Extraordinary School

 I just had the most amazing school visit at Hamlin School in San Francisco. It's an all girls' school, begun by Sara Dix Hamlin in 1896. The school is in an old mansion full of amazing rooms. That built-in cabinet in the upper left corner of my collage is part of the school secretary's room! Full-on fake bamboo ceiling, too. And the horse? A huge student mural, hanging right in the main hall.

 The Head, Wanda Holland Greene, is incredible. When she was six years old, her father and mother decided she should be one of several children to integrate a school in the New York. Everyday she climbed on a bus and went to an all-white, Jewish neighborhood from her home in Brooklyn. She's energetic, direct, and determined to pass on to the girls the values of being an engaged citizen.

Ms. Greene wanted me to especially talk about Marching for Freedom. Here's what the girls were studying when I came: sixth graders were discussing freedom and personal rights, and the challenges of migrant farm worker families. Seventh grade: social class and identity, and will soon discuss Jim Crow era. Eighth graders: about to do a long unit on race and identity, and look at Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

These students will have such a rich understanding of history and social justice.

Love Me Do celebrates its 50th birthday!

Okay my friends. Don't worry about your email, feeding the cat, getting to work on time. Take two minutes out for this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEEC-yhr_Ks













50 years ago, on October 5, 1962,  the Beatles released Love Me Do.

Thanks to Lionel Bender for making my day.

Dorothea Lange, National Hispanic Heritage Month

National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15 - Oct. 15) comes on us so fast at the beginning of the school year that sometimes it doesn't get much attention. I just found some incredible photographs by Dorothea Lange in the California fields of the migratory Mexican farm workers.

Mexican picking melons in the Imperial Valley, California

 Children of migratory Mexican field workers. The older one helps tie carrots in the field. Coachella Valley, California. Feb. 1937

Migratory Mexican field worker's home on the edge of a frozen pea field. Imperial Valley, California

(If you look closely, you can see a girl peeking out of the doorway.)

Migratory Mexican field worker's home, March, 1937. Dorothea Lange

Lange also photographed workers arriving as part of the Braceros Program. We called them "guest workers," they called themselves enganchados, the "hooked ones." Here's more about the controversial Bracero Program.

First Braceros, 1942. Dorothea Lange

Want to teach your students about what it was like to be a child working alongside your parents in the California fields? Here's a great lesson plan, Children in the Fields:, by Theresa Chaides at Marquez Charter Elementary School.

Your Vote is Precious

I was about twelve when I asked my mother about this mysterious voting thing she did a couple times a year... getting dressed in one of her nice dresses, then walking with my father up to our local grammar school to vote. She told me all about voting, concluding with, "it's both your privilege and your obligation to vote."

Her words came back to me as I worked my book Marching for Freedom, about the Selma to Montgomery march for the vote. I discovered the incredible courage and conviction of the people of Selma who stood up for their right -- and every American's right -- to vote. Below: John Lewis after crossing the Selma bridge.

Both he and Amelia Boynton were at the Democratic Convention. Here's a video of John Lewis's inspiring, impassioned speech.

Amelia Boynton, 101 years old, was in the audience. She was an amazing, unstoppable force for the vote in Selma.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/amelia-boynton-robinson-dnc_n_1863273.html
 
And an earlier blog post of mine on crossing the bridge with Amelia Boynton and many others on the night of Obama's election. A true hero of mine.

Woody Guthrie centennial and All Things Considered

Several weeks ago I was asked if I'd like to be interviewed for Woody Guthrie's centennial on All Things Considered on National Public Radio. I am a huge ATC fan, so of course I jumped at the chance. I took BART over to San Francisco and was shepherded into an audio booth at KQED, our local public television and radio station. I watch and listen to a huge range of programs on KQED, so I shouldn't have been surprised, but the studio is big and busy. Lots of people going in and out.

Bradley Klein interviewed me for a half an hour. He was in NYC and I was in SF, and with a techie and a lot of equipment it sounded like he was right next to me. It was fascinating to see what Brad was interested in pursuing. I'm eager to hear the segment and see how he wove together his POV and all the other interviewees.

Check your listings for All Things Considered, July 11, 2012.

Happy centennial Woody. We need your music as much now as we did when you were rambling from California to the New York Island.

Tribute to Maurice Sendak

Sendak was a querulous, opinionated genius. He was grumpy, but he was our grump. We revered him, and feared him, all in the same moment. We loved how he wrote and illustrated dark, savage, powerful, and hopeful picture books. Books where kids triumphed.

He started, decades ago, illustrating other authors' books. Here's my favorite, much beloved book when I was a child:

Years ago, Sendak came out to Berkeley and autographed books at Cody's. I stood in a long, long line, inching my way forward. We were told to hold our books out, open to the page to autograph. Sendak didn't look up, just scribbled his name, reached for the next book. I held out my book, Charlotte and the White Horse by Ruth Krauss. He looked up, startled. "I haven't seen this book for a long time," he said. "Tell me your name, and I'll put your name in."

And he did.

I read Charlotte's White Horse over and over, carefully penciled in my initials under my godmother's signature. Later I realized my initials weren't supposed to be there, so I just as carefully erased them.

 I loved this book because it was a book about a girl and a white colt. Her father tells her he's going to sell it to save money to send her little brother to college one day. She begs her father to let her keep the colt, and he agrees. "And ever after, every morning, she groomed him and they went for a gallop and in the evening she tucked him in and said goodnight."

A book where a father understood, and a girl triumphed.

So how did the Dorothea Lange shoot go?

 Months ago my friend Dyanna Taylor asked if she could shoot interviews with her scholars at my dad's house. On her sixth application --- sixth! -- to NEH she finally got funding for her American Masters film on her grandmother, Dorothea Lange. The crew arrived with an unbelievable amount of stuff, and took over the living room, dining room, kitchen, even my bedroom. Cameras, monitors, sound equipment, black out shades and sheets, huge backdrops.

For days I watched Dyanna interview the scholars. Amazing people like Clair Brown, Sally Stein, Linda Gordon, and Anne Whiston Spirn. Even though my dad's house is huge, once all that equipment was in place, we had a fairly small hidey-hole to do the interviews. Here's Dyanna interviewing, a camera lens over her left shoulder.

Then it was my turn. First, make-up.

 Get wired for sound. 

 Look over notes one last time while Dyanna adjusts the lights.

Keep pencil in hand for whole interview to be able to think clearly. Be serious said Dyanna, and so I was.

Now Dyanna has to go home, head for her next hidey-hole, an editing room. She has to take the interviews, the footage she's shot, the archival photos and interviews and footage she's collected, and make it into an hour and twenty minute documentary.

I'm telling you my writer friends, we have it easy. One little hidey-hole... our writing room... with our papers and books and flights of imagination. Easy street.

Thanks to Paul Marbury and Allyson Feeney for the photos.

Battle of the Books coming....

It's time to rumble.... Battle of the Books time! School Library Journal sponsors this every year. I'm a big fan. It's a great way to see what some of the smartest, hippest writers think of the best books of the year. This year's contest kicks off March 13 with Matt Phelan choosing between two amazing books: Amelia Lost (just won the Golden Kite) vs. Anya's Ghost.

Run out and buy these books or check them out from your library and see what you think. It's a lively, kick-butt contest. Best part? Right at the end everyone can go online and vote one book as "undead," and it has to be put back in the contest!

April and a few things I love about spring

Our pullets are laying their first small brown eggs.
The yolks are deep golden and delicious.


The wild plums in the hills have burst into blossom.


And girls go walking in the lightest of rains.

Teaching at Vermont College, one year in.

I've been teaching at Vermont College of Fine Arts for a year now. I began teaching wondering what it would be like to share some of what I've learned over my years as a writer. I was eager to be involved in an academic community. I mean, let's face it. To be a writer is to be a shut-in. Long hours alone, which I cherish, but sometimes I want to be out there, connecting with other writers.

I've learned to be a better teacher, and better editor of students' work. No big surprise there. Do anything intensely and you get better at it. What I didn't expect is how much I've learned about my own writing process. There are incredible lectures by smart, well-prepared writers, visiting authors who add their amazing lectures, and late nights in the faculty room, which veer between industry gossip, swapping of writing and teaching tips, and a heady, exhausted exhilaration as we make it through the intensity of the ten day residency.

We have a lovely graduation each residency. Here I am beeing the "hooder" for the ceremony, as Mandy Robbins gets her diploma. Thanks to Shelby Hogan for the photo.

Marla Frazee and Libba Bray were our visiting authors this last residency. Both of them were spectacular. Libba whipped up an awesome blog post about her time with us. Here's Libba post, On Gratitude.

We've also got a faculty blog going, Write at Your Own Risk. Here's my most recent post, Tough Love From an Old Poet, on Mary Oliver.