Now Malik walks and talks with both whales.<br />
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Then, finally, and with restrained elegance of word and image:<br />
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Malik says goodbye.</blockquote>
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You almost don’t need to see the string of photos to feel the heart of this story. But if you want to see them--and you do--read Bill’s version of <a href="http://www.logbookwasilla.com/logbookwasilla/2012/2/22/the-movie-big-miracle-and-what-i-witnessed-in-real-life-part-2.html">The movie Big Miracle and what I witnessed in real life</a>. You’ll see Bill in his element as an artist.<br />
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As a writer, I’ve always been in complete awe of Bill’s dual talents. How can one have both the ability to capture a story with just the right photos snapped at exactly the right moment <i>and </i>the ability to add the words that frame the story behind the photos perfectly?<br />
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It’s a mystery. I once asked Bill which he liked best, photography or writing. “That’s like asking me which I prefer my eyes or my ears,” Bill told me.<br />
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Now, here comes Bill with a book on cats—<i>cats?</i> Well, actually, no. <i>Thunder Paws</i> is not a generic cat book. It’s not your run-of-the-mill coffee table cat book, of which there are legions. This book is the unique story of one special cat and its relationship with one special family. Within a few short pages we meet the cat called Thunder Paws and watch how the family embraces its new feline child and how the cat child embraces and changes its family, growing, with the human children, into adulthood. It opens with these words:<br />
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Sometimes, the best cat is the cat you do not seek out; the cat that appears unexpectedly before you and, without trying, inserts itself deep into your heart, brings you warmth and pleasure, causes you to laugh with delight and to marvel at the wonder that is a cat. So great is the love generated by such a cat that when, unexpectedly, it is torn from you, its absence leaves you, and its whole host of human loved ones, grieving; yes - even weeping.<br />
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Thunder Paws was such a cat.</blockquote>
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As I've said, this is not your typical cat, it’s not your typical family, nor is it your typical cat story. But don't take my word--see for yourself: go <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Paws-Cat-Chronicles-1/dp/1548837865/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&dpID=61wkSChQz4L&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=detail">HERE</a> and buy it. You won’t be disappointed.<br />
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Bill has self-published this book and it <i>is</i> beautiful. Did I fail to mention that Bill is also a master at book layout and design? Yeah, well he is.<br />
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Thanks Bill. We want more.<br />
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</style>Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-9722598370157766232015-09-14T18:59:00.001-07:002015-09-14T19:38:27.670-07:00Never Let go of your Dreams.....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When my kids were little, I used to dream about going on a writing retreat I'd heard of. It was on Whidby Island off the coast of Washington. As I read the literature, I would image the luxury of it. I'ld stay in a beautiful hand-crafted cottage where I would be invited to write all day long, all expenses paid. At the end of every day, I would enjoy the company other other women writers, celebrating our work together with a great meal. No cooking, no dishes and no responsibilities save the responsibility of being a writer. Nothing to do but take long walks, ruminate, and create books and stories.<br />
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Writers: close your eyes and imagine this for a few moments, if you will. Breathe deep into the joy of of the image and let it sustain you for a bit. This was what I used to do all those many years ago. It was merely dream then, of course, because what young woman with seven kids and very little means can afford to take even a few hours off?<br />
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After my kids grew up the excuse was a day job and commitments.<br />
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And after I retired it was: well retirement is a retreat all by itself, isn't it?<br />
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No, actually, it is not.<br />
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I was struck by something writer <a href="http://www.nancywerlin.com/">Nancy Werlin</a> posted on Facebook recently: "I regret to say that in writing there is no such thing for me anymore as the shitty first draft. There is only the shitty slow draft."<br />
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It't true. I spent those years when my brain was faster and brighter devoted to other kinds of work. Now I am where I am as a novelist and that is that. I <i>am</i> slower. That's the bad news. The good news is that craft, when you nourish it over long years of gestation, is kind of like the human nose--it never quits growing. (How's that for Bizzare Mixed Simile of the Week?)<br />
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Over a year ago, I read another Facebook post--this one from my young writer friend <a href="http://keklamagoon.com/">Kekla Magoon</a> (who was just shortlisted for the National book Award!). Kekla was encouraging writers to apply to <a href="http://www.hedgebrook.org/writers-in-residence/">Hedgebrook</a>---that very writer's retreat that I had longed for when my kids were young. And even though retirement is it's own retreat and all that, I applied and was accepted.<br />
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<i>Whooo--double---hooo! </i>I am going to Hedgebrook where a little hand-crafted cabin and a group of other artists awaits me. I will have a month's worth of long slow days in which to nourish my last remaining child, the one who is taking her own sweet time to grow: my writing.<br />
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Wish me well and don't expect to hear from me for awhile. I am going on a retreat from the world to immerse myself totally in the world of writing.<br />
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Hedgebrook: their motto is "Women Authoring Change." How cool is that?<br />
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<br />Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-11385818489187734742013-11-28T11:26:00.000-08:002013-11-28T11:26:33.695-08:00A Conversation with God on Thanksgiving Day<div style="text-align: right;">
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>"Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost!" </i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>– Isaak Denison, "Babette's Feast", 1953</i></span></span></div>
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So I am thinking, today, of Karen Blixen, the wonderful Danish writer of royal blood who wrote under the pen name of Isaak Dinesen<i>.</i><br />
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I'm thankful, in a season of thanksgiving, for Blixen's work, especially for <i>Winter's Tales.</i> Especially for one tale within this volume entitled, "The Young Man with the Carnation." It's about a young writer--Charlie--who is tormented by the fame his first novel has generated and is paralyzed by the fear that he will never again write anything of significance. He has run amuck at a hotel in Antwerp where he has checked into the wrong room, gotten drunk with a group of sailors and has thrown his second manuscript unceremoniously into the sea.<br />
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As a writer I can so relate to this. All of it except maybe the sailors. I especially love the conversation Charlie has with God at the end of the story:<br />
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<i>"Who made the ships, Charlie?" he asked.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Nay, I know not," said Charlie. "Did you make them?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Yes," said the Lord, "I made the ships on their keels, and all floating things. The moon that sails in the sky, the orbs that swing in the universe, the tides, the generations, the fashions. You make me laugh for I have given you all the world to sail and float in and you have run aground here, in a room of the Queen's Hotel to seek a quarrel."</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Come," said the Lord again, "I will make a covenant between me and you. I will not measure you out any more distress than you need to write your books."</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Oh, indeed!" said Charlie.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"What did you say?" asked the Lord. "Do you want any less than that?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"I said nothing," said Charlie.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"But you are to write the books," said the Lord, "For it is I who want them written. Not the public, not by any means the critics, but ME!"</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Can I be certain of that?" Charlie asked.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Not always," said the Lord. "You will not be certain of it at all times. But I tell you now that it is so. You will have to hold onto that."</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"O good God," said Charlie.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Are you going," said the Lord, "to thank me for what I have done for you tonight?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"I think," said Charlie,"that we will leave it at what it is, and say no more about it."</i></blockquote>
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Charlie always makes me smile. The creation of art is so rife with self doubt and raw vulnerability that we writers are continually seeking validation.<br />
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As children's writers we grow weary, at best, of all the people who think of us as a lesser breed, as though it somehow takes less craft and less dedication and less talent to write books for our youngest readers. I get mad at these people sometimes. I want to holler at them, sometimes, holler right into their red faces. <i>Think about what this says of your feelings for children, book people! We are the ones who <b>creating</b> the readers of books, for crying out loud! Don't patronize!</i><br />
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And then a child comes up to me at a reading and asks if the character of Uncle Joe, in <i>My Name is Not Easy</i> is based on a real person and I sense in his question a deep longing to know, for certain, that the possibility of a person like Uncle Joe exists somewhere in this uncertain world.<br />
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And it is enough. I can hold onto this.<br />
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As writers writing from the heart of marginalized cultures we often get frustrated, at best, by those who fail to "get" our work, frustrated even by those who give us glowing reviews that somehow manage to miss the point. <i>No! </i>we want to holler. <i>No, that's not it, that's not it at all. Look deeper! Look beyond your assumptions. </i><br />
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And then a woman comes up to me at church and taps me on the shoulder. My book, she tells me, has healed her. "You are the anointed one," she says.<br />
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And it is enough. More than enough.<br />
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<i>Anointed. </i>It's so heavy with connotation, this word, so carefully chosen, I sense. There runs through it a deeper meaning which not even my wonderful dictionary of entomology can articulate.<br />
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It holds within it all I really need, I think. I will hold onto it.<br />
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Okay, I return you now to your regularly scheduled Thanksgiving programming wondering, of course, if anyone ever reads these little missives of mine, fired off at such irregular intervals. Wondering if it even maters.<br />
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Okay, yes it matters.<br />
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Leave me a note if you are inclined to do so.Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-9589851962213885102013-08-07T11:48:00.001-07:002013-08-12T00:24:42.360-07:00The right book at the right time....In an article in<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/books/review/one-book-in.html?ref=books&_r=1&"> the New York Times Sunday Book Review</a> recently, Terry Eicher talks about a book from his childhood. He writes:<br />
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<i>The best part of sixth grade at Grady Elementary School in Houston, in 1960, was after lunch when Mrs. Wise stood at the front of the classroom and opened a red book and read a few pages aloud...it was a story about yearning, maybe even one that taught yearning. Mrs. Wise always stopped reading at the height of excitement, making a small indentation in the margins with her fingernail to mark the spot. We groaned.</i></blockquote>
It was a book that touched Eicher so deeply he spent twenty years trying to find it again to read to his own children. It was <i>Giles of the Star. </i>You've probably never heard of it. I hadn't.<br />
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But every writer on the planet remembers his or her own<i> Giles of the Star</i>. For some of us, this was the book which compelled us to become children's writers. We remembered the place it held in our hearts and we wanted to be the writer of that book. In our minds there was no title that held greater honor. People accord adult writing a higher status, but we know better. We understand from personal experience the power a children's book has to mark hearts and souls indelibly. We couldn't demean or devalue these books if we tried. We still love reading them.<br />
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Eicher started his story by talking about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/books/review/drew-gilpin-faust-by-the-book.html">an article on childhood books <i>he'd</i> read. </a> In this article, Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust recalls the joy of discovering a long lost childhood favorite in a used bookstore.<br />
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<i>Sweet</i>. </div>
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But what really caught my attention was what Faust said about re-reading <i>Huckleberry Finn</i>, a book she hadn't read since high school:<br />
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<i>I was astonished to find how much of what I had been teaching and studying about race and slavery in American history was already there in a book published in 1884.</i></blockquote>
Such is the power of young people's literature and the lifelong impression it leaves behind. <br />
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<i>What? </i>You didn't think of <i>Huckleberry Finn</i> as young adult literature? Think again.<br />
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Eichner's memories of <i>Giles of the Star </i>made me remember a magical star book from my own childhood. It was given to me by the couple who lived next door. They were childless and had adopted me as their surrogate child. He was an artist and she was a dancer and I was a solitary child with imaginary friends so real family members still remember their names. <i>Dowdy and Gwee-Gwee--</i>he painted a mural of them on his stairwell wall and she gave me enchanted gifts--a chinese rag doll that had a blue shirt with frog buttons, a slender porcelain vase wreathed in paper thin flowers . . . and books, they always gave me books. On my seventh birthday it was a handsome volume published by Hatchard & Co. London, entitled <i>The Daughters of the Stars,</i> a story which transported me to another world, another universe. It began like this:<br />
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<i>Midway, upon the extreme edge of a great continent, there lies a huge forest. In it are more varieties of plants and trees than it is possible to imagine, more strange creatures and beings than the greatest scientist has yet been able to study or explain.....</i></blockquote>
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The illustrations, by Edmund Dulac, were magical to a seven-year old girl-child.</div>
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I've always remembered one scene in this book where the mother and daughter find a silver dish of raspberry ice, buried in a cloud. Imagine traveling through a starlit sky bound for adventure, stopping only to nestle into a cloud and eat raspberry ice...<br />
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This memory somehow became entangled with memories of my grandmother Meg--we always called her Meg--who used to play a bedtime game with me.<br />
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<i>What color is your cloud? </i>Meg would ask.<br />
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We always tried to outdo one another in picking unusual colors for the clouds we were going to ride to sleep on. <i>Pigeon Berry. Butterscotch.</i> And one time--I was especially proud of this one--<i>Merthiolate. </i><br />
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(Yes, I'm dating myself. Merthiolate was a mercury-containing germ-killer that came in a small brown glass bottle with a clear glass applicator attached its lid. Maybe you remember it, too. Applied to a skinned knee it had a wonderful pinkish tinged orange color that seemed nearly neon, the same color you sometimes see on teenaged hair these days...and once in a blue moon, on clouds.)<br />
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When my oldest granddaughter began talking, I remembered Meg's game one night as we lay in bed after reading a story. But the game had changed. <i>What flavor is the ice in your cloud?</i> I found myself asking her<i>.</i><br />
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I had strong, creative women in my life, women who raised me to believe I was bound for greatness, women who compelled me to raise the children in my life the same way.<br />
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Recently, I read the forward to <i>The Daughters of the Stars </i>for the first time:<br />
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<i>Readers of fairy tales and other romantic fiction will have noticed before this that the Mothers of the heroines are seldom featured. One would imagine that the effort of producing a female child destined to adventure was too much for the average Queen or Princess, since, if she has not already expired before the story opens, she usually manages to to pass away before its close.... Thus it will be seen that, from the first page to the last, Astrella is never permitted the slightest excuse for decease...Which is surely not unreasonable, inasmuch as the death-rate of actual Mothers does not appear to be alarming; and we could name more than one beside whom our fictitious lady is but a delicate shadow.</i> </blockquote>
This book was written in 1939, but I read it in the late fifties and rode it into the sixties. I think it colored how I've raised my children.<br />
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Because this is the truth. Children's books have made us who we are. Their words and images and worldviews live within us and continue to inform our responses to life in ways we may only begin to suspect as we grow older. <br />
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I think about this as a school board member, the one who always talks about reading. The one who grows increasingly weary of those who think they can turn children into readers and writers with computerized phonics, scripted reading programs and prescriptive reading standards, the kinds of things that tear a book apart into so many unrecognizable bites of stuff.<br />
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You can take the bird apart to see what makes it fly, but it will never fly again.<br />
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Some children will become readers despite these things. Many more will be driven away from reading altogether. And we will continue to wonder why our educational system falters and our kids don't read.<br />
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All it takes to turn a child into a reader, writer and lifelong thinker is the right book at the right time. All it takes is a a teacher who loves to read and models it in her classroom, an adult who gives the gift of a good book, a library with one good librarian.... <br />
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Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-6000690889148236242013-04-01T08:08:00.000-07:002013-08-04T14:17:47.333-07:00Writing Across CulturesThis is a topic I have thought a great deal about throughout my writing career. I'm even teaching a class on it <a href="http://www.writers.com/">starting this week at writers.com.</a><br />
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I, myself, was born into a Minnesota Norwegian family, learned Norwegian attending school in Norway, and have lived for the majority of my life within the Inupiaq culture of northern Alaska. I learned both the Norwegian language of my ancestors and the Inupiaq culture I am married into through a powerful immersion process. I wanted, through my writing, to approximate this experience for my readers.<br />
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I think of German literary scholar Wolfgang Iser who proposed a new field of inquiry he calls “literary anthropology,” a field which starts, as he describes it, with the question of how “literature—in relation to history or society—reflects something special that neither philosophies of history nor sociological theories are able to capture.”<br />
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It's captured through immersion, literary immersion. We readers know all about it. We have craved it, constantly, since discovering that very first book, the one that enfolded us into an unimagined world and kindled a lifelong passion for literary exploration. Within the pages of books, we are able to assume the worldviews of others—to become other. Understanding worldview is at the core of good writing. It's core to understanding culture, as well—culture in the broadest sense of the term.<br />
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People sometimes say that I write outside of my own culture or that I write through a borrowed culture. I can't imagine consciously doing any such thing. If you understand the worldview of your characters and write from within that worldview you are not writing outside of anything and you are not borrowing—you are immersing yourself within. Does your own individual perspective on life bleed through? Sure. But you are aware of this and you control it—not as a bad thing, but as a conscious thing.<br />
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People want to know what constitutes authentic writing from a cultural perspective. They want to know how to tell whether the books they are reading or writing are authentic to the cultures they represent. A good part of this comes from recognizing your own cultural bias. As Anne Lamodt writes: <br />
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<i>“You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”</i></blockquote>
In thinking of this over the years, I've come to realize something important. It's actually something that's pretty basic, as well. All writing is about crossing boundaries. Good writers learn how to inhabit the skins of others--even those whose life experiences are very different from their own. So, in a very real sense, the skills you need to successfully write across cultures are the same skills you need to master in order to be a good writer regardless of your subject.<br />
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Because let's face it: we live in an increasingly multicultural world and if we are to write within this world, we must learn these skills. How can we possibly write of a world in which all characters share our own cultural perspective? Jane Austin might have been able to do it from a comfortable perch in her country parlor but we, in today's world, cannot. To do so, we would have to lock ourselves in our writing rooms and never emerge because today's world is everywhere reflective of a multitude of cultural perspectives. And it's not our job to amalgamate these. It's our job, as writers, to mine the gems we find there and let each shine of its own light.<br />
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I'll be talking about this a lot over the next eight weeks at <a href="http://writers.com/">writers.com</a>. Join me.<br />
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PS. It's August and this class is over now. Great class! I wanted to add a post script, though, because I was recently reminded of <a href="http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2011/11/guest-post-debby-dahl-edwardson-on-lens.html">a guest post I did on this subject over at Cynstations</a>.<br />
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<br />Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-69746972881309769502012-11-24T10:16:00.001-08:002012-11-24T10:16:03.329-08:00The Mixed Thanksgiving PostIt's winter now, cold and getting colder. The sun lingers just below the horizon during the day. It's a time when those of us who are growing older start thinking we maybe are not cut out for all this cold stuff, after all. Maybe, we think, we will go someplace warm, like...<i>Arizona!</i><br />
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But then we remember how the State of Arizona effectively shut down the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson by threatening to withhold a large amount of money from the school district there.<br />
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Teaching them about their own history and culture was leading Mexican-American kids to be too much Mexican and not enough American, detractors said. Dangerous stuff. <a href="http://www.coe.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/MAS_report_2012_0.pdf">It was also making them smarter, studies showed. </a>That's dangerous, too.<br />
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And here we are, in northern Alaska, trying to meld culture into everything we do educationally. We want our kids to be smarter. <i>Watch out world.</i><br />
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Oh never mind. I really just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving and, for my writer friends, I wanted to share <a href="http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/popup.php?name=writers_almanac/2012/11/twa_20121119_64&starttime=00:02:12.0&endtime=00:05:01.0&elq=f7b08f70d7684ccca799d08f18352e04&elqCampaignId=128">a poem by Louise Erdrich</a> which seems apropos to all the unnecessary stress we put on ourselves in this and other seasons.<br />
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And to think of thanksgiving, not associated with any bogus holiday because, really, why do we celebrate, with thanksgiving, an event that either marks the time when the Native American tribes on the east coast tried a temporary truce or a time when they were first subjected to genocide, depending on who's telling the story.<br />
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I don't suppose, though, that this is a real reason to quit eating turkey.<br />
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I am thankful for this, from a student at Barrow High School:<br />
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Its a poster for <i>My Name is Not Easy</i>. I especially like what she chose as "Significant Quotation":<br />
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<i>I was a leader, testing the safety of the frozen world with my own skin.</i></blockquote>
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I am thankful for books and book people and those who test the safety of the world with the skin of their own bright words, left behind, leading the way for those who follow in this frozen and thawing world.<br />
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<br />Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-63336592793254622242012-10-02T10:41:00.001-07:002012-10-03T08:39:13.276-07:00A Summer of Light and Memory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Summer is gone. There is a light dusting of snow on the tundra and the fall light is with us, full of soft pastels and evening fire. The whales are passing by us, headed south. </div>
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So I am behind on posting of summer, mostly because I was un-wired for a good part of the time. Here are my summer memories to share....</div>
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It began on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, traveling eastward from the northernmost point of land on the North American continent, to the Chip River and then southward--inland--to the Ikpikpuk River, the place of big cliffs in the foothills of the Brooks Range. </div>
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The one thing that stands out about this trip (aside from the fact that I intentionally left my laptop behind and went an unprecedented eight days without it) was the light. We traveled all night, some nights, but it wasn't dark. The sky around us, bigger than life, was translucent. Luminous. There is nothing in the world quite like the 24-hour light of an Arctic summer night deep in the country. Absolutely nothing. That kind of light has it's own flavor as though the air itself is made different by its presence. <br />
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We flew up the river in our new river boat, the sides of the cliffs sprouting with red and purple flowers and the waters were alive with geese and goslings. As they saw the boat approach, the niglik--the adult geese--would run flapping along the top of the water in front of us, fleeing--or perhaps trying to divert us--and the goslings, the nigilingnaurat, would dive in unison, butts up, as though they had been drilled in the procedure. </div>
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And the caribou. They were there by the hundreds along the shores of the Arctic ocean, escaping the mosquitoes and crossing the river, up inland, migrating.</div>
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It was a breath-taking journey.</div>
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The great thing about a river boat is that it can fly through shallow water where other boats get stuck. The bad thing is that when it gets stuck, it really gets stuck.</div>
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When we got stuck, it took seven hours, all night, for the four of us--my husband, myself, our son and our daughter's fiance, to push us out. And trust me, my husband and I are fairly past the prime of our brawniness. In fact my husband has had serious health issues and yet was up on the bow of the boat, dancing, even after five hours of being stuck. (Don't tell him I told you that.) </div>
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He was so happy to be back inland, the place that feeds his soul. </div>
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It was 7 am. by the time we broke free. We should have stopped for the night but we didn't. A milky fog drifted along the water making the world seem magical. It hard to see, but we kept going...and we got stuck again. As tired as we were, it looked hopeless. </div>
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"When are we going to go for help?" my son asked. At that exact moment it really did look like without help we would be there forever.</div>
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My husband, who still had his humor about him, laughed and told him to quit being silly. In this country, you help yourself or you perish. We did not perish. We made it all the way to our cabin, where a bear had preceded us. One of the hunters we ran into said something about those grizzlies that tickled me: "you know, you can look into one of their dens and it's so neat it looks like they have maid service, but when they get inside your cabin they leave it totally trashed." Our cabin was totally trashed. The pots were all punctured by huge teeth and the floor was covered with rotting caribou fur as though a bear had dragged an animal, or several, into the cabin and eaten everything but the fur. The mattress appeared to have been slept in by something big and wet and smelly and bear-shaped. We still have a lot of work to do there. </div>
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It was the longest I've been separated from my computer in something like 18 years. I also lost my cellphone along the way. It was a silly thing to bring in the first place. We were way beyond the world of cell service but it helped me keep track of the time and date, when I felt the need to know, which in that timeless world, I rapidly quit needing to know...</div>
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From the tundra of Alaska we went to northern Minnesota, the place of my childhood. <a href="http://wordsfromthetop.blogspot.com/2010/10/where-have-i-been-all-these-weeks-since.html">My oldest brother Dave passed away on Septemeber 28, 2010.</a> His wife of 47 years, my red-headed Swedish sister, Barb, followed him six months later. </div>
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How fast our lives fly by. I remember well, the autumn day nearly fifty years ago when they got married and waved goodbye, smiling, from their little car. They spent their honeymoon in northern Minnesota duck hunting. Now they are both gone.</div>
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They never had children and so left me their cabin on an island in the lake, the lake just south of the Canadian border, the lake where they spent their honeymoon, a lake I know well. </div>
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I spent every summer of my childhood there. </div>
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It is a place of enduring beauty, a place that somehow doesn't seem to have changed all that much since those lazy summer days of my childhood, when Mom and I stayed there alone, painting and reading and dreaming.</div>
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It's a place where one steps out the door to a world of water, Norway pines and northern skies...</div>
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A small island where one falls asleep to the sound water lapping against rocks and wakes to birch trees shaking their leaves outside the bedroom window. </div>
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It's the world I grew up in. It has electricity now, but only very limited cell service. I got a lot of writing done there, a lot of big picture thinking about my current work in process, a work which was in a huge knot when I arrived--a wonderful, totally hopeless mess of scenes and odd events and things which I, as the writer, was surprised about, delighted with, but which ultimately left me feeling helpless. <i>What did it all mean? Where was it going? Who knew? </i>Not me.<br />
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Okay, so I still don't know entirely, but I am a whole lot closer now.<br />
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My brother had a wood burning hot tub on the side of the island facing the sunrise. I stoked it with wood at night and took hot tubs when the sky was red with sunrise and not a soul was around to see this 60 year old woman, floating in the cold northern waters, looking up at the pines and listening to loons.<br />
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My sister had a kitchen, stocked just the way I would stock it, right down to the spices. I felt her presence there, sometimes, looking for something I knew she would have...<i>come on Barb, were is the cumin? </i>And it would appear. Right there on the shelf in front of me. <br />
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The cabin has it's stone fireplace. It's sixty years old, that fireplace, built by one of Dave's mentors, Carter Wetzel, an old man who lived all alone in the woods and knew its ways like he knew his own mind. We called him a hermit. Dave spent time with him, learning what he knew. He knew hunting and fishing and trapping. He knew where to find diamond willow and how to make furniture from it, how to notch logs and build cabins and stone fireplaces and even--he showed us once--how to make cane strips, the kind you use for chair seats. I was very small, but I remember vividly, the huge white pine, stripped of its bark, and the way he covered it with mud and pounded it down, very systematically, with a mallet, until the strips peeled off, one by one.<br />
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Do you see, in the picture below, the white stone in the bottom center? Its quartz. <br />
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That's my brother's flag above the mantel, honoring his four years in the Air Force. I couldn't bring my self to rearrange the furniture. I couldn't bring myself to remove the utensil container that says it's "Barb's Kitchen." I couldn't bring myself to remove my brother's camouflage hunting jacket from the coat rack. Maybe I never will.</div>
<br />
I am just grateful to be able to reclaim this piece of my life, grateful that I was able to be there this year, just as the trees were changing. I love fall. It's my favorite season. It's been so long since I've seen fall in Minnesota. Swimming in the chill northern waters one dawn, I heard the sound overhead of geese returning north. It's been over 40 years since I last heard the sound of geese in the skies of northern Minnesota.<br />
<br />
I remember, I told George, how the skies would fill with the geese, their calls deep and pervasive, how the sound would always make my heart flutter. No, they no longer do that, George told me. He, too, remembered the geese in the skies of northern Alaska, so numerous they darkened the sun with their numbers. Those numbers of geese are gone, George said, gone in Minnesota as well is in Alaska, gone as much of their habitat is gone to malls and suburbs and parking lots.<br />
<br />
How sad to think that that sound now only exists as an echo in our aging memories. <br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j9g7mfUISmE/UFoSCZP-5MI/AAAAAAAAAYE/gdPmzguBocE/s1600/IMAG0051.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j9g7mfUISmE/UFoSCZP-5MI/AAAAAAAAAYE/gdPmzguBocE/s640/IMAG0051.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
And now, I am returned to the tundra, my front yard russet with fall, the light falling in the chill air, wonderful and life affirming.<br />
<br />
Arigaa.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s4Dzw7OUEDM/UFqv0OswmdI/AAAAAAAAAYc/hfSaRtoW8gY/s1600/FallTundra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s4Dzw7OUEDM/UFqv0OswmdI/AAAAAAAAAYc/hfSaRtoW8gY/s640/FallTundra.jpg" width="360" /></a></div>
<br />Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-27719182118824581932012-07-09T13:18:00.000-07:002012-07-09T13:18:09.230-07:00The Conditions for Art<br />
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</style> "Great art—or let’s just say more modestly, original art—is
never created in the safe middle ground but always at the edge. Originality is
dangerous. If you want to increase the sum of what it is possible for human
beings to say, to know, to understand and therefore, in the end, to be; you actually
have to go to the edge and push outwards. Originality is dangerous…and there
are powerful sources in many societies, including this one, who don’t want
those boundaries to be pushed outwards, who don’t want us to be allowed to think
new thoughts, to think dangerous thoughts, to think original thoughts. There
are forces in every society, including this one, which push back against the
efforts of artists and intellectuals and thinkers to increase those boundaries.
And that pushing back can sometimes be dangerous for the artist concerned but
if we believe in liberty…. this is the kind of art whose right to exist we must
not only defend, but celebrate. Art is not entertainment. At its very best,
it’s a revolution."</div>
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<a href="http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/6392/prmID/2206">—<i>Salman Rushdie from the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture at the PEN World Voices 2012 Festival </i></a></div>
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<br />Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-35630552889000889092012-07-03T12:34:00.002-07:002013-09-27T00:08:15.456-07:00Celebrating Life's PassagesIt's been a month of travel. I was in New York City at the end of May for Book Expo America. It was huge! I signed a lot of books.<br />
<br />
The panel discussion I was on at the PEN America Festival is now up! <a href="http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/6442/prmID/2206">Click here to listen.</a> It was a discussion of children's rights. I spoke of educational rights. I referred to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people, Article 17:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning." </i></blockquote>
This has been eradicated in the Untied States. My point is that when we talk about the rights of children and the horrific violations occurring in many parts of the world, we must not forget to look at ourselves and our own violations.<br />
<br />
After New York I went to Dartmouth for the graduation of my daughter, Anna Bergitte Ahgeak Tuuluk Edwardson on June 10.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GRzZZx36vMw/T_NAEu8E3QI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/_6Pi8dgjh8Q/s1600/annagrad1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GRzZZx36vMw/T_NAEu8E3QI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/_6Pi8dgjh8Q/s400/annagrad1.jpg" width="371" /></a></div>
<br />
She is in the middle, above, with some of her NAD (Native Americans at Dartmouth) classmates. The NAD program at Dartmouth is powerful. As I heard one visitor say, it's like a United Nations of Native American nations. Most of the NADs wore tribal dress for graduation. Anna graduated with a degree in Film and Native American Studies. She wants to teach Iñupiaq. She wore a green atiqluk (Dartmouth colors) and kamipiaq or mukluks, which I am really proud of because they were made by one of our very young Barrow seamstresses, Jerica Aamodt, and they are beautiful! Bearded seal, calf skin and beaver:<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O38ZyLtTCvM/T_NCsFL-4_I/AAAAAAAAAUg/YcdGyesP8MQ/s1600/kamipiaq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O38ZyLtTCvM/T_NCsFL-4_I/AAAAAAAAAUg/YcdGyesP8MQ/s1600/kamipiaq.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The photo doesn't quite do them justice. My camera broke in the middle of graduation.<br />
<br />
Fortunately there were plenty of cameras around to record the birth of my granddaughter when I returned to Anchorage. Annabel Rose Nuyaagik Tavialuk Kalayauk. She was born on June 28 at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage and she was born with her eyes wide open.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PnObxI2PnSY/T_NDxvgI0MI/AAAAAAAAAUo/wN2pcDJ4CXE/s1600/Annabel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PnObxI2PnSY/T_NDxvgI0MI/AAAAAAAAAUo/wN2pcDJ4CXE/s400/Annabel.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<br />
She is beautiful and very wise, I think.<br />
<br />
What else is there? Life is good. <br />
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<br />Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-38065194631920722212012-05-27T11:26:00.000-07:002013-09-27T00:13:28.074-07:00Remembering Ellen Levine<style>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I’ve been thinking a lot about my dear friend Ellen Levine,
who lost her battle with cancer yesterday. I started rereading her emails, pulling
out bits and pieces of her words, trying to recreate the essence of her--like people who catch
the scent of a loved one they’ve lost in an old coat and just want to hang onto
it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Right before going to bed last night I looked at the stack of books at
my bedside. On the top of the pile was <i>Art and Fear.</i> I hadn’t gotten around to
reading it. For some crazy reason, I said, “Okay, Ellen,” and picked it
up. I tend to be fearful whereas Ellen was fearless. The first thing I
read was this: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-size: small;">“Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience
treacherous, judgement difficult.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">--Hippocrates (460-400 BC)</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Life is short. Hippocrates only lived to be 40. Ellen was
70, which looks young to me these days. But art is long and </span><span style="font-size: small;">yours, Ellen,</span><span style="font-size: small;"> will long outlive us. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Opportunity is fleeting but you, Ellen, knew how to grab it by the horns and run with it. And you knew, too, the treacherous nature of experience and were always ready and willing to pin it to the floor.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Oh my wise
and scrappy Ellen! </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">When I questioned my judgement </span><span style="font-size: small;">I always went to Ellen and she always made me see
what I already knew but was reluctant to admit. When I
asked her whether she thought I was foolish <a href="http://wordsfromthetop.blogspot.com/2011/12/im-just-writer-here.html">to speak out publicly about the sale of Marshal Cavendish to Amazon</a>, for example, here is what she said:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-size: small;">"Those that
disagree with the M/C sale can't hurt you any more than they already are by not
carrying the book. You, George, Rachel, et al., may talk about stepping warily
as you wade into political waters, but thank god you all never have.
You're fighters and say what you think. Sure there are times when
it's wise to be silent. My 2 cents is this ain't one of them."</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And another time, when I was worrying over reviews: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">"...listen, there's nada we can do to combat stupidity
except to keep writing and speaking truth as we know it."</span></div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: small;">And here, when I was plagued by the thought of those who
might question the authenticity of my work and my right to write it: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">"Seems to me we spend way too much time in life locking ourselves and
others in boxes that we think are important definitionally. But when I
read <i>My Name Is Not Easy</i>, one thing so very moving to me was the way Luke talked
and thought about his far north landscape. It's not mine; I don't look
out on vast unhemmed in openness, a true bowl of a sky, etc etc, but I related and
was deeply moved. It reminded me in a sense of my grandmother's kitchen,
as it were -- i.e., that I have a landscape and it has meaning to me." </span></div>
</blockquote>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And this,
when I asked her to write a blurb for the book:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">"Meanwhile,
my fine writer friend, why in hell do you want a quote from this NY urban
Jewish radical woman..."</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Ah, my dear Ellen,
that’s an easy one</span><span style="font-size: small;">. As it turns out I happen to love NY urban Jewish radical
women….or at least one of them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qHGaBSSxx5Q/T8HzznvtvUI/AAAAAAAAAUE/MZQMuYUrcEM/s1600/ellen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qHGaBSSxx5Q/T8HzznvtvUI/AAAAAAAAAUE/MZQMuYUrcEM/s400/ellen.jpg" width="281" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And her quote, part of which is on the cover of the book: </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;">"In <i>My Name Is Not Easy</i>, Debby Dahl Edwardson has given us an <br />extraordinary tale of love, betrayal, and above all, survival, as a </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">group of young Alaskan Natives are transplanted from their home <br />villages to a parochial boarding school in the Alaskan wilderness. <br />Through their stories, Edwardson reminds us that the landscape we see <br />is also the landscape of our soul, whether arctic tundra or urban canyons.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a novel that, like landscape, marks a reader's soul foreve</span>r."</span></div>
</blockquote>
The line about love, betrayal, and above all, survival was used on the cover--but it's the last line that carries the essence of Ellen and the mark she's left.<br />
<br />
<b>PS--Her Books (some of them):</b><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Darkness Over Denmark</i>, the story of the Danish resistance
that saved the Jews in Denmark during World War II</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>A Fence Away from Freedom</i>, about internment of Japanese
Americans in the 1940s </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>I Hate English</i>, which has become a resource for ESL
teachers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Freedom's Children</i>, the story of the young black civil
rights activists of the 1960s, which the New York Times called, "nothing
short of wonderful." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Henry's Freedom Box</i>, the true story of a slave who mailed
himself to freedom, a book which earned her a Caldecott Honor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Catch a Tiger by the Toe</i>, of the MacCarthy era.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>In Trouble</i>, the story of two pregnant teenaged girls in the
l950's, pre Roe vs Wade, written in a voice pitch perfect, which nails the era.
I know; I was there. Much I had forgotten. Thanks to Ellen we will remember.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I am particularly fond of this line from Ellen’s
introduction to <i>Darkness over Denmark:</i></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: inherit;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;">There were “good people” in countries throughout Europe who
helped Jews during the Nazi period. But many more, when faced with the arrest
and murder of their Jewish neighbors said, “What could we do?” For Danes, one
additional word made all the difference: “What <i>else </i>could we do?”</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The essence of Ellen Levine, her passion for
social justice and her willingness to always act in its defense.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Go buy one of her books right now.</span></div>
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<br />Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-75047850715135821092012-05-22T13:00:00.002-07:002012-07-03T17:24:56.904-07:00Two videos, totally unrelated<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The first one was made by my daughter in opposition to offshore oil development in the Arctic.</div>
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<br />
I am really proud of her. That's my granddaughter on the image above (and later on in the film, my grandson appears, as well.) This touched my heart. I hope it touches yours, too.<br />
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The other one is <a href="http://player.vimeo.com/video/42372767?color=ffffff">Neil Gaiman's graduation address to the University of the Arts.</a> The Christian Science Monitor calls Gaiman, "one of this year's best commencement speakers." Well worth a listen. The two takeaways for me:<br />
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<ol>
<li>Regardless of what life gives you or doesn't give you, make good art.</li>
<li>Be wise and if you can't be wise, pretend to be a wise person and do what they would do.</li>
</ol>
These both work for me on this spring day in the arctic.<br />
<br />
And speaking of graduates, I wanted to share a picture of our oldest high school graduate, from this year's graduation ceremony at Nunamiut School in Anaktuvuk Pass.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}">At
77 years old, with the help of teacher Inge Lisa Jensen, Grace Ekak (pictured above with grad Megan Ahgook) learned
to read and write. When she read her first letter--a letter from her
doctor--she was amazed. "Is this right? Did I read it right?" she asked.
The letter said she was cancer-free.</span></span></h6>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"> </span>And hey, people, don't be afraid to talk to me here. I won't bite, or at least it won't hurt if I do.</span></h6>Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-25919590510578818832012-05-18T09:19:00.000-07:002012-05-20T10:56:14.119-07:00On the trail of dark & light to New York CityI'd meant to post from New York where I attended the <a href="http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1096">PEN World Voices Festiveal of Internal Literature </a>earlier this month, but, well, I didn't. It was a wonderful gathering of writers. I was slated for something called a <i>Literary Safari,</i> advertised as an event where one could see writers in their "natural habitat. I had joked with friends prior that I was either supposed to arrive with a spear in hand or I would be ensconced in a bed with a laptop, my "natural habitat." Happily, I did neither but was, instead, a guest at the home of artist <a href="http://westbeth.org/wordpress/artist/stephen-hall/">Stephen Hall </a>and his wife Samantha who live in the <a href="http://westbeth.org/wordpress/">Westbeth</a> artist's community. It was a wonderful evening of reading and discussion, which Lyn Miller-Lachmann blogged about. Actually <a href="http://penlive.tumblr.com/post/22427591318/lyn-miller-lachmann-debby-dahl-edwardson-at-westbeth">she posted on Tumblr s</a>o maybe I am supposed to say she Tumblred about it. Okay, maybe not.<br />
<br />
I was hosted by writer Susanna Reich whose book, <a class="title" href="http://www.amazon.com/Minettes-Feast-Delicious-Story-Julia/dp/1419701770/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336544243&sr=1-1">Minette's Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat</a>, was released on May 1. I stayed in the East Village which just sounds incredibly cool to someone referred to by her capitalist eldest son as an old hippie. In fact Susanna and her husband Gary Golio were driving me back to my hotel when Gary said: look, there's Bob Dylan! My head turned so fast I nearly got whiplash. It wasn't Bob Dylan, of course. Gary was just pointing out that we were in the middle of Dylan's old digs. He had no way of knowing that I was once a Dylan groupie (well, figuratively speaking) and I did not yet realize that he was the guy who wrote <a href="http://www.amazon.com/When-Bob-Met-Woody-Story/dp/0316112992/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2">When Bob Met Woody</a>. Small world.<br />
<br />
Dylan was from Hibbing, Minnesota. My mother was raised in Buhl, Minnesota, right next door, and my dad was from Virginia, Minnesota, right down the street, all three towns in the heart of the Iron Ore Range, the source of Dylan's early ballads. What's not to love? When my dad complained about "that godawful noise," my brother and I sat him down and made him listen to the lyrics of<i> Mr Tambourine Man</i>. Dad was a writer. He loved words. He never complained about Dylan again. In college <i>I Shall Be Released</i> was pretty much my theme song. Still is.<br />
<br />
Which all leads to the next NYC experience. I finally met my agent, <a href="http://www.fbliterary.com/">Faye Bender</a>, (stay with me) who is absolutely just as lovely in person as she is on email and I told her about how the hotel I was staying at had bikes and how I was biking around New York. How cool is that? But Faye scolded me about the fact that I wasn't wearing a helmet and I thought about my kids--who would be horrified to see me biking NYC without a helmet--so I started wearing a helmet. In fact, I took a ride that very afternoon wearing a wool jacket and a helmet. But then it got really hot for this Alaskan, so I took off the jacket. And there I was, biking around New York in black jeans, a black t-shirt and a helmet. Tough, huh? Then I stopped at a light and some old guy, rather worse for wear, asked me if I was Janis Joplin.<br />
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Of course I immediately thought of Amos, an Inupiaq from Point Lay, Alaska who is said to have dated Janis. We call him Famous Amos. Ever hear the song <i>Quinn the Eskimo</i>?<br />
<br />
Just to set the record though: when I was younger, nobody ever mistook me for Janis Joplin.<br />
<br />
Oh, and this is for my oldest son, who loves New York: I now know what it's like to be at a penthouse party in NYC. How amazing to stand in the night sky with the lights of the city and all its iconic buildings, spread around one like jewels on black velvet.<br />
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Hmm, maybe I do look like Janis.</div>
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Backtracking---Before New York, I visited my daughters at Dartmouth which was wonderful but I went through a total sense of culture shock when I arrived there. I had, after all, left the near 24 hour brilliance of sun on snow--springtime in the arctic, in other words--and I arrived into the darkness of a New Hampshire night, where I was in the middle of a woods. It was not just dark at night; it was black dark, inky dark, soul-sucking dark. No streetlights no visable stars and apparently no other guests that first night at the little motel where I stayed--the one with the wooden Indian in the lobby. This was beyond culture shock for old Janis here.<br />
<br />
I was glad to get these pictures of my granddaughter Josie, fishing in the intense Arctic light.<br />
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There's a wonderful Greenlandic movie called <i>Heart of Light</i>. Exactly so. My home is in the Heart of Light.<br />
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They were camping near Anaktuvuk Pass, my son in law's home.</div>
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I really wanted to be there. </div>
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<br /></div>
At PEN I participated in the panel on children's rights with Wojciech Jagielski, Arn Chorn-Pond and Patricia McCormick. Patty's new book <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/books/review/never-fall-down-by-patricia-mccormick.html"><i>Never Fall Down </i></a>was released earlier this month. It's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-A_Y1kjJww">Arn's story </a>of how, as an 11-year-old boy in Cambodia, he survived the Khmer Rouge by playing music in the Killing Fields. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called it, “One of the most inspiring and powerful books I’ve ever read." I read it on the plane home and it was. Sorry to sound like an old hippie, but it blew my mind. It was that good. It will win many awards. Read it.<br />
<br />
I also read my friend <a href="http://www.janebuchanan.com/About.html">Jane Buchanan's</a> wonderful <a href="http://www.janebuchanan.com/Books.html#"><i>Gratefully Yours</i> </a>on the plane trip home and I cried. A wonderful story about grief and healing set in the orphan train era. How can a book like this go out of print? Someone is asleep at the wheel. We--VCFA classmates David, Hatsy and I drove up to Greenfield, MA from Hanover NH to surprise Jane at her book launch for newest book, <a href="http://www.janebuchanan.com/Books.html#">Seed Magic</a>.<br />
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<br />
Another wonderful book.<br />
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Thank God for wonderful light filled books, for people who pour their souls into story, for story standing witness, painful and transcendent; for story illuminating trails through the abyss.<br />
<br />
I dedicate this thought to my dear mentor <a href="http://www.ellenlevineauthor.com/">Ellen Levine</a>, whose books have always done exactly that. Ellen lives in New York City, but she's battling cancer and was too sick for visitors when I was there.<br />
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Always, I hear Ellen's indomitable voice with it's Yiddish wisdom: <i>so what's against it?</i> Be well Ellen, and follow the light.<br />
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What's against it?Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-32669123334215979422012-04-03T16:31:00.004-07:002012-04-04T13:59:50.448-07:00Writing is a lot like Chopped!Maybe it's a sign that I'm a writer or maybe I'm just increasingly ADD, but when I start thinking about something, suddenly I see it everywhere. Lately it's writing metaphors. Now it's Chopped! You know, the TV cooking show.<br />
<br />
Based on <a href="http://wordsfromthetop.blogspot.com/2012/01/sinking-nails-into-edge-of-boat.html">posts about writing metaphors</a>, you might think I watch TV all the time. In fact, I really don't really like TV. "Don't like" is an understatement. Actually, I pretty much detest TV, especially the part where they turn the commercials up really loud and these obnoxious guys with auctioneer voices start screaming things at you, things you wouldn't want to hear about even if they were speaking politely.<br />
<br />
I have to admit it, though. Sometimes these commercials are really funny--like the whole family that was walking around in hooded Snuggies like members of some fuzzy cult, which you and yours are cheerfully invited you to join for only $19.95. Or those drug commercials that show handsome gray haired men walking along beaches with lovely blond women who shake their tresses in the wind while some guy in the background says, "if you experience an erection lasting more than four hours..." <br />
<br />
Seriously, though, TV is pretty much all just so much noise to me. But I live in a family of TV addicts. Sad but true. So sometimes, in the interest of appearing at least slightly social and conciliatory, I watch TV with people. With my daughter and her boyfriend, lately, I've been watching Chopped!<br />
<br />
It's pretty engaging.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zIwRNsK9DE8/T3uKwWbaUwI/AAAAAAAAAS0/6J4y37N5cho/s1600/chopped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zIwRNsK9DE8/T3uKwWbaUwI/AAAAAAAAAS0/6J4y37N5cho/s1600/chopped.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Here's four professional chiefs, each given a basket full of ingredients--odd pairings, like cotton candy, star fruit, matzo crackers and shrimp. They have to create a gourmet meal with these things in thirty minutes flat. With each course of the meal, one of them is going to get chopped from the show. The skinny one is going to use her winnings to pay for an operation for her son--if she wins. But, yikes, she's allergic to shrimp! It's drama, suspense and a ticking clock--with three critics watching their every move and poised to pass judgement.<i> </i>(We didn't miss the significance of three, did we?) Hey, what's not to like?<br />
<br />
Which takes us back to the topic at hand.... writing is a lot like Chopped! <br />
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I won't drive it into the ground, I promise, but here we are, our baskets bulging with disparate story ingredients, odd things we've been given, things that cling to us, bits of a recipe that eludes us. We smell the aromas and savor the tastes and we're starting to make interesting connections...a cotton candy star fruit glaze with a shaving of ginger? How about a kosher salad with matzo croutons? A shrimp flower?<br />
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And of course there's the guy in the commercial hollering that for just $19.95 we can buy a phone app that will create an outline for us and find the storyline for any combination of ingredients...<br />
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We don't believe it, do we? We know better. We just grab the double boiler, turn up the heat and dig out that old the egg timer, the one with the loud tick... <br />
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Okay, okay. I'm done. No more writing metaphors. I promise. Let's just quietly get back to work, shall we?<br />
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Here's a parting shot, one of my favorites from Anne Lamott: <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: black; font-family: garamond; font-size: small;"> "I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">one</span></span> </i>of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)"</span></blockquote><br />
I bet you can guess where I am at in the process.....Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-57063696664144170332012-03-30T10:40:00.000-07:002012-03-30T10:40:25.344-07:00What I am ReadingThis is the heart of it, yes? What we read, what touches us, what inspires us. I read like a writer most of the time. It's both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes I long for the book that doesn't beg me to analyze it, doesn't even leave me wondering, <i>how did she do it?</i> and force me to figure it out. Sometimes I just want to immerse myself in a good story, like I did when I was 12, and get lost with a few people I love and a story I care about. Too often these days, though, the quality of the writing gets in the way and I spend more time thinking about the book than experiencing it. Sigh. It's a writer's affliction. We love books so much we want to write them and when we do, part of the magic is lost for far too many of the books we read.<br />
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Enter John Green's latest (is it his latest?) <i>The Fault in Our Stars. </i>I'm not going to show you the cover or link to it or anything. It's selling like hotcakes, to cop a cliche. John Green does not need my help in marketing so I just want to weigh in, briefly.<br />
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Confession: I did not love <i>Looking for Alaska.</i> It was good, competent, clever even, but I did not love it. I won a promotional copy of <i>The Fault in Our Stars </i>and it came in right before a trip<i>. </i>Now that I am a Kindle owner, I travel with this great little light weight library. But I need a book for take off and landing. I just do. So I tossed <i>The Fault in Our Stars </i>into my carry-on. I started reading it on take of and kept reading in the air, on landing, and in the hotel. I reread it on the return trip. I love this book. I am in love with John Green. Yeah, okay, he's married and young enough to be my son, but still.<br />
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And that's all I'm going to say. It was good to get lost in a book again. Thank you John Green.Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-51102452692328585292012-03-15T11:49:00.000-07:002012-03-15T11:49:11.353-07:00Courting DiversionI just got an email notification: a Gifted Giraffe is following me on Twitter. I am tickled, of course, wondering if there are other gifted animals out there who might be persuaded to follow me. I imagine myself as the pied tweeter of gifted animals. Gifted polar bear, wolverines, flamingos and fleas. What stories, one wonders, will they respond to? What links might inspire? What kinds of antics might a group of them engage in? Dances, improvisations, the occupation of various institutions. Ah, the possibilities...<br />
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Get back to work, Debby.Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-72205745055713149972012-03-10T12:31:00.000-08:002012-03-10T12:31:16.121-08:00About the connections we make with each otherErin Hollingsworth, the children's librarian at <a href="http://www.tuzzy.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1">Tuzzy,</a> our local library, told me something wonderful yesterday. She said that one Inupiaq girl checked out a copy of <i>Blessing's Bead</i> and said she had read it four times. It was her favorite book, she said, and she and her mom read it together sometimes.<br />
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(Erin told me this in answer to my rather snippy question: why aren't my books displayed with the others? They are all checked out, she told me. Yes, I felt appropriately guilty for snapping.) <br />
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This is why I write books. This is why I started writing books for young people. This is why I write books set within the context of the culture I live in. There were not enough books that reflected Inupiaq life as I knew it. <i>Understatement</i>. I would be happy, I said at the start, if just a few Inupiaq kids could read my books and say:<i> yes, that's us. </i><br />
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I'm happy.<br />
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Sometimes, though, as our careers progress, we have to remind ourselves of why we write. We have to remember to see the faces of our first readers and see them clearly. My first readers are Inupiaq. <br />
<br />
We want all readers to relate to our work, of course. And when we start to receive wider recognition, it's wonderful. When I got my first review for <a href="http://www.debbydahledwardson.com/whale_snow_89219.htm"><i>Whale Snow</i>,</a> a review in the prestigious <i>Publishers Weekly</i>, and when the reviewer clearly understood the book, even though it was about the whaling--not a politically popular subject beyond my world--when they liked it, even, I celebrated. When I went to an Alaska Library Association meeting in Anchorage, years later, and saw saw a young Barnes and Noble sales rep, Renee Sands, hand selling <a href="http://www.debbydahledwardson.com/blessing_s_bead_89220.htm"><i>Blessing's Bead</i></a>, I was deeply touched--and surprised. I hadn't expected it. I thought I had to go out and push my books, but she'd found it on her own and she was celebrating it. And when I got that call saying the <a href="http://www.debbydahledwardson.com/my_name_is_not_easy_107683.htm"><i>My Name is Not Easy</i></a> had been named a finalist for the National Book Award, I was breathless. Who knew my books could reach so far?<br />
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<a href="http://www.adn.com/2012/03/03/2350260/wheres-the-book-alaska-title-unshelved.html">Now I am in a political tug of war within the industry</a>. Renee writes with regret to say that <i>My Name is Not Easy</i> will no longer be sold at Barnes and Noble because my small publisher was bought by Amazon and Amazon is at war with Barnes and Noble. <i>Publisher's Weekly</i> writes stories about the war that make Amazon look like the devil itself. But they've been good to me. And what about me? What about my books? I take a stand. I take multiple stands. Remember, people, I say, it's about writers, readers and books. That's the core of it, isn't it? It's the young girl reading my book for a fifth time because it touched her--that's what we're talking about. And the boy in New York City--as far removed from the Inupiaq world as it is possible to be--who said he'd read <i>My Name is Not</i> Easy twice, less than a month after its release. That's it, really. That's the heart of it. That's all there is of importance.<br />
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So this is me, reminding myself to remember this. Telling myself to just keep writing. Artists are not politicians. Books are about the connections people make with each other, nothing more and nothing less.Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-78474610421970193412012-01-28T15:10:00.000-08:002012-01-29T01:00:12.789-08:00Sinking nails into the edge of the boatMy husband is watching this fishing show on TV where the guy has put nails around the edge of his boat to hold the different fishing lines. Apparently the nails keep the lines separate, keep them from getting tangled. My husband is impressed with this idea.<br />
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I've probably got it wrong, but it makes me think about writing. Writing is like fishing, after all. You drop in a hook, jiggle it around a bit. Let it sit. Come back to check, jiggle it some more. And yet some more. And, if you're lucky, pretty soon you'll be fighting the legendary big one.<br />
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You will be relentless, tough, focused---maybe even graceful---engaged in this dance with this fish.<br />
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Me? I'm with the guy on the fishing show. I like to have a bunch of story lines out at once. I'm not sure it would be a smart idea to secure them with nails though. Some of these story fish are very skittish. They only come when you pretend you're not interested, when you act like you're looking the other way, thinking of somethings else, ignoring them. If you turn to look too quickly, too soon, they disappear into the deep water, or dart off into the rocky part by the shore where you lose lures trying to catch them. You can't nail them down.<br />
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Actually, maybe it <i>would</i> be good to sink those nails into the writing boat. Then you could turn your back and feign disinterest. Which means I have driven this metaphor into a dangerously shallow water because what, exactly, is the craft equivalent for writers to "sinking nails into the edge of the boat?" <br />
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And the bigger question: why am I comparing writing to fishing? I don't even like to fish although I never admitted this to my big brother, <a href="http://wordsfromthetop.blogspot.com/2010/10/where-have-i-been-all-these-weeks-since.html">Dave</a>, who left us a little over a year ago. Dave used to take me out in the boat with him and basically plant fish on the end of my line.<br />
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Somewhere an old high school boyfriend has a photo of me as a five year old, holding a pike as tall as my little self. The one Dave always bragged about. I never did get that photo back.<br />
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Hey, maybe I <i>was </i>good at fishing and maybe this means I should be good at story fishing. Okay, it's a long shot. And if I am going to continue with this frivolity, I will have to go through the whole story equivalent of cleaning the fish and cooking it in a way that will make even non fish lovers say, "hey, this is good!"<br />
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Okay. I'd say that's the sound of the buzzer: <i>Time's up. Back to work.</i><br />
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Oh. But wait. It really is amazing how one can struggle and struggle with something and then, with just one little change in the way you hold the rod, you are able, suddenly, to land the fish. Okay, never mind. That's silly. It's probably not even true about fishing. But it <i>is </i>true about writing and I have had some of those experiences this very week so I am happy.<br />
<br />
For real now. Gone . . .<br />
<br />
<br />
<i> </i><br />
. . . fishing.<br />
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(Sorry. Couldn't help myself.)Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-26533847496000747502012-01-23T10:19:00.000-08:002012-01-23T10:19:05.420-08:00Addendum to Arizona<a href="http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/22/how-tucson-schools-changed-after-mexican-american-studies-ban/">CNN blogged about it.</a> I had to quit reading the comments. Some where just too hateful. Some of these uber-Americans need to take a look at American history and acknowledge it for what it is. There are some great and inspirational things in our history, but the basis of our claims are, well, pretty shaky.<br />
<br />
Two students of mine--adult teachers--were chatting before class a while back. They were talking about immigration and expressing the, "they should all just go back to Mexico" perspective. I smiled at them and said, "I bet you two are grateful that they didn't think that way about <i>your</i> great grandparents."<br />
<br />
One looked at me shocked. "Mine immigrated legally," he said, highly offended.<br />
<br />
"Legal according to whose law?" I asked.<br />
<br />
It is not a matter of debate. When our great grandparents immigrated "legally," there were a bunch of people, who had already claimed this land as theirs, standing on the shore, watching. No, not a bunch of people--there were nations of peoples.<br />
<br />
Do people really have to be reminded of this, over and over? Would it even make any difference if they were? Sadly, it would not.Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-2198214109584865272012-01-22T10:38:00.000-08:002012-01-25T21:33:48.027-08:00American Apartheid?A friend of mine--Jana Harcharek, Director of Iñupiat Education for the North Slope Borough School District--sent me a link about the affront to education that's taking place in Arizona: <br />
<br />
<a href="http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2012/01/teaching-critical-thinking-in-arizona.html">American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL): Teaching critical thinking in Arizona: NOT ALLOWED</a><br />
<br />
"This makes me especially grateful for the work we are doing with the Iñupiaq Learning Framework," Jana wrote. Me too. I'm president of the North Slope Borough School District Board of Education and I'm proud to say that unlike the school district in Arizona, which is shutting down its Mexican American Studies Program, we are not only teaching Iñupiaq Studies, we are creating a framework that will make "Iñupiaq studies" an integral part of academics on all levels. Unlike Tucson, Arizona, which is apparently afraid to teach alternative versions of history, we are actively creating materials that tell history from an Iñupiaq perspective.<br />
<br />
I had been following this story on <a href="http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/">Debbie Reese's blog</a> before Jana emailed me and I was, and am, shocked. Sherman Alexie referred to it as American Apartheid. I think that pretty well sums it up.<br />
<br />
Aside from the obvious racism, aside from the fact that the powers that be in Arizona didn't care that the program was creating academic success among its Latino students, aside from the fact that this is the kind of thing that is gutting our educational system and sapping us of our strengths--aside from all of this, I am deeply disturbed about what it says about us as a country. This is not a version of America we can be proud of. This is not the land of the free; it's the land of the oppressors and the oppressed. This is a group of people who hold the balance of power saying, "our story is the right story and all other stories will be suppressed." Whatever ugly things students in that program may have been learning about American history, these things have just been validated.<br />
<br />
It is such a serious affront to the truths we claim to hold as self-evident that it should be front page news, nationwide. Sadly, it is not.<br />
<br />
I know this is a buzz phrase, but honestly, it makes me think of Nazi Germany.<br />
<br />
Which in turn makes me think of my friend<a href="http://www.ellenlevineauthor.com/"> Ellen Levine's</a> book <i>Darkness over Denmark</i> about the Danish resistance during World War II.<br />
<br />
And in thinking of Ellen's book makes me want to share this, from the book's wonderful introduction:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Something unusual happened in Denmark during World War II: Hitler's plans to kill the Danish Jews failed. Like many American Jews, I grew up hearing stories of how Denmark saved its Jews. That Denmark chose to protect its Jews was an astonishing and extraordinary act. What happened, and why did it happen in Denmark and nowhere else?</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century English political philosopher and member of Parliament, wrote, "The one condition necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." I believe that this is the essence of this story. Evil did not triumph in Denmark because most Danes simply refused to allow it.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"> There were "good people" in countries throughout Europe who helped Jews during the Nazi period. But many more, when faced with the arrest and murder of their Jewish neighbors, said, "What could we do?" For Danes, one additional word made all the difference: "What <i>else</i> could we do?" </blockquote>This is how I feel about the oppression happening in Arizona. One of the students, in fact, said that watching them box up those books and remove them from classrooms--which they did in the middle of class--was like looking at what had happened in Nazi Germany. We can't all just say, oh well, Arizona's a long way off and it's only one school district, only a small group of students, only one program.<br />
<br />
No, I don't know what to do about it, either; I'm just a writer. But as they say, the pen is mightier than the sword. And it must be true, too. Those people down there in Arizona appear to be mighty afraid of a few words in a few books. They must see those books as truly dangerous. Those books must be subversive. They are literally tearing books out of the hands of students. They are actually monitoring classrooms to make sure teachers don't secretly continue teaching those books. Those books must truly be powerful. <br />
<br />
We must keep writing, we must keep reading and we must keep teaching <i>those books. </i><br />
<br />
In fact I'm going to put a few of them on the syllabus of the class I teach at Ilisagvik College. We're a tribal college and the Tucson Unified School District can't touch us.*<br />
<br />
I'm also ordering a few more of those books for myself. Matt de la Pena's <a href="http://www.mattdelapena.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=8">Mexican White Boy </a>is about a boy negotiating the line between being Mexican and being white--This could be the story of my own kids, negotiating the line between being white and being Iñupiaq. It's time I read it....<br />
<br />
That's what I'm doing. It's a start. What are the rest of you doing?<br />
<br />
***Added 1/24: The decision to shut down the MAS program and pull books from classrooms has it's roots in the Arizona state legislature, which threatened to pull a significant amount of money from the district if Tuscon did not comply to their reading of the law. What would I have done? In our district 75% of our budget goes to personnel. If we faced that kind of cut, we would have to make serious cuts to our teaching staff. I would challenge the state's interpretation of the law and seek an injunction.Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-15044267500869313652012-01-15T18:22:00.000-08:002012-01-22T10:54:04.867-08:00On being where one belongsI liked <a href="http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/mmoustakis/2012/01/the-national-book-awards-behind-the-scenes-advice/">Melinda Moustakis' National Book Award behind the scenes advice</a>, especially the second bit of advice: <b> </b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Find the Alaskans—they’re a friendly bunch. </b> </blockquote></div>This is true. When you're traveling in the lower '48 or beyond and you run into an Alaskan it's like running into an old friend. Actually, when an Alaskan runs into another Alaskan on the road a lot of times they <i>are</i> old friends, or at least old acquaintances or most certainly people who are acquainted with or somehow related to mutual old friends. <br />
<br />
So it was great running into Melinda at the award ceremony. She was recognized by the National Book Foundation as one of the promising 5 under 35 writers and she was born in Fairbanks. I was from Barrow, was a finalist for the Foundation's National Book Award and had once lived in Fairbanks. <i>Small world!!!</i> We instantly had a lot to talk about. She was absolutely the only other writer in the whole room of hundreds who could relate to an experience I'd had two days earlier at a reading. I'd read a section from <i>My Name is Not Easy</i> that gets to the core of some fairly powerful feelings--powerful for me anyway. When I finished the reading, one young woman raised her hand.<br />
<br />
"What's a snow machine?"<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oxK5zixyXZ8/TxNuyzKEKNI/AAAAAAAAASQ/J6mD6su_wnM/s1600/radio-control-snowmobile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oxK5zixyXZ8/TxNuyzKEKNI/AAAAAAAAASQ/J6mD6su_wnM/s320/radio-control-snowmobile.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>This</i> is a snow machine, okay? In Alaska, snow machines have replaced dog teams as the accepted mode of transport in the roadless wilds. In terms of the scene I was reading, understanding this was critical. And yet the audience at <a href="http://www.booksofwonder.com/">Books of Wonder</a> in NYC didn't know what a snow machine was. <i> </i></div><br />
<br />
<i>Maybe it's like, a snow blower, </i>they thought. I had just read what was supposed to be an emotionally charged scene in which the Inupiaq narrator is mourning the loss of a way of life. The presence of the snow machine is significant and yet it's significance was lost on the audience I was reading to. They were imagining the uncle and the long lost brother roaring around on a snow blower. It wasn't actually supposed to be a humorous scene but Melinda and I had a good laugh over it.<br />
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In <i>Whale Snow,</i> when I compared snowflakes to cotton grass the editorial staff at the Charlesbridge office in Boston envisioned sheets or maybe t-shirts, fluttering from the sky. But that's another story.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aD5bBDYp2xA/TxNvUCpLnlI/AAAAAAAAASY/s6Wz5AjgMcs/s1600/cotton+grass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="246" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aD5bBDYp2xA/TxNvUCpLnlI/AAAAAAAAASY/s6Wz5AjgMcs/s400/cotton+grass.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cotton Grass<br />
(My granddaughter, in the upper right hand corner of this blog is holding a bouquet of it.)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
So I'm an Alaskan writer. My stories and images come from the Arctic. So deeply is this embedded in me that I generally don't think of how singular the imagery is until I find myself reading my work, far from home, in a place where these images, and the world they come from, simply don't exist.<br />
<br />
How did this happen, I wonder sometimes. How did I become an arctic writer writing of things alien to much of the world? <br />
<br />
I came north in 1974, fresh out of college, looking for adventure. (I know, I know, this makes me really old but forget about this for a minute. It really doesn't matter.) I traveled the Alcan highway, which was not then a highway, not by any stretch of the imagination and I rode in the back of a windowless van. By the end of that trip I thought maybe I knew exactly what it felt like to cross the country in a covered wagon.<br />
<br />
Yes, like every other white person who came to Alaska in those days, I felt like a pioneer.<br />
<br />
When I arrived in Fairbanks, it was springtime and it really <i>was</i> forty below (you don't know <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVK-PlfvGR0">Johnny Horton</a>, either? Okay, never mind.) The pipeline was in full boom and Fairbanks was <i>wild. </i>I lived in a log cabin heated by a 55 gallon drum laid sideways to make a wood stove. The lighting system was powered by kerosine and I traveled by dog team. I worked at a log cabin Greek restaurant where one of the Greek brothers who owned the joint threw knives at the wall if we didn't pick up our orders fast enough. (Hey, maybe he was related to Melinda! I should have asked.) The patrons were rough and tumble pipeline workers on R&R who dropped hundred dollar tips like kleenex. Every night after we closed down, we had Greek feasts replete with the best mousaka you ever tasted, washed down with wine.<br />
<br />
I had a lot of adventures in Alaska in those days, some amazing and some, to paraphrase Doug Swieteck in<i> </i><a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2011_ypl_schmidt.html"><i>Okay for Now</i></a>, well, some are just none of your business.<br />
<br />
And then I went north and lived with the Eskimos.<br />
<br />
Hey that's a great book title, don't you think? <i>. . . And Then I Went North to Live With the Eskimos. </i>Actually, it was the Inupiat I went north to live with and from day one, their way of looking at the world just made sense to me. <br />
<br />
For a long time, though, a part of me clung to the little shred of an idea that someday I would "go home." Or at least continue on in my travels.<br />
<br />
Then one day, something strange happened. As my plane was landing in Barrow after a long trip, I looked out the window at the wide open tundra, red and gold and full of twisty rivers. I got off the plane, with ducks and geese flying overhead in wavering v's and went inside the terminal, where people were hugging me and saying <i>welcome home!</i> And I realized, suddenly, that I really <i>was</i> home, in every sense of the word. It's funny how this works.<br />
<br />
Maybe I'll write a book about it someday.<br />
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We don't think of it much, but a place and its people, its landscape and its images--these become a part of one. I remember reading Norwegian poet Tarjei Vesaas' poem "Snø og Grandskoq" when I was 21 and a Norwegian-American living in Norway. I recognized, in a very personal way, its impetus. I grew up in country like the country Vesaas writes of. I loved and still love this country. I knew the feeling. Here's the translated version:<b> </b><br />
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<b>Snow and Spruce Forest </b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Talk about what home is--<br />
snow and spruce forest<br />
is home.<br />
<br />
From the very start <br />
it is ours.<br />
Before anyone has told us<br />
that it is snow and spruce forest,<br />
it has its place in us--<br />
and then it's there<br />
the whole, whole time.<br />
<br />
Waist-high drifts<br />
around dark trees<br />
--it's here for us!<br />
Mixed into our own breath.<br />
The whole, whole time,<br />
though no one sees it,<br />
we have snow and spruce forest.<br />
<br />
Yes, the hill under the snow,<br />
and tree upon tree<br />
as far as you gaze--<br />
wherever we are<br />
we find ourselves<br />
facing this.<br />
<br />
And have in us a promise<br />
about coming home.<br />
Coming home,<br />
going out there,<br />
bending branches,<br />
--and feeling so it flares in you<br />
what it is to be where you belong.<br />
<br />
The whole, whole time,<br />
until it's extinguished<br />
in our inland hearts.</div>Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-39067557145961874562012-01-07T10:43:00.000-08:002012-01-14T13:24:10.676-08:00Why this book and not that one?I think a lot about this question. Especially when it comes to recognition and awards.<br />
<br />
The average reader probably doesn't think much about it, but we writers do. Most people probably assume that the best books rise to the top--the survival of the fittest and all that. But of course it's not that simple. It's not even always true, strictly speaking. I mean, think about it. There are something like 20,000 children's books published a year, give or take a few thousand. No one can possibly read them all. There are a few very influential awards and reviewers. This means that there are a few people, generally well read and respected, who make the decisions about which books deserve stars, awards and recognition. Award committees generally deal with only a very small pool of books--only those that have been nominated or submitted by the publisher, the writer, a librarian...<br />
<br />
Some writers are blessed with publishers willing to pull out all stops to make sure their books get noticed and seen in all the right places. Some are not so well favored. Some writers are pros at self promotion and know how to create avid fans on the strength of their personalities alone. Some would rather have root canals.<br />
<br />
Laurels go to those books that manage to come to the attention of reviewers and committees through promotion of one sort or another. And yes, awards and recognition are given to well written books, but these must first be books that appeal to the taste of the individuals in positions to give them recognition. There really is no way around this. Readers understand this, surely. How many times have you read, and been totally unimpressed, by a book that's received multiple kudos? Or adored a book that no one's noticed?<br />
<br />
Think about what this means for books of color, if you will. <br />
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Where am I going with this? Well for one thing, I think we should all champion the books we love, especially the ones that don't receive as much attention as we think they should receive. <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/hidden-1/HelenFrost"><br />
</a><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MjFP9i7yL_o/TwYc3kJr8DI/AAAAAAAAASI/iZGdUUEWgQ8/s1600/hidden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MjFP9i7yL_o/TwYc3kJr8DI/AAAAAAAAASI/iZGdUUEWgQ8/s320/hidden.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>I just read Helen Frost's newest book, <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/hidden-1/HelenFrost">Hidden.</a> What a beautiful cover--one that exposes our prejudices in a very subtle way over the course of the book. It's a compelling story: a mom goes into a quickstop to pay for gas. There's a gunshot and the little girl in the car dives to the floor, hiding. Someone gets into the car and speeds away. It's not the mom. The girl hiding is Wren. The daughter of the man driving is Darra. The two girls meet, years later at camp... I couldn't put this book down. It's taut and well written and goes to the core of things. Here's a book able to make kids say, <i>whoa, who knew poetry could make you bite your nails?</i> Frost has even invented a new poetic form, ready made for teachers. Will it find it's way into schools? I don't know. It will fare better than most because of Frost's reputation. <br />
<br />
<br />
How many good books are out there there with nothing working in their favor, promotionally speaking?<br />
<br />
We writers tend to worry about our books once they're published and out in the public. Our books are like our babies, after all, and we want everyone to love them. Our maternal--or paternal--instincts kick in and we want to protect them and defend them from attack but we can't. We count their stars, proudly. We view every star not given as a death toll. We've been known to spend inordinate amounts of time tracking their travels via Google searches, all of which does little to feed our writing life. <br />
<br />
Yes, we're extremely gratified when our books receive recognitions and awards and sell well. But deep down inside, I think we all understand that a lot of what happens is happenstance. Deep down we know it would be better to ignore all of the hoopla, or lack thereof, and just keep following the whisper of the stories given us. Because in the final analysis, that's what it's all about.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://jbknowles.livejournal.com/443404.html?view=8253452#t8253452" target="_blank">Jo Knowles has posted a wonderful post </a>on just this her blog. This resonated with me:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white;"><i>I want to get back to those pre-published writing days when, while in the writing mind, I was truly IN the writing mind. I wasn't thinking about what my agent or editor might think of the sentence I just wrote. I wasn't thinking about reviews. Or sales. Or best-of lists. Or snarky GoodReads. <br />
<br />
I was thinking of story. Of character. Of words. <br />
<br />
There was a purity to that time and I want to get it back.</i></blockquote><i>Me too!</i> For me, this means a New Year's resolution to severely curtail time on the Internet, to quit worrying about how my published books are doing, to quit taking what readers see or don't see personally--remembering that I cannot control what a reader brings to a book. And most of all, it means returning, fully, to the real work.<br />
<br />
<br />
I think I'll start now.Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-22100500942794325382011-12-31T13:18:00.000-08:002012-01-02T13:44:48.726-08:00Christmas Books, Eating Crow and a New Year's ResolutionAfter posting my take on Amazon and the indies, my impulse buy from Bank Street Books in New York City came in quicker than my Christmas buy from Amazon, which was ordered much earlier than the signed book from Bank Street--and this despite the fact that the Amazon warehouse is closer to Alaska. So I'm eating a bit of crow today.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.judyblume.com/books/fudge/tales.php" target="_blank">Judy Blume's <i>Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing</i> </a>arrived in time for Christmas. The Amazon order, which included <a href="http://www.timtingle.com/crossing.html" target="_blank">Tim Tingle's <i>Crossing Bok Chitto A Choctaw Story of Friendship & Freedom</i></a>, did not. In fact my granddaughter and I were already reading Judy Blume when the Amazon order arrived, two days after Christmas. We took a break that night to read Tingle's book, which begins with:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>There is a river called Bok Chitto that cuts through Mississippi. In the days before the War Between the States, in the days before the Trail of Tears, Bok Chitto was a boundary. On the one side of the river lived the Choctaws, a nation of Indian people. On the other side lived the plantation owners and their slaves. If a slave escaped and made his way across Bok Chitto, the slave was free. The slave owner could not follow. That was the law.</i></blockquote><i>Crossing Bok Chitto</i> is the story of a fearless Choctaw girl, Martha, who ventures beyond the Choctaw boundary despite her mother's warnings, and a slave boy, Little Mo, who learns the power of faith as he takes on losing odds to save his family. I had a lump in my throat the size of Mississippi as I read the last lines:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>The descendants of those people still talk about that night. The Choctaws talk about the bravery of that little girl, Martha Tom. The black people talk about the faith of that little boy, Moses, but maybe the white people tell it best. They talk about the night their forefathers witnessed seven black spirits, walking on the water--to their freedom. </i></blockquote><br />
Wow. That's about all I can say. Wow. So many good books, so little time. This one, which was a great choice for Christmas, incidentally, goes onto the list for the class I teach this semester at <a href="http://www.ilisagvik.edu/" target="_blank">Ilisagvik College</a>: <i>ANS 293 Alaska Native/Native American Children's Literature</i>. It's beautiful book, too:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uJ3FfvMj4DQ/Tv94v8boDcI/AAAAAAAAARw/cP_vILaN3dY/s1600/Crossing_Bok_Chitto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uJ3FfvMj4DQ/Tv94v8boDcI/AAAAAAAAARw/cP_vILaN3dY/s320/Crossing_Bok_Chitto.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Ready for that New Year's resolution? How about a resolution for schools across the nation? November is Native American Month. You probably didn't know that. It's also Thanksgiving. You probably did know that. Yes, I know, it's a long way off, but let's think ahead and make November 2012 the time to make a permanent paradigm shift in children's literature. <a href="http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2006/09/native-americans-and-thanksgiving.html" target="_blank">Let's teach the true story of Thanksgiving </a>and replace all the books with Indian stereotypes with books like this one, books that tell the real stories of this country's First Peoples. The real stories are way better, anyhow.<br />
<br />
Deal?<br />
<br />
<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"> </blockquote>Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-48583195530119032662011-12-20T11:16:00.000-08:002011-12-21T11:26:21.523-08:00Amazon Buys Marshall Cavendish: I'm just the writer here<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">On the surface, a union between book publishing and bookselling is unholy marriage. Everyone understands this, don't they? I’m a writer and we writers have been singing this chorus since time immemorial. Writers tend to champion free-standing publishers and independent booksellers. We all have indie buttons on our blogs or websites. We know there is nothing in the literary universe that beats the power of passionate human beings promoting the books they love. The power of the indie is that they have the freedom to carry a book for no reason other than somebody at the store loves it. Some editors—a diminishing number—have the same freedom. Fortunately, I found one of them. She edits books for Marshall Cavendish.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
So here's my slightly different take on the Amazon buyout of Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books--a few points that none of the morally indignant people, who are talking the way I normally talk, are managing to mention. Please note, if you haven’t already read the <a href="http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1637030&highlight=" target="_blank">press release</a> of this buyout that was picked up everywhere, my young adult book, <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2011_ypl_edwardson.html" target="_blank">National Book Award Finalist <i>My Name is Not Easy</i></a><i>,</i> was one of the 450 titles acquired by Amazon. And please know, right up front, that I heard of this transaction only moments before you did. I was sent the press release at the same time it went out to the world, which was right before it was published in the source where you first read about it. Did I have any say over this business deal that affects me on a very fundamental level? No, of course I didn't. That's how the writing business works. I sell rights to a publisher. What the publisher does with the rights I sell is its business, not mine.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">We all understand—and many of us have experienced first hand—the unhealthy influence that the big chains have had on the industry and on the cause of diversity in literature. Word has it that if Barnes and Noble says they won’t sell a certain kind of book, some publishers won’t buy it. Is this true? I don’t know. I do know that you can go into pretty much any Barnes an Noble in the country (except for the one in Anchorage, Alaska, bless their hearts—specifically the heart of book lover and book seller Renee Sands) and my books won’t be there, not even the book that was just acquired by Amazon, the one named a National Book Award finalist. Ditto, it appears, in the bulk of the independents across the country. But my books have always been available on Amazon because Amazon operates on a different model. They don't let selected buyers pick and choose. If it's in print--or even if it's out of print--they have it or they can link you to someone who does. </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">Now, here’s my personal experience. I spend ten years writing a book, a book of my soul, one I was driven to write. Some people tell me it’s a good book, maybe even an important book, but I don’t really care for any of that. I'm writing it because I have to, because I'm a writer and that’s what writers do—we write the stories that speak to our souls, looking only at where we have succeeded and where we have failed, determined to do better this time and even better next time. Happily, in my case, my book is published and a small group of other writers sees fit to name it a finalist for one of the top awards in the industry. Suddenly lots of people want my book. My small publisher, who has never had a National Book Award finalist, goes into a frenzy trying to get the book reprinted and into bookstores. I’m patient with them. They get a reprint done fast and the book is out there. Or so I think. Then I start getting reports from friends all over the country: no one can find my book. In NYC, not one Barnes and Noble carries it. Ditto in LA and Boston. Two weeks ago, my husband, who is president of the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, had ten minutes with President Obama. I didn't have a copy of the book to send with him so he decided to pick one up in DC. The book, after all, is his story. He went to five bookstores there and nobody had it. He finally found a copy at a used bookstore. Yes, President Obama got a used copy of my book.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">This was all very frustrating. Why wasn't Marshall Cavendish getting my book out there? To everyone who told me they couldn't find my book anywhere, I had only one response: it's available on Amazon. Then I learned: Barnes and Noble stores in the major markets aren't buying it. Does it matter that <i>My Name is Not Easy</i> was a National Book Award finalist? Apparently not. Why is this? I don't know. Is it too regional? Too culturally specific? As one Good Reads reviewer said of<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1011736128" target="_blank"> </a>my first book, <a href="http://www.debbydahledwardson.com/blessing_s_bead_89220.htm" target="_blank"><i>Blessing's Bead</i></a><i>, </i>is it a case of<i>, </i>"I'm sure if you're into inuits and whatnot you might dig it. Just not my schtick." </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">So here’s my confession. I shop Amazon. I live in the northernmost community in the country. It's not on any road system. It's a $500 dollar plane ride to the nearest bookstore. I supported one of Alaska's largest independents before they went under. I got schools to do book fairs through them. I did events with them. I shopped with them. But here's the truth: half the time they didn't have the book I wanted and told me it would take two weeks to get it and the other half of the time their shipping was about a week slower than Amazon's, despite the fact that they were closer to me geographically. Just how far does one go in the name of loyalty?<br />
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And now, people are threatening to boycott Marshall Cavendish because of the Amazon buyout. To all <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/49771-booksellers-unhappy-with-amazon--s-latest-moves.html">those independents who say they're going to happily return all of their Marshall Cavendish stock</a> I say this: Hey, I’m the victim here! I had no say over any of this. I just wrote the best book I could and followed my editor to a small publisher who treated me well. Like every other book ever written it probably isn’t everyone’s schtick. Written from within a little known cultural context, it had an uphill battle from the start. Then it got a lucky break. Okay—no. I don't think it was entirely lucky: I worked for it. I worked all my life for it. These independent booksellers who are returning their stock may think they're punishing Amazon, but in fact, it's me and the writers behind those other 449 titles who being punished. And what about readers, readers like me, who love shopping at small independent bookstores? Is it fair that we’re being denied access to books, not on the merit of the book itself, but only because of industry politics? </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
So now the rank and file is calling Amazon evil. Yes, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/12/14/amazon-price-check-may-be-evil-but-its-the-future/">the price-checking AP </a>was a bit unsettling, but don't shoppers have the right to price check? Don't venders have the right to meet or beat anyone's price? Does it make me happy as a writer that people want to buy my books cheap? Not particularly, but I'd rather see my books in the hands of 5000 readers, at a reduced price than 500 at full price. Does it suit me as a buyer? Actually I am not sure why anyone would want to go into a bookstore to find a book and then go through the hassle and delay involved in ordering it online. If one is inclined to order online in the first place, why go into a bookstore to check out the books? First chapters and previews are available on Amazon. Is it unethical to read a book in a bookstore and buy it online? Somebody referred to this as intellectual shoplifting. Shoplifting, intellectually, from whom? The bookstore? Does the bookstore own the intellectual property rights to my work?<i> </i>Is it unethical stand in a bookstore, read an entire book, and then walk out and not buy it anywhere? It’s not a happy thought but, in the final analysis, the book has to sell itself. The book has to grab the reader and say: <i>take me home.</i> All we writers are asking is that booksellers give our books a chance, a fighting chance, to do so.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
People can go ahead and say what they please about Amazon but at least they’re not killing our books by not selling them. Amazon is very democratic this way: they sell everything. Yes, the move into publishing is a game changer. But then again, maybe the game needed changing.</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
I made an interesting phone call the other day. I dialed in to <a href="http://blog.booktalknation.com/" target="_blank">Book Talk Nation </a>to listen to a conversation between <a href="http://www.judyblume.com/" target="_blank">Judy Blume</a> and <a href="http://www.rachelvail.com/" target="_blank">Rachel Vail</a> sponsored by <a href="http://www.bankstreetbooks.com/" target="_blank">Bank Street Books</a> through a program administered by the <a href="http://authorsguild.org/" target="_blank">Author’s Guild.</a> I hadn’t intended to buy a book, but by the end of the program I just knew I had to get another copy of <i>Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing</i>—an <i>autographed</i> copy for my granddaughter. As I went through the checkout process—online—I mused, again, about how vital it is to have passionate people, talking about books in an open forum. Here was a wonderful example of an indie doing what indies do best and doing it in such a way that even I, in a breathtakingly remote corner of the world, could participate. Now, here was a model worth emulating. </div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">My plea, as a writer who wants to see more rather than fewer book people, is this: come on indies, make a new game for the new millennium. Independent doesn't have to mean insular. Work together to build something core to the cause of literature, something that supports our books--all of them. Something only real people, <i>real book people,</i> can do.</div>Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-54668302967700500322011-12-04T08:42:00.000-08:002011-12-04T08:42:13.573-08:00The National Book Awards, a parting shot...then back to writingOkay, you say, enough already on the National Book Awards. Let us move on, shall we? And yes, I am deeply into a new project. But I wanted to share this picture of me with one of the NBA judges, a writer I admire, Nikki Grimes.<br />
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And speaking of new projects, which I will do later, check out Justine Larbalestier's post about<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2011/08/25/writing-liar-with-scrivener/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Writing Liar with Scrivener"> <span style="color: blue;">Writing Liar with Scrivener:</span></a></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"In the acknowledgements of <i>Liar</i> I wrote the following: “Without <a href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html">Scrivener</a> this book would most likely not exist.” Ever since people have been asking me to please explain. Here, at long last, is my explanation."</blockquote>Interesting. I use Scrivener, too. It's a writing program that gives me some freedom to play with new writing, to practice what writer Alison McGhee once referred to as the lego block technique of drafting--you move pieces of writing around until you find what works where. Working with bits of a book is like working with colors on your palate. Which color adds depth or clarity to the whole when paired with another? Which is needed here? And here?<br />
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It's also like working with building blocks: which block of story needs a bit more support? What if I add this block, here?<br />
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Of course, a lot of it is intuition. With Scrivener, I can follow a more intuitive process. I can say,<i> Why Qilaa needs to do something here. Maybe she needs to do something with that rock she found on the beach...</i> So I label a section on Scrivener<i> Qila and the Rock</i> and there it sits until one day it hits me, no pun intended, and I <i>know </i>what she's going to do with that rock. So I write it. <br />
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Writing a first draft is not at all a linear process for me. How about you?<br />
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Okay, here's the photo, courtesy of my daughter Aaluk. I like it.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CidKiRi7MWg/Ttudc5CdT0I/AAAAAAAAARk/9XqgzEQow9w/s1600/with+Nikki+Grimes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CidKiRi7MWg/Ttudc5CdT0I/AAAAAAAAARk/9XqgzEQow9w/s400/with+Nikki+Grimes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Nikki posted a wonderful <a href="http://www.nikkigrimes.com/blog/">NBA reflection on her blog</a>. Her book <a href="http://www.nikkigrimes.com/books/bkbronx.html">Bronx Mascarade</a> was a book I studied when I decided to make <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761459804/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d1_g14_i3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1KK3JQMRBFCFBZDZHK8Y&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846">My Name is Not Easy</a> a multi-voiced telling.Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4206475344187744609.post-62412481972767509002011-11-28T23:04:00.000-08:002011-12-23T12:26:03.941-08:00Diversity in publishing--a conversation worth havingThere's an interesting conversation on diversity in publishing going on over at <a href="http://zettaelliott.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/the-breakdown-2012/#comment-4800">Zetta Elliot's blog Fledgling </a>that start's off with a look at numbers of black YA writers published in the US and blossoms into an important discussion about publishing and diversity. And we haven't even begun to think of what these statistics mean for readers, our growing base of multiracial, multicultural readers who are looking for books that speak to their experience. I think a lot about "multicultural" writing (which seems like jargon, somehow) and about lens shifting in our increasingly multicultural world. I did a guest blog on the topic on <a href="http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2011/11/guest-post-debby-dahl-edwardson-on-lens.html">Cynstations</a> recently. But I was really taken by, and wanted to share this interview with Nigerian/UK children's writer Atinuke, posted on Zetta's blog. I am always interested in the issue of negotiating cultural boundaries. It's where we live, isn't it?<br />
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And, just because, I am sharing a picture of my granddaughter, Josie, advertising my Alma Mater.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4vVLz7XE8-E/TtSCxAYXyHI/AAAAAAAAARU/wWfFQzaY19c/s1600/IMG_0217.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4vVLz7XE8-E/TtSCxAYXyHI/AAAAAAAAARU/wWfFQzaY19c/s320/IMG_0217.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Debby Dahl Edwardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13687093141965452634noreply@blogger.com2