wejkome to the clug (typed on my iPhone)

(Note: My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Norway...)
That was my cousin Lew's greeting when I emailed my iphone number to them. Yes! Big sausage fingers on teensy qwerty.

One of my favorite bakeries: FlorioleWhat do I think? Texting! What a brilliant thing! I'm sold! Skype works better on the iphone than on the laptop (great -- free calls in wi fi). And it's Apple, which as I mentioned before, I grew up on, so this is an easy, easy phone for me to use. Easier than our clunker prepaid Tracphone, I'll tell you that. I cannot figure out how to do anything on that prepaid phone. If you want to humble me in the tech department, hand me the Tracphone and tell me to change the ringer, or turn off the ringer, or make it vibrate. That thing brings me to my knees, calling Phil in tears...sad, sad, sad.

And instagram! Lovely, lovely instagram(see square photo above).

What don't I like? The bill. Good gravy, I should own half of Wisconsin for that!

It's too hot for a rant, so I'm moving on topically. How are you surviving the heat? Tell me all your tricks.

The news from Chicago is not good. Tom Skilling claims the air is holding 2 inches of water (reason why it feels like you're walking into a damp blanket outside), heat indeces have been 108 and 112, big cumulous clouds suddenly appear on the horizon out of nowhere, like a giant popcorn on a completely empty blue plate. We've had a couple of storms now, and they're real pot & pan bangers.

Anyway, I hear we're sending the heat out to the east coast. There's going to be a run on window air conditioning units, and supermarkets are going to have to chase people out of the frozen food section. I used to do this in the heat -- I'd be at the supermarket to get a pizza, but when I opened the door the cool would mesmerize me and I'd just stand there thinking all the pizzas were so, so pretty completely unable to choose one.

I hope everyone is okay. If you're up in Wisconsin, I hope you're jumping in a lake. That's the only thing to do.

News on the book front: My editor says I'll have the manuscript tomorrow with changes marked. She says there's not a lot (oh YAY). I'm a little nervous -- because I need to see it. But she seems genuinely excited about the manuscript, so I think I did my job right last time. I'm trying not to give into the nerves.

Pickle Report: Did I mention that I put these cucumber pickles in Phil's great grandmother's pickle crock? Well, I did. Added the brine too. They're supposed to stay there for 3 weeks and ferment. Smell fine. Actually kind of nice and fresh-ish. But the pickles are not foaming, which what was supposed to happen DAYS ago. Something was on the top today. Finally, I thought. Then I looked closer -- it seemed kind of mold-ish. It was white... Does the foam look kind of like mold?

I'm a girl who follows the rules -- I scraped it off.

Still, dubious, dubious, dubious.

Look, I'm going ahead with this thing, because I got to be sure, but don't hold your breath. This pickle experiment may be doomed...

Finally, here's the happiest bike video I've seen in a long time. Wouldn't it be nice if the USA were like this? Hey, Chicago is flat...

dance like a 100-year old

Doesn't this make you smile? Had to snap a photo!

News Alert! News Alert! Are you a writer looking for some new ideas, tips, and tools in the world of social media? JOIN ME and Carol Saller & Hilary Wagner as we talk about Social Media down in Hyde Park on April 21st. Free too! More details are here: http://www.scbwi-illinois.org/Networks.html#HydePark

Now back to our regularly scheduled programing...

Hi everyone --

Well, the work has started... I'm on a new draft of One Came Home (formerly known as Pigeon-Shot). My editor at Knopf sent a revision letter and manuscript. I paced around it for about two days without opening it, nervous -- the whole fear of failure thing. And then I opened it and hey, it's not so bad.

In fact, I think you're going to get a much better book. And I still LOVE this story. Now I am starting to get truly excited about sharing it with all of you and seeing what you think about it. I hope you want to see it too! 

Phil came up with the title. (Thank you good looking husband!) I like it. It fits the book. And my agent and the editor like it too. Though everybody should know (and I'm reminding myself as well) that the publisher is the one that will decide if it sticks. But so far, so good... Big yay! (By the way, from here on out I will refer to it as One Came Home -- no 'Pigeon-Shot'ing this and 'Pigeon-Shot'ing that.)

Now big change in subject (Stand up, spin around 3 times and then read the next paragraph): 

One of the beautiful people of the world died last week -- Arthur Lessac. I knew of him because my husband is in the world of voice teachers, and Arthur Lessac was highly respected and influential in that field. He was also full of life -- even at 101 years old. Check out this video taken only a month or so before he died. I tell you, I want to live like this!

Arthur Lessac in Rijeka from gluma, mediji, kultura on Vimeo.

How are you all doing? By the way, spring/summer hit Chicago right after that last post. I wrote it, and the next day summer landed with a thud. (That's the way weather is here in Chicago.) It was 75 or so degree weather -- hot -- with big winds. Ah, the windy city. Anyway, now all is forgiven. People are back in love with Chicago. Talk about weather all you'd like to us locals -- it's safe. We won't bite.

Amy

bat in the bedroom

Hi everyone -- 

Random thoughts! Be forewarned that I'm to flap all over the place like a bat trapped in the bedroom. (In case you don't know what that's like, follow the link to a little youtube video.) 

First, it's foggy here in Chicago, and no one has any idea if or when spring will arrive, though we think that by June there is a slight chance for some sort of heat to pass thru Chicago. Still, we're not getting our hopes up. For now, it's cold. It's rainy. It's like that weather from my trip out to Santa Cruz, California (2 weeks ago?) migrated to Chicago. Only migrations don't move that way. Whatever. People in Chicago are growing desperate. Jokes about spring are told with a decided edge -- if they can be told at all. Just be forewarned if you're visiting Chicago -- don't mention the weather to the locals. It is not a safe topic.

BUT the wedding last week? Gorgeous. My cousin, who was the bride, looked amazing. (I'm not exaggerating.) And the ceremony was in a conservatory, so it was filled with flowers and smelled of hyacinths -- the perfume! Wow. Needed flowers and green badly, so loved it. And not one wedding mishap. I've included some photos so you will conclude too that yes, this was a beautiful wedding. Way to pull off a wedding, Suzanne and Paul!

Before everyone arrived...

Book news: My editor is giving me an editorial letter next week, so more edits soon. We talked by phone and it doesn't sound so bad. In fact, it sounds like it's going to be a better book. Better is, well, better. Good.

So what am I writing now? I've been finishing a personal essay for a workshop I'm taking this summer with Scott Russell Saunders. I'd like to learn how to write essays, and I heard him speak last year. When he spoke about how he approaches his own writing -- how painstakingly, how carefully -- every part of me said YES. So I found a workshop and I'm taking it. I like being stretched artistically. (I kind of doubt though that SRS will say "Who's the rock star?" and then point to me like my yoga teacher did when I finally stood on my head for the first time. This is kind of disappointing. I like being called a rock star. But still, I think he'll be good.) 

And how is the NYTimes.com addiction going now that they're charging for access? Have I reached my 20 articles yet? Have I ponied up and paid my monthly fee? Answers: Okay. No (but close and after only ONE week). And NO I have not paid. Still indignant about the fees --  it's too much, New York Times. Are you listening? Good gravy, I'd give you something if you were reasonable, but you're asking for everything but the kitchen sink.

Turns out there's a bright side to this: I decided to try giving up the New York Times cold turkey and listen to my local NPR (which I support and listen to every morning) and read the news magazines I already subscribe to (The Week, New Yorker, Utne Reader) and you know what? So far, so good. In fact, it's helping me write. It seems I tend to waste more time online when reading the news online. Plus, reading actual paper magazines gets me away from the computer. AND I read the entire article (or more of the article) when reading a paper magazine then when I read online. Hmm. Interesting. 

Take that New York Times!  

I must admit that's sort of satisfying to write.

Anyway, how are you guys doing?

Amy 

Where the wedding was held... wow!

why not say why not?

Hi guys -- 

How are you?

I am hard at work. This week I got an editorial letter from my new editor at Knopf, Allison Wortche, and I've started working on the changes. I feel focused, screwed down (but in a good way), thoughtful, living with images and scenes in my head, imagining this and that, and problem-solving. There's a lot of problem-solving in this stage -- things where I haven't communicated clearly or not structured things properly. I sort of like that part. 

One of the odd things is that after focusing this intensely I find that a) I can't speak in full sentences, but jumbles; b) I often run into things (in college it was the library pillars that I couldn't seem to avoid); and c) the world is so, so beautiful -- colors pop, sing, sizzle, glowing hotter than any glassblower's glass. 

Or is that fall? Fall is like that, isn't it? You have a gray day and it almost doesn't matter because the trees illuminate the way.  

It's been hot. Then on Monday temperatures dropped 20 degrees in two hours, and a fortress of fog pushed through downtown Chicago (caused by falling temperatures and proximity to Lake Michigan). It was crazy-looking. Above is my best photo of it. See how the Sears Tower looks smudged? That's the fog.  It ended up being thick as quilt batting. 

Because fall is making me giddy, below is a slideshow of more fall, Chicago photos. The moon is something known as the Super Harvest Moon. It came out the night one of my friends had a baby, so it's Eliza's Moon to me. You know how kids like to hear their birth stories?

Here's Tom Skillings' article about the Super Harvest Moon.  That's our famous Chicago weather man...Best weather blog in the universe -- promise.

And here's another thing I've been thinking a lot about. This is from Annie Dillard's The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (There are writers and then there's Annie Dillard...) I read this while we were in France this summer and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. She's talking about the creator and the creation she finds in the world:

Along with intricacy, there is another aspect of creation that has impressed me in the course of my wanderings. Look again at the horsehair worm, a yard long and thin as a thread, whipping through the duck pond, or tangled with others of its kind in a slithering Gordian knot. Look at an overwintering ball of buzzing bees, or a turtle under ice breathing through its pumping cloaca. Look at the fruit of the Osage orange tree, big as a grapefruit, green, convoluted as any human brain. Or look at a rotifer's translucent gut: something orange and powerful is surging up and down like a piston, and something small and round is spinning in place like a flywheel. 

Look, in short, at practically anything -- the coot's feet, the mantis's face, the human ear -- and see that not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He'll stop at nothing.

I'll leave you with that. Tell me what you think of it. At the very least it makes me want to create like that too -- kick the Critic out the door for good. Why not say why not?

Amy

Here's my slideshow: