reading dates

Thanks for all your comments about the storms and your reassuring thoughts in our direction. It's been an unsettling and scary week. Harry and Sally demonstrate that in this photo. They are both barking at me, all at once. This hasn't been unusual lately, and you can imagine how loud it is. (the command Hush! doesn't always work. :) We're tired, the storms were pretty frightening, and work plows ahead as usual.

It's been a productive work week--most of the photos for the book have been selected at this point! I've worked with the editor all week long. We're probably going to reshoot a few images one more time so that the projects look just right. I'm also working on the first draft for another article, and for some reason, it was hard to do. Sometimes I plow through when things are hard to write--and at least now, I have a draft. (working writers don't have time for writer's block.) I'm glad it's Friday!

There's no new knitting to show you yet--my hat's getting use (on my head) and the zafu cushions are on display at our local gallery. The art show opens with a reception tomorrow night. I'm still pretty excited about how they came out. (photos in the last few blog entries for folks who hadn't seen them.) I hope others find them as fun to sit on and touch as I felt about knitting them. Not sure how you blog readers felt--there was so much else to comment on this week!
Today, as a reward at the end of a long week, the professor and I took an hour off to go to our local library's used book sale. This raises money for the local library and allows our community to recycle good reads. We love reading and books, and go to lots of book stores whenever we travel. In our town, there's only one big chain bookstore, and one small used book store and that's it. (I don't count the campus bookstore, it's big on textbooks only.) For us, this sale is a sweet treat. We read a lot. One of my education grad. school professors repeated over and over again:

Good Readers Make Good Writers. Good Writers Make Good Readers.

Yup, research shows that is the case for all kids (and adults) who are learning to read and write. It's also true for full-time writer types like me. In an average, busy month, I will likely read no fewer than 4 books. Many months, I read at least twice that, especially if I'm travelling. Not all of it is great art--much of it is not, but in our pile today were books by James Fenimore Cooper, Salman Rushdie, William Stafford, and Horatio Alger...along with plenty of junk fiction. We buy fiction and non-fiction, poetry and memoir, paperbacks are 50 cents, hard covers, a dollar. An empty box stands near our bookshelves, and when we're done with a book, if we no longer want it, we recycle it right back to the library book sale.

We schedule the date on our calendar, and we look forward to it. I bumped into an acquaintance or two at the sale, and their responses confirmed what I already know. "Wow. You're getting an awful lot of books." Or, I gesture to the professor and mention this is our special date. The person looks at me like I have fleas and says, "A Date?!" (The hot follow up will be when we curl up in bed or on the couch with the dogs and READ. We'll read each other the funny parts out loud. If I read a good book, I'll put it on the professor's pile to read. He'll do the same for me.)

Sadly, American households don't read much, and even those who read probably don't invest as much in "the book" the way we do. We're working hard on indoctrinating our two year old nephew long distance. We sent him books for his birthday, and I hear there are a lot of requests for Meat..Ball! Meat..Ball!, which is probably the professor's favorite book.

So, if you're not a fan of the paltry TV offerings, consider reading a book to yourself, your kid, or your sweetie. It could result in a hot date. Or, in my case, it just might make me a better writer.

(Your comments just make my day! What about those zafu cushions? Did you have bad weather where you are? How about reading? A cheer for reading?!)