You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening

Summer in Portland, Or is here, and to supplement getting my hands in the dirt a few times, I bought myself You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening by Gayla Trail. The book is filled with basic tips on everything from acidity to organic composting to guerrilla gardening. There are tons of crafty projects, such as building one's own planter or making an apron, so I'm looking forward to testing some projects from this book. This summer's focus, for me, will be the container garden, because I do have to move at the end of July. But I look forward to tips on transplanting, harvesting seeds, and building that planter. I want to take some strawberry and raspberries with me to my new home, and I have poppies growing in my yard and would like to harvest the seeds.

Meanwhile, I will read, dream, and container garden away!

There's also a sweet blog and website (actually started before the book was written) at yougrowgirl.com.

Blankets by Craig Thompson

This graphic novel by Craig Thompson is painstaking, lovingly done. He is a master of his art, telling stories through lyrical language and images.
Blankets is his story, a memoir about a childhood that was often painful, an awkward and lonely adolescence, and his first love, unabashadly portraying sexual abuse, poverty, questioning of one's identity and beliefs, sexual development, and learning how to love. This bildungsroman's chronicles his rivalry and playful love of his younger brother, his first heart-break, and Thompson's slow and gradual break from the strict Protestant faith he was raised in.

For high-school students, I would recommend permission slips: swearing, nudity, sexual content, and alienation from religion.

Recommended! Also, check out www.dootdootgarden.com, Thompson's online blog.

Cairo by G. Willow Wilson

Finished reading Cairo the other day, a graphic novel about a group of people trying to escape from an evil-doer who kidnaps and kills in an attempt to control a box that contains the ancient word "east" from the divine language.

Interesting conflicts include a reluctant young hero's journey from becoming a would-be martyr driven by anger to an altruistic young man driven by love and curiosity; an impassioned Egyptian journalist's and naive American girl's struggle to understand the other's desire to help the people of the region; and a drug-smuggling arrogant Egyptian discovering love with an Israeli special forces operative. It's a story that blends ancient myth with modern realism--sort of a magical realism-- about love, acceptance, and repositioning of egos.

High-school student appropriate: little swearing, no nudity.

Illustrated by M.K. Perker.
Written by G. Willow Wilson
Published by DC/Vertigo 2007

Only 12 more days of school after today and then, back to subbing? I'm not going to think about how much I'll miss knowing that I'm a high-school lit. teacher with a myriad of responsibilities and the task of taking students on a dive into the wonderful literature of the world and guiding them to think about characters, motives, author intent, etc. Instead, I'm dreaming of summer, summer, summer.

Summer to-do: (when not gardening, biking, reading novels, picnicking, camping...)
Praxis
Constitution class/workshop
reapply for teacher's license
research teaching abroad jobs

living...and writing

Unlike my initial launch of this blog, I no longer want it to be about anything. If I feel like writing about my parents, books, learning how to knit, my students, my vices, my fears, my hopes, I'm going to write about them. I've always been terrified by the idea of an audience, to the point where it's ruined my writing. It's prevented me from being really honest, and it's stopped me from taking real risks, both killers in writing. The idea of having an audience even led me to demand that all of my writing was something worthwhile, which totally negates the purpose of most expressive writing: to express one's feelings, thoughts, ideas, frustrations, dreams, fears. Not to be a Woolf or a Cisneros or a Marquez. At least, not on the first draft. Not in the journal.

So I'm trying to redirect my thinking. I want both my journals and my blogs to be places where I can express myself in words rather than through lesson plans or dance or bicycling or gardening. And right now, I don't want or need an audience. So if you're out there reading, know that I'm no longer focusing this blog on the economy or on teaching, but rather, simply on "living in interesting times."