Rebecca J. Carlson

Okay, So I Lied

2012-01-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

I promised myself that I'd be ready to submit after draft 10, but I should have known better. In draft 6 I extracted a 20,000-word subplot. It takes some time to recover from that kind of major surgery.

But I did achieve something in draft 10. I got the story right where I wanted it.

This is my favorite, favorite part of writing a book. All the tears, pain, and frustration are behind me, and there's nothing left to do but polish the prose. Shine every sentence. So I'm sharpening up my blue pencil and reading each word aloud.

No, I am not stalling. Yes, I will submit soon.

But first, I get to spend some quality time with my manuscript.

Writers Club Wednesday: Pitches

2012-01-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

Today at our Laie Young Writers meeting, we'll be talking about pitches. This will be the first in a series that covers two vital weapons in an author's arsenal, the pitch and the synopsis.

A pitch is a few short paragraphs that are meant to leave an agent or editor dying to read your book. The pitch doesn't contain the whole plot, but should take the most fascinating elements of your book and put them on display for all to see. It's like a shop window, meant to lure prospective buyers inside. You'll use a pitch to interest an agent, and then if that agent represents you, she will probably use that pitch to hook an editor, and the editor will need that pitch to convince the editorial department to take a chance on your book. So a good pitch can go a long way.

But how to write one?

It isn't easy. A good pitch is like poetry. Every word counts. And how can you boil down an entire novel to less than half a page? But this is what makes the pitch such a great writing tool. It forces you to decide what's most important about your story. In fact, I like to write my pitch before I begin drafting a new book. It keeps me on track as I go.

According to Elana Johnson's excellent guide, From the Query to the Call, a pitch needs four things:

1. Hook
2. Set-up
3. Conflict
4. Consequence

This afternoon we'll take a look at a successful pitch, analyze it, and then try writing our own.

From the Query to the Call is free for download from Elana Johnson's website. Those of you who are serious about publishing should definitely read it for yourselves.

Where Are You People?

2012-01-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

I co-mentor a teen writing club with one of my neighbors. One phenomena associated with this venture is the excessive amount of e-mail all these verbose teenagers pack into my inbox. Sometimes they have six or seven e-mail conversations going at once.

But today, there weren't any e-mail messages. None at all. Very strange.

It worried my daughter, so she wrote this poem:

Where are you people?

This morning I got up early
And checked my email, because
I knew that I would surely
Have fifteen messages

But to my shock
To my surprise
I'd an empty inbox
Where are you guys?

Ok, I thought
No need for alarm
They've probably not
Come to any harm

But I checked again
At a quarter to ten

And to my shock
And to my surprise
I'd an empty inbox
Where are you guys?

My face went pale
My heart filled with dread
If they're not sending emails
They must be DEAD!

Ever since the day
We started this
Not a single hour
Have I missed
Without getting an email
Or two or three
But now there's nothing
Where can you be?

It's four forty-eight
And getting late
And I'm getting worried
Oh cruel, cruel fate!

Could I be the last living
Writer's club member?
Of the dying fire
Am I the last ember?

Are you all dead
Are you all gone?
Where are you my friends?
What's changed? What's gone wrong?

Did your characters come alive
Like we joked they would?
Did they kill you all
Did they poison your food? (because that would rhyme with would... ish)

I just checked my email
And to my surprise
I've an empty inbox
WHERE ARE YOU GUYS?

Between Drafts

2012-01-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

When I write, I write hard. So what to do with all that energy when I finish a revision and need to wait for the dust to settle in my brain? I put the passion into a project! Or two... or maybe three.
This time I'm going to:
1. Clean the living room carpet (by hand)

Isn't it lovely?

2. Clear ground for a little vegetable garden in the back yard (also by hand)

Almost done!

3. Read a lot of books:
-A Million Suns by Beth Revis
-The Rex Zero series by Tim Wynne-Jones
-Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge
-Revision by David Michael Kaplan
-Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
-From the Query to the Call (again) by Elana Johnson

4. Write a few random scenes from other books I'm thinking about, plus a chapter of a group story I'm writing with my daughter's teen writing club
5. Outline my next book
6. Work on my query letter
7. Sew the patches on my new Cub Scout Committee Chair uniform. Did you know that Robert Baden-Powell was a British spy? So awesome.

Proudly wearing the Aloha Council patch

8. Arrange a harp duet with my daughter (she's already written her part) so we can perform it together in March.

There, by then I should have forgotten everything about my last draft and be ready to read it with an objective eye.

More Discoveries

2012-01-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

I recently posted about my top eleven discoveries of last year. Now I'd like to add a few things I've discovered since January 1st. If this keeps up, it's going to be a big year for discoveries.

Bread Flour

I love to bake bread, but in the past I've always used all-purpose flour. Why buy a sack of flour that's only for baking bread? Here's why - when I use bread flour, the bread isn't crumbly. It can hold up in a school lunchbox all morning. So now, since I've started baking with bread flour, the kids all want my home-made bread for their lunches.

The Piano Guys

I didn't even know electric cellos existed! These Piano Guys have made a lot of music videos, and they're perfectly addicting. And whatever video editing software they use--I want it.

M&N

In this case, M&N stands for Maltomeal and Nutella. Take a regular, boring old bowl of Maltomeal and add a tablespoon of Nutella. Amazing creamy, nutty, chocolate goodness. You want some now. Breakfast will never be the same.

A Story for English

2012-01-07T20:08:00.000-08:00

"I have to write a short story for English," my son told me. "But I can't think of anything. I don't do stories."

This would not have been a problem for me when I was in high school. I had a notebook full of short stories that no one had asked me to write. I could have taken my pick and turned one in.

It was a problem for me to figure out how to help. How do you get a story out of someone who doesn't like to think them up?

"Lets start with a setting," I said. "Where do you want your story to take place?"

Blank look.

"In a house? On the beach? In a car? On a school bus?"

Slight raise of one eyebrow.

"On the moon? In a banana tree?"

"A banana tree," my son said. "We could have two ants talking to each other."

It wasn't working.

"So maybe you could take a story you already know and change the characters," I suggested. "Like The Three Little Pigs, or Goldilocks."

"Mom, I can't do that!" he said. "I have to make it up myself."

Later, at the dinner table, I noticed how my son kept us all laughing with one clever joke after another. "You should write a funny short story," I told him. "You're good at funny."

"But I don't know what to write about!"

I reached deep in my mind, trying to find the essence of story. Where does a story come from? A story is a person in a place with a problem, right? I decided to try it. "A story needs a main character. Who do you want it to be?"

"I don't know."

"Boy or girl?"

"Boy."

"How old?"

"I don't know!"

"Older, younger, or the same age as you?"

"Younger."

"Good. Now where does he live?"

Shrug.

"City or country?" my husband asked.

"City."

"Good," I said. "Now, what does he want?"

"Candy!" my younger son giggled.

"Okay, candy," said my high school student with the writing assignment.

"And what is keeping him from getting what he wants?" I asked.

My son grinned. His eyes gleamed. The gears had begun to turn. "His mom."

In the next few minutes, a hilarious story took shape. My son got up from the table and went to the computer to get it down. And so a story is born.

Draft 9 R.I.P.

2012-01-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

It was back to work today, which meant the start of draft 10, which is really and truly my final draft I mean it.

This time I'm working on one chapter at a time, getting everything just the way I want it, and printing it out before moving on to the next chapter. The previous draft goes into this box, bit by bit.

And then what am I going to do? I'm going to read my book on my son's new Kindle! Because that way it will look like a real book to my brain (which by then will have already read several other real books on the Kindle). My senses can tell the difference between a computer print-out of a manuscript in a 3-ring binder and a paperback-bound book. But I'm going to completely fool myself this time.

Maybe then I'll be able to see the book for what it is.

Writers Club Wednesday: Revising

2012-01-04T14:29:00.000-08:00

Today we'll be talking about what to do when your story stinks. You could shove it in a drawer and forget about it, but chances are, there is something in that story that makes it worth saving. In fact, I once heard Brandon Sanderson say that any manuscript can be made publishable. The question is -- how much work is it going to take to get it there?

Our lesson will be a brief overview of the revising process, including rereading, redrafting, revising, and line editing. Also a word of caution - yes, revising can make your story WORSE. So always proceed gently and with caution. Continue to trust your imagination, trust your heart, and trust your ear. If you do that, you can make your story as awesome as you dreamed it would be before you wrote the first word.

Top Eleven Discoveries of 2011

2011-12-31T17:49:00.000-08:00

For my last post of the year I'd like to share some amazing and wonderful things I discovered in past twelve months. Some of them have been around a long time, but I hadn't picked up on how awesome they are.

These aren't in any kind of order, except maybe in the order I thought of them while writing this post.

1. Musubes

I'd seen these nifty seaweed-wrapped rice things, but I didn't learn how to make them until a few months ago. Now I make a batch every week and send them in the school lunches. Did you know that seaweed rocks when it comes to vitamin A?

2. Avatar: The Last Airbender

This is the best television cartoon series. Ever. We didn't notice it before because we don't watch television, but some time last year we started watching episodes on the internet. What I like most about this series is the excellent writing. I also like the concept of non-contact martial arts. Bending is like kung-fu at a distance, so kids can play-fight by doing cool moves but never get anywhere near each other.

3. South Wind

Who would have guessed that when I moved to Laie, Hawaii, I would find myself starting an Irish folk band? We've been playing together since January, and having a grand old time. Our next performance will be Sunday, February 5th at the Laie Temple Visitors Center.

4. Incarceron

My daughter brought this book home from the library and insisted that I read it. It has an astounding, multi-layered setting, lots of action and adventure, and an intriguing plot. I enjoyed the sequel too.

5. Afro-Blue

We're big Vocal Point fans at our house. I proudly claim attendance at the VERY FIRST Vocal Point concert ever in the fall of 1991, and I didn't miss a single concert until I graduated from BYU four years later. So we watched them in the Sing Off, and discovered Afro-Blue, another collegiate acapella group, this one from Howard University in Washington DC. Vocal Point is fun to watch, but if you want to hear some sweet jazz, I recommend Afro-Blue.

6. Megamind

I ignored this one when it came out in the theater, probably because I'd recently been tortured by Madagascar in the lobby at the dentist's office and didn't want any more punishment. But Dreamworks has at least one hit for every miss, and Megamind was a hit. Metafiction at its best.

7. Faculty Townhouses

In April we moved into an apartment complex entirely inhabited by employees of Brigham Young University Hawaii. This is the first place we've lived in which I feel like I actually fit in with the neighbors. Our family of five children is only average-sized. Walk from one end of the complex to the other at any hour of the day and you'll hear someone practicing music. There's a constant troupe of small children going from house to house to play with their friends. Sometimes we have a house full of little friends, sometimes the place is empty because they're all out at the playground. I love living here!

8. BYU Hawaii Farm Sale

The school owns a lot of farmland, and they let people farm on it. And they sell the produce at really good prices, every Thursday from 12 to 3. So each week I go and buy local grown papayas, apple bananas, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Yum.

9. Kahuku Grill

For our anniversary, Russel and I went with some friends to the Kahuku Grill. I ordered the famous coconut macadamia shrimp. It was good. We'll be going back.

10. Wailele Falls

Earlier this year, my family went on a hike up into the mountains behind the PCC. There's a trail that winds along a narrow valley, crossing a stream about fifteen times, until it finally reaches a waterfall with a pool below it. It was the best hike ever. We'll be going back for more of that too.

11. May Day

Here in Laie, the elementary school puts on a big show to celebrate May Day. It was huge! Grandparents flew in from the mainland and other islands. High school kids stayed home from school to go and watch their younger siblings. They held it in a big outdoor theater at the PCC and each grade did a dance performance. I could not believe how good the choreography was! I was especially proud because my son Colin got to be in the May Day Court as a conch shell blower.

Holidays in Hawaii

2011-12-29T22:12:00.000-08:00

Celebrating Christmas in Hawaii holds some unexpected differences.

First of all, windward coast humidity plus hard candy = goo. Candy canes melt in their wrappers. Butterscotch disks? Starlight mints? Try chewy.

The humidity problem extends to baked goods. This year, in honor of the film adaptation of "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," we designed a gingerbread clock tower. I baked the walls nice and crisp, but they went soft and the top tumbled off within twenty-four hours.

That was fine with the kids. They ate it anyways.

One of our family traditions is to dress up like shepherds on Christmas eve, eat stew and home-made bread, then read the Christmas story out of the Bible. This year, it was just too warm to wear robes and bath towels tied onto our heads. By the end of the dinner, most of the shepherds had shed their costumes.

It was still a beautiful Christmas day. We walked to church in sunny, warm weather, then home again to a simple Christmas dinner. Once the sun went down, all the houses shone with Christmas lights. The palm leaves rustled outside the windows while we sang carols, then had our pie and cocoa and went to bed.

Mele Kalikimaka, everyone!

Writer's Club Wednesday: Inspiration

2011-12-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

Today at writer's club we'll be talking about where ideas come from, how to get more of them, and how to tell when you've got a really good one. We'll also discuss the importance of WRITING IDEAS DOWN before they slip away from our minds.

Where were you when you got the first idea for the story you're working on now?

A Million Books for Christmas

2011-12-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

We gave my son a Kindle for Christmas. I asked my husband how many public domain books were out there that he could now access for free. "About a million," he said. "Most of them you've never heard of and wouldn't want to read."

My son did find something he wanted to read right away. The New American Oxford Dictionary. It comes with the Kindle.

"Mom, it has word origins!" He was so excited. He read me entries while I cooked Christmas dinner.

Writers Club Wednesday: First Lines

2011-12-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, I know it isn't Wednesday anymore. I'm behind schedule. I've been baking and wrapping and harping.

But I still want to tell you about our lesson from this week.

My daughter led a discussion about first lines. She brought several of her favorite books, read the first lines, and then gave us her thoughts on what a first line ought to do.

All great first lines set the tone for the book by their voice. But a first line should also make promises. The promises come in many ways. A first line can promise an intriguing setting. It can deliver immediate tension. It can pose a question. Whatever the first line promises, it has to be something that draws the reader into the book. The most important promise a first line can make is, "I promise you want to read this."

One of my daughter's favorite first lines is from Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn:

Ash fell from the sky.

I've always loved: Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

What's your favorite first line?

Writers Club Wednesday: Killing your Characters

2011-12-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

Every Wednesday I meet with the Laie Young Writers Club for a short discussion on the art of writing, and then readings by club members. This week our lesson will be on killing characters. Yes, it's fun, but it must be done carefully.

So why do we kill characters in stories? Well, death happens, and exploring the powerful emotions that surround this most final of all events is one of the great themes of storytelling throughout human history. Stories, as a road map for life, also give us a road map to navigate our grief at the death of a loved one, and eventually our own meeting with the infinite beyond.

And, on a more practical level, threatening the life of a character is one of the tried and true ways of raising tension and keeping readers turning pages.

So, how to do it right? First of all, don't expect your readers to care if you kill off a character before the reader has time to get to know and love that character. If you kill or threaten to kill someone in the first few pages of a story, you can't get anywhere near the emotional reaction you would have if you saved that sort of thing for the end.

A tangent to this -- if your readers know a character is going to die during the story, they may have a hard time forming an emotional attachment to them.

Second, make sure dead characters stay dead, UNLESS you build it into the rules of your fictional world and prepare the reader for it. Killing someone only to bring them back later can make the reader feel cheated. You want death to have all of its emotional power, so don't weaken it by making it less than permanent.

Third, the death of a character only has as much emotional impact for the reader as it has for the other characters. If some unfortunate member of the adventuring party dies and the other characters have an, "Oh well, too bad, let's keep hiking. Do you suppose there's a pub in the next village?" sort of attitude, then the reader won't care either. Maybe that's what you want, but if it isn't, make sure the other characters show some shock and grief.

Anyone have some other pointers on character death for us? Leave a comment and we'll share it at club meeting.

Made the Cast

2011-12-06T13:45:00.000-08:00

Opportunity comes not only to the talented and deserving, but to the willing who show up and give it a try.

When my husband called me this morning and told me we'd both been assigned roles in our school's production of "The Sound of Music," I was almost as giddy as the day I got my first acceptance letter for a story publication in a magazine. Thinking back on that long-ago day, if I hadn't submitted that story, how would my life be different now? Would I even think of myself as a writer?

And now my husband has a supporting role in a musical, and I'll be on stage in the chorus (playing his wife). I have absolutely no theater experience, but I've always wanted to try it. Now I get a chance. It will probably change my life. I hope it is the beginning of much more to come. Maybe someday I'll think of myself as a theater person too.

Miphods Eat Mushrooms

2011-12-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

When I signed up for art class in high school, I'd already taken a year of it in Junior High. My teacher took a look at my work and said, "You already know everything I'm going to teach in this class. How would you like to make an animated film instead?" She showed me an old dark room that used to be for the photography class, loaned me the school's old Super 8 camera, and gave me the run of the supply cupboard.

I was in heaven.

This is the first film I made, an experimental piece based on characters I created for a seventh grade science assignment in which we had to invent animals and give them appropriate Latin names. The small green star of the show is classified as a mycophage olepod, or "small footed mushroom eater."

And no, he does not die at the end, poisoned by mushrooms! He's taking a nap after a long and adventurous morning.

The Evolution of Style

2011-12-03T01:58:00.000-08:00

I found a book I wrote long ago, back in the days when two spaces came after every period. And before I learned how to punctuate dialog. And when I still put an adverb with every dialog tag. So now I'm bringing it up to date. It's a lot of work, but I enjoy it, like spending time with an old friend I haven't seen in a long while.

Seeing in Detail

2011-12-01T14:51:00.000-08:00

In our last SCBWI-Hawaii newsletter, Sue Cowing recommended a daily writing exercise--put down six details you noticed that day. I love that idea! I notice at least six details every time I walk down the street. There's so many things to notice here in Laie. Crossing campus on my way back from the Thursday farm sale, where I buy my supply of local grown papayas, tomatoes, and cucumbers, I picked out these six gems:

A college student with a high, flat-top haircut and heavy horn-rimmed glasses buzzed by on a white moped.

Day-glo pink streamers fluttered at the end of a construction stake stuck in the middle of a muddy drainage pool.

A drab brown sea-bird with boomerang-shaped wings skimmed the water.

A cream-colored blossom lay face-down on the sidewalk under a plumeria tree, petals swirled in a spiral to rise to the sharp point of its stem.

One single burst of scarlet bloomed among the dark leaves of a bush by the sidewalk, as if someone had put the flower there by mistake.

A young woman with pale eyelashes knelt on the grass beside a bowl of soapy water, scrubbing a window screen with a plastic brush. She didn't smile back at me, her face preoccupied. Moving out soon, cleaning the apartment, final exams, graduation, my world about to change--I read it all in a single glance.

I love concrete details! There's nothing to put a whole picture in the reader's head like a single, good, solid detail. Capture some small thing in perfect imagery, and suddenly the imagination fills in all the rest. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but the mind's eye can produce amazing pictures with only the stimulation of a single sentence.

Singing in the Closet

2011-11-30T11:04:00.000-08:00

This morning I'm doing my housework and preparing an audition for BYU-Hawaii's production of "The Sound of Music." It would be a lot easier if I didn't live in the faculty townhouses next door to the theater professor and across the way from the orchestra director and various other music faculty. I've closed all the windows and pulled all the curtains, but I still think they can hear me.

Maybe I'll go sing in the closet.

Waiting and Dreaming

2011-11-29T18:13:00.000-08:00

I love all stages of the writing process--the mad dash of drafting, the intricate puzzle-work of revision, the patient polishing of line-editing. I like the in-between times too, like right now. This week I'm waiting for test-readers to get back to me with comments on my latest draft, and in the meantime I'm happily dreaming up my next book.

Thankful for the Internet

2011-11-24T09:21:00.000-08:00

I love the internet! I use it to connect with friends and family, to find recipes, to do research for my books, to swap critiques with all my writing buddies, and to hunt for a literary agent. Without it, I'd be totally isolated on this little rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

But now, my dear friends, the internet is in trouble.

Congress is right now considering the PIPA bill, which will give the GOVERNMENT the power to SHUT DOWN YOUR ENTIRE SITE if they think you OR ANYONE YOU LINK TO infringes on someone's copyright. This will not stop piracy as the bill's advocates claim. Pirates are smart. They will find a way. The people in trouble are people like us, who value the free exchange of ideas. People who enjoy youtube and facebook. People who don't want internet censorship like they have in China and Iran.

Here are some of the people against the bill: the Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and Public Knowledge.

Who is for it? The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Microsoft, the Copyright Alliance, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

Who's side are you on?

Click here to join the fight! Let congress know you're thankful for the internet.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

My Backyard Farm

2011-08-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

I love living in the country. If I move back to the city I'm still going grocery shopping only once a month.

Well, maybe not.

Since I live so far from the usual modern day shopping resources, I decided I'd better start up some home food production. When in the country, do as the country do!

Last Saturday I built this garden box. It's up on stilts to cleverly evade the giant slugs roaming my back yard. So far, the lettuce and spinach are safe in their beds.

We also have a chicken. One chicken. My daughter rescued her as a tiny chick from the neighbor's dog. We were pretty sure the soggy, chewed-up thing was going to die, BUT IT DIDN'T. This chicken has some pluck. And just to prove it, she gave us two eggs on her first day of laying.

To celebrate the advent of eggs, we remodeled the chicken's coop from this:

to this:

Now she's got a rain-proof feed box and twice the yard. Maybe next time we'll put in a swimming pool.

The New Cove

2011-06-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

In my last house I had an office all to myself for writing. I dubbed it "The Scribblers Cove" and named my group blog after it. But in my new house I've had to commandeer a corner of the master bedroom.

I like this arrangement better than what I had before. There's a lock on the door, lots of sunny windows, and if I need to I can spread reference materials all over the bed.

What I Would Like to be 20 Years from Now

2011-06-10T00:24:00.000-07:00

My mom has been going through a lot of old school papers she saved from when I was a kid. She found an assignment I wrote in 6th grade called What I Would Like to be 20 Years from Now.

Twenty years from now I would like to be a mother of three girls and a baby boy living in Salt Lake City. I would like to have taught school before I had children.

I would also like to be an author of children's fiction books. I'd like to sew in my spare time and raise fish like my mother. I want my children to have a perfect childhood like I did.

I want my house to have three small bedrooms, a master bedroom, and a guest room, livingroom, and kitchen. I would use the guestroom for plants, fish, and a piano. I want to have written a few songs and be a piano teacher.

That was a little over twenty years ago. Since then I've had five children (one girl and four boys), I've written a few songs, I've been a piano teacher, taught college algebra, and that last paragraph just about describes my house except there's one less bedroom, the fish are in the kitchen, and instead of being in Salt Lake City, it's in Laie, Hawaii.

What gets me is that middle paragraph. It's one thing to claim I've always wanted to be a children's author, another thing to see the evidence. That's one big dream I'm still chasing. So here's my long-overdue What I Would Like to be 20 MORE Years from Now:

Twenty years from now I would like to be living in Laie, Hawaii with ten grandchildren, at least that many published books to my name, and more on the way (both books and grandchildren). I would like to be teaching school, playing the harp, going to the beach, and writing life histories for my family in my spare time. I hope to be a perfect grandma, just like my mom.

Pretty Colors

2011-06-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

In a recent video conference, author Kathleen Duey told the Hawaii chapter of SCBWI that revision is to re-envision. To see the story in a whole new way.

With that in mind, I'm trying to take a fresh look at my current project with a new outlining method. Okay, yes, I know, outlining is boring. But this method uses pretty colors. Ooooo!

First, I wrote a short synopsis of each chapter. Then I went through and colored the following things:

Problems

Plans

Decisions/Actions

Solutions

And one more thing- I only colored the main character's problems, plans, decisions, and solutions. In looking over my outline, I found out that a lot of the things I thought were important to the overall story were not important to the main character's personal story. I wasn't letting him make enough plans and decisions. Too often someone else took action or solved problems. Dread! I had a passive character.

Can't allow that sort of thing! I'll be sure and put him to work in the next draft.

Thunderstorm for Breakfast

2011-06-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

We had a thunderstorm for breakfast this morning. Rain roared down from a dark sky. I was glad I'd been able to get the hot cereal to boil before the power went out.

"My brain isn't scared, but my body's overreacting," my eleven-year-old said as I served him some cocoa.

"Really?" I leaned across the table. Poor kid has a writer for a mom. "Tell me about it. How does it feel?"

"Well, my heart is pounding insanely. And my fingers are shaking insanely."

Lightning. Thunder. The lights flickered.

"And my stomach feels cold."

"That's great!" I said. "Beautiful! Thank-you!"

I guess I should be more sympathetic.

Disaster Plan

2011-05-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

My nine-year-old son asked me, "So what if we knew the world was going to end in only three or four days, and we only had that long to pack up all our stuff?"

Not sure what use it would be to pack up, I asked, "Where would we go if the whole world was going to end?"

"Mars!" he said, as if it was obvious.

"Oh."

"And we'd need to bring some fires with us so we could melt the ice, so we'd have something to drink. We'd also bring some seeds so we could grow food."

I guess he has his disaster plan all worked out.

An Evening of Irish Music

2011-03-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

Some things happen like magic.

The first time I played my harp in church here in our new home in Hawaii, a member of the congregation came up and introduced himself as a Celtic guitar player. He said he knew someone who played whistle, and we agreed it would be fun to put together a group. Turns out he knew a violinist too, and so a few months later we started rehearsing for our first gig at the Kahuku Public Library.

When I moved to Hawaii, I had no idea that I would find my own Irish folk band all living in my new neighborhood.

Hope you enjoyed this sample of music from our first performance last night.

One of the people who came last night was a visitor from New York, of Irish decent. He laughed when he told us he never expected to hear Irish music played on the north shore. Me neither! That's the magic.

Tsunami Warning!

2011-03-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

Last night the popcorn was popped, we were hunting for our DVD of "The Incredibles," and then I get a call from my grandma in Los Angeles.

Massive earthquake in Japan, she said. Terrible tsunami. Keep alert.

When I moved to Hawaii seven months ago, I noticed my house lay smack in the middle of a tsunami evacuation zone. So one of my first projects in our new home was to make evacuation kits. Each family member had a backpack with granola bars, peanut butter and crackers, fruit cups, water bottles, pajamas and a change of clothes. My pack had a few extras, like bug repellent, sunscreen, and toothpaste. I also had a plastic bucket with a lid that has soap, matches, toilet paper, a radio, some mylar blankets and ponchos, and various other things you want in an emergency, like a deck of Uno cards. It was such a relief to know those packs were standing by in the cupboard in case we had to go.

As I walked around the house, turning on the radio and finding the big flashlight, the watch became a warning. And then the sirens went off.

My eight-year-old burst into tears. I hugged him and told him the wave was still six hours away, and we had plenty of time to get to a safe place.

"But all our stuff!" he cried.

"That doesn't matter," I told him. "We'll be fine without it. I just want all of you to be safe."

I told the children to go find a few things they really wanted to take. Each took the special quilt their grandmother had made for them. The little ones came with handfuls of favorite toys. My eleven-year-old brought a wad of neckties out to the car. As I loaded up the evacuation kits the block captain came to my door to tell me where to go. There was a large ranch nearby where we could drive up into the hills and camp for the night. But before I had stowed the tent in our car, we got a call from a friend, inviting us to spend the night with them in their house on high ground.

That was a great idea.

Somehow we wiggled into the car among all the stuff we'd salvaged. Boxes of important documents, laptop computers, a couple of harps, the nice ukulele, and all the fresh bread I could find in the house. I didn't know what I would be coming back to in the morning. At that point, all I knew was that a ten foot wave had crushed houses and tossed cars in Japan. I imagined that in the morning the narrow strip of highway that connects our little country town to the rest of civilization might be washed out. No electricity, no water, my house wet with ocean sludge three feet up the walls. I said goodbye to life as I knew it and squeezed into the car.

A line of cars backed up along the highway, all trying to get to the gas station. At first I thought we'd be stuck in traffic for hours, but then I saw that they were all waiting in line off to the side of the road. We edged by the back end of the line, then zipped down to the next town. As we drove I thought of other things I would be sad to lose. The journals I'd kept for each child since they were a baby. My bin full of scrapbook material I hadn't had time to put together yet. Still, my family was safe, and there was NO WAY I would be sending my husband back for another load.

After we unloaded at our friends' house and had the children settled for the night, I stayed up hour after hour watching the news. Our friends went to bed, my husband dozed in a chair, but I did not want to miss a single minute. The news showed people standing in line at convenience stores, cars waiting at gas stations, and people parked along the Pali highway that runs through the mountains above Honolulu. They interviewed scientists and city officials. And they showed what had happened in Japan. A wave of mud rolled over fields, canals, roads, coming on as if it would never stop, never slow down. Flaming debris floated on the top, an insane deluge of fire and water. My eyes burned with tears.

The hours dragged on, but when the wave finally reached us in Hawaii it seemed like it had all come on so fast. Too fast. The grainy video feed from Waikiki beach showed the waves come higher, then higher, swallowing all the sand, and then...

The water went back out. Didn't even get the road wet.

What a relief!

Tsunami Evacuation Aftermath

After that I went to bed. I missed seeing the coral reefs exposed when the wave went down. I missed seeing beach-side parking lots flood on the North Shore. When the sun came up and the all-clear went out we put our things back in the car and drove home.

All day I've been grateful for the smallest things. A warm shower, all my clothes still dry and clean, my refrigerator untouched by sea-water and full of food. Most of all, my husband and dear children who stayed so calm and brave through the whole thing, and normal every-day life gone back to normal.

Aloha and thank you for all your thoughts and prayers!

-Rebecca J. Carlson

Island Poetry

2011-02-18T20:24:00.000-08:00

My children made up a poem at the dinner table this evening:

Spam is nice
It's good with rice
So have a slice!
You'll want it twice.

At first I could not see the point of Spam. I knew that people around here liked it, but why should I pay three dollars for twelve ounces of chopped and processed who knows what? For seven months I lived in Hawaii without tasting Spam. I didn't buy it. I didn't cook it.

And then a friend of ours bought us a can of it. Since it was free, I didn't say no. I sliced it and fried it up and served it with rice for dinner.

The kids ate the Spam. And then they were too full to eat anything else.

So now I see what Spam's about. A little goes a long, long ways. That twelve ounce can for three dollars is all the meat I need for seven people.

And it will keep on the shelf too.

I think I'm going to have to buy more Spam.

What to Do with a Degree in Physics

2011-02-09T20:19:00.000-08:00

I used to want to be a nuclear physicist. But that's a field that's hard to get into if you ever take leave from the academic world, and I jumped ship to raise my family about fifteen years ago.

Here's what I do instead:

I made this video at the request of my alma mater's society of physics students. They contacted all alumni with a request for a 30 second film that shows what we are doing with our degree now.

I've always wanted to be in a documentary film.

Exasperation

2011-01-31T09:10:00.000-08:00

If you have a teenage daughter, you know what this word can sound like:

"MOTHER!"

I hadn't told her she couldn't stay out past eleven with her friends. I hadn't told her to do the dishes two nights in a row. I hadn't even borrowed her favorite earrings without asking.

"What? What did I do wrong?" I asked.

"Bwah! Nothing!" she flapped her hands in frustration at the last page of my unfinished manuscript. "It's just you ended on a cliff-hanger AGAIN! And there are no more pages left for me to read! YOU NEED TO FINISH THIS BOOK!"

That's the kind of teenage-girl exasperation I truly appreciate.

Complete Sentences

2011-01-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

The kindergarten teacher said I should have my son practice speaking to me in complete sentences. So I asked him to tell me what he wanted on his toast, in a complete sentence.

"Mom, I would like some strawberry jam period."

Christmas Eve in the Islands

2010-12-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Eve we hit the beach. I worked hard to finish all the wrapping and preparation the day before so that we could spend Christmas Eve relaxing in the sand and surf. Sand castles and snowmen, snorkeling and swimming, I hope it becomes a new family tradition.

One nice thing about walking to the beach, a lot of our new neighbors were there too. It was fun to wish friends a Merry Christmas as they headed out for spear fishing or came back from walking their dog or boogie-boarding. When some of our friends saw our sandcastle they told us they'd seen people making sand snowmen further up the beach.

What a great idea!

The last thing we did before we left was to pile up a huge mound of sand, then shape him into our Hawaiian snowman. Sticks and kukui nuts littered the beach after last week's storms, so there was plenty of material for buttons, eyes, and arms. We found a pair of goggles that had washed up and put them on top of his head.

Along with us, he wishes you a Mele Kalikimaka and a happy new year.

Now It Can Be Christmas

2010-12-20T23:41:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday night, one of my new friends and I decided to host a caroling party together. We'd meet at her house, go around the block, and end up at my place for cookies and cocoa.

So I began inviting people. Whoever likes to sing, I said. The more the merrier. I invited friends I passed on the street. I invited the entire church choir. I invited my next-door neighbor. I came from Nevada, you see, where people are too busy for caroling. Where I had to invite twelve people to get four.

This huge mob showed up at my friend's house. My meager stack of twenty carol books were not enough to go around. But as we finished singing through our first carol my friend turned around from the piano, beaming at us, and said, "Now it can be Christmas! That sound in my house made it Christmas."

We took the show on the road. Light rain sprinkled down on us as we strolled. In my opinion, Christmas music sounds best when sung on front porches in the dark. I loved the bright smiles on the faces of our neighbors as I stood with a crowd of singers at my back, leading "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "Oh, Holy Night," "Deck the Halls," and a host of other favorites.

By the time we trooped back to my place I hardly had any voice left. There must have been thirty children sitting on the floor, waiting for the cocoa to heat up. My house was full of people, my table full of cookies, the air full of the sounds of talking and of children taking turns playing their Christmas music on the piano. I kept busy serving drinks and mopping spills, too delighted by it all for anything to go wrong.

As the last guests walked away I smiled to see wayward slippers and a forgotten umbrella gracing my front porch. That meant we'd had people over. I looked forward to seeing them again when they came back to get their missing things.

I've had my caroling party. Now it can be Christmas.

Rebecca Reviews: Tron Legacy

2010-12-18T10:51:00.000-08:00

There was something about the original Tron. It had an amazing alternate world I wanted to visit. It had characters I loved: Tron the noble gladiator, Flynn the laid-back wise-cracking computer genius, and Ram the friendly, faithful actuarial program. Sure, the story was crazy and a little confusing, but there was a sense of fun that carried it through. My family watches it over and over and never seems to get tired of it (though now that we have the DVD my boys usually skip that boring stuff at the beginning and go straight to the light cycles).

As for Tron Legacy, I think watching it once was enough.

The digital dystopia of this new Tron has a gritty, black-and-white feel to it. I missed the eye-popping color of the old grid. And no, I don't want to visit. There were some new ideas in the film, but merely taking light cycles and disk battles to three dimensions doesn't count for originality points on my score sheet. I was disappointed that I didn't connect to the characters as much as I had hoped: Sam, the orphaned loser, Flynn the spaced-out guru who has been chilling in his own digital world for too many centuries while hiding out from his evil twin Clu, and Quorra the artificially intelligent warrior princess. They didn't move me. As for Clu, he had neither the dramatic flair of Sark or the all-powerful presence of the MCP. And I just couldn't see my old pal Flynn turning into a megalomaniac perfectionist, dude. Where did that come from?

What I missed most was the sense of fun. It came through now and then with a clever line of dialog, but mostly the film took itself too seriously. And the ending let me down. At the end of the old Tron movie we free the system and Flynn gets to prove he wrote "Space Paranoids." In the new Tron movie, well, I won't spoil it for you, but don't expect fireworks and a big parade.

Still, I don't feel like I wasted my seven dollars and fifty cents. It was interesting to see where they took the story. And planes with jet walls? That's cool.

So go watch it once, if only to see what they do with Sleeping Beauty's castle in the opening titles.

Caroling - Hawaiian Style

2010-12-13T23:59:00.000-08:00

My family went for a walk this evening to watch the meteor shower. My thirteen-year-old son said, "No! I don't want to go! It will be BORING!"

You know how thirteen-year-old boys are. We persuaded him to put down his comic book and come with us.

Half-way around the block we passed a flat bed truck with a big flashing Christmas star mounted on a pole at the front corner. We recognized several of our neighbors sitting in camp chairs and lawn chairs on the truck bed.

"Come with us! We're going caroling!" they called.

How could I say no?

We climbed up in the back and they made room for us somehow. Some of my children sat on the woven mats that covered the bed of the truck, others squeezed onto my lap. The warm, dark night gleamed with stars, the colored lights on the houses, and the carolers' flashlights. A few more families joined us, and then the truck began to roll.

All through the little town of Laie we sang Christmas songs in full harmony. Every time we passed someone on the street, friends in the truck knew their name and would shout out a greeting. At one home they waved us down and handed us a big box of cookies and candy, which the children in the truck pounced on. Midway through the ride one of the boys dropped his slipper off the back of the truck and immediately hopped down to retrieve it. We all stopped singing and shouted "STOP THE TRUCK!" until the driver put on the brakes so the boy could catch up to us.

At last the ride was over. We piled off into the street. "That was so much fun! I love caroling!" my thirteen-year-old son was almost dancing as we walked toward home. "I'm so glad I got to do that!"

Me too.

Growing Young

2010-12-03T18:10:00.000-08:00

Winter winds whipped the surf white as snow. Overnight the waves had cut the smooth beach into a steep drop. I jumped down to the wet sand at the bottom and ran out into the foam. The next wave drenched the bottom of my capri pants, throwing flecks of sand up onto my knees.

Another woman, wearing gray sweats and dangling an empty coffee cup from her fingers, hiked along the sand above me. She was the only other person on the cold, windy beach. We wished each other a good morning as she passed by.

Run, said the wind and water, so I did, splashing through the waves' white train and feeling the damp sand stick to my feet. I want to grow young here, I thought, and laughed for joy.

I knew there was something to see up around the bend, up around that mound of sand ahead that thrust out into the water. It called to me. My toes dug my way to the top of it and I looked out over the next beach.

Two heads rose above the waves, too small to be children, though at first that's what I thought they were. They vanished, then surfaced again.

"Hello, turtles!" I shouted, searching for shadows of shell and flipper beneath the water. I drank in their beauty as they rolled in the fierce winter sea. Other heads appeared and sank. A whole troop of them! I watched until they moved out behind the high white breakers over the reef.

I love to visit my beach in the morning.

Reincarnation

2010-11-26T18:53:00.000-08:00

I'm an armchair inventor of sorts. I've never cobbled together a Rube Goldberg contraption that cooks my breakfast, but I have designed and built an Irish harp or two.

And I can turn a broken umbrella into a kite.

My favorite umbrella, only days before it met with destruction.

My eight-year-old son broke my favorite umbrella by trying to use it as a parachute. The wind blew him off the wall before he was ready to jump, and the umbrella ended up at the bottom of the heap.

End of umbrella.

Instead of throwing the umbrella away, I put it in the corner of the Cove. Someday, I thought, that broken umbrella is going to be a kite.

Yesterday my daughter and I took the old umbrella apart. The carbon fiber rods made perfect material for a kite framework.We were trying to make a fish shape, but it turned out more like half an ice-cream cone with wings.

I sewed the umbrella's triangular panels back together into a sail and my daughter stitched the sail to the frame. The outer layer of the umbrella made a perfect tail. We attached it with a fishing swivel.

Here's the thing with kites: Anything can be a kite! You can make any crazy shape you like. It's a matter of attaching the string at a good angle to the sail, and then adding just enough tail to keep it stable. After a little experimenting with the harness, I found the "sweet spot" for the string and the kite took off.

Not bad for a broken umbrella.

Creativity, Cooperation, and a Lot of Hard Work!

2010-11-21T21:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a great montage from the Laie Temple Cultural Celebration:

Laie Temple Cultural Celebration .mov

And here's the famous opening number, except the camera ran out of batteries. Well, at least you can get an idea of what they were doing. It was AWESOME!

This incredible number, brilliantly choreographed, honored the ancient Hawaiians who designated Laie as a sacred place of sanctuary:

Cars 2

2010-11-19T13:33:00.000-08:00

My little brother worked on this movie! OH I AM SO PROUD OF HIM!

Usually when Pixar comes out with a movie I think, "That's crazy! They'll never pull it off." But this time I love the concept. Race cars plus secret agents? Sounds like a perfect match.

A Culture of Celebration

2010-11-17T23:20:00.000-08:00

Since the year 2004, when 2000 youth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Ghana, Africa celebrated the dedication of their new temple in song, dance and story, youth all around the world have taken part in similar events as temples are built in their own communities: Kiev Ukraine, Sacramento California, Panama, Gila Valley Arizona, Cebu City Philippines, Rexburg Idaho, Curitiba Brazil, and many others. I've watched some of these celebrations on television. I always thought, "How wonderful! What fun! I wish I'd been able to be part of something like that when I was a kid."

Now my own kids are getting that chance. This Saturday we'll be having a temple dedication cultural celebration right here in Laie. My two oldest are at the dress rehearsal as I type this post. One thing I never imagined as I watched all those celebrations: THIS IS A LOT OF HARD WORK.

We've had rehearsals once or twice a week since September. Besides seeing that my offspring make it to rehearsals, I've spent evenings at the church, sewing costumes. I am so looking forward to Saturday. The show will be amazing. It will be wonderful. IT WILL BE OVER!

And yes, it will be worth it. There's nothing better than getting a whole lot of people together to create something grand. I'm glad my children will have this memory, will know what miracles are possible with creativity, cooperation, and a lot of hard work.

A Taste of What's Coming

2010-11-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

The big yellow school bus lumbered up the black strip of road, squeezing between parked cars on one side and sidewalk on the other. My nerves tingled. That bus would carry my child, my only daughter, on the long winding coastal highway from our tiny country town to the big city of Honolulu.

Fear is my enemy, I told myself. Even now, I could say, "Let's go home. I don't want you to do this." Instead, I pushed away my anxiety and let a rush of pride and excitement take me. Weeks of practice, giving up her lunch hour, coming on Saturday, staying after school, my daughter had worked hard to earn this opportunity. She would have a wonderful day, rehearsing for the big concert on Saturday and spending time with her friends.

Morning sun lit up the mist over the jungle-covered mountains that rose sharply behind the town. I wouldn't see my daughter again until well after dark. I thought of my own mother. Had she felt like this every time I left on an all-day school trip? Had she felt like this the day she dropped me off at college? When I was the child going away, I had felt nothing but delight in the coming adventure, a thrill for the freedom, for the change, and a sturdy sense of confidence in my ability to take care of myself.

My daughter was fine. I was the one having an emotional moment.

And someday, when my daughter goes away for good, It will be the same. I'll watch her go with fear, pride, and joy all mingled together in wonder at the never-ending cycle of life.

What's With All the Homework?

2010-11-10T18:49:00.000-08:00

When I was in kindergarten, I had NO homework. I remember very clearly the first time I had to do something from school at home, in first grade, and how scandalized I was that the teacher dared to infringe on my time like that.

When my daughter was in kindergarten, she had homework once a week. We did it. I didn't like it, but we did it.

Now, ten years later, my youngest child brings home kindergarten homework every night. Two or more pages of it! Tonight's homework:

Page one: Practice drawing the letter j six times, then color several pictures that start with j.

Page two: Color and cut out eight pictures representing words that start with various letters, then glue them next to the right letter.

Pages three thru eight: Color a whole coloring book of half-sheet pictures of words that start with j.

To do a GOOD JOB on all that coloring would take me thirty minutes. It would take my son hours. So I don't require my son to do a good job on the coloring, even though that's teaching him to rush his work.

In fact, what this homework is teaching my child to do is sit still and do meaningless busywork. I don't want the public school system to manufacture people who will sit still and do meaningless busy work. I want it to turn out people who, among other things, can use their brains to understand things clearly and solve problems.

My son needs to practice making the letter J, yes, but does he need to do all that coloring and cutting? Every night? When there's a back yard and nice island weather outdoors and a whole neighborhood of friends to play with? Coloring and cutting probably isn't going to make him more competitive in the future job market, but good social skills might. I think I'm going to let him go out and play.

The Dragons are Loose!

2010-11-04T00:44:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't know already, the best dragon movie of all time is now out on dvd (or whatever format they're putting films in for home viewing this week).

I love friendship stories, comedy, epic adventure, flying sequences, great storytelling, good cinematography, and dragons. This film has them all. Oh, and did I mention fire? Yes, lots of fire. And explosions. Hee hee.

And here's the author, simply gushing about how amazing it was to see her book come to life on the big screen. Great job, Dreamworks!

Five Kids, One Pumpkin

2010-11-02T01:35:00.000-07:00

I only bought one pumpkin this year.

They're expensive, okay? And we're still paying the mortgage on that house in Las Vegas.

I have five kids, all old enough to want to get into the pumpkin carving action. So what was I to do?

Something clever.

On five little scraps of paper I wrote the name of one facial feature. Left eye, right eye, mouth, nose, and "?" Yes, "?" is a facial feature. The child who picked "?" got to choose an additional feature for the face. Like a beard, or ears. My youngest child ended up with the "?" and picked eyebrows.

I wish I had taken a picture of the jack-o-lantern. It looked freaky, like some kind of modern art--each facial feature done in an entirely different style.

But all I have is a picture of the aftermath.

Want a piece?

Will Play for Food

2010-10-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

Today I went to a luncheon of the BYU-Hawaii Women's Organization. They told me if I played the harp for them they'd give me free food.

I had a wonderful time. As much as I love hearing the harp when I practice in my own living room, it's even more fun when other people are listening. Even if they come up and talk to me while I'm playing prelude. My harp teacher warned me that people would do that. I've learned to smile and say, "Thank you!" without really listening, because if my brain pays attention to what they're saying I'll start missing notes. Someday, someone will come up to me and say, "Someone just ran into your car in the parking lot," and I'll smile and say, "Thank you!" and keep playing.

The whole program was looking forward to the open house for the Laie, Hawaii Temple. For two years they've been rebuilding the entire inside. We saw photos of the whole process, and also heard from a former Temple President and one of the workers on the site.

The open house starts tomorrow! Everyone is invited to tour the building before the dedication. I'll be taking my children to see it in a couple of weeks. I'm so excited! I wish all of you could come and see.

Tiny Blessings

2010-10-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

My third-grader has one of the favorite teachers at the elementary school. My son just loves him. So of course when my son's teacher gave him a young lilikoi (yellow passionfruit) vine as a prize for being a good student, that little plant was precious.

We picked a nice spot in the yard, by a wall for the vine to climb on. Then we dug the hole together and put the plant in place. It was close enough to the wall that I thought the people who come to mow the lawn would leave it alone. I knew I ought to tie a bright pink ribbon around it to make sure they'd see the leggy vine with its three big green leaves and know that it was meant to be there.

I never did.

One day I went out front, smiled to see the grass cut, and then spied a sad little stick poking up by the wall where our lilikoi used to be.

It had been mowed.

Heartbroken, I told my son the sad news. He took it better than I did, assuring me that the stick would grow new leaves. But I knew better. The next time the mowers came, the stick disappeared entirely.

Hoping to grow a replacement, I saved the seeds from a lilikoi and put them in a pot. Weeks went by. The children knocked the pot over while playing and I had to sweep the dirt up and dump it back in. Oh well. Nothing would be coming up in there.

Last Friday as I walked home from teaching I thought of that lilikoi again. I grieved, wishing I'd taken better care of it, sorry we'd lost the opportunity to say, "That beautiful lilikoi growing all over the wall was a prize from my son's favorite teacher." I prayed that I could forgive myself for being careless with something that was precious to my child.

When I got home I happened to glance in the pot, the pot where I thought nothing would come up.

Three lilikoi sprouts!

I called my son, telling him I had a surprise for him. When I showed him the baby lilikoi he asked, "Are those for me?" Yes, I told him, to make up for the one we lost. The hug he gave me melted all my guilt and regret away.

Thank the Lord for tiny blessings.

The Haunted Lagoon

2010-10-12T00:59:00.000-07:00

Every night for the past couple of weeks, we've heard the screams. Two blocks away from my house, at the Polynesian Cultural Center, they're putting on the Haunted Lagoon.

Tonight we went to see what all the noise was about.

Imagine "Pirates of the Caribbean" crossed with "The Haunted Mansion," with ALL LIVE ACTORS. Real people. People that stare back at you. People that pop out of the water next to your canoe and make you jump into your neighbor's lap.

People who are having at least as much fun scaring you as you are having being scared.

I expected it to be good, but I wasn't expecting it to be THAT good. If you're ever on Oahu in October, don't miss it!

Play-in-a-Week

2010-10-08T23:57:00.000-07:00

Here in Hawaii we get a fall break. Like spring break, only in the fall. And at La'ie Elementary, we're using that break to put on a school play.

In one week.

I am so there.

Each morning at 8 A.M. I lug my sewing machine out of the car and haul it into the school cafeteria. Along one wall, children glue colorful construction paper fish to an ocean backdrop. At the tables, they paint plastic bottles gold and glue on sparkly rhinestones. Up on the stage, one group after another learns dance steps, practices songs, and reads lines. In the middle of it all, I hurry around with costumes draped over my arm, checking to see that everything fits before running back to my sewing machine to do more stitching.

The Costumers

The best part? I'm not in charge of anything. I just showed up and asked the costume ladies if I could help.

Going over the script with the sea monster

We're doing our own adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I can't think of a better story for children's theater. Every kid wants to go to Narnia. I know I did when I was a kid. The children know the territory, they know the characters, but Dawn Treader isn't overdone like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It's something fresh and fun. And there's a mouse with a sword. Can't beat that.

The Magic Picture of the Dawn Treader

The sad thing is, I missed the performance. I had to teach algebra at the very same time as the show. But they're selling DVDs for $10 each to help cover production costs. Of course I'm going to buy one. Not only is my son an excellent comic bit part as a member of Pug's pirate crew, I made Prince Caspian's shirt!

Kite Festival!

2010-10-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

I have come to my own personal paradise. How do I know? They hold an annual kite festival here.

My passion for kites is entwined in my earliest childhood memories. We had a huge red dragon kite with a long, crackling cellophane tail, and I loved to go out with my family and fly it. Later, as a teenager, I had a spectacular triple stunt kite that I took along on occasion when my little brothers had soccer or little league practice. The kites came with me to college, and when the wind was right I would put off studying and head for the soccer field near my dorm. When I had children of my own I learned to build my own kites, and loved to watch as my children ran up and down under our flying creations.

This is the kite I flew at the festival this year, a hand-painted silk and bamboo kite from Bejing. It won "Most Beautiful" in the kite contest.

My daughter flew this boat kite, a favorite in my collection, which won for "Most Complex." She let it out all the way to the end of its string. That, even more than winning a prize, is the way to make a kite feel truly fulfilled.

Rebecca Reviews: The Owl Movie

2010-09-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

This movie is actually called "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole" but I didn't want to say all of that to the guy at the ticket counter. "Two for the owl movie, please," got me in just fine.

If "Chicken Run" is "The Great Escape" done with chickens, then the owl movie is "Prince Caspian" done with owls. Beautiful owls. Incredibly animated owls. They look like owls. They move like owls. I have never seen such visual realism in digital animation. Watch the credits--they had a whole team of programmers just to design the feathers. Wow!

Kidnapped by evil owls, the owlet Soren discovers their plan to dominate the forest using their secret super-powerful weapon that Does Something Very Bad (never quite clear on that point). With the help of a disgruntled guard he escapes and goes on a dubious quest to find the forest's only hope, the Owls of Ga'hoole, a legendary band of warriors that lives across the sea and defends freedom and goodness everywhere.

Although some of the story elements were chosen based on "this will look really cool" rather than "this will make sense," and some of the minor characters teeter off the fine line between providing comic relief and annoying the audience, this is still a movie worth seeing. Emphasis on the seeing. Go see it on the big screen. The visual impact won't be the same on video. I also loved the character who becomes Soren's mentor in Ga'hoole, the old soldier owl, and his insights on what it really means to be a warrior.

This is not a film for the little ones. Not only are there scary scenes, the story is complex and there's some definite pacing problems that small children will not sit through. But the older ones should love it. We're taking everyone over age ten to the 4:00 showing this afternoon.

Happy flying!

Harp Surgery

2010-09-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

I saw it coming.

Since the first day I tuned up my harp here in Hawaii, I knew it wouldn't last. My harp, born in the desert of Henderson, Nevada, did not take well to the humidity of being two blocks from the ocean on the rainy side of a tropical island. The only question was, how long did I have? Each day the soundboard bent more and more until finally... POP!

The right side of the board ripped out of the box.

So I took all the tension off the strings and went to the hardware store for some epoxy. After I glued everything back together I waited a week to let the epoxy set. And then I began to tune up. Very slowly.

I couldn't bring myself to take it up to true pitch. If the soundboard comes out of the box, that's one thing, but with the way the wood was warping, I worried that a crack right up the middle would come next. That can't be repaired.

So I left it a third interval low. And just to see what would happen, I tried playing it.

Not bad!

It's different, but it still sounds good. Instead of crisp and bell-like, the sound is mellow, older, more soothing. I like it. And I know that, tuned to a lower pitch, there's less tension on the soundboard and my harp will last longer.

So I got to thinking about my life. Back on the mainland my life was tuned to a high pitch. I ran around, involved in this hobby and that volunteer effort. But here, I don't have so many things I'm involved in. I have time to go sit by the sea and watch the waves.

It's different, but still good. In fact, I think I'll last a little longer this way.

Wild Chickens

2010-09-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

I've never seen so many wild chickens. They're everywhere.

Where did all the chickens come from?

I don't know if this story is true, but here's how I heard it:

On the edge of town we have the Polynesian Cultural Center, the world's only living exhibit of Pacific Island history and culture. Not long ago, someone thought that for the PCC to look like an authentic Polynesian village, they ought to have chickens. So they brought in some chickens and let them loose in the PCC.

But chickens, they smart. They know how to tell a real Polynesian village from one that opens at noon and closes before midnight. So they all hop the fence and come live with us in La'ie.

NOTE: I took all these pictures of chickens on one short walk from BYUH campus, down the street and around the corner to my house.

Full Circle

2010-09-10T16:08:00.000-07:00

I adored my college years. So much to learn! So many people to meet! So many things to see! I studied physics and math and Japanese and religion and history and took creative writing and documentary filmmaking and thought thoughts I never would have thought I could think. And all the while I was striding around campus in my trench coat and Aussie hat, organizing late-night sing-alongs in abandoned staircases of the arts building, starting up my own science humor magazine, calling every last department at Los Alamos National Laboratory to see if they might like to hire me as a summer research assistant (got two offers, by the way), combing through the discontinued book sale at the campus library, watching foreign films at the campus international cinema, and enjoying every moment of freedom and independence.

So, naturally, I wanted to teach college myself someday. Why would I ever want to leave such a place?

Fifteen years and five childbirths later, I know there will be no going back. Delighted as I was to get a job teaching at my husband's new school, I knew I wouldn't get the same kick out of it that I got from being a student. Just like once you grow up you can never go back to that special Christmas morning when you're six years old.

But sitting this morning in faculty meetings, I realized something. I may not get to be a student again, but now I can see behind the scenes. I know better what goes into giving young people the college student experience. I had no idea how much my professors put into making my wonderful college years possible, how much my parents put into it, how much all the people who donated or contributed to my school in any way put into it.

And now, I get to be a part of creating that experience for a new generation of students. I get to be the one to put the presents under the tree.

Lesson plans, here I come!

That's No Cake! It's a Space Station!

2010-09-06T00:54:00.000-07:00

When I was a little girl I loved my mom's Wilton Cake Decorating books. I spent hours looking at the photographs, marveling at what could be done with cake and frosting. It filled my head with possibilities.

Each time a birthday rolls around at our house, I go back to that place in my mind and dream up an amazing confection that will delight the children and impress their parents. Unfortunately, unlike my mom, I never took any cake decorating classes.

So I'm going to tell you how not to make a Death Star cake. Honest, that's supposed to be the Death Star. See the aluminum foil tie-fighters being chased by the Millennium Falcon up there?

It started out pretty good. I mixed up a batch of cake batter and divided it evenly between two Pyrex bowls that had been lined with greased foil. I built the batter up a little on the edges so the tops would be more flat.

Then I baked the cakes in the oven. It took longer than I expected, probably because the bowls were deeper than your typical cake pan.

After the cake had cooled, I peeled off the foil and put one piece, flat side up on a plate. I stuck a big glob of frosting on top, then squished the second half in place. Rather than making a nice round shape, it ended up more like a half-deflated beach ball.

If I do this again, I'll make three layers. The two bowls, and then one regular round layer of cake in the middle.

I tinted the icing gray (five drops blue, two drops red, one drop yellow), frosted the cake, and then made the rest of the frosting a darker gray and piped on those technical-looking dark gray panels that distinguish the Death Star from a small moon with a big crater on one side. When my work of art was nearly complete, my birthday boy helped me make some foil space ships to go flying over the surface.

My fully operational battle-station was ready to blow up a test-planet or two. When I brought it to the table at the birthday party, one of the guests remarked, "That's something that lives in the ocean, yeah?"

Misfire.

"No, it's the Death Star. See?" My son came to my defense.

Sea urchin or Death Star, it tasted great with ice cream.

I Could Get Used to This

2010-09-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago my youngest child started Kindergarten. It has been an adjustment. Several times a day I'll twitch, "WHERE'S THE KID?" because I haven't heard from him recently. Such silence used to mean scribbles on the wall or all the towels pulled out of the linen closet. Now it means he's safe at school, learning songs about the days of the week and the months of the year.

Today I walked down to the farmer's market, ALL BY MYSELF. I bought two tomatoes and a ripe papaya. Then, on my way home, I saw a book shop. And I went in.

You don't know how crazy this is unless you're used to having a small child, or multiple small children, as constant companion. I would never go in a shop unless I absolutely had to. Too much stress.

But today I sat on a bench and looked at books. That's all. No glancing over my shoulder every ten seconds to verify the location of a child.

After I browsed the book shop for as long as I felt like it, I went home and ate my papaya for lunch.

I could get used to this.

Room to Grow

2010-08-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

For the last six months, moving has consumed my life. From the end of last March when I tore up the ruined vinyl in the guest bathroom, to last Friday when I helped my husband unpack the books onto our new bookcase, every spare minute was taken up by the massive project of transporting seven people from Henderson, Nevada to La'ie, Hawaii.

But now we are here. I have time to breathe and room to grow again.

The house is smaller, but I can clean and sweep it out in a few hours. Sometimes the neighbor children come over and want to sit on my couch and play my ukulele. That's a treat! They sound a lot better on the uke than I do, at least so far. I watch and learn.

If we ever get tired of being indoors, the beach is right around the corner. And when we get adventurous we can hop in the car and find plenty of other beaches to try. There's waves to play in and sand castles to build.

But I'm not going to sit around and listen to music or go hang out at the beach all the time. I'll be teaching college classes and writing novels, building harps and taking hula classes. In short, after six long months of nothing but moving, I'm getting back to being me again.

How to Build a Quick and Easy Pine Bookcase

2010-08-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

When we got to Hawaii we learned from our neighbors that particle board doesn't last here. If you don't want it to warp and fall apart in the humidity, it has to be solid wood. We were glad we'd left our particle board bookcases in Nevada, but we were going to have to replace them with something else. With real wood.

I'd always wanted to build my own bookcase!

We designed a bookcase six feet high and nine feet long. Here's the materials we used:

16 boards of pine shelving, 1inx10inx6ft
10 pieces of wood trim, 1inx2inx6ft
a box of 100 1 1/2 inch long wood screws
around 30 2 1/2 inch long wood screws
1 large bottle of wood glue
a carpenter's square
a circular saw
a power drill
1 quart wood stain
assorted rags
disposable gloves

First, I picked the four nicest boards, straight ones without any flaws. Those became the vertical parts of the book case. I decided how tall I wanted the shelf spaces to be and marked each board with lines where the shelves would go. With the amount of wood I bought, I could make up to 24 shelves.I ended up using 22 shelves and having two extras.

Next, I marked the rest of the boards for cutting them in half into three foot pieces. These I cut with the circular saw.

Then I took the pieces of trim and cut 6 pieces that were 3 feet long, 12 pieces that were 9 inches long, and then 72 pieces that were 2 inches long. These pieces are for holding up the shelves. I could have saved myself a lot of cutting and sanding by buying a little more wood trim and cutting 36 pieces that were 9 inches long instead of the 72 little 2 inch blocks. Oh well.

With all the pieces cut, my next task was to sand the edges. That was the most time-consuming part of the process. But I had help. I went out in the front yard to work on it, and before long the neighbor boys had come over to see what I was doing. I handed them each a piece of sand paper and put them to work.

When all the pieces were sanded, it was time for assembly. I glued the long blocks directly under where the top and bottom shelves would go, leaving a space at the back edge so that I could fit one of the three-foot-long trim pieces running across the back under each top or bottom shelf. The short blocks went two each under the rest of the shelves. I glued them in place, then for extra security I used a short wood screw in each block.

set sides upright, three feet apart

put back trim piece in place

glue shelf on top, then secure with wood screws

After letting the glue dry overnight, I assembled the first of three ranks of shelves. For this part I needed someone to help me hold everything in place. We stood the sides of the shelves up, set one of the three-foot-long trim pieces on the floor at the back of the case, and set the bottom shelf on top. Once I had everything square (checked with the carpenter's square), I put some glue on the top edge of the trim pieces, then replaced the shelf and screwed it in place from the side with the long screws. Last of all, I used a couple of short screws to fasten down the shelf to the back trim piece. I did the same with the top shelf, except that I put the back trim piece in place after the shelf was glued and screwed down to the side trim pieces. The back trim pieces are important to keep the corners of the bookcase squared up.

I assembled the left-hand rank of shelves first, and then the right-hand rank. Last of all, I set the two ranks three feet apart and put in the top and bottom shelves of the middle rank. I couldn't screw these in from the side, so I added another permanent shelf to the middle rank and screwed it in place.

I slid all the shelves into the left-hand rank to see if the design was working. So far so good!

After that I stained everything, using rags and disposable gloves. I did the shelves outside, but when I did the case I made the mistake of doing it just before dinner. The smell was so bad we decided to go out for tacos instead of eating at home with all the wood stain fumes.

Two days later, I used three small L-brackets to attach the bookcase to studs in the wall in back, slid all the shelves into place, and there you have it! It's no great work of art, but it doesn't look too bad, and it will hold all the books.

the finished product

Te Manahua

2010-08-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

I saw the poster for Te Manahua in the window of the local ice cream parlor. A Maori Cultural Arts Competition? Right here at the Polynesian Cultural Center? I really have died and gone to heaven.

Nothing moves me like Maori music. There's a power in their voices unmatched by anything I've ever heard. They also get to throw sticks and swing things around at the end of a string, and instead of mom saying, "don't do that, you'll break something!" it's considered a cultural art.

This performance from the Poi-E competition on Friday night by Tongariro High School was my absolute favorite. Who would have thought you could do so much with a ball and a piece of string?

This morning I took my five children to the Pacific Theater to watch the 2010 Te Manahua. Excellent, excellent performances. Exciting hakas, graceful poi twirling, thrilling harmonies, I loved every minute. The concessions stand was selling New Zealand-style food too - oooh, that meat pie was to die for.

The last group to perform opened with a song about how La'ie is the eye of a needle. The threads of all cultures pass through this place. It is a village where all the tribes of the people dwell together in peace. After sharing in a day of beautiful Maori culture, I couldn't agree more.

How to Plant a Pineapple

2010-08-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

I learned this trick three years ago at the Dole Plantation, but when I tried it in Henderson the pineapple died. It missed Hawaii too much, I suppose. But now I can plant pineapples outside in my yard!

Step One: Move to Hawaii. Just kidding! You can grow a pineapple anywhere so long as you keep it in a pot and bring it inside in the winter.

Real Step One: Get a pineapple. Pick one with yellow skin and a healthy top.

Step Two: Cut the top off the pineapple. Remove any pineapple flesh, then peel off the bottom leaves to expose about half an inch of stem.

Step Three: Put the pineapple top in a jar of water and wait for a week or two.

Step Four: Pull out the pineapple top and check for new roots. Wow! I love this part. IT GROWS!

Step Five: If you're putting the pineapple in a pot, then fill your pot with a well-drained material, like cactus soil. Pineapples don't like to get too wet. If you're putting it outside, just go outside and dig a hole. You may want to add some cactus soil or vermiculite to your hole so the pineapple can get a good start.

I hadn't bought a shovel yet at this point, so I just used a stick.

Step Six: Put the rooted pineapple stem in the hole and tuck the dirt back in around it. Then water it lightly. Keep the soil just slightly moist so that the roots can continue to grow.

After a few weeks, check to see if your pineapple is still growing by tugging on it. If the new roots hold it in place, things are going well. If the pineapple pops out again, then simply rinse it off and replant it. Pineapples grow slowly, and they are very tough. If the pineapple completely dries up and dies, then go buy another one and try again.

Step Seven: Wait for three years. Then, if you've kept your pineapple happy, it will be big and beautiful and make a new pineapple for you.

Three years is a long time to wait. Meanwhile, let's build some bookshelves! Next week: How to Build a Quick and Easy Pine Bookcase.

What I Like About Living in La'ie

2010-08-08T17:48:00.000-07:00

1. Tile floors. I never want carpet again.

2. I can walk to the grocery store. I've always wanted to live somewhere where I could walk to the grocery store. The other day I was making coleslaw when I realized I didn't have any vinegar. No problem! I put the chopped cabbage in the refrigerator and went across the street, around the corner, and got some.

3. I can walk to the beach.

4. I can walk to the Polynesian Cultural Center. There I can walk around and visit Tahiti, Samoa, New Zealand, Tonga, and Rapa Nui without ever getting on an airplane.

5. I can walk out my back door and hang out my laundry. Back in Henderson when I tried to hang out my laundry it always came in smelling like desert dust. Here in La'ie when I hang out my laundry, it comes in smelling like tropical flowers.

6. And, at that grocery store I can walk to, the pineapples sometimes go on sale for 99 cents each.

More on pineapples in my next post. I'm going to show you how to plant one.

The Scribbler's Cove

2010-08-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Before we moved to Hawaii, before I knew anything about where we'd be living, I told my husband I wanted a writing room. I needed my own dreamspace, a doorway I could walk through and become a writer, a storyteller, a weaver of words.

I didn't have much hope in this wish. Housing is tight in Hawaii, and I have five children. How could I expect to have a room all to myself? Well, maybe I could share it with my writing daughter, but still, it was hard to justify.

My husband arrived in Hawaii a week before I did. He called me in the middle of the night to tell me about our rental house. It was smaller than we had expected, but, "There's a perfect place for your writing room!"

"Are you sure? Maybe we should use it for another bedroom."

"No, it's too small to be anything else."

At first I didn't believe it. But when I got to Hawaii there it was, just a tiny office room with one big window. For the first week it stored all the extra boxes, but as I finished unpacking I began to set the place up--a desk with drawers to store all my writing files, a book shelf for manuscripts and reference materials, a big tack board for maps, outlines, drawings, research, and other stuff, a mirror so I can study facial expressions, a white board for notes and calculations, a phone line, an internet cable, my laptop computer, some sewing and craft stuff for when I need a change of pace, and my favorite big comfy desk chair.

"We need a really awesome name for this room," my daughter said as she tipped herself back in the chair.

"I agree. The Writing Room just isn't good enough. We could call it The Writer's Den. Or how about The Writer's Cove?"

"Ummm," my daughter wrinkled her nose. My naming wasn't going so well.

"I like calling it a cove. It goes with the island theme. But Writer's Cove isn't enough. It needs to be something more dramatic. Coves tend to have names with danger and mystery, like Pirate's Cove or Shark's Cove. Dead Man's Cove. Smuggler's Cove."

"I'll think about it," my daughter said.

Late that night, as my husband and I poured over plans for the bookshelves we wanted to build, I heard my daughter coming down the hall.

"You should be in bed," I said without looking up from my notebook.

"I know, but I've just thought of a great name for our writing room. It's so good I had to get out of bed to tell you."

I set the notebook down. "What is it?"

"The Scribbler's Cove!"

Perfect. Now all I need to do is go to the beach and find a piece of driftwood, carve the name on it, and hang it over the doorway. Welcome to the Scribbler's Cove. Some dangerous scribbling is going to happen in here.

Day 17

2010-08-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

Seventeen days ago, I moved to Hawaii. It struck me yesterday, when I first held my Hawaii Driver's License in my hand, that I'm not leaving. This is a permanent thing.

I live at the center of the Ring of Fire. Life roils like the sea. Clouds blow in, pour down rain, and then pass in a few minutes. Trees spring up in a few weeks, bear fruit, then die and decay. Everywhere rust and ruin, but also new life, strong life, pushing through the rich remnants of the old.

I like it here.

Our cute little cinder-block house is nearly unpacked and mostly in order, but my internal clock isn't reset yet--I'm still surprised by how early in the day it is whenever I check the time. In my crock pot I'm cooking pork ribs with purple sweet potatoes (grown by a neighbor), soy sauce, and garlic instead of my habitual barbecue sauce. We'll eat it tonight with sticky rice instead of bread. Some old things came with me, like my beautiful antique wind-up clock which, even after two weeks of heat and jostling inside a shipping container, still chimes the hours faithfully. It makes the place sound like home. But now instead of piano practice, I hear the children play their new ukuleles in the afternoon (we'll get back to piano as soon as I figure out how much we can afford for a teacher).

Aloha everyone! I'm off to build some bookshelves so I can unpack the rest of the books!

I'm Melting

2010-08-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

The first time I stepped out of a car here in Hawaii, the pleasant temperature of the air surprised me. I was used to stepping out of a car into the blazing heat of Henderson, Nevada. Here on the windward side of the island, the summer highs hover around 80 degrees F.

But that's outside. Inside is a different story.

My house has no air conditioning. No way to cool off except by opening the windows and hoping the tradewinds will come wafting in from the sea. On my first day here I asked the neighbor girl if they left their windows open all day. She looked at me like I was asking her a trick question. Of course people leave their windows open all day! In Henderson, as soon as it started to get warm in the morning I had to shut the windows down tight. If I did that here in Hawaii, with the tropical sun beating down on the roof, we'd all roast like a pig in a barbecue pit.

Even with the windows open, we're sweating. If I set butter out on the counter, I can spread it on bread in three minutes. And sweating doesn't help much when the humidity is 85%.

So, in the afternoons, we just give up and go to the beach.

Boys Meet Beach

2010-07-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

On the day I moved to Hawaii, the neighbor girl came by to invite my daughter to go to the beach.

It sounded fun, but, "What beach are you going to? How are you getting there? Who will you be going with?"

My daughter threw her hands up. "I don't know. You can talk to her if you like."

The neighbor girl seemed surprised that I had so many questions. I guess "going to the beach" is something the teenagers just do in Hawaii. They were going to Hukilau beach (I had no idea where that was), they were walking, and they would meet two other friends there.

Too many unknowns. This paranoid mother from the mainland had to go along, just for a little while, so I could check things out. And also because I was hot and tired from unpacking and wanted to see the beach.

When my boys heard about this expedition, they clamored to join up. I said we weren't going swimming. We were just walking to the beach so we could see where it was. We'd look around, then come back home and do some more unpacking.

Ha ha.

We walked a block or two, took a little path between houses to get to the beach, then took our sandals off and stepped into the sand. My boys had only been to the ocean once, on a windy December day in Los Angeles. This was nothing like that! Here was warm sun, a pleasant breeze, and gentle waves of inviting waters. At first the boys just got their feet wet.

But then a big wave came by and knocked the smaller boy down. Of course he didn't mind that a bit.

Before long, the other one got "knocked down" too, and since they were already wet they thought they might as well play in the surf for a while.

I can't believe I didn't see that coming.

I called the boys in before they got their fill of the waves, but not before their pockets got their fill of sand. My daughter stayed behind to build sandcastles with her new friends while the boys and I walked home. The boys collected some souvenirs from their first trip to the beach--a coconut, some wild almonds, and a strange black nut that made a big blob of grease on the back patio table.

I shook about five pounds of sand out of those clothes, and had to throw the cargo pants away because the sand got in the liner. No way was I going to put that much sand in the washing machine. I scraped another handful of sand out of the bathtub after the boys got cleaned up. From now on, we wear swimsuits to the beach.

WHAT IS THAT BIG GREEN THING IN THE FRIDGE?

2010-07-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

When I arrived in Hawaii last Monday night, my husband and three of my children had already been there for a week. I followed them around as they proudly showed off our new little house. When we got to the kitchen I opened the refrigerator and saw this:

"WHAT IS THAT BIG GREEN THING IN THE FRIDGE?" I asked.
My husband said, as if it was no big deal, "It's a breadfruit. The kids picked it off the neighbor's tree."
"What?"
The kids chimed in:
"They said we could!"
"We had to hit it down with a stick!"
"They said we could eat it!"
Sure. Whatever.
The big green breadfruit lurked in the fridge for several days. I was tempted to throw it out.
Yesterday another mother in the neighborhood gave me a ride to the high school so I could register my older children for classes. I told her, "The neighbors gave us a breadfruit, but I don't know what to do with it."
She laughed. "You peel it and boil it, or you can wrap it in foil and bake it in the oven. Then just cut it up in chunks, like a pineapple. We call it 'ulu. It's very good."
So today I tried cooking an 'ulu. First I sawed off the scaly skin. After peeling it half-way I rested my sore hands and thought, "You'd have to be pretty desperate to want to work this hard to eat this thing."

Then I plunked it in the pressure-cooker pot and boiled it for half an hour.

It smelled good, sort of like baked acorn squash, but how would it taste?
I pulled it out with a fork and tried not to burn my fingers as I chopped up the starchy, spongy mass. Then I sampled a little bit. Wow! It was delicious! Just barely sweet and very satisfying. I had to eat my words - that thing was definitely worth peeling. It made a whole lot of good food.

Want to try some?

The Inexperienced Traveler

2010-07-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

My family is still here in Las Vegas. Yes, we told you we were going to Hawaii yesterday, but that's not what happened.

We got to the airport in plenty of time to get on the plane, or so we thought. Our wonderful neighbor who gave us a ride offered to park his car and help us carry our luggage into the terminal rather than dropping us off at the curb. We gladly accepted this kind offer.

We should have insisted on being dropped off at the curb. Instead, we had to walk from parking into the terminal, and then when we got there we were nowhere close to ticketing and check-in. We collapsed on the floor in a heap and decided we needed a luggage cart. After thanking our neighbor we sent him home, then I sat on the floor with the kids and waited for dad to come rescue us with the cart.

Things were getting tight, but still okay. Once we had our cart we crossed the airport and found the ticketing area. Then we went and stood in line.

It was a long line. It was a slow line. Only one agent was seeing people. I couldn't believe it. Forty minutes went by, and we were still in line. Our flight would leave in only fifteen minutes! We were going to miss it. What happens when you miss your flight? I didn't know. It had never happened to me before. I imagined having to buy new tickets. To Hawaii. We were dead.

It wasn't like this was some kind of vacation. We were moving!

All this time something strange was going on. People were not stopping to stand in line, they were going up to these rows of computer screens, typing things in, and then dropping off their luggage at the counter. It slowly dawned on me that WE WERE STANDING IN THE WRONG LINE! In fact, IT WAS WRONG TO BE STANDING IN A LINE AT ALL! I just assumed we were supposed to get in line. When there's a line, get in it, right? I hadn't seen any signs that said, "Don't bother to stand in line, go check yourself in on the computers." There were no agents standing around to tell us what to do. Somehow, all those other people already knew what to do. We didn't have to be standing in this line at all.

Too late now.

"I think we've missed our flight," I told the smiling Polynesian girl at the counter as I handed her our itinerary.

She typed on her keyboard and her smile disappeared. "Shoot. You did."

"What do we do?" I asked.

"And that's our last flight to Honolulu for today," she sighed at the screen. "I can put you on another flight tomorrow."

"How much will that cost?" I asked.

She curled up her lip and shook her head, "I'm not charging you for that."

"Thank-you!" She was my new best friend.

"Here, let me put you on the earlier connection so you have a longer layover in Phoenix. With all these little kids, you're going to want some more time."

She was the most wonderful ticket agent ever. She got us seats on the plane so everyone could sit together, and even checked us in so that when we came back all we had to do was drop off the luggage.

So we called another neighbor who came and picked us up from the airport, and we all trooped home and spent the day sitting around, watching Lord of the Rings. Yesterday was only a dress rehearsal. Today we are leaving for the airport three hours early. We will be dropped off at the curb. We will not get in the long, slow line. We will drop off our luggage, go to the gate, and then get on the plane and get out of here!

We've learned from experience.

This Is My House

2010-07-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is how it looks. Nearly everything wrapped up in brown paper, ready to be loaded in a shipping container and sent to Hawaii. I won't see this stuff again for over three weeks.

This is my room.

And this is Jerry, my packing guy. When he saw me with the camera he said, "Are you taking pictures of my beautiful work? Here, get me in the picture too!" So there he is. He was the best packing guy ever. If you need to ship 8000 pounds of stuff to Hawaii, he's the one to call.

This is my kitchen. Nothing in the cupboard. Everything on the counter and soon to be in a box. We're happy we have several friends who have invited us over for dinner for the next few days so I don't have to cook any more.

And THESE are all the boxes I packed when I thought I was the one who would be doing the packing. I knew my husband's new employer was paying for our shipping container and for movers to load up 8000 pounds of stuff, but I didn't know they were paying for packing as well.

If I had known they were doing the packing, would I have sorted everything so well? Probably not. The big question was, did we get in under our weight limit? We had to pay for anything over 8000 pounds. We knew that after the truck left for the scales, there would be no way for us to have them bring it back and unload things. We asked Jerry to call us as soon as they weighed the truck and give us the news.

After the truck pulled away, we went to pick up our five-year-old from his friend's house. While we were there, we got a phone call. It was Jerry.
"Well, guys, bad news. We went over," Jerry said.
"How much?" my husband asked.
"It's 12,000 pounds."
My mouth dropped open. What had gone wrong? I'd sorted everything so carefully, given away so much. 12,000 pounds! How much was that going to cost us?
"Gotcha," Jerry said.
My husband laughed.
I moaned and collapsed on the nearest couch, "He got me! He got me! I believed him!"
"It was 8400. You're good," Jerry said.
Hooray! Seven people living in a four bedroom house for six years, and I got all our junk down to 8400 pounds.
See you in Hawaii!

Griffith Observatory

2010-07-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

I love this place

As a last fling before we leave mainland shores, we drove to Los Angeles to visit some of my favorite childhood vacation places. My grandparents always took us to museums when we'd spend a week with them each summer, and this was one of my favorites. Now I'm sharing the memories with the next generation.

The Griffith Observatory had some old familiar exhibits, like the purple-lighting shooting Van Der Graaf generator:

And the earthquake detector:

But I also saw some fun new exhibits, like the infrared camera.

And best of all, the Big Picture, a Hubble Space Telescope image of a tiny sliver of sky, magnified and spread across the length of the whole exhibit hall. I could just sit there and stare at it all day.

Admission to this amazing place is absolutely free. If you are ever in LA, don't miss it!

P.S. Check out this billboard we saw on the way home:

Why don't they have billboards like that in Las Vegas?

995 Pounds of Books

2010-07-02T22:45:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, I'm moving to Hawaii in a couple of weeks. The people who hired my husband recommended that we send our books by media mail instead of putting them in a shipping container. Saves money. So today we boxed up the last of the books and took them all to the post office. The back tires were bulging and my husband had a hard time handling the van.

You may wonder how we got all those boxes from the back of the van to the post office counter. Well, when we got to the post office we asked them for a cart. I was thinking of one of those big flat-bedded things they have at hardware stores. The postal worker went back in the back and came out with something that looked more like a shopping-cart.

"That won't be enough," I said.

"We're moving to Hawaii and we're shipping our entire library," my husband explained.

"Oh," said the postal worker. "I'll go get you a bin, then."

She came out again, this time with a huge thing like a plastic-sided mine cart.

"That should work," I said.

I was wrong. We needed two of them. Here's my son wheeling half of the load into the post office:

Back at the counter, the postal workers weighed, stamped, and took away all twenty five boxes, then handed us a receipt six feet long. The grand total? 995 pounds of books. Aloha, my books! See you in Hawaii!

The MP3 Player

2010-07-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

My son asked for an MP3 player for his 13th birthday. At first I resisted. I believe that music is a gift to be shared with everyone around us, not to be kept to ourselves. Besides, as a concerned parent, I want to know exactly what my kid is listening to.

But then I realized it could be a way to feed his blossoming musical skills. Maybe we could give him some piano concertos to listen to, some classics to stimulate his music mind.

So the birthday came. Overjoyed by his new MP3 player, my son immediately loaded it up with Weird Al songs. So much for my piano concerto idea. At least my son would be happy with his music while I wouldn't have to listen to Weird Al for hours on end.

Or so I thought.

My son sings along with his MP3 player.

As we drove home from Los Angeles yesterday my son treated us to hours of "The Rye or the Kaiser," "The Spiderman," and "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota." I thought it was charming. I don't want to explain to him that the idea of an MP3 player is so you can listen to music without bothering the people around you.

After all, I want to know what he's listening to!

Fiction is Real

2010-06-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

When my daughter was five years old she had a pet crab named Clyde. He was purple, two feet across, and invisible.

"Mom," she said to me one day, "You don't believe that Clyde is real."

"Of course Clyde is real!" I said.

She stuck out her lip at me. I guess she had heard somewhere that parents never believe in imaginary friends.

I tried not to laugh. "Clyde is a real imaginary crab!"

"NO!" my daughter hopped up and down. "Clyde is a real REAL crab!"

It wasn't hard for me to imagine Clyde scuttling around the house, barley avoiding my feet as I walked the baby or hauled laundry baskets. Every now and then I would tease my daughter, "I haven't seen Clyde around lately. Is he all right?"

"Mom, you can't SEE Clyde. He's invisible!"

He was real. As real as anything.

A few years later I overheard my boys arguing. They had wands made from tightly rolled-up paper in their hands. One shouted to the other, "Well, Harry Potter isn't REAL anyways!"

"Of course he's real," I said. "Harry Potter is a real fictional character, and he puts very real money into certain peoples' pockets."

This year at Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers I learned that, biochemically, there's very little difference between reading about something and experiencing it. The reader enters a waking dream in which adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, and other lovely chemicals are released into the bloodstream just as if things were really happening. The difference is, a reader can close the book and come up from the waking dream with limbs intact and life all around just as it was before. The consequences of reading a story are harder to see than the consequences of living an experience.

But the consequences are there. The consequences are there inside. And what's inside begins to affect what's outside.

I've read books that changed the way I looked at the world. Nothing afterward was ever quite the same. And in that way, fiction is very, very real.

Kathy's Harp

2010-06-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

When my friend Kathy heard I was making a new batch of harps, she said, "I want to make one too!" She paid for the supplies, then came to my garage once or twice a week so we could work together. It sure helped to have another set of hands. I'll need to find a new harp-making partner when I get to Hawaii.

Here we are, stringing it up. Kathy's daughter painted the butterflies on the soundboard. Congratulations to Kathy on a fine piece of woodworking!

Rebecca's Reviews: Toy Story 3

2010-06-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

Daycare goes dystopian.

When Andy packs up for college, his toys think that being donated to Sunnyside Day Care will beat being stored in the attic, or even worse, being sent to the landfill. At first, Sunnyside seems the perfect retirement home for well-loved toys. And then things go horribly wrong.

After the first two Toy Story movies, I thought the people at Pixar had exhausted the subject. What else was there to say? Ho ho! Was I ever wrong! This film has a fresh story that ties in well with the other two, and brings the series to a very touching, very satisfactory close. I laughed a lot and cried more than I expected to.

With its slower pacing, smart jokes, and prison-break parody plot, this film targets older kids and their parents more than the little ones. My four-year-old, who was riveted by "How to Train Your Dragon," wouldn't sit still for "Toy Story 3." He still says he wants to go see it again, though. Maybe I'll take him tomorrow.

Conservation of Awesomeness

2010-06-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone seen "Dead Poets Society?" Do you remember that poetry lesson where they tear a page out of the textbook?

That was my high school's AP English textbook.

Besides having an unenlightened view of poetry, the book preached that there were two types of fiction: escapist commercial fluff on the one hand, and serious valuable literature on the other. Commercial fiction and literature were mutually exclusive. Like broccoli and chocolate sauce, they don't go together. It was as if there was a Conservation of Awesomeness, so that the more fun a book was, the less it could have something valuable to say.

I didn't buy it.

That textbook sent me on a life-long quest to find books that were not only fun to read, but were well-written and honest about the human experience. It sent me on a quest to write such books myself. As I got deeper in to the craft of writing I learned how difficult it could be. Why not lie to the reader, pull a few gimmicks, and then cheerfully collect their money? Definitely the easier road.

But the great classics, the books with true staying power, are those that defy the law of Conservation of Awesomeness.

This past week I went to a writer's workshop. My teacher, who has published dozens of books and worked in the film industry for many years, taught us what goes into creating a delicious read. Books don't become bestsellers by accident. There's a science to it, a method that can be learned. And that method is, as I suspected, mostly independent of the soul of the book. I could write a thrilling roller-coaster ride of a book that doesn't have anything valuable to say, or I could write a thrilling roller-coaster ride of a book that shares something important I've learned about life. Sure, the entertainment industry is full of pirates and gangsters that only care about separating people from their money, but there are a few who really care about what they're saying, who know that communication in all its forms can change the world for the better.

Words give us the power to share experience. The more satisfying and fun to read my book is, the more people will want to read it, and the more readers will share what's inside of me that's aching to be said.

And that would be truly awesome.

Dutch Oven Sourdough Pizza

2010-06-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted pizza, but I didn't want to heat up the whole house. So I tried something bold and daring. I made pizza outside in the dutch ovens. Here's how I did it:

You will need:
12" dutch oven
aluminum foil
charcoal briquettes or firewood
tongs and a spatula

Sourdough Pizza Crust:
1 cup sourdough start
2 cups warm water
1 Tbsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
6-7 cups of flour

Mix water and sourdough start, sprinkle with yeast and let stand for five minutes. Add salt, olive oil, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Knead for 10 minutes, then let it rise until double.

While the dough is rising, go start the coals for the dutch ovens.

When the dough is doubled, punch it down and divide it into eight pieces. Tear off a square of aluminum foil and tuck it into the bottom of the dutch oven to shape it, then pull it out and grease it lightly. Roll one piece of dough out on the foil until it forms a 12 inch circle. Repeat with remaining balls of dough.

Make pizza sauce. Here's my recipe: 2 cans tomato paste, equal amount of water, 1 tsp Italian seasoning, 1/2 tsp salt.

Spread sauce on the pizzas, then add cheese and any other toppings. The fun part about doing small pizzas is that everyone gets to "decorate" their own.

By now your coals should be ready. Preheat the dutch oven with enough coals to heat it to 450 degrees F. Using the corners of the foil square, lower one pizza into the dutch oven. Bake for five minutes with top and bottom heat, then remove the oven from the bottom heat and cook for another 5 -10 minutes with top heat only. When the crust is lightly browned and the cheese is bubbly, use the tongs and spatula to remove the foil and pizza from the dutch oven. Repeat with remaining pizzas.

This recipe makes 8 small pizzas. We had two dutch ovens so I could bake them all in under an hour.

My clever plan was to make pizza without heating up the house. BUT I had to work outside with an OPEN FIRE in 110 degree weather. So I would have been a lot cooler if I'd stayed inside and turned on the oven.

Oh well. At least I've got a new trick for the next time we go camping!

Return to Reality

2010-06-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

I loved spending a week at the Writing and Illustrating for Young Reader's Workshop! Friends from two years ago were happy to see me. I could start a conversation with anyone by saying, "So what do you like to write?" Classmates would stop me in the halls to tell me how much they liked my work. Every day I was having my mind blown away by new ideas on how to become a better writer. What could be better?

And then I came home.

One of my children met me at the door and gave me a hug, but the others were busy playing upstairs. After I'd crashed on the couch for a while and checked my e-mail, they still hadn't come down. Didn't they know I was here? Their soon-to-be-famous-author mother?

I found my four-year-old and said, "Eian! Give me a hug!"

He put on a suspicious frown. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere. I just came back."

"Oh." He smiled and threw his arms around my neck, then ran off again.

Did he even notice that I'd been gone?

As the afternoon wore on, I got more attention from my children. "Mom, I'm bored!" "Mom, can I have a drink of water?" "Mom, Daniel's not being fair!" Not quite the kind of attention I had been getting from my writing friends. My ego sprang a slow, hissing leak. Around here, I was just plain Mom.

Deflated, I dragged myself back into the routine: wash dishes, move laundry, what's for dinner, no hitting, get your feet off the furniture. But I liked it. Here at home, I'm comfortable. Here at home, there's nothing to prove.

By this morning my head had returned to its normal size. When my eight-year-old crawled in bed with me, snuggled up, and shared all the wild adventures he'd had in his dreams last night, I couldn't imagine a better place to be.

Three Years of Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers

2010-06-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

The first time I went to the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Workshop, I had been working on the same book, off and on, for over a decade. I'd written a few short stories (one of which got published--YAY!!!) and had another novel I would peck at occasionally, but that one book had been my main focus.

On the second day of that workshop, I found out that my one book, my one shining star, my baby, was utterly unpublishable.

The characters were supposed to be college students, but everyone in my critique group said they talked and acted like middle-school kids. The premise and the light, funny contemporary fantasy setting were both middle-grade too. I had started out with an entire chapter of "maid and butler" dialog, in which the characters were informing the reader instead of really talking to each other, and there was so much backstory that my teacher, Brandon Sanderson, said, "Where's chapter zero?"

Ooooh.

Maybe had I started the story in the wrong place. Maybe I should be writing middle-grade instead of YA.

That was going to take an OVERWHELMING amount of work.

So I went home and gently put that unpublishable manuscript in a box in the garage. I wrote another book, went back to the workshop a second year, wrote a third book, began a fourth one, but all that time my first book kept calling to me. The characters would not let me go. The premise kept coming back to my mind.

Nearly two years after my initial disappointment, it was time to try again.

I made the characters younger and thought up a new storyline, wrote two chapters, and took them to David Farland's class at this year's WIFYR workshop. Was it good enough now? I couldn't say. I was hoping Dave would tell me.

He gave the project a thumbs-up. A big thumbs-up. Coming from Dave, who has trained a whole long list of bestselling authors, that meant a lot.

Time to get back to work!

Aloha Oe, Everyone!

2010-06-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't been posting lately. That's because I'm moving to Hawaii in five weeks. But that's not all. Next week I'm going to the Writing and Illustrating for Young Reader's Workshop. Then the week after that my husband is taking our oldest son to Scout Camp. And then we're going to LA for a few days to say goodbye to family before we move to the far side of the moon. And then my two middle sons are going to Georgia to spend two weeks with other family. And THEN I finally get to move to Hawaii.

So I'll see you after we get internet set up in our new place. Love and happy thoughts!

-Rebecca

How To Tell If You Have an Infinite Number of LEGOS

2010-05-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

If you have small boys at home, this post is for you. You may, without realizing it, have an infinite number of LEGOS in your home.

Here's how to tell.

If you add any number to infinity, you get... infinity! It doesn't change. Add two to infinity or two million to infinity, and you still have... infinity.

Now, think about it, if your child gets a new set of LEGOS, does it seem like you still have the same amount of LEGOS in your home that you had before?

If so, you must have an infinite number of LEGOS.

Here's another way to tell. If you take any number away from infinity, you also get infinity. Infinity minus any number? Still infinity. So, if no matter how many LEGOS you vacuum up, lose, leave at someone else's house, or even give away, you still seem to have the same number of LEGOS in your home, then you have an infinite number of LEGOS.

I've got an infinite number of LEGOS at my house. How about you?

Taking a Break

2010-05-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a short break from writing in order to move my family of seven to Oahu so that my husband can take a job as a math professor at BYU-Hawaii. I've got a writer's workshop in June and I'm waiting to hear back on some submissions, so it isn't like I'm totally going into hibernation. But I'm not doing my book review blog, and I only peck at my new novel for a few hours a week.

But then, once I get to the North Shore, my youngest child starts all-day kindergarten. And BYU-Hawaii has some awesome creative writing classes. And thanks to the internet, it hardly matters that I'll be another four hours away from New York City (and those submissions I'm waiting to hear on) than I am here in Las Vegas.

ALOHA EVERYONE!

It's Official!

2010-05-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

Last night my husband got a call from BYU-Hawaii. His position as a mathematics professor has been approved and they're drawing up the contract. ALOHA everyone, we're off to the islands!

Anybody want to rent my house? Four bedrooms, updated cabinets, new roof, new oven, new water-heater (these dang things keep breaking, you know), new pool pump and filter, beautiful vegetable garden, great neighbors, walking distance to elementary, middle, and high school, a public park and the Black Mountain Recreation Center.

And now for my next trick, I will move a family of seven to Hawaii!

Birthday Turnip

2010-04-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

I got a nice birthday present from my garden this year---a big, fat, round, turnip! I've never grown one this pretty in all my life.

If you don't like turnips that's probably because you've never had them picked fresh from the garden, peeled, cubed, and steamed, then served with with salt, pepper, and butter. It was a treat.

Why Didn't I Do This Before?

2010-04-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

In getting ready for a possible move this summer, I'm painting and repairing my house, doing things I've meant to do for years but never got around to. Why didn't I do this earlier so that I could enjoy my home the way I wanted it to be?

I'll tell you why:

I had a toddler in the house. My friend Crystine says she painted her house with a toddler around, but she can also read a book while crocheting (she turns the pages with her toes). I'm not up for that kind of frustration. I could just see little footprints in paint all over my carpet. I didn't want to go there.
I would have had to do it all over anyways. Last year I painted one wall. One wall. And it already needs to be repainted due to popped nails and general kid damage.
I was writing books! Who has time for home improvement when in the middle of a major writing project?

So, there are my excuses. I'll take some pictures and post them when it's all done.

The Soundboard and Box Back

2010-04-16T15:09:00.000-07:00

The soundboard is one of the most important, and definitely the most expensive, part of the harp. Every moment, the strings threaten to rip the harp apart with a thousand pounds of tension, and only the soundboard stands in the way. Think about that while you're working!

Here are your templates for cutting both the soundboard and the box back, once again on a one-inch grid. Each piece is a long isosceles trapezoid, 29 inches high with base 11 1/4 and top 2 3/4 inches across. The back of the box is the one with the holes in it.

Cut the soundboard with the grain running across the short direction. For the back of the box it doesn't matter which way the grain is running.

Use a jig saw or a coping saw to cut out the holes in the back of the box, then sand all the edges so that they're smooth. This is where I'm glad I have a Dremel.

Its All In Your Head

2010-04-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

I pulled out my debit card to pay the dishwasher repair man. "I was just thinking about how unreal money is these days. I never see it. The numbers go to my bank..."

"And then they disappear! Magically." The dishwasher repair man laughed.

"I know. The value of money exists only by common consent of society. If we all decided it was worth one hundred times less than it is now... does that make you nervous?"

The question hung in the air as he swiped my card on his portable debit card reader, then typed on the keyboard of his portable computer. At last he glanced at me, blue eyes serious. "Yes."

"Of course then my mortgage would seem smaller." I shrugged.

The corners of his white mustache twitched up. "I guess."

After signing my name for the transfer of my imaginary money, I showed the dishwasher repair man to the front door. "So how long are these dishwasher motors supposed to last? I mean, this is my third dishwasher in six years in this house."

"Oh, the life expectancy for this kind of dishwasher is ten to twelve years."

AH HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! Who came up with that imaginary number?

Attack of the Killer Bees

2010-04-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Today at my monthly writer's group luncheon I was telling the story of my next novel to one of my writing buddies. Just as I was getting to the big reveal, she leaned past me and stared out the front window. "Oh my gosh, what are all those bugs doing in your yard?"

I turned to see a black cloud of fat, flying insects whirling around over the rocks and wildflowers. We went to the window and watched them settle into my tree, a dark, bulging, crawling mass of tiny bodies. Black and gold striped bodies. Bees.

Now that the bees had crashed the party, no one else wanted to stay. Once the uninvited guests settled in, my friend sneaked past them to get to her car and I ran for the phone. My kids would be coming home from school in less than an hour, and I didn't want those bees there when they arrived.

The first pest control number I dialed gave me an answering machine. The second one was busy. The third one said they'd send someone right over. Not long afterward, my four-year-old son and I sat by the front window, watching as the pest control man donned his bee suit---white coveralls, heavy blue gloves, and a safari hat draped with mesh. Then the pest control man started up his sprayer and bravely marched into the tree.

I thought the bees would go nuts, but they mostly just sat there as he soaked them. When they began to fall off the tree in clumps I felt a little sad. Poor bees. Too bad we couldn't keep them and get free honey.

Then I imagined that swirling swarm attacking one of my children with their poisoned stingers.

Die bees, die.

"Those were the nasty kind," the pest control man said after he was done and a pile of mostly dead bees lay twitching at the base of my tree. "They wanted a piece of me."

I watched as he wrote up my bill. "So is there some dangerous pesticide out there? How long should I wait before going out by the tree?"

"I just used soap and water," he said. "Nothing dangerous."

My kind of pest control. I guess I could have done that myself, except that I don't have a bee suit. Or a powered spray pump. Still, $125 to give my tree a soap shower...

That stings.

Top Ten Reasons "How to Train Your Dragon" is better than "Star Wars"

2010-04-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

SPOILER WARNING - please go see the movie before you read this list!

Hiccup is a better actor than Mark Hamill.
Gobber is missing two limbs. Obi-Wan just lost his head.
Princess Leia may be a good shot with the blaster, but Astrid can throw a Viking battle-axe.
Light-sabers may glow and make cool noises, but dragons fly, breathe fire, and come rescue you when you're in trouble.
The people who wrote "How to Train Your Dragon" had a sense of humor.
Luke's prosthetic hand is just as good as his old one. There's no cost. Hiccup, on the other hand... or should I say foot...
Stoic the Vast has a village to feed and protect. Darth Vader just struts around and strangles people when he gets mad.
Hiccup has friends his own age.
It is much more fun to see someone learning how to tame a dragon than learning how to move boring rocks with their mind.
If the clones have a war with the droids, does it really matter if anyone gets hurt? I cared about the Vikings---they were people! And as Toothless and Hiccup become friends, the dragons started to feel like people too. I CARED!

Rebecca's Reviews: How to Train Your Dragon

2010-03-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

I was right. This is the movie I have been waiting to see all my life.

Hiccup ought to get an Oscar nomination for best actor. The emotional timing, the body language, the way he reacted to everything with such honesty---it was perfect. And hilarious. Toothless is the coolest dragon to ever grace the silver screen. No doubt. His design, the way he moves, his attitude---loved it all. The story is epic---the tale of how one open mind, one kind heart, can change the world. There are amazing flying sequences, big battles, and the most perfect moment of father-atonement I've ever seen in a film.

Huh?

Unfortunately, I'm in the middle of reading Joseph Campbell's "Hero With a Thousand Faces." I guess it's a thousand-and-one faces now that Hiccup is here. Though I feel very knowledgeable about why "How To Train Your Dragon" worked on a psychological level, this did not add to my enjoyment of the film, I can tell you that. Thanks to Mr. Campbell, I had a hard time seeing Toothless as himself, as a big fantastic wonderful scaly creature with wings, instead of everything the dragon symbolizes---the dark and powerful creative/destructive force that lies within us. Near the climax, when I was thinking, "Oh look, what an amazing moment of father-atonement!" my inner child said, "Hey, sit down! I can't see!" and my muse said, "Look, we're trying to watch a movie here." And what with all of that, the moment was lost. It didn't move me as much as I knew it should have.

So I'll just have to go see the film again, and leave my analyst outside in the lobby to study the movie posters.

The writing in this film is incredible. The dialog is lovingly crafted. Watch for the repeated lines that grow in meaning throughout the story, and then turn themselves around at the end. There was a perfect blend of comedy and adventure. Clever word play, situational humor, great visual gags, all that fun stuff, and it all added to the story rather than ever taking away. I laughed hard at the same time I was aching for the characters. The tragedies were tragic, just heart-wrenching. Real cost. Real pain. Real fear.

This is storytelling at its best.

And they did it all with dragons.

Mind in a Whirl

2010-03-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Adoration of Jenna Fox.

Mary E. Pearson must feel an immense satisfaction at having created such perfection, such a beautiful piece of literature. As for me, my head is still spinning so fast from all the stunning ideas, I don't know if my thoughts will settle down and let me get any writing done this afternoon.

Wow. One incredible book. And it's science fiction. YA science fiction.

The renaissance is here.

The Sound Box

2010-03-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today we'll cut the sides of the sound box and make the joints. You'll want to use the 1/2 inch blade on your band saw for clean, straight cuts.

To make the sound box, you need two boards, 4 ft by 3 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch. I get mine at Lowes. From one board, mark and cut a piece 29 3/8 inches long and another piece 12 inches long. Then from the other board, cut one piece 29 3/8 inches long and one piece 3 1/2 inches long.

Lay the box out. It helps if you have one of these cutting mats with a grid on it. I like to make a note on the inside of each board which direction is the top, bottom, front, and back of the box. I also draw a line down the middle of the inside of the top piece and the bottom piece of the box.

Next, take a your pencil and sketch the cuts for the joints. The sides are at slightly less than a 90 degree angle from the bottom of the box, and slightly more than 90 degrees from the top, so you'll need to angle the joints accordingly. The joints should be 1/8 inch deep at the deepest part, and a little less than that at the shallow part.

Raise the guide on your band saw so that it's high enough to get the board in there sideways, and very carefully cut the joints. Then reassemble the box and check to see if the joints are good. On this one the angle got too deep, so I took it back to the band saw and cut a little bit more off the outside edge.

Once you have all the joints cut, measure the box from the top to the bottom and make sure it is nearly 29 3/4 inches. If it is longer, you may need to make your joints a little deeper or the arch and pillar piece won't fit. If it is much shorter you may need to go back to Lowe's and get some more boards and try again.

But if you did it just right, you can slide your assembled box into your arch and pillar piece and stand it up like this:

Arch and Pillar

2010-03-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

If you're not familiar with harp terminology, the arch of a harp is that curvy part on top where the strings attach to the pins. The pillar is the piece that holds up the arch. In traditional harp making, these are cut as two different pieces and joined. I keep things simple and cut them as one piece out of plywood. Here's the template:

The grid is marked in inches. The green lines are the outline for the arch and pillar piece, while the red lines show where the box will go.

Trace the pattern for the arch and pillar piece onto a 4 ft by 4 ft sheet of 3/4 inch plywood. Lay the pattern out so the pillar runs along the grain. You should have enough room to cut out two. One for now and one for later, or one for yourself and one for a friend:

Rough cut the pieces using a circular saw or a table saw, and then cut them out with a 1/4 inch bandsaw blade. Sand the edges to get off all the bandsaw marks, and then fill any gaps with wood putty.

Next time: The Sound Box

How to Make Your Own Irish Harp for around $250

2010-03-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I'm going to start blogging about my harp-making process. This time, I'll include diagrams, plans, and instructions. In other words, YOU, dear reader, should be able to do it for yourself.

Here is what you'll need:

Complete hardware kit for the 29 String Studio Harp available at harpkit.com. This includes strings, pins, wood screws, finishing nails, and even a tuning wrench. $74
A sheet of 1/8 inch, 5 ply aircraft birch laminate, at least 12 inches by 29 inches, cut with the grain running parallel to the short side. This can also be ordered from harpkit.com, but you may be able to find it cheaper somewhere else. Be sure and let them know which way you want the grain. $60
Another sheet of 1/8 inch plywood, same size, but it doesn't need to be aircraft quality. 3 ply is fine. This will be for the soundbox back. $10
One 4ft by 4ft piece of 3/4 inch oak plywood. This is for the arch and pillar. Available at Lowes. $35
Four solid wood boards, 1/2 inch by 3 1/2 inches by 4 feet, also available at Lowes. They call them craft boards, and they come in oak, poplar, and pine. I recommend the oak or poplar. These will become the soundbox and part of the pillar as well. $20 - $40.
A piece of 1/4 inch by 3/4 inch oak batten, 5 feet long, for the string rib. $5
Your favorite woodworking tools. I use a circular saw, a band saw, and my Dremel (which has a router attachment). A table saw and a jig saw would probably work instead, if the jigsaw is big enough handle the 3/4 inch thick oak plywood. You will also need sand paper of various grits, 50 - 200, and paint brushes or soft rags for staining and varnishing. If you don't already have woodworking tools, I'm sorry but your harp is going to be more expensive than I said. But if you don't already have woodworking tools, you probably want to start with a simpler project. Just a suggestion.
A small bottle of gorilla glue and the strongest 30 minute epoxy you can find. $10
A small can of wood stain and a small can of polyurethane. Even if you have these in the garage already, you may want to get fresh, new stuff. Especially when it comes to the polyurethane. $12

Go round up your supplies! Next time I'll post templates for the arch and pillar piece.

Wishing for Dragons

2010-03-10T19:40:00.000-08:00

When Pixar came out with the film "Toy Story," at first I was disappointed. Sure, talking toys were cute, but if someone had handed me a computer animation studio, I would have made something with dragons.

As time went on I came to love "Toy Story," along with the rest of Pixar's unusual fantasy films. Cars that talk? A rat that wants to be a chef? A fish whose son gets kidnapped by a dentist? The ideas sound like they will never work, but time and time again, they pulled it off---with great storytelling.

But now Pixar's rival animation studio Dreamworks has finally made the film I've been waiting fifteen years to see:

Looking forward to reviewing it on March 26th.

Dear Dad

2010-03-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

My seven-year-old son pushed a much-folded sheet of paper into my hand. "I wrote a letter to dad at school today. Will you give it to him when he gets home?"

"Sure." I tucked the letter into my jacket pocket.

My son ran off to play with his brothers. At first I just sat on the front porch step and watched them bike round and round the driveway, but after a few minutes, curiosity tickled. I unfolded the letter and began to read:

Dear Dad,
Why do you do your job every day? Is it because we need mony to buy food? Is it because we need mony to survive? Is it because we need mony for clothes? Anywaies I like school this year.

"Mom," my son interrupted. I glanced up to see him standing in front of me. He looked very serious and a little hurt. "It isn't polite to read other people's mail."

Springtime!

2010-03-02T19:18:00.000-08:00

Late-winter sunshine poured over me as I snuggled back in my coat against the park bench, watching my son dash around the playground with the other children whose parents and caretakers had been tempted out by the pleasant weather.

A tiny, gleaming speck fell through the bright air. Puzzled, I pursed my lips and watched as I became aware of a strange rain coming down all around me. I could see nothing collecting on the pavement, but every few seconds a bright dust mote fell like a tiny meteor.

Curious, I tipped my chin up to see what was above me. A pine tree. Fat ropes of green bulbs dangled down from the ends of the branches. Bulbs that were sprinkling...

POLLEN!!! AHHHHHH!!!

I bought a new bottle of allergy pills at Costco today.

Research and Development

2010-03-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

What part of the writing process do I like the most? It's hard to say. I know I love research and development. Yesterday I had my college physics text open as I scribbled equations in my notebook and made sketches for interplanetary spacecraft. I also read for hours about the history of slavery, from the Israelites in bondage in Egypt to modern-day child camel jockeys in Saudi-Arabia.

I just have to make sure that all of this exciting research doesn't overshadow the plot.

Last night, in looking over my work for the day, I clapped my hands to my head and exclaimed, "I started out with this fun little swash-buckling space-pirate adventure story, and now I'm having to draw on my knowledge of the entirety of human civilization!"

My daughter shouted from the other room, "That's because you're the only one who is going to do it right!"

At Last!

2010-02-25T11:23:00.000-08:00

I finally, finally made a recording I like of my harp tune, "Hedgerows and Fences." I wrote it years ago, when I was new to the harp, and when my harp teacher heard me struggling through it the first time she said, "Why do you write such difficult pieces for yourself? You should start with something easier. It's going to take you forever to learn to play that."

She was right. But here's the sweet success:

http://gnomonkeep.org/harp/hedgerows.mp3

And then my harp teacher laughed at me and said, "But you're going to be famous someday."

That remains to be seen.

A Visit to Hoover Dam

2010-02-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

My parents came for a visit last week. On Friday we took them to Hoover Dam. Or maybe they took us, since they paid for the tour tickets.
The tour began with a movie that looked like it had been made in the 1980's. To a triumphant soundtrack, it enumerated all the wonderful benefits of Hoover Dam—cropland protected from seasonal floods, the recreational opportunities at Lake Mead, hydroelectric power. When the film ended and the lights went up I leaned over and muttered in my twelve-year-old son’s ear, “That’s called propaganda.”
“I know. I’ve seen it before.”

We took an elevator five hundred feet down into the canyon wall. Deep underground, water seeped through the porous volcanic rock, leaving sparkling white mineral deposits on the damp walls. Our tour guide led us down a tunnel and under a “Fallout Shelter” sign. Fallout shelter? My science-fiction-writer brain began clicking. Fifty people are on a tour of Hoover Dam’s hydroelectric plant when a nuclear bomb strikes Nellis Air Force Base. Trapped in the fallout shelter five hundred feet below the surface, what will they do? Who will become their leader? Will they open the door for the next tour group even though there’s barely enough room for them as it is? Can they still use the fifty-year-old food and water stored down there during the Cold War? Will any of them leave to find family and friends in spite of the deadly radiation sifting down over the Las Vegas Valley? How will they pass the time for the next two weeks while they wait for the deadly radioactive isotopes to decay? Pictionary, anyone?

I admired the huge water pipes that feed the hydroelectric plant, and the massive spinning turbines in the power house. Then we took the elevator back up to the museum. My favorite part of the day was watching the time-lapse photography of the dam rising up from the canyon floor, like a weird grey fungus climbing the walls. In the museum they have a huge cement bucket like the ones that poured the dam, and a cut-away of an electricity-generating turbine you can walk right through. Wow! I also loved the big star chart in the terrazzo marble tiles surrounding the dedication monument. Maybe some distant future archeologists can decode the English language using that star chart.

The tour guide told us that the dam is expected to last for two-thousand years. At that time it won’t be the cement starting to break down, it will be the silt buildup behind the dam that will be a problem. I wondered what it would be like to come back in two-thousand years and see what is going on. I wonder if they have a plan to deal with it. I guess that doesn’t make sense. By then the technology may be so advanced, there will be ways to solve the problem we haven’t imagined yet. Or else so reversed that there’s nothing we can do.

While we walked along the top of the dam and admired the view down to the roiling river below, my dad told me that my very own great-grandfather had been here during the construction of the dam. Farming wasn’t so good up in Overton in the 1930's, so great-grandfather had come down to Boulder City and opened a dairy to supply the dam workers and their families with milk.

Cool.

As we drove away, craning our necks to get a last look at the new bridge under construction high over the dam, I felt mighty proud to be a human being. We do things! Big things! I wondered if our nation could get together and do a big project like that now.

I looked up at the new bridge again, and answered yes.