The Foolish Frog, by Pete Seeger

This short, animated film is a classic Pete Seeger story-song. I've presented the story in preschool programs (sans banjo), and it works as long as I refrain from attempts to imitate Pete Seeger. Sometimes, when I need to cheer myself up, I listen to "The Foolish Frog." As Steve Martin says, "The banjo is such a happy instrument. You just can't sing a depressing song when you're playing the banjo."

Silver Slippers

Ever since I read the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, which featured both silver and gold slippers, I fancied a pair of silver slippers for my own. After reading L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, whereby Dorothy wears silver shoes* (the ruby slippers were created for the film), I only wished for them more. However, there were a lot of beautiful things I wanted-- not necessarily to own, but to enjoy in some capacity.

LoneStarMa convinced me that my storytelling outfits would not be complete without the silver slippers. I ordered a pair of ballet slippers for myself, and a smaller pair for Lucia. The first night she wore the slippers, Lucia danced around the room, admiring her reflection in the glass door to her room. Now, she only takes the slippers off when she has to. When Philip the Pun last babysat, Lucia attempted to convince her "Uncle Phil" that she needed to wear her silver slippers to bed to keep her feet warm. Since Lucia is a girl who likes to run around barefoot when the rest of us are shivering, Uncle Phil remained unswayed.


*If you'd like to read about the populism theory of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, whereby the yellow brick road is the gold standard of currency and the silver shoes represent the "free and unlimited coinage of silver," take out your magnifying glass and click here .

The Ukulele revolution starts in the home

The new DZ Flea ukulele arrived today. After some initial protestation over the necessity of tuning the wee instrument, Lucia started to strum "Polly Wolly Doodle" and strike dramatic ukulele-player poses. Now she's doing windmills to "Cape Cod Girls" and other rollicking sea shanties. I can't keep up.


Psssst... what isn't pictured here:

Lucia: You don't play the ukulele!
Alkelda: Fine, you play the ukulele, and I'll play the guitar.
Lucia: You don't play the guitar!
Alkelda: That's not fair. You don't get to tell me I can't play the guitar. That's like me telling you that you can't play with your dollies.
Lucia: You don't play! You don't! (Bawl, screech, wail)
Alkelda: Bede, please come home. My daughter is oppressing me.

I'm not kidding. Sometimes Lucia says, "You don't sing it! You don't dance." I feel as if I'm in the middle of the film "Footloose" and Lucia is the character played by John Lithgow. There was a time when we sat next to each other and made music.

Two Frogs Discover Treasure

Thank you all for your good wishes regarding the death of my grandmother. I have some good stories about her that I plan to tell in the future. Speaking of storytelling, 2007 is the year that I launch my storytelling business. For now, it'll be a hobby business. As Lucia gets older and spends more time in school, I'll see where I can take my storytelling. I'm thankful to all of you who have encouraged me.

Next month, Saints and Spinners will be two years old. I'd like to do something to celebrate. Maybe I'll make-up some downloadable/printable swag. Maybe I'll have another Journal of Alien Contact story ready, as Lone Star Ma requested. Maybe, just maybe, I'll have that puppet-show done. One thing I've got to say about the puppet-show: I'm never working with people-puppets again! I prefer working with animals, even if those 5 little monkeys tend to be a bit twitchy.

As of now, here is my placeholder blog:
Farida Dowler

Here is the clip-art mock-up of my logo:

My Grandma

I found out today after my interviews at the American Library Association Midwinter meeting that my Grandma Anne (my father's mother) died last night. I feel really lucky that I had Grandma Anne for all of my childhood and my adult life up until now. Still, I'm a bit sad. Please understand if I'm either uncommunicative or overly-talkative over the next while. I miss her.

Library Swag

Today was my first day at the ALA Midwinter Conference. I was really lucky, and serendipitiously met up with old friends from grad school and the New York library scene. (Hey friends! I hope you'll make it to the blog over the next week.) I haven't seen Fuse yet, but I am hoping she can tear herself away from the task of judging the next Newbery award and attend the School Library Journal cocktail party tomorrow night.

In the meantime, I scored a lot of library-related swag: pens, posters, pins that light up, tote-bags, and even a few non-traditional items like a scented candle, a manicuring set, and a real faux-gold frog lapel pin. My favorite item thus far was not free. I bought a Banned-Book bracelet at one of the booths:



Bracelets designed by Carolyn Forsman

Stockstock

Scott Dierdorf, the sharpest guy in a fishsuit you'll ever meet, is co-hosting the Stockstock Film Festival online this year. If you've ever had an itch to make a film, here's your free chance to do so.

Every year, Stockstock producers compile a film reel of stock film footage that they've collected from the Prelinger Archives. Festival entrants download the reel and create a 2-minute digital film using that footage. You can add audio or graphics, design new treatments, cut it up, tell a story -- basically, you are encouraged to abuse the reel as much as you can. The one catch is that you can only use the footage provided -- you can't introduce any other footage.* Amateur and experienced filmmakers alike have participated in the festival in the past, but Stockstock producers are hoping to expand their entrants and audience this year by making the footage available online.

The film reel is now available for download from stockstock.org, and entries are due Feb. 11. You can view past entries here. I'd hoped to make a Stockstock film this year, but as you know, I am still in mid-production with my puppet show. Gadzooks. The good news is that I'm busy with work on launching my storytelling business (a hobby business, but a business nonetheless).

*Unless you're one of the producers of the Stockstock Film Festival, in which case, you can cheat like dogs playing poker.

Play on a Snow Day

Snow days and sick days have kept Lucia out of school for a week. She is too young and I am too old to enjoy time off from school. Despite trips out into the snow, we were both restless. Yesterday, I brought out the Playmobil playground set pieces I'd been collecting over the past while, and sewed a playmat to bring it all together. Sewing the playmat was a pleasant diversion from potty-training. To date, potty-training is the most tedious part of parenting for me. Dan Zanes said, “I can't get too emotional about songs about learning to eat with a fork or tie my shoe." I'm guessing that Zanes is in no hurry to compose a learn-to-use-the-potty song. Neither am I, but if I do become inspired, I'll let you know. The lyrics will be to the tune of "Going to the Zoo."

Library grrrl

Hey all,

If you're going to the ALA Midwinter Conference in Seattle, Washington this weekend, I'd love to see you, even if it's just a wave from across the exhibits hall. I've been looking forward to this particular conference ever since I moved away from New York City. I miss my old friends and colleagues from NYPL. Many of us have dispersed. It's a bit humbling to know that colleagues who have started their careers the same time I did are now managing branch librarians and award committee members. It's not as if my friends had pegged me "Least likely to pause her career in order to stay home with her child," but there are times when I am rueful about having left a 30 hour job with benefits and paid holidays. Truth be told (I get stomachaches when I lie), I quit my salaried job a year before I got pregnant. Officially, I quite because I believed I could make a steady living a substitute librarian while pursuing my writing career full-time. They say, "Don't quit your day job," and I did just that. It was the proverbial "jump off the cliff" into who-knows-where. Had I thrived as a freelance writer, people could say, "How inspiring, she followed her dreams, blah blah." Really, I wanted to see what would happen. If I didn't quit my job (which had a schedule that was leading to burn-out), I would have wondered what my life would have been had I not had the chutzpah to leave.

Did I make the right decision? In the short term, no. However, the long-term effects are still up for debate. After I gave birth, I was glad that I didn't have to think about leaving my child in someone else's care. I was relieved that I had made my decision to put my library career on hold before the era of multiple night-wakings and round the clock nursing. I would have gone back to work had there been need to do so, and yes, I know how extraordinarily lucky I was that the family could survive on one income. I was glad to know that my colleagues who had both children and full-time salaried jobs also had parents in the area who would take care of the grandchildren.

I don't miss my library work schedule, but I do miss my colleagues. I miss talking about children's books with patrons. I miss my colleagues and I trading wacky patron stories. Oh, whoops, we didn't actually do that last bit. Really!(Uh-oh, here comes the stomache-ache.)


Photo: Pre-pregnant Alkelda in her usual reference desk attire.

Just Us

Icon by Robert Lentz

I grew up in a school system where we studied the African American experience(s) in almost all aspects of the curriculum. In fourth grade, the academic highlights for me were:

*Presenting my luminary, George Washington Carver, as if I were telling the audience an autobiography

*The Black History knowledge bowl

*Helping to write a class-produced rhyming couplet poem about Harriet Tubman

*Book report as a commercial for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor

Even though I was in the so-called “Gifted and Talented,” program, I was strictly bottom-shelf in the social hierarchy, and didn’t show signs of brilliance to compensate (though I assumed that one day I’d be a children’s book author of some renown). I felt so powerless, too. People were mean to me, and sometimes I came up with retorts, but most of the time, the confrontations ended up with me crying. However, I got fierce when people were mean to other people. Perhaps that is why I kvelled to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. When our Language Arts teacher assigned us to write essays about how we thought Rev. King would view the world today, I wrote out every mean, racist thing I had heard my classmates say. I wrote that Rev. King would be appalled. I didn’t name anyone specifically, but I quoted the conversations as I remembered them. I was venting, not tattling.

However, I did not expect my teacher to read my essay aloud to the class.

No one confronted me afterward. How could they? No one was going to admit s/he said what I had quoted. Still, I wanted to hide myself. It was as if I had stood up and said, “You all out there are so very, very bad and by implication, I am so very, very good.” I didn’t feel good. I just felt angry about injustice. I knew Rev. King was angry about injustice, too. I admired him for actually doing things to dissolve the rage and promote peace.

I know Rev. King wasn’t perfect. I know that he made mistakes just like other human beings. There were times when I was frustrated with my knowledge of his faults, because I was worried that the flaws would negate the good things Rev. King had done.

They don’t. So, thank you, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (flaws and virtues and everything). Thank you for doing your part to bring peace and justice into our lives. May we all continue the work.

Wedding Anniversary 6

Photo by C.B. Bell III

Remodel

After flooding in our basement made it imperative to rip up the carpet, Bede redesigned the game room using three-dimensional mapping technology of Google SketchUp. While Bede comes from a family of proud DIYers, his particular style of renovation stems from his enjoyment of cartography as a hobby. Sometimes, people even pay Bede to design maps for them.

If you follow the link for the game room remodel, you'll notice the clownfish carpet in one corner. Bede used that icon to represent Lucia's new play area. This is what the carpet looks like in the IKEA catalog:


At Lucia's request, here is the clownfish carpet I made for her dollhouse:



No, I'm not crafty by nature (though I have admiration for people who are). I'm just sick from my petty cold. Other than emptying the dishwasher, sewing that dollhouse carpet was the one activity I completed today.

Kertyschoo*

I'm sick. We're all sick. Blech. Here's a fairy tale about a man who learned from a sage that he would die after sneezing three times: How An Old Man Waited For Death. According to The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, the wolf's huffing and puffing were simply results of a bad cold. I wonder if there are any fairy tales with titles such as "The Girl With the Running Nose" or "The Three Magic Cough Drops."

Blech.

*This is how Peter Rabbit sneezes.

Lisa Yee's Book Title Contest

Lisa Yee, author of Millicent Min, Girl Genius and Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time is running a book-title contest. Her rules:

1. Think of a title from a children's/middle grade/young adult book.

2. Change the FIRST LETTER of ONE of the words to make it into a whole new title.

3. Then add a sentence describing the new book.

My entry is for the book Six-Dinner Sid, by Inga Moore, called Six-Sinner Sid:



Sid, a proud, gluttonous cat, is furious that the seventh deadly sin, "lust," eludes him and vows to hunt down the vet who neutered him... right after Sid takes his mid-morning nap.

Your turn!

Thanks to Fuse#8 for the link.

Weekend Notes

Yesterday, our friends had to cancel their plans to visit us on Three Kings Day. We shall take our cake over to another gathering today, and bring the Christmas crackers with us. Before the party, we'll head over to the Eastside to see Captain Bogg & Salty in concert.

By the way, I had thought Brad the Gorilla retired his blog. Imagine my surprise when I found this.

Eleventh Day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
A new (on sale) Nativity.

The Nativity set I had admired for much of December 2006 was on sale at 40% off. As there were a couple days of Christmas left (ending on Epiphany, January 6th), Lucia and I arranged the set on the hutch with the Magi traveling one shelf above the creche.

If you're wondering why the Magi are traveling with a giraffe and a zebra, it's probably because the folk-art creators, Maurice and Kelly Dallas, mainly craft Noah's Ark sets. Follow the link to see some of their more intricate designs (and no, our on-sale Nativity set was not originally hundreds of dollars as the link might indicate).

Tomorrow, the House of Glee is having a Three Kings' Day party with a few friends. This is the first time since college since I've organized any such venture. Traditionally, the baker puts a bean into the cake batter and whomever gets the coin is the king/queen of Three Kings Day.* In Louisiana, a tiny plastic baby takes the place of the coin and whomever gets the plastic baby has to throw the next party. All these years I never took seriously the possibility of someone breaking teeth or choking on the various objects** I dropped into the batter, but now that I have a child, I'm Ms. Safety Woman. I shall bake a hazelnut into the cake to prevent the former and make sure everyone mashes the cake to bits before eating in order to prevent the latter. We have some Christmas crackers we forgot to bring out on December 25th, so we'll distribute the crackers at the party. As each cracker comes with a paper crown (in addition to the corny joke and the prize), it seems appropriate that we ended up saving the crackers for Three Kings Day.


Adoration of the Girlie


Adoration of the Playmobil dollies

Notes:
*While the Biblical passages do not state how many Magi/Wise Folk/Kings actually traveled to visit Jesus, tradition holds that there were three Magi, and their names were Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. I honor the tradition.

**For example, a ring symbolized who'd get married next and a coin symbolized who'd come into great wealth.

The Mongoose That Played Sitar

Ulric plays an original composition on the guitar that is heavily inspired by "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."* In the song, a mongoose** travels throughout India carrying a sitar. He encounters different animals (a tiger, a jackal, etc.) who want to eat him. The mongoose challenges each animal to a sitar-playing contest. If the other animal wins the contest, that animal gets to eat the mongoose, but if the mongoose wins, he gets to continue on his journey. Fortunately, the mongoose is a virtuoso sitar-player and escapes each time with his life. As far as I know, there is no golden sitar for the grand prize. Ulric prefers to keep the story realistic, after all.

Addendum: Ulric says, "The Mongoose also pulls out other instruments (fiddle, Ud, ukulele, Japanese stringed instrument, etc), but those are kind of random."

By the way, here is a clip of Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with bassoons. (Fuse#8 and Goddess of Clarity should be pleased.) The sound quality is low, and I recommend you use headphones in order to appreciate the nuances of Colbert's and Dinello's bassoon performances. Urgh.

Notes:
*This is a McSweeny's link. Cheers to Nonny!
**The plural of mongoose is "mongooses," not mongeese, in case you were curious. I was.

Silver Boots and Broken Hearts

I know these ballet slippers are not silver boots. They're still on my wish-list. I wouldn't turn down silver boots, either.



Lucia was grouchy all day today. "You don't play guitar! You don't sing!" she said in her most imperious toddler voice. I asked, "Do I have to sequester myself in my room in order to practice guitar?" and she said, "You don't sequester!"

Today was Lucia's first day of group speech therapy, and tomorrow, her new schedule with Plum Creek School begins. I am glad for it. It's lovely to miss my daughter for a few hours and then see her. It's much more pleasant than wishing fervently that everyone in the world would leave me alone for five lousy minutes. If I don't make sure to get little pockets of time to myself, my brains addle like runny scrambled eggs.

Tonight, Lucia requested I sing, "sad songs about the big silver boots and broken hearts."* I started out with "I Know Where I'm Going" and "I Am A Maid of Constant Sorrow." Then, I started ad-libbing about the woes and tribulations of brushing teeth and donning pajamas for bed. I ended with a full-throated lament about how no one understands the hard times of children under 5. The sad songs cheered her up. Bede said, "Oh no! Our daughter is going to become a country-western singer." I just hope Lucia takes after Diana Jones more than Shania Twain.**





*For the literary context of this request, read Mr. Putter and Tabby Toot the Horn, by Cynthia Rylant.

**Okay, okay, "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" is one of my guilty pleasures. You can take that piece of information and use it for extortion purposes later on, after I become famous for my pithy ditties about superheroes and tricycle races. I still don't want my daughter parading around in sequinned brassieres and stiletto heels, thanks.

Catch that Flea

Happy New Year!

Here is the 2007 Grammy nominees list for Best Musical Album for Children:

"Baby Einstein Meet The Orchestra"-- Various Artists
"Beethoven's Wig 3: Many More Sing Along Symphonies"-- Beethoven's Wig
"Catch That Train!"-- Dan Zanes And Friends
"My Best Day"--Trout Fishing In America
"The Sunny Side Of The Street"--John Lithgow

To celebrate, Dan Zanes is giving me (and a few others, for a price) a Flea ukulele: