Heroes

When I’m out visiting schools, as I have been frequently this spring, children often ask who are my heroes. I think teachers ask them that question, frequently, and when they have a captive adult they like to turn the tables, toss it back. I find the question difficult to answer. At first I consider famous people—George Washington or Mother Theresa. But they’re too far away in time or space to be quite real for me. So my mind turns to folks closer at hand.

Living in Pittsburgh, it would be natural to select a sports hero. We have many to choose from. But although I enjoy sports, I don’t tend to lionize athletes. Or politicians or movie stars. Fame and glitz aren’t high on my list. Instead, I try to think, who has made a difference? Who has done something that really matters?

Joan Friedberg and Betty Siegal are two smart women with a good idea. And the energy to carry that idea into action. It’s a simple idea, really. If you start connecting children with books from the earliest months and years of life, they will grow up strong and healthy. Joan and Betty are the organizers of Pittsburgh's premier Early Childhood Literacy organization, Beginning with Books. These women are real heroes—their good idea has impacted and improved the lives of hundreds of children and families all over western Pennsylvania.

I have been notified that I am to receive the second annual Friedberg Siegal Champion of Literacy Award. To receive an award named after Joan and Betty is, in the words of my granddaughter, awesome. In my own words, it is humbling as well. I will have to do some serious stretching to measure up.

Breaking Records

And just when I was complaining about January, February hit. In Pittsburgh, we're inches away from breaking all records for the snowiest month since they started keeping track. This photo shows my street after only the first two days. That was about 21 inches, 13 days ago. We're at 38 inches today and it shows no sign of stopping or melting. Around town, electricity has been iffy, traffic has snarled into gridlock, roofs are collapsing. Down the street, a water pipe burst this morning. We haven't seen a snowplow on the street yet and probably won't. But we have seen folks on cross-country skis, and grrr. My skis are in Massachusetts as are the brand new snowshoes. Excellent timing.

In fact, it has been an excellent time. Hot soup with neighbors after shoveling, walks to the nearby market for supplies, hiking to campus for meetings with students, walking out at night to a nearby restaurant for an Italian dinner, all beautiful on foot. I didn't touch my car for 11 days and I really didn't miss it. Without all the usual distractions of outings and meetings and classes did cabin fever set in? Sure, a little bit. But there's a quick remedy for that--piling on the snow gear and going outside to enjoy the crisp cold air, the sculptural trees, the odd piles of snow on roofs.

For a writer, such a spell of quiet isolation is golden. When working forward in a manuscript, I try to compose one new chapter a day. Most days, I succeed. But during the past several days, I've averaged two chapters per day, occasionally more. I've also helped a writer friend (within walking distance) complete final edits on a manuscript and given feedback to others more distant via email. It is easy to let distractions rule one's life and when they disappear for a while, the day seems to grow extra hours. This is not to say I won't welcome tomorrow's meeting with colleagues at the university, for I will. You can spend only so much time in conversation with the made-up people in your fiction before turning loopy. Balance is all. And warm boots...

Snow and Chocolate

Twenty-ten. Late last December I yearned for the new year and without realizing it, was also waiting for a new decade. Then it arrived. We ushered in twenty-ten with family in New England. Playing games by the fireside. Enjoying our youngest grandbaby. A few moments before midnight, our daughter remarked that oops, nobody had thought to bring funny glasses or party hats. This set us off in a flurry of catching up. With five minutes to go, she created strange additions (from a child's puzzle) to her glasses frames while I grabbed a pile of newspapers and began folding. I should have sent someone off for the masking tape, but no time, no time. When the year turned over, it found us with semi-folded newspapers on our heads and riotous laughter shaking our bodies. To the onlooker, surely these people were missing a few essential nuts and bolts.

We returned home to Pittsburgh with a warning about lake effect snow, which caused us to travel a more southerly route. Once home, it snowed and snowed and snowed. Every day for thirteen straight days, snow fell in Western Pennsylvania. We never got a big pile, just an inch or so. I'd wake up to covered walkways and grab the broom, but by afternoon, I needed to sweep again. Somehow, this gradual, grey, small flurry and flake storm accumulated to more than a foot on the patio table. Creeping, sneaky.

There was nothing slow or gradual about what came next in this new year. Haiti was shaken, broken, devastated. In seconds the built landscape flattened, burying homes, roads, and most tragically thousands of people. The actual numbers are not known, will never be known. And that uncertainty must haunt the survivors. Did friends, family, neighbors, children survive? And if they died, where, how, how painfully? Will supplies ever arrive? Will I have a roof before the rains come? Will aid come in time to help heal the wounded? How many more will die? In the midst of such enormous disaster, we in Pittsburgh witnessed a small miracle--the evacuation of 54 orphaned children, already in process of joining new families when the quake struck. From farther away we read of survivors rescued after more than a week of entrapment. Tiny flickers and flares of hope amidst the ruins.

It felt odd, then, to travel to Hershey PA for a weekend library event. To visit Chocolate City, where they give you a candy bar as you check into your hotel, while in the Caribbean, people were desperate for food and water. Odd to spend an hour watching our two small grandsons splash in a large indoor swimming pool while some people can't find a drop of clean water. Odder still to sit in that hotel lobby and watch 60 beauty queens from all over Pennsylvania vie for the title of Miss Grange of Pennsylvania. Lovely girls, in beautiful dresses with proud parents and grandparents cheering them on. While in Haiti, families mourn their losses, scramble for a shirt, for shoes. And yet this too is a flicker of hope--a promise that young people will continue to grow and survive despite the challenges that surround them.

As we reach our hands into our pockets to aid and support the thousands in crisis, those same hands can applaud the proud moments of strong young women in triumph. Our hands, our hearts, these are versatile tools--and it is our task to use them well, to stretch and grow them and use them in all sorts of ways--to dry tears, to fan flickers of hope into flame, to sweep snow, to unwrap chocolate.

Fast Away …

It is officially winter. As I look out the windows, the first snow of the season lingers. It clings to tree branches, covers roofs, frosts the fence tops. It makes me wonder if the clouds and sky conspired to wash away the grime and prepare for a new year. Familiar words float into mind—fast away the old year passes…

Some years, I’m not ready to say goodbye to the old year, whether because I’m feeling too rushed, or I sense that life in general is passing by too quickly. Some years, I want the nearly-ended year to linger like this snow has, to stay with me awhile longer.

This year, I’m celebrating. Fast away? Yes. Please. Fa, la. While 2009 has had some lovely moments, it’s also been extremely challenging. So I’d like a fresh, new year, please. Clean and unspoiled like a snow-covered meadow. This year has required of me one, very difficult task: learning patience. And patience is not one of my natural assets.

I’ve experienced some eye trouble—retinal bleeding. The cause is known and not particularly dangerous in my case but the effects have been difficult. Most particularly, I have not been able to see with my left eye since August. Slowly, very slowly, the blood begins to clear and peeps of the world sneak through. Therefore the patience… In the meantime, I’ve had to adjust to a narrowed view of the world and have had to learn how not to bump into things.
Because I’m a writer, when I struggle with something, I often put words down, to try to understand, or if not understand, then simply dump out the frustration. Here’s a poem I wrote when the trouble first began.

So as the old year passes, here are my resolutions: hail the new, fresh beginnings, more snow. Look out at the world in wonder, both eyes wide. Exercise patience. Write more poems. Cheers for 2010.

one-eyed cat

one-eyed cat prowls the backyard

tawny—marmalade you might say

if you didn’t look closely—

but she is no creature

of orange rind and sugar

no sweet, sticky syrup

orange but rough

the ruined eye

hides behind diagonal scars

k

she’s torn one ear

same fight or another?

I presume multiple fights

multiple scars hidden

beneath fur

I know when she’s visited

trail of feathers, emptied eggshells

uneaten yellow feet

I watch her move—slinking, shadowy—

until she pounces—

feline grace on all four paws

extra balance in the gift of a tail

k

last Sunday I had eye surgeries

with cryo and laser and I am now that

one-eyed cat

I stumble, stagger in my own shadows

want it back—feline grace

four sure certain paws

the gift of a tail

Refreshed!

I have a new website! Hooray! Please visit and check it out, especially the surprises andwhat's new pages. Lots of news.

www.katherineayres.com

And speaking of news... what's it like to see yourself in the newspaper? One of my local papers, The Pittsburgh Tribune Review, interviewed me and ran a full page in their magazine section, complete with pictures. Answering all the questions took a while, but some were really easy--at least half the questions seemed to have something to do with TV shows and I don't watch TV, so just kept replying nope, nope, nope. If you want to see what said yes to, check it out. Here's the link: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/books/s_652703.html

From Green Sign to Green Sign

[This article appeared in a recent newsletter of the Western Pennsylvania Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.]

A particular logo pops up as you travel across Pennsylvania—a green sign with a stylized profile of a person reading along with the word LIBRARY. These green signs appear in large towns and small, in cities and rural counties, all pointing in the direction of books.

For nearly six weeks this spring I traveled Pennsylvania, visiting these public libraries. As the author of the 2008 Pennsylvania One Book (Every Young Child), I hit the road to promote early childhood literacy from Pittsburgh to Susquehanna, from Philadelphia to Greencastle, and numerous points in between.

Because I was working with young children (70+ events with children, 5 with teachers and librarians) I met many children’s librarians. These folks were kind, extremely cheerful, and possessed great senses of humor. As children entered, the librarians gave them a wide smile and said, “Hello friends.” That’s all you have to do to become a friend, just walk in the door. These days, there is no shushing. Children’s learning can be noisy and that’s just fine. Toddlers darted about. Infants bounced on laps. Sometimes they fussed but that was okay. Story hour is about the children, after all.

Or is it? In one library, while the children were having a snack after their story, the mothers were socializing intensively. But of course—it was the start of spring, and they’d been cooped up indoors with small children for months. Story hour provided intellectual stimulation for the children, but also a social support network for their mothers.

And across the state, libraries have been stretching their missions in an attempt to become centers of community. New library buildings crop up next to municipal buildings, in the midst of town playing fields, in the midst of the action. You want a tax form? No problem. Need to use a computer? Sign up here. Nationwide, libraries are developing Family Places, programs that reach out to parents with children three and under to provide information and support about all aspects of childhood from child health to typical patterns of growth and emotional development to early literacy activities.

In my own trip, I was greeted effusively in every town, every county. In one library, the community room was soon to undergo reconstruction. So on their own time, the librarians painted huge vegetables on all four walls. (My book, Up, Down, and Around is about how veggies grow.) Early in the tour, 160 children arrived for the story and songs dressed as veggies, wearing colorful tee shirts and amazing headgear—green beans dangling from vines or a green foam visor “planted” with three bright beets. Later, a librarian and teachers collaborated so that 300 kindergarteners sang my story as a song. (Twice! Once in the morning and again in the afternoon.) Another librarian had four-year-olds decorate a tee shirt with veggies as a gift. Still another set up a farmers’ market outside the entrance. By noon, some of her display carrots had been nibbled. In seventy different events, there were seventy different stories to tell—all filled with a joyful spirit—the delight of words and stories and learning.

Children respond to this generosity—they bloom, share opinions, get excited about books and ideas. “I weally, weally wove wettuce,” one little boy confided after hearing my book. Another girl informed the room that “My sister lives with me!” I led a small group, spinning in and around the children’s room bookshelves, pretending to be pumpkin vines, tangling up the books. “This is so fun, I want to keep doing this,” said a kindergarten boy. I agree. I want him to keep tangling with books for the rest of his life. Another child, whose thoughts were stimulated by a story and discussion, asked hard, interesting questions: “Why do seeds grow?” (Not how, which I could answer.) And then, “Why don’t we grow like plants do?” Such a question had never occurred to me. I checked the bottoms of my feet for roots.

As I traveled the state, the children invigorated my spirits. Yes, I got tired of the turnpike, but I only got lost twice and ate in some fine and funky restaurants. And although I was away from home, away from my family and usual companions, I was rarely lonely. Several governors ago, the state had a promotional campaign. Its motto: You have a friend in Pennsylvania. After traveling for six weeks, from green sign to green sign, I can testify to the truth of that statement. We all have a friend in Pennsylvania—it is the librarian.