Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

It’s time for another installment of 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks . . . For those new to our series, this is where we all stop in every Sunday to report seven (more or less is fine) Good Things that happened to you (or that you read or saw or experienced or . . . well, you get the picture) this week.

1) Elaine Magliaro’s dedication of an original acrostic poem to me and Eisha. Thanks again, Elaine!

2) MotherReader’s lovely tribute to Kurt Vonnegut.

3) The opportunity to chat with authors and illustrators and editors and other bloggers because of this blog. Eisha and I really enjoyed chatting with Alvina Ling (how multi-faceted is she?) and John Green (who is just so stinkin’ nice) last week, and this week we will feature interviews with author/illustrator Anna Alter (who amazes me) of The Blue Rose Girls and Barbara Kerley of The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins and Walt Whitman: Words for America (two very lovely, lovely books out of a handful of great books she’s written). Why can’t these people pass some of their talent over to me? If only it were that simple . . . Read the rest of this entry �

It’s time for another installment of 7 Imp’s 7 Kicks . . . For those new to our series, this is where we all stop in every Sunday to report seven (more or less is fine) Good Things that happened to you (or that you read or saw or experienced or . . . well, you get the picture) this week.

1* Thursday I met Grace Lin. She did a program at my library. In spite of woefully low attendance, and a bizarre series of mishaps that made the day feel slightly cursed (she even had to ride in my cute-but-trashy car Phoebe), she was utterly gracious and adorable and interesting and wonderful, and I think the children who did attend had a very nice time indeed. As did I.

Read the rest of this entry �

It’s time for another installment of 7 Imp’s 7 Kicks . . . For those new to our series, this is where we all stop in every Sunday to report seven (more or less is fine) Good Things that happened to you (or that you read or saw or experienced or . . . well, you get the picture) this week.

1> The poem “Request” by Franz Wright, which you can read here at Liz Scanlon’s Poetry Friday entry from yesterday. I am in love with this poem, and I thank Liz for introducing me to it (Poetry Friday is such an excellent thing). Amusingly enough, I read — while trying to find more info on Franz Wright — the following: “A five-year-old Franz Wright once reportedly made the following request of his parents: ‘Excuse me. Do you think, because it’s my birthday, we could not talk about poetry today?'” (I read that here; his father was poet James Wright) . . . The poem made me think of another favorite, “The Guitarist Tunes Up,” by Frances Darwin Cornford: Read the rest of this entry �

Yes, we have to make an executive decision and go with “7-Imp’s 7 Kicks” as the title for the new weekend series, formerly and temporarily named Seven Good Things Before Breakfast. Both titles are good, we think, but Michele (at Scholar’s Blog) suggested “7-Imp’s 7 Kicks” (the “kick” coming from Kick-Ass Things That Happened to You During Your Week), and we just love it. For any new folks, the idea is that we simply share The Good in our lives this week.

And how do you like the image? It’s Tenniel’s image of Lewis Carroll’s The White Queen with Alice (from Chapter Five, “Wool and Water,” from Through the Looking Glass), here telling Alice that “{w}hy, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Later, she mumbles something to Alice about 7 Kicks before breakfast, too, but that part was deleted from Carroll’s text (Alice fans, don’t send hate mail. We only jest).

Anyway, blah blah. Sorry. Here are our lists:

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So, it looks like we for sure need to make a real series out of last Saturday’s idea to highlight Beautiful and/or Kick-Ass Things That Happened to You or That You Read or That You Noticed This Week. Yes, that was last week’s working title for the series, but it’s a bit cumbersome, eh? What do you think of Seven Good Things Before Monday? Feedback, anyone?

So, yes, that idea really took off with all kinds of folks chiming in and wanting to discuss A Bit of the Good. As Betsy Bird put it well when she mentioned this series idea over at A Fuse #8 Production, “{s}ometimes we’re so smothered in snark that we have a hard time appreciating the ‘nice.’ And I’m talking actual ‘nice’ here. Not ooey-gooey saccharine-filled ‘nice.'” To that Eisha and I say: word and for shizzle. We don’t want things to get ooey-gooey. We’re not fans of ooey-gooey. Yup, as we mentioned last week, it’s this simple: the world is scary, the news is depressing as hell. I, for one, have children. I’m worried about the world in which they’re growing up and the world of their futures. We can do something about some of the problems, but we can also take a moment to notice The Kick-Ass.

So, my list is below. But first, three things: 1> Eisha is not able to participate this week. But I hope she will be able to next week. 2> Let’s move this from Saturdays to Sundays, whaddya say? Can we cyber-gather on Sundays? That will give Eisha and me more time to compose these weekend lists — and give you one more day in the week to notice Some Good. 3> THANKS to everyone who participated last week. Please come play again. And we want updates anyway on sharing glamour shots, doing nice things for yourself, big moves, drumming, daughters getting scholarships, Dalek-shaped cookies and everything else we missed . . . you know who you are. Update, people, update! Oh, and add this week’s Good Things.

I humbly submit . . .

Jules: I have an idea for a new series of sorts on this, our impish blog (if you haven’t noticed, the nickname we’ve been granted, which has stuck, is 7-Imp). I’m reading this brilliant, little-known book called The Book Thief. Have you heard of it? Yes, I’m just a bit slow in getting to it. Anyway, I was just emailing my Four Favorite Readers in All the World about a passage in it that is just so beautiful, and it gave me this new 7-Imp weekend-series idea. I didn’t think I’d have time for blogging this weekend, but I’m just all inspired now.

So, at the risk of sounding like Oprah, the idea is that every weekend we can cyber-gather and discuss what Beautiful and/or Kick-Ass Things Happened to You or That You Read or That You Noticed This Week (yes, I need a better name for the series. Any ideas?). If you’re a Patty Griffin fan, as Eisha and I are, you may have heard or read her discuss in several interviews that, since the world is just scary – what with wars and suffering and environmental destruction and many other innumerable dreadful things — it’s nice to take moments to notice the good (a recurring theme in her music as well). Sure, she’s not the first person to say this, but, hey, it’s on my mind, as I just read an interview with her.

I shall begin:

1> The aforesaid moment in The Book Thief (spoiler coming up): When Liesel finds Rosa –- after Hans has left for the war — sitting with his accordion strapped to her and her fingers hovering over the keys in the middle of the night. “There was . . . an acknowledgement that there was great beauty in what she was currently witnessing, and she chose not to disturb it.” Even better is the fact that Zusak brings relief to this heart-shattering, soul-shaking poignancy (can you tell I liked that part?) by having Rosa snore again and having Liesel think, “{w}ho needs bellows . . . when you’ve got a pair of lungs like that?”;

2> The lyrics to and one-word chorus (“sun”) of “Burgundy Shoes”; the piano in “Someone Else’s Tomorrow”; and the guitar feedback in “Getting Ready” on the new Patty Griffin CD;

3> The fact that we have three great interviews coming up, one of them being with M.T. Anderson, who visited Eisha at her library this week just to get a photo for the interview and in which they’re holding my disembodied head. Confused? The interview will be posted soon, so you’ll just have to wait;

4> My daughter turns three on Monday and may actually have a pony at her party (her part-time pony that lives at her grandfather’s). A pony at a child’s birthday party – it’s terrifically cliché, huh? Now we just need to add a clown. Best of all, she’ll be getting good books for her birthday, including the new Polo adventure; Punk Farm, which she really wants to own yet somehow hasn’t ‘til now; and Steve Jenkins’ and Robin Page’s I See a Kookaburra, which she seemingly can’t live without. I also love the imagination of a three-year old. I’ve been reading The Higher Power of Lucky this week (did you all know that the word “scrotum” is on the first page?), and she picks it up, pretends to be reading it by making up a stream of nonsense words, and has named it The Lost and Found Girl Who is Good. As far as I can tell thus far (I’m about half-way through the book), that would actually suffice as an alternate title for the book, no?

eisha: I love Jules’s idea, and I’m totally game. Here goes:

1> Well, you already mentioned that M.T. Anderson showed up at my library to have his picture taken with me, along with his charming girlfriend, and we just talked books and Nashville and blogs and awards and stuff, and I had such a great time. Why don’t excellent authors just drop by my little library branch and hang out with me all the time, I wonder? Sure, I might not get a lot of work done, but still…

2> I just finished Jacqueline Woodson’s new middle-grade novel, Feathers, this morning. I immediately turned back to the beginning and started it over. Yes, even with the huge pile of TBRs I’ve got sitting around. It’s that good. I’m going to write more about it, of course, but I’m hoping I’ll get to see her Monday night at a reading (if I can figure out how to get from my library to that one in less than 30 minutes), so I’ll probably wait until after that so I can include that experience in the review.

3> Last night I tried White Sangria for the first time. It’s really good!

Jules: Anyone else? What do you think of this series idea? Will you play weekly? What would you call it? Is it just a bad idea?