Basketball jones

watching them play ball;
a game requiring the skills
of hold and release

- Andromeda Jazmon

When I'm not blogging these days I'm playing the piano, working in the garden, playing with my sons, or working on reading & writing for grad school. Hoping to find time today to enjoy the poetry round up at A Year of Reading. Join me there?

Morning coffee

sirens in traffic;
that rooster crowing, crowing -
my garden quiet

-Andromeda Jazmon

Lazing by the water

it slips away
just when you catch the stream;
summer free time

-Andromeda Jazmon

Once we pass the 4th of July summer starts to really race by. I try to force myself to slow down, relax, enjoy the lazy moments, all the while thinking I don't have enough time to do all I planned. I need more time to sit by this stream and daydream...

summer reading update

I am taking a grad course in YA Lit for library school this month. We have to read 24 YA novels chosen from the ones referenced in the textbook: Nilsen, Alleen Pace and Kenneth L. Donelson. Literature for Today’s Young Adults. 8^th ed. New York: Longman, 2009. We also have to read another textbook, several articles, write a couple papers, compile a YA library with a $3000 budget, and do a "webliography" listing 5 websites of interest to teens.

We are expected to immerse ourselves in teen pop culture, including TV, movies, music, etc. I am afraid I don't watch much TV or listen to the latest popular music, so I need some help here. What's hot with teens these days?

I guess with all this reading, writing & surfing that I will be doing I won't have much time to blog. I am going to do short updates on the books I'm reading for the course. Here's what I have read in the past week:

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. My favorite parts are early in her solitary experience on the South Pacific island. First when she tries to leave the island, paddling out East into the ocean in an old canoe she found, in an attempt to join the rest of her people who have left her alone on the island. The canoe has a split and starts to leak so she turns around and goes back and just barely makes it home. I can see this happening to me, only I wouldn't have the sense to turn around and go back. After paddling for a day and a night I would be too stubborn to give up and I'd probably end up swimming with the fishes. My other favorite part is when she shoots the pack leader of the wild dogs with her self-made bow and arrow, then tracks him down and finds him almost dead. Instead of finishing off her enemy (who was responsible for the wild dog pack killing her little brother) she takes him home and nurses him back to life, making him her best friend. That is a miracle of grace, and one of the really beautiful turns in the book. What part do you remember moving you especially?

The Land by Mildred A. Taylor. I hadn't read this 2001 prequel to her Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Logan family series before. I really liked it. It tells the story of Paul, a young man living on his white father's post-Civil War land in his Black mother's house. Paul is treated well and given many of the benefits his white brothers receive, up until he becomes a teenager and his father decides he needs to learn that being Black means he doesn't really live in the same world as the white family members. Angered and humiliated, Paul leaves his father's land with his best friend, a Black teenager. The two have many adventures before settling down on their own piece of land. Very interesting to see the Reconstruction period through the eyes of a mixed teen who identifies as Black although he looks white enough to pass. Taylor tells us in the Author's Note that this is the real story of her own family, heard from her father, uncles and grandfather. I'd love to go directly to reading Roll of Thunder and all the rest of her books, if only I didn't have so much assigned reading.

Day of Tears by Julius Lester. This is the story of families devastated and torn apart by one day's slave auction in Savannah, Georgia in 1859. Lester draws on historical documents to give us a picture of the largest slave auction in US history, This novel is told in first person accounts from different perspectives of both white and black family members. The characters are complex, revealing mixed motives, emotions, and coping strategies. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to live through such horror, this book takes you there. It's disturbing, heartbreaking and riveting. Lester is a master storyteller and one of my all time favorite authors. I highly recommend this book.

I'm keeping a list of the 24 novels for this course on a Goodreads bookshelf here. Please feel free to comment if there are books you've read or wondered about...

Raspberry Season Haiku

picking raspberries,
trying to decide: sorbet
or raspberry jam?

- Andromeda Jazmon



I'm telling you there is nothing sweeter and more delicious than homemade raspberry jam on fresh baked bread. Unless it's ice cold homemade raspberry sorbet...



We like our raspberry sorbet with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

It's something to contemplate while you are out in the hot sun, fighting prickers, avoiding bumblebees and listening to the birds scream at you for stealing their fruit.

The Friday Poetry roundup is at Tabatha A. Yeatts' blog. Happy 4th if you're American. Enjoy your weekend!!