FAMILY AT CHRISTMAS or ROMANCING THE STONE

THE FAMILY STONE is one of my favorite movies, not because Diane Keeton is dying, but because everyone has to fiercely protect the things that they love, even if that causes a dance where people shift partners and learn to respect new values. My favorite son (my only one) and his lovely wife arrive tomorrow. They will pull in right behind my husband who has been fixing broken pipes at our cabin in the Trinity Alps. And while I'm writing they are enjoying a night together at the cabin. My daughter and her significant other come the next morning and my other daughter and her husband will dance in and out as they go back and forth to their own home with my grandson and soon to be granddaughter. The next four nights are full of family and family extension dinners. For those of you that aren't old enought, that means we are all grandparents and our families now fill our houses...which means a separate night is involved to get the WHOLE family together. Chaos! And as an only child, chaos and the love of people we are close to is all I have ever wanted. Well, not really. I didn't know chaos might be a byproduct.

Once in a while you feel your life come full circle. When we lived in villages in Alaska, we had the same kind of chaotic Christmas week. We had a "village" family. The girls came to our house to bake and create crafts to share. We met at the dance hall, the drums beat and we danced and the kids were given gifts from Santa. Then village families joined their family of relatives. always telling us we could join them. But it was time for many of the teachers on the delta to enjoy their own family committment...to meet in a bigger school, where there was a gym or an extra classroom for the mom's and kids to sleep in. We layed pallettes on the floor and the kids all went to sleep, not caring who they were next to. If we had met these other couples in Sebastopol, where everyone had their own families to go to, our kids would never have known the idea of a village family, or a family of friends. We are lucky. In my family's world there are so many different kinds of families.

During the holidays... Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, etc. the idea of a family can become stereotyped. A mother, a father, a tree, a menorah, and don't forget the gifts! For those who have widened their circle, we should all be grateful...for those who work at food banks, share shifts at hospitals, take the extra shifts at grocery stores so that other can go home, recognize that we are all a part of a bigger family, a wider circle.
...
I think that those of us who write and share our art are also looking for the bigger family.... a group that is open to hearing our story, and is willing to share theirs. And we are looking, often for the greatest gift... listeners. These are the people who listen to our stories, then tell their own so that our own circle can widen.

PIECES OF CHRISTMAS

Several years ago I wrote and illustrated a book called PIECES OF CHRISTMAS. It is about Santa calling the North Wind to recycle all the letters he's answered.

When Santa returns from making his rounds,

the letters he's answered lie drifted in mounds.

He calls the North Wind to swirl them around,

And pieces of Christmas cover the ground.

I wish we could break up what we try to do and feel at Christmastime, and at other holidays through the year, into pieces. I wish a piece of that feeling would land on us every day....talking to a loved one, creating something just from us out of love, giving more than taking, and a belief in something magical about to happen. I have been wondering why some of us, including me, save these good feelings, good thoughts and generous actions for times around holidays. I do know that these pieces often come unrecognized at other times of the year. But during the holidays we are more open to receiving them. We just have to listen, not to the earthly news, but to sounds of goodness that are all around us. As the poem for the stamp above says,

The vole performed throughout the night...

He violined in black and white,

While people stopped to hear the sound

of Christmas coming from the ground.

For all of you who have put extra stamps, exotic stamps. collectors stamps on Christmas mail to us, thank you . They are like small magical windows to look through. And like any perfect gift, they tell me that you know a little about me. As we exchange gifts and thoughts during the holidays, let us share small pieces of ourselves and let us continue to share these pieces after the holidays.

Oh, and usually I connect this with writing. All I can say is that when we write, we need to share a piece of ourselves. It is our greatest gift to give.

REPACKAGING

Ok, no more reflection. First it was reflection as I went through the year...and cleaned out my studio with its old memorabilia, but today was purging time. Time to throw out the old so that there is room for the feeling of Aaaahhh! that this time of year is supposed to bring. I threw out over 30 oil paintings today, and it felt good. I through out slips of paper with story ideas...something I tell people never to do. But I have a little more confidence that they will come back in some other form if they are important.
The paintings I threw out were not wasted. They led to something better, and now it's time to let them go. Who knows, someone at the recycling center may have that aaaahhh! feeling when they find them. But if I don't have it anymore, they just take up space....and they don't just take up space in the studio and shop, they take up brain space and they use energy. They keep you looking backward, unless they are that unusual idea that you are glad you rediscovered and now are thinking of packaging differently.
Speaking of packaging... about ten or twelve years ago my family started packaging Christmas and other holidays in a different form. My kids and I joined other soccer players in the county and had a Turkey Bowl at Thanksgiving, a Christmas Bowl, a New Year's Day get-yourself-out-of-bed game, and an Easter Game. People have had to pull out at different times. They are pregnant, like my daughter...they are out of town, they have injuries, etc. After the last knee surgery I can't play, but I still go...to watch my kids and their spouses and significant others. It is a tradition as important as sitting around the table. And afterwards, just before each family goes to their own homes for holiday dinners, we join at the bar for a beer. We toast each other, catch up on news, and know that we will see each other again at the next holiday.
This year, one of our players, a coach at a local high school, died scuba diving, and on Christmas Day we will toast him, his wife, and his love of life.
So what does that have to do with this time of year? Today a friend and I were talking about what Christmas used to mean to us. We agreed that it was the magic.... not knowing what would happen but having some traditions to look forward to.
So here is my question, now that you have made space for this time of year. What is the magic you remember from your past that you hope to find again, and what are some of the changes in tradition that you have made in the last few years? How are you repackaging things this year?

And to those of you who are writers, did I tell you that I have had to get rid of some old ideas in a new manuscript? I was hanging on to them because they were part of the original idea. Out with the old, let them develop into something new...something that comes in a wonderful new package.

A TIME FOR REFLECTION

How did this year go by so fast? I can't tell you all the things I thought I would have done by now, and here I sit, knowing that this is the end of fall...that next week not only brings winter and Christmas rush, but that the week after that brings a whole new year. I need a day to fluff out my feathers enjoy the brisk air and spend some time reflecting. LOON REFLECTIONS was started as a different piece of art while we lived in Alaska. The loons would call through the mist on the lakes in the delta and sounded lonely. Then we would hear another loon call back. They weren't really sociable yet, just announcing their arrival in the spring, or making their last calls in the fall before leaving. They were content to be alone a good share of the time. The air was heavy and full of moisture during those times. In the spring, it was a last chance to rest before the frenzy of mating, nesting and feeding started. In the fall, it was a time to rest up before another time of transition started.... to put away summer and fall and clear their mind for the time ahead.

As an artist, it is time not just to think about the year, but to clean my studio, to put my old work away in safe places or to display it on the wall, a time to put away reference materials from old projects and get rid of the clutter that keeps me from focusing on new projects. It's the job I have put off for weeks because it means stopping the "starting" of new work... time to throw out old pens that are dried, and pencils too short to use, and to rearrange my books.
It is my week to be almost alone so that when the holidays start and family comes home I can have a new energy to focus on being together.

I worked silently most of the day today, throwing things out, clearing spaces and rearranging , calling out once in a while to let people know I'm here, but not sociable. When the winter solstice comes next week, I hope to have a clear mind and a less cluttered space to work and live in.

THE CHILD IN US

I am an aging, like everyone else, and yet, when the holidays come, whatever holiday it is, I become a child again....that little girl that has spiritual tradition or belief, whether religion or custom or modern politics goes with that or not. For that I can thank my parents who never ushered me into adulthood in a hurry. I think as children we know what is right...maybe not the fine tuning, but the basic instinct of right and wrong, or good .

The image at the right is from my imagination mixed with the real part of my life. While sitting on a snowy, rainy day, literally stuck in our cabin in the Trinity Mts., I started thinking of a friend and her baby's babysitter Olga Michael, and how later, this woman from Kwethluk, Alaska, had been canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church as a saint. We just knew her as Hope's babysitter and a typical Yup'ik woman...full of nurtering and love, and common sense, one of the Grandmothers of our time. and full of belief that the mothers she helped with babies, and that this little girl that she took care of on a paid basis, and her mother, needed something that she could offer.

I am fascinated with icons, no matter where they are from, and their relationship to the child in us. So, while this painting is just a sream of thought about those who go before us in age or time, hanging stars in the sky for us we do not have to grow up yet, we have already created visual images to embody them in.

And as we approach Christmas, Hannukah or any other tradition that brings out the child in us, I hope the memories of how we celebrated these new periods of hope and memory bring out the child in us that felt like there was a lifetime of possibility to look forward to. And since most of us who are reading this are not children in age anymore, it is a time to reflect, not only on all those childhood dreams that have come true in one form or another, but on all the possibilites that are still open to us.

If you are a writer, pull out all those manuscripts that didn't get finished and see what the possibilites are that lie within them, and for those of us that are visual, go back to sketches and think about the excitement they were produced with. The child in us knows that they were good. Don't let the adult in you doubt that.

WAITING

Last year I gave my cousin, a close friend and advisor, a golden next with three glass eggs. I felt like one of the many things we both had in common was that we were waiting for a grandchild. She is waiting for her first and I am waiting for our second, a granddaughter who will arrive in March, just two months ahead of her grandson. So this fall I put the image at the left into print. It is called WAITING, for while it is our children and their spouses waiting to see what this new nest will hold, we are waiting as well. We can't quite picture the changes that this new arrival will bring to our lives and to theirs. It is a time of anticipation and my tendency is to focus so much on the next big event I forget to look at all of the things unfolding around me.

So as I wind up a year of new experiences that have hatched for me, I am mostly grateful for all the things that happened while I was waiting for what I thought would be big roadmarks in my life. Some of those eggs have been sitting in my nest for a long time...so long that I thought they would never hatch. A visiting professorship at Hollins University, art shows in Homer and Anchorage Alaska, joining a gallery in Sebastopol, finishing manuscripts and my new book, PAINTING THE SKY, and more study of cave paintings. But the egg that has finally hatched is something more personal. The realization that this year is a year of becoming stronger with other people. Giving credence to my own direction. In the meantime my children and my grandson are the most signigicant stories in my year.

This year reminds me of some of the books that I started to write and a great book for writers that my son gave my called The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo. It says to start writing and write till the subject becomes the background, the story beneath the intitial zing that got your started writing the story or poem in the firs place. The initial subject that your are writing about needs to be written about until it becomes background for the true essence of the story....the egg that is waiting to hatch.

So while we look at eggs in a nest with a great sense of wonder, or an idea for a story, or a list of what we think will be our next great accomplishment or adventure, we need to remember that they are only shells that hold something deeper inside, something that is waiting to fly free when it is time. Our job is to write, to create, to live our surface story of acheivements until we find out that something more than we were imagining on the surface has come to life.

If life were a novel we would find out that while we were living above the plot line with all of our actions, something deeper and more meaningful was developing below the plot line with all of our characters.

For those of you that are writers, or people who are waiting to see where the next idea or event is going, give yourself a gift this year. Here are some suggestions. THE TRIGGERING TOWN by Richard Hugo, ON WRITING by Stephen King, WRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT by Dennis Palumbo, THE SPYING HEART by Katherine Paterson. I am taking them off the shelf to reread them as my Christmas gift.

A COZY HOLIDAY TEA AND WHACKY CAKE

This afternoon I attended the Gateway Council Holiday Tea with my friend Marsha Arnold. It is the first of a series of holiday events and receptions that combine people who share a passion for the arts and for reading. There are many who form the backbone of the local reading council.... Carla, Marie, Paula, and others who have spent their entire lives not only raising families, but also fulfilling their passion for teaching, either in the classroom or by running our community and school libraries . They match children with good books, which means not only knowing children well, but also knowing the vast variety of books available.
I stay connected to our local reading council not only because we share a similar interest, but because it connects me with people who constantly give themselves to creating the next generation. These people are the ones who create the people who will run our future.
So what about Whacky Cake? The refreshments at the Holiday Tea were made from recipes in a book called Taste of Literacy...a collection of recipes by authors around the state. Marie made my Whacky Cake. Barbara Winslow would be proud. She is the writer of DANCE ON A SEALSKIN, a book I illustrated, that recaptures some of our dancing experiences in Alaska. Barbara always did things the easiest way, and this cake is all made in the baking pan. Only one dish to wash when you are done.....and it's chocolate!
So this afternoon I got to combine one more thing with my love for reading and the arts....food and memories of living in Alaska. When it was Christmas several (sometimes 15) teaching families gathered together in one school on the Yukon or Kuskokwim Rivers in Alaska for Christmas. We did not have time to go to our homes in the lower 48 and join our 'real' families for Christmas, so we formed our own. We flew in, snowmachined in, and divided up the cooking. We layed out palettes for the children to sleep on in one of the classsrooms and the mom's slept with them on the floors. My kids remember bouncing from lap to lap with all of our teaching friends, going to the village activities, and playing in the snow.
Christmastime is often a time for nostalgia and for remembering old friends who are still friends, and this afternoon I was reminded that part of Christmas in Alaska was Whacky Cake..... there was always Whacky Cake.
So, if your are out there Barb, we are having Whacky (Crazy) Cake for Christmas here this year.
We will dump the following ingredients into a 13x9 baking pan and stir till all the lumps are gone (sounds like what life does to all of us)
2 cups suger
3 cups flour
1t salt
1/2 c cocoa...as in Hersheys Dark
2t soda
2t vinegar
2t vanilla
2/3 c salad oil
2 c water

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 min

I laughed when I read the last line...good cake for company if you are out of eggs. We were always out of eggs in the village!

MAGICAL CONNECTIONS

Years ago I created a book that felt like magic for the whole time I worked on it. It is called PIECES OF CHRISTMAS and was a gift to me from Holt. They let me work on a surreal idea....a set of poems set inside a snow globe with the premise that Santa calls the North Wind to recycle the letters he's answered...."he calls the North Wind to swirl them around, and pieces of Christmas come falling down ". Each piece of Christmas is a stamp torn from an envelope, with a poem. The image on the left is part of the spread for the following poem:

On Pennsylvania Avenue
Possums pray for me and you-
Please bless this world and bless this town
and those whose lives are upside down.

At the end of the book you find yourself watching Santa fall asleep after delivering his gifts. The stamps are part of the quilt he is sleeping under and the pieces of Christmas...the fragments of letters my own children wrote that Santa sent back to me...are now part of the snow in the globe. My editors knew it was a long shot but believed in dreams. The book monetarily has not done as well as my others, but I think there is something more important about it. Those who like it, love it in the way we are thrilled when we feel those unexpected connections, forming in our brains. Universal studios used a spread from the book in a movie and the director bought the picture. I think he knows how to make those magical connections as well. As an artist and a writer, those are the connections I hope for.

If you were a possum, or a person like me you would find yourself thinking that we have turned our values upside down in the last ten years and are only now trying to right ourselves. The one thing we can hang on to is our mind's ability to make connections that are new and exciting, whether they explain our real world that we deal with or the imaginary world that we are trying to form.

I take care of my grandson, Jack, one day a week. It is a day of sitting on the "apple porch" where we eat our apples off the tree (I'll be buying those soon), getting eggs from Donna's chickens and cooking them for lunch and making magical connections. Yesterday he watched my dog, Blue, chase vultures in the sky. I ask him if Blue could catch the vultures. He is almost two and he told me "Blue need wings to catch birds." He didn't tell me Blue couldn't catch birds, just told me the next step. He astounded me. His mind is building those magical connections that tell a story. Last night as the moon came up, we sat on the porch before we took him home, and Jack said, "Blue catch the moon". When I looked at him, he said, "Blue need wings to fly to catch the moon". Then he grinned and said, "Teasing Grandma." I looked at him in wonder as I realized he is already learning how to craft a story that makes him happy.

That night, while having dinner with my daughter and her husband, they told me he could tell a joke. They said, "Jack, can you tell a joke?" His response was "JOKE!" and the laughter of a standup comedian. While my husband says I'm the one telling this story, he has to admit those first magical connections are being formed in our grandson's young mind.

And for those of us being asked to underestimate the connections that young children can make while reading books, or being read to, I have to say, we need to counter that with the fact that our main job is to form new magical connections in their minds.

THE COLOR OF AIR

The image at the left is called Sonoma County Evening. It is imaginary, and yet it looks like most of the fall evenings in Sonoma County. After standing outdoors and painting many sketches of an area outside of Penngrove, I put my memories of those evenings painting into one picture. It is what I love about being able to create your own memory on paper.

The air in Sonoma County is always full of color. There are crystals of fog that collect the sunlight and crystals of condensation that paint the sky in the evening as the moisture in the fall rises from the ground. The sky becomes a canvas that is the beginning of the story of that time and that place. In some places a yellow sky means smog, in others, it means a sunset, but the color of the air around us always tells a story. And in a painting, smog and fog can both be beautiful. And the color of the air affects the colors of everything between us and the objects in the distance that we gaze at. I have had the same painting mentor for 5 years and she always says, "don't do anymore to the forground till you get the sky in." A yellow sky goes in and all of the colors in the hills need some yellow in them. A sky of light value makes the foreground darker. A sky of warmth needs to sparkle off of the objects in the picture.

In writing I think the sky becomes the setting, the culture, the time and the place. All of these things sit comfortably in the background so that the story itself stands out. In the foreground we avoid telling a story that doesn't match the background. In the painting above, I could not put smoke rising from the chimney. But even though that is a lovely thought, this is a warm evening, late in the summer and smoke from the chimneys would automatically place your eye on the buildings. Then I would have to add more detail to make that story make sense and pretty soon the peacefulness that I felt when I started the picture, the feeling of gazing at a sky full of color that paints the hills, would be lost.

How do I know? Because I have two drawers full of manuscripts that are overtold and need to be edited, two drawers of stories where the culture, the rhyme, the folklore template stood out as the main story and not as the underpainting and the background. They are pieces of work that I allowed to spin away from the story in order to keep a pet phrase or paragraph in tact. And for every painting like the one above, for every illustration in a book, I have ten that did not capture the essence of what I went after. But they did help me get to where I wanted to go.

So what is the color of air? Let me know what a yellow sky means to you, or a green sky, or a red sky. I'd like to know.

A SENSE OF DISTANCE

The picture I painted on the left called Spring on the Kenai Peninsula. It sits in front of me in my office to remind me of the grandeur of Alaska. It is also a vision of distance. I love places where you can see a great distance, have no idea of how you are going to get there, but still have a feeling that there is a path for you to take.
This weekend I went to a lovely retreat at Asilomar....15 writers, 15 talented and creative people still traveling to get to their distant goals. I don't think many of us knew why we said yes to the retreat. We didn't know everyone going, we thought we were going to work at this retreat, accomplish the next chapter, the next book, set of illustrations, or the next talk for a conference, but all of us dropped our goals for conversation. What an amazing gift we gave ourselves. Long awaited naps on the beach, conversations by the fireside on how to balance careers with our artistic souls, how to balance family and career, and how to honor that fact that some of us have a new direction we need to take. And, for me, how to honor who you really are when it takes you out of the mainstream.
For many, they said it was the first time they had talked at that level, and I realized I have been fortunate. I have been with a variety of peoples that hold who they really are above what the rest of the world would like for them to be. Some of these people come from Northern Alaskans who have had to step out of their comfort zone to use their gifts and to share them with others. Some are other artists who pursue their arts regardless of income. Some are like my husband, who is one of the best general contractors, but saves time for hunting, gardening meat-making and cooking. These are the people I want to be with...those who have seen something in the distance, a feeling of space, of opening up, and are willing to get off the beaten path to take that trip.
I go back to places of space, like Alaska, or the oceanside retreat at Asilomar, to feel small enough to travel through the open space of ideas with a knowledge that I am headed through a beautiful landscape on my journey.
So what is the next space that I am exploring? I thought it would be outer space, but it is cyberspace, of course. I am behind, if that matters, but have finally found that it is much like living in Alaska. The world is so vast, the communications so great, that it is a bit like my kids described landing is a mosh pit. Something will bouey you along on my journey. I hope there are a lot of strong, open hands out there to bouey me along on mine, especially as I land with all the baggage I carry!

WALKING THROUGH A STORY

I have often wondered why I tell stories. Are they lies like I used to tell to make my real world live up to the standards of the world I thought everyone else had? Growing up in the Catholic church, and being forever guilt ridden, I thought that might be the answer. But, lately, what I think it is, is a chance to expand my very small world into the "what if" world....a world full of possibilities. A chance to leave the competetive (well, now you know something about me) world of publishing where we try to write what will sell, in order to write the stories we are passionate about. We need to do that in order to get them out of our heads to make room for new stories.

The image on the left is called Seal Moon. I have an ivory pendant carved with a Moon's face and framed with silver. The moon and I are good friends, and you will often find me on the porch during the fuller phases of the moon till way too late at night...or not, depending on the month and the season. To me the moon calms things, makes our days slow down to night, and I need that. I miss her when she is gone, just like the seal who fell in love with her and climbed out onto the ice to become a the first man. He found out she left each day, so he lit a seal oil lamp inside of an ice hut so she could find her way back each night. But in my story Moon is curious as well. She wants to know what is under the hole in the ice. No matter how far away she may seem, she still wants to know what is grounded, under the ocean and bound to real life.

When I first drew this picture I didn't think there was a story, then I realized I wanted to take a journey...follow a path through my imagination to a place I love to go but am afraid will get criticized. I did not want anyone to think I took this story from any Alaskan groups I have worked with, but ignoring the influence of hearing Yup'ik stories is like ignoring my love for Rie Munoz's art. It is the place my imagination took flight.

I like creation stories, as you know from THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY, so I decided this would be where the first man came from. I like having the freedom to play with possibilities and my own folklore, and as a writer and artist, I feel fortunate at times to get a glimpse of my own landscape. It goes from my "real" life here to a life full of possibilities and without limitation.

Last night I officially joined The Sebastopol Gallery. a group of 12 Sonoma County fine artists. I am grateful that this is part of my path, as well as book illustration and writing. It gives me a chance to be part of 12 other fine artists who create with many different "ingredients"...fabric, silver, gold, clay. My own art has already gone through a small transformation after being part of 11 other artists. I can't give you any rational reason for joining, just that it was the next step on my own path through my own story, maybe like the Moon wanting to see what was beneath the ice. I can put stories on a wall as well as in a book. I can create my own folklore...or landscapes without trying to fit them into a book package when I need to. I am grateful to the group for voting me in last night. And I am grateful to publishers who still keep me illustrating stories that fit the book package.

Someone quite smart said we only need to see 200 feet ahead of us while we are driving. I know from walking at night at a slower pace that we only need to see about ten feet. So whether walking through a story, or through life, we only need to head the direction we want to go for a short distance and then our headlights will show us where to go next.

SUDOKU: One square at a time.

Every morning I wake up to coffee, the morning paper and the game of Sudoku. I never know how long it will take, and I may have to start over, but I play because it reminds me of life in general, and especially of a life in the arts.

Having a career in the arts is unpredictable at best, and like Sudoku, one move, one idea, one book or image may have you thinking that you have the answer to walking with success through the whole puzzle of life. Most of the time when I put that number into the puzzle, I am amazed that that is ALL I got ....one more number. Then I sit and wait again, esp. on Diabolical rounds, for the next number to surface. So what's the point?

I have learned that the game for me is something of a meditation, a chance to let go of time, to let go of a guaranteed win, and a reminder that sometimes the best thing you can do is put the game down and go do something else. When I come back, the next number is usually right in front of me. At that point, my husband has probably heard me say thank you...just to know I'm not stuck.

I have put Sudoku in my mind as a way to deal with the unknowns as I play my own creativity game. One day I draw birds in birch trees. Later I add a birdhouse. A few days or weeks later, I decide that this is connected to the fun I have of small people, so I put a woman standing in the doorway of the birdhouse. A story has started. I give her a tray or bowl of seed to feed the birds. I start a final picture in a hurry....typical of me. I put on the color, but when I'm done, it is not the right composition, and I have a different feeling towards her than I did when I started working with the image. She is that quiet part of me that likes stories of gathering seeds, feeding birds, and watching them come to eat. I think the woman in my picture needs to live in the house.

So today I'm starting over. I have a clean start, a larger piece of paper, and more space to play with. The picture on this blog is getting redone. And like Sudoku, when you have to erase and start over, you know what doesn't work, and usually the next time the puzzle comes together. So here is to starting over, to knowing that the first squares are filled in with this image, this story, and to not quite knowing how it will end up. And here is to being content and grateful for one square at a time, even if you don't know where it leads.

JULIE AND JULIA AND THE INVISIBLE AUDIENCE

Since it has only been a couple of days since my last post. I am becoming more comfortable with an invisible audience, I think. I had a small epiphany on Sunday when I finally went to see the movie, JULIE AND JULIA. The movie was much more than I expected. I expected to see a passion for French cooking, but what I really identified with was the need to find an audience to share that passion with.

I have been a little afraid of blogging...of saying things to strangers that might sound foolish, that I might wish I could take back in a year because I know longer feel they are true to what I believe. But during the movie I realized that is exactly why I like to speak at conferences and workshops. I don't get to meet everyone in the audience and I leave not knowing what the vast majority of them are thinking. The reward always comes from people I meet or hear from as a result of the talk. And as a writer and artist, I will never know what each reader or viewer is thinking when they are holding one of my books, or looking at a piece of my art.

After seeing JULIE AND JULIA, I admired Julie for two reasons. The first was that she was not afraid to use another person, Julia Child, as a role model, to literally copy someone else's expertise. The second thing I admired was her search for the essence of the cooking. She did not buy the same cooking equipment, or rebuild her kitchen, but using the same ingredients, and following instructions, attained her goal of preparing every recipe in Child's cookbook. While that was the surface acheivement, it was more important to me that she found her own passion, and discovered, as Julia did, who she really was, with or without the constant approval of everyone around her.

I love cooking, but it is my husband who has the passion for it. But if I had been as brave as Julia, I would have sat down and tried to duplicate all the art of Rie Munoz, an artist whose work has kept our walls full of color and energy for years. Rie is an Alaskan artist who is known internationally. She has has captured the energy and happiness of people in Alaska where we lived as well as in many other areas. Because she is so well known, I have gone out of my way not to let my work look like hers. And it doesn't...it can't. We are two different people.

But a couple of years ago, I began to look for the ingredients in her work...not the actual images. I found patterns, a set of colors true to her work and a focus on shapes and editing out. I found a connection to French art for some reason, a freshness and an airiness and a love of what people do everyday at the bakery, the lake, the park, and a fearless use of her imagination.

My picture at the top is called DANCING THE NEW BABY IN. It is an image done with acrylic and colored pencil that I have put into print. It is the result of doodling while on the phone and liking the first sketch. Yup'ik dancing was a big part of our life in the village years ago, and I find the theme comes up in both books and art for me. At a gallery opening in Anchorage at the beginning of the month, I wondered if people would tell me my work was like Rie's. They told me instead that that my art is whimsical and happy and tells a story. But like Julie, I know who I studied to find the ingredients to create my own art, to follow my own passion.

For those of us fortunate enought to get glimpses of our passion, there is a great quote from Abraham Maslow that allows us to take our times of feelikng off course a little easier. "It isn't normal to know what we want-t is a rare and difficult psychological acheivement!"

DISCOVERY

I have had the privilege of sharing my new book during speaking engagements at schools, bookstores and conferences, and of receiving great reviews since its release in late spring. To my deight and validation, the reviews from Newsday, SLJ, Kirkus, etc. focused on the sense of wonder I feel about the world we live in.

This weekend I spoke at the SCBWI Regional Conference at Mills College. I was asked to give an inspirational keynote at the end of the day, It was a good time to talk about THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY as well as some of my own folklore. Just as the discovery of the paintings on the cave ceilings in Altamira created a sense of wonder in Maria and her father (see Jan.'s Blog), the last few years have been years of discovering new things about the world and about myself and how I relate to that world.

As I have said earlier, there might have been a non-fiction story to be told about the cave discoveries, but it did not have a great ending for Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautula whose daughter discovered the painting. His discoveries conflicted with academia at the time, and the world of academia would not let his writings have any credibility. The story is that after his ideas were denounced he spent the rest of his years in depression.

To me, that is unfortunate, because in my mind, based on what I know of his time period and setting, I believe he was an unusual man. For one thing he respected his daughter's discovery and did not try to claim it as his own. He was brave enough to share what he believed and knew with the academic world. He was following his passion and he took a risk. Can you imagine the number of times we have discounted important discoveries and ideas because we are not comfortable exploring their possibilities, when instead we could have allowed that sense of wonder to open up a whole new world of thought for us.

My job as a writer is to start our writing everything that I wante to say, and then eliminate anything that gets in the way of sharing that original sense of discovery and wonder with the reader because to paraphrase one of my favorite quotes: Our world will never lack for wonders, only a sense of wonder.

This weekend at Mills was a learning weekend for me as well. Even though we seem to still be experiencing an economic downturn, this conference for writers and illustrators was sold out. It reminded me again that in difficult times we turn to stories and we all need to share the stories we know. We need to hang on to the discoveries we make about ourselves and the world we are in and for those of us who enjoy the arts, we need to put these discoveries into a form we can share. We need to embrace time as a friend and not an enemy. For me, there is often a long span of time between the inspiration or the discovery that starts my imagination moving into something that I can create and share. Then there is often a long period of time before I know how to funnel those thoughts and feelings into their proper package.

And sometimes the final package, or book, in this case, can hold more than one story....a story that served more than long enough time in my drawer labeled " writing limbo". Years ago, I had written a two page piece of my own folklore about how the animals got their spots and stripes from people who had painted themselves and danced so fast around the fire that their paint flew off onto the animals watching. That two page story now takes up one paragraph and fits within THE OLD MAN. So hold on to your discoveries and your inspiration and let them take you on a ride. Share them with others when you are ready, but most of all give them credence. We have much to share.

THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY

This weekend I had the privilege of speaking at our regional SCBWI conference. It gave me a chance to delve into how ideas change from the original inspiration, travel through our imagination to become something we create. In the case of my last book, THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY, the packaging or funneling into a picture book was the last and most difficult step.

Like most people who are interested in the world around them I have no problem feeling inspired by a discovery.

TIME AND CONFIDENCE

I started this blog with a goal of writing at least every three weeks. As you can see, it has been months since my last post. Confidence was going to be my topic of choice but I'm still getting used to an invisible audience, so I lost some of the confidence to blog, and with that every time I went to write, I thought I should set aside enough time to say things clearly. However, I have re-learned an important lesson this year. Most good things happen when we don't give ourselves too long to worry about the result.

This summer I spent 6 weeks teaching at Hollins University outside of Roanoke, Virginia. The class I taught was CREATING PICTURE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN. In 6 weeks, my students had to write and learn the basic guidelines for illustration. I am amazed at what they produced. The wrote fables, poetry, paginated books, and illustrated action and story sequences using Uri Shulevitz's, WRITING WITH PICTURES. They also found that they could used color and shape and size to show mood, time of day and setting as well as action, thanks to Molly Bang's PICTURE THIS. By the end of the 6 weeks, along with a few migraines, we had 9 well presented picture books, paginated correctly and well-written. Watching them create their first picture books from beginning to end made me realize it was a good thing they didn't have too much time to worry. They all had a good first start for a picture book. Many had full color dummies to boot.

So what does this have to do with confidence? This year I took two classes at our local JC and worked on homework assignments. I did not expect them to be perfect because they were done in a rush. My students were under the same pressure, and were forced to drop their unacceptance of imperfection. They had to stop comparing their work to others around them and, hopefully, they left knowing that, given more time for revision, their work will get better.

I realized as I looked at their work that others don't notice as many of the imperfections in our work as we do. We should count on that, and have the confidence to put our work and our dreams out there for others to react to, and hopefully enjoy.



Here is some of what I shared this summer while teaching:

My first drawings reflect nothing more than a use of space and planning.

A basic version of almost anything can be drawn with basic shapes.

A story is like music. It can't be the same beat all the way through.

The writer needs to write well enough that the reader can see himself in the story. That means the writer has to know what part of himself is in the story.

When you forget why you wanted to write the story, go back and remember what it was that was exciting to you about it.

A class in writing does not mimic a writer's life. It takes time to realize why we are writing the story and time to remember the reason when we are stuck in the middle. Just as we can't be cheap with the art materials needed to create a wonderful piece of book art, we cannot be cheap with the time needed for writing. It is our most valuable ally until too much of it allows us too much time to worry.

Here's what I learned this summer from my students:

A teacher can be a robin in a tree.
Kisses can be made of macaroni.
A bald grandfather's head can be the moon.
A whole day of a little girls visit to her grandmother's can be told in 156 words.
The magic of an ocean swim among fish can be placed in a backyard pool.
Animals can go on strike.
Lightning makes tomatoes grow fat and juicy.
A butterfly's journey is a showcase for magical realism.
Ghosts need friends and haunted houses can be inviting.

Thank you to Carter, Jamie, Mary-Liz, Tracey, Beth, Angela, Jenette, Cindy and Hillari for a great 6 weeks. I learned a lot from all of you.

Editing

I have been given a new lens to view the world around me with. After a very simple cataract surgery I had a distance lens implanted. It has sharpened my vision to 20/20, allowing me to see every house, every tree, it seems on Sonoma Mountain when I stand outside.
One of my passions is plein air painting. You can only imagine my excitement when I found I could see EVERYTHING. And my disappointment at trying to put EVERYTHING that I saw into my paintings. I did four paintings in the late afternoons last week before realizing that painting is like writing....you have to edit!

When I painted with poor eyesight the editing was done for me. When I paint from my imagination the editing is done for me.
But as a writer, I know so many words, that the temptation is to put them all in. As a painter who can now actually see, the temptation is to show you what I can see.
We all know what an overwritten manuscript can be like. It is one where the author is in love with the words, the names, and not the story. They have fallen in love with the tools of their trade, with their skills and forgotten about the passion that made them write the story.
So, I had to go out yesterday and put my writing skills to use in my painting. I had to eliminate everything that got in the way of the feeling I had when I looked across our neighbors pasture. The reason I wanted to paint his barns was not to prove that I can make perfect boards, but to show the contrast in value that I see at certain times of the day from my front porch, and the way the mist in the air colors the mountain.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could edit our lives daily, enhancing the things that keep us impassioned, and editing out the extra, unneccessary things that get in the way of us making our lives into the stories we crave them to be.

FAREWELL TO A GOOD FRIEND

I have posted a younger picture of Betty Huffmon as seen on the flaps of books she and I have written together. I have been receiving e-mails from people in Alaska as a reaction to her passing and they all have been a reminder of how fortunate I have been to have her as a personal friend and writing partner.

Betty was the first Yup'ik teacher in Alaska. After working with me at the Bilingual Education Center in Bethel, she later directed the Bilingual/Bicultural Center under LKSD, first as part of a team to make Yup'ik a first language in some of the delta schools and then to create a second language program in other villages in western Alaska. She and I met 35 years ago and lived across the dirt road in the luxurious trailer court of Bethel, Alaska.

There are so many things that I have learned from working with her. But most of them can be summed up in one sentence. "There is something good in everyone." She has woven together a Yup'ik family whose mother owned her own reindeer herds, a French Canadian father who was an entrepeneur in trading along the rivers and coasts of Western Alaska, boarding school living and an exquisite knowledge of the rest of the world and how important language is.

Betty told me the story of THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE. It is the story of a little boy who is sent out to hunt food for himself and his grandmother, but eats everything himself. When the story was told to Betty, the little boy pops as he comes into the hut through the eye of grandmother's needle. Betty said that since this is not a time of starvation in the village the lesson did not need to be harsh. Instead we created the universal, loving grandmother who draws out the good from the little boy named Amik.

Later we created BERRY MAGIC from a snippet of a story she remembered. It is the story of how the different kinds of berries came to grow on the tundra. Both of us liked the idea that good ideas lead to good results if you act on them and can create a little magic. Collaboration between us, between two cultures, two generations and two different minds often took 5 years but led us to learn the value of finding a common voice. We were working on a rewrite of THE GHOST FISH when she died. I hope her voice will still work with mine to finish the story.

For anyone visiting the Anchorage area, she has made the largest individual donation ever given to them of over 500 artifacts (furs, ivory, trading beads, dolls and baskets.

My thank you goes to her family who let me accompany them to take Betty to Goodnews Bay for her burial and feast. It was wonderful to watch as everyone in the village welcomed her home for her final resting place.

With Betty leaving, it is my hope, and I am sure it is Betty's as well, that more writers from Alaska will come forward and write for children and that more of the folklore and everyday stories will see their way into trade book form to share with the rest of the world.

A YEAR OF CREATION

There was an old man who painted the sky,
But I don't know how he painted the sky.
It's up so high!

These are the opening words from my next book, THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY. It is beautifully illustrated by Stefano Vitale and will be out in the spring. The inspiration for the book was the fact that it was a child who discovered the first cave art in Spain, and it was teenagers who brought the Lescaux Caves in France to the world's attention. The sense of wonder and curiousity that young people have is something our society must continue to honor. If I were a non-fiction writer I'm sure I would have pounced on the story of the young girl, Maria and her father, and how the discovery changed their lives. But my mind works in a different way and it became a song parody of creation and the discovery of cave art.
If you are fascinated by the history of cave art, one of my favorite books from last year is THE CAVE PAINTERS, by Gregory Curtis.

So as 2009 begins, let's welcome in the new. It feels like a year to be creating a new future for ourselves as well as the children coming behind us...and often leading us into new discoveries. My only resolution is to embrace technology as a friend that can enhance my creativity. So I will be starting an Adobe Illustrator class at our local college.

And I don't want to throw out the old. Last year was a building block for many new ideas. To start with my grandson has opened a whole new world of discovery. My nephew, Mike Sloat worked with me and animated a short clip that I will post. As always, I found it a thrill, even in the rough stages to put music and art together. I am using the animation to help me form a book....any tool that helps, is my motto. Finally, last year was a year of gallery art. Many days and weekends of plein air painting, art classes, and putting my own folk art into print, my first art shows in Alaska as well as shows here in Sonoma County.

2008 ended with the loss of my dear friend and co-writer, Betty Huffmon. Betty and I have worked together on bi-lingual projects and have been friends for 35 years. She told me the story for THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE, and co-authored BERRY MAGIC with me. Her family graciously invited me to the village for her burial in Goodnews Bay, Alaska, and while it was a time of saying good-bye in December, it is her thoughts that I will begin the new year with. Betty, who always kept her sense of wonder, taught me to keep the parts you liked from the past and build on them for the future, and never to forget to notice the small things around you. Sounds like a good way to start the new year.