We're on the road to paradise - here we go, here we go

My driver's license is suspended in North Carolina.

When the young woman at the DMV who was trying to renew my license for me this morning looked up from her computer and asked, frowning, "Have you ever lived in North Carolina?" I knew exactly what was up.

In the late 1980's, I worked in the insurance industry - I worked for a company that serviced the customers of the state insurance funds, to be exact. If you get too many tickets or accidents and the regular insurance companies don't want you, if you want auto insurance, you have to get it through the state. This is true in most states. Those rates are HIGH, and, at least back then, the state funds did not offer a payment plan. So there is this secondary constellation of little finance companies that offer financing to the desperate youngsters and hard luck cases who need to drive so badly that they will pay thousands and thousands of dollars a year to remain insured. Needless to say, the interest rates were incredible. We couldn't do business in Michigan because they had strict(ish) usury laws. Usury! How often do you get to use that word?

It wasn't a shady company, exactly, but the people who made their way through it were not, as a rule, career insurance people. We had the ex-soccer player who is now the manager of a professional team in New Jersey. We had the guy with the Super Bowl ring who held all his "meetings" at sports bars. We had programmers whose IBM System 36 expertise was not in great demand elsewhere.

And we had my boss, a terrible human being who had moved from company to company, always in an executive position, dogged by harassment charges but possessing the kind of brash, incorrect sense of humor that made him a hit with the other upper-management guys, who all seemed to yearn for the days when they could make a pass at a secretary with impunity.

That guy once put his hands on my ass to steady me as I stood on a chair, then leered over his shoulder at the head of HR (HR!), "Ten more seconds of this and I'm probably liable for $10,000!"

I am very proud of myself that I replied, "Tick-tock, motherfucker."

Although they laughed - and he didn't move his hands. They thought I was cute, their little punk-rock mascot. I only wish I'd ever been asked to testify against him.

Anyway, he wasn't a terribly good strategist either. At one point, he lowered our rates and attracted so much business that all of a sudden the company had no more money to loan. He announced to the entire sales and marketing team that we were to do no work for a month. "Go play golf!" he decreed. And the rest of 'em all went to play golf. Yuck.

This was summertime, and I lived in an un-air-conditioned apartment in southwest Baltimore. Staying home wasn't too appealing, and I had no money to go anywhere. I did have a car, however, and a gas card, so one afternoon I got in the car and drove to Delaware. I slept in my car at the National Park beach. When I woke up, I drove to a diner and had a grilled-cheese sandwich. Then I drove south to the National Park on Assateague Island. When I got hungry, I found another diner and had another grilled-cheese sandwich. I drove south. I slept in the car. I danced on the beach. I ate grilled-cheese sandwiches, sometimes with a fried egg. I got as far south as Ocracoke Island.

I spent a night at a hotel in Nags Head, mostly to take a shower. I remember that shower. Five days of sunscreen, sweat, salt water, and mosquito repellent washed off me and out of my hair - I remember wondering where their graywater went, and feeling sorry for whatever was downstream.

At one point I left the Outer Banks and drove through Dare County. The sun went down while I was driving one of those two-lane state roads that arrowed straight through a swamp. It was DARK. I was nervous. Locals kept whipping along that road, pulling up right behind me, and then passing me with a roar in their pickup trucks.

Now, I know that some people are scared of cities. Perhaps rightly so. I've been mugged and broken into, and had cars stolen in cities, granted. But I'll wager that just about anyone who is not from the South can get really creeped out down there. We hear Creedence in our heads, and think of poor Ned Beatty, and we suspect that behind the wheel of every pickup truck rides a crosseyed inbred redneck who will drag us from the car, hold us captive in a tarpaper shack, and invite his legions of cousins to perpetrate unspeakable things upon us.

So, eventually, when the third or fourth pair of headlights came up fast and rode my bumper, I sped up... and of course, that was the cop.

He pulled me over, I gave him my license and registration, and he told me to close my window back up because of the mosquitos. Oh, the mosquitos on that trip are a whole 'nother story.

When I got back home, I sent Dare County a check to pay the ticket. Months later, I got a notice from them that they had suspended my license, along with my returned check. I called. Money order only, or I could pay in person. I got a money order and paid it. What a pain.

So today, when I called the North Carolina DMV to find out why they are still reprimanding me almost 20 years later, I find I have to pay a "license restoration fee" of fifty dollars. Can I pay over the phone with a credit card? No. "Do you know anyone in-state who can come in and pay it for you?" You've got to be kidding. Bob says I should have said, "Just you, ma'am - you're my only friend in North Carolina."

It was a great trip though.

'Cause nobody loves you when you're old and gray

Photo by David Yellen, from Hair Wars.

And just when my faith in humanity was all but shot, along comes Hair Wars. This knockout of a book, with sparkling, precise photographs by David Yellen and sunny, informative text by Johanna Lenander, documents and celebrates the Detroit-based Hair Wars tour, a showcase of outrageous feats of hair styling.

There are showgirl outfits made entirely of human hair. There is a monster truck made of human hair perched atop a woman's head. There are spiderwebs, there are bats. There are crowns, birds, helmets, a fishbowl, the Olympic rings.


Detroit Metro Times photos/George Waldman

The color! The eyelashes! The outfits! The models: beautiful real women, mostly African American and mostly not teenage stick figures. I imagine it takes stamina to sit for these hairdos. Lots of glue. Lots of glitter.

Lots of respect to the publishing company that put the money into this beautiful book, powerHouse Books of (where else?) Brooklyn, NY.

x 24

x 24, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

I am not thinking about a post-apocalyptic world.

That is a lie. Whenever I am not thinking about a sci-fi novel (and sometimes when I am), I am thinking about a post-apocalyptic world.

The littlest thing can set me off - an ailanthus tree growing out of an alley crack, an air-raid siren perched on a firehouse, Quonset huts, Daniel Day Lewis. Shouldn't he be the guy when they make the movie of The Road? Face like his, he looks like he's stared down plenty of cannibals.

Certainly I've always loved the post-apocalyptic fiction. A Canticle for Liebowitz - I invoke it every time I recommend microfilm as a preservation medium. Riddley Walker, possibly my favorite novel of all time. Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. The Stand by Stephen King. Mmmm - I would STILL read that book, even though it's hell long and I know how it ends (ludicrously) and I'm getting the idea that his son is a better writer. I even slightly enjoyed the first book of the Left Behind franchise because of the authors' vision of the Earth after the Rapture (don't get me wrong - it's offensive, reactionary bullshit, but it surely qualifies as "speculative").

Plus the movies and the TV: the Yangs and the Khoms episode of Star Trek; Planet of the Apes; that scene in Twelve Monkeys when Bruce Willis meets the bear in Philly... the world laid waste has great visual appeal. I'm even looking forward to seeing I Am Legend, even though I hate zombies.

So it's no surprise that Alan Weisman's "thought experiment," The World Without Us, was a real page-turner for me. The book attempts to describe how the planet would recover (or not) were the human race to disappear all at once. What would happen to the nuclear power plants? The hole in the ozone? The squirrels in the Bronx? His description of how a house would disintegrate, teased apart by moisture, succumbing to gravity, oh, I'm practically a big old Goth girl, I love that so much.

But more objectively, this book belongs on my Favorite Non-fiction Books of All Time list because the author allows his curiosity to lead him the length and breadth of the planet and from one end of the Dewey Decimal System to the other. His research plumbs history, paleo-history, geology, geography, weather, anthropology, zoology, physics, taste, economics, chemistry, and habitat ecology. He goes to the middle of the Pacific ocean, Poland, Kenya, New York, Arizona, and South Korea, among other places.

Something for everyone, in other words. Plus, it's a clear-eyed, sound, well-researched discussion of the extent of the environmental damage we have done so far and what will happen if it does not cease. I'll tell you what: no more plastic water bottles in our house, not after reading this book.

I have a list, by the way (what a surprise), of Favorite Non-fiction Books of All Time. In fact, I used to only read non-fiction: Jaime once wondered how anyone could expect me to do adult reader advisory when all I read was books about disease and natural disasters. But I've branched out, and the reason I feel ok about presenting this list now is that The World Without Us touches the subject of each and every one of these books (except The Professor and the Madman. And possibly Homicide.).

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. Desert ecology.

Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains by Howard B. Bluestein. Tornados.

Blood on the Tracks by Miles Bredin. Africa.

In the wake of the plague: The Black Death and the world it made by Norm Cantor. Bubonic plague.

Ecological Imperialism by Alfred Worcester Crosby. Ecology.

Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich. Economy.

A Gap in Nature, by Tim Flannery, pictures by Peter Schouten. Extinct animals.

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. Congo.

Magical Mushrooms and Mischievous Molds by George W Hudler. Fungi.

Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson. Hurricane.

The Soul of a New Machine. Tracy Kidder. Computer design.

Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. The Arctic.

City on Fire by Bill Minutaglio. Texas City refinery fires.

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Erik Newby. India.

The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich... by Lynn H. Nicholas. Art in WWII.

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. Economy, agriculture.

Stiff by Mary Roach. Corpses.

Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels by Robert Root-Bernstein. Folk medicine.

Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte. Garbage.

Low Life by Luc Sante. New York City crime.

A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky. Baboons.

Homicide by David Simon. Baltimore crime.

Rats by Robert Sullivan. Rats.

In Siberia by Colin Thubron. Siberia.

Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte. Visual display.

Bones: A Forensic Detective's Casebook by Doug Ubelaker. The original forensic anthropology story collection.

Krakatoa by Simon Winchester. Volcanic eruption.

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Oxford English Dictionary.

Rats, Lice and History by Hans Zinsser. Cholera.

Most honorable mention must be made of Commodify your dissent: Salvos from The Baffler, edited by Tom Frank and Matt Weiland. Anyone who's ever caught themselves buying an EXXtreeme Mountain Dew instead of a regular one should read this book and cringe.

Here, hold these and try not to look...

at the farm, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

... like you look.

I don't know. Sometimes when I'm weeding the Easy Nonfiction I find real gems, and other times I end up with... something like this.

And is it less scary inside?



It is not.

I know a girl who reminds me of Cher

The year that was:

January: I won't deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone

February: Yes I am Mother Nature's son

March: Eating Chex with Janet Reno

April: Giant steps are what you take

May: It's a sound salvation

June: From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow

July: To do the dishes, to clean up my room

August: In our sleep

September: Everything hurts

October: It starts with an earthquake

November: Call me Deacon Blue

December: The worst cookies in the world

Bow down before the one you serve

Christmas is going, the goose forgot his hat,
Please throw a penny at the old man's cat.
If he hasn't got a cat, then throw it at his head -
If you throw it at his head then he might be dead.

I love my husband. Funniest son of a bitch in Baltimore.

I swear, I haven't cooked a meal since Christmas day. Ok granted, on that day I cooked an eleven-pound fresh ham, hoppin' john, rice and greens, mashed sweet potatos, broccoli, sauerkraut, bread pudding and hard sauce... but still, it's been a solid week, 3 meals a day, and we've had enough parties, open houses, impromptu gatherings, and family dinners to keep us fed without me lifting a finger. A FINGER. Not even THIS one (and yeah, you know who you are).

...

For example, just today we were invited over our friends' house for breakfast. We had two open houses to attend later in the day, but we certainly wanted to hang in the A.M. with our home crew.

Good breakfast. We just got home from their house an hour ago - at 6:30 pm. It was like The Big motherfucking Chill over there: or, like, you know those mid-Pacific gyres? The horse latitudes where all the plastic garbage on the planet ends up? Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm not calling Molly & Sam's house a garbage slick - but nobody could leave that house today. There was champagne, coffee, O.J., waffles, potatoes, sausages, bacon, bean soup, pork & sauerkraut, apples, chocolate, biscuits, pasta, green beans, beer, schnapps... eleven kids having a terrific time, and 14 grownups cracking each other up and showing off their swearing skills whenever the children were out of earshot. Wow.

We have met some of the greatest people since Big Man started school. I can't believe how lucky we are.

When you don't have kids, you can have a fun raging late-night social life, but it often devolves into who's sleeping with whom and competing to see who has the worst neuroses. (and I'm not sayin' that's not fun!) When you have kids though, whenever the conversation lags, you can complain about your kid, and man, that's ALWAYS funny. Kind of like a poop joke.

Also?



booty booty booty!

At last, the bunkos have a home

For Nancy:



with love from us.

I was alone I took a ride I didn't know what I would find there

cooperation, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

"This one's for both of us! Come on, let's open it together!"

We've had like a week of happy and excited, cooperative, generous and helpful. And to think, all it took was about half a ton of plastic, batteries, cardboard, and paper.




Well, there was also some voluminous puking Wednesday night, but all told, I'll take the bad with the good.

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine

also makes a fetching cape, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

All right, I lied before about giving up on replacing the vinyl tablecloth that we've been using as a tree skirt.

I decided to make one.

I didn't come to this decision easily, mind you. I had to do much soul-searching (well, Internet searching) and I had to discover that such an item could be made using glue and felt and not with any sewing.

Also, I had an Idea. Jesus, next time I have one of those somebody just tip my head back and fill me full of bourbon until I forget my own name. Oh, I should warn - there WILL be uncontrollable cursing as I document this process.

The Idea was to decorate the tree skirt with the kids' hand prints. The Idea is that every year we'll get the kids to make handprints with craft paint and felt and we'll glue them to the tree skirt, so that we'll eventually end up with kind of a graphic representation of their growth. Didn't you always love putting your hand in the tiny plaster handprint you made in kindergarten?

So, I traveled to JoAnn Fabric. I bought 2 yards of grey polyester felt ($8 per yard) and 1 yard apiece of beautiful wool felt ($15/yard) in red, green, and ivory (so that each year we can do the handprints on a contrasting color of felt). I bought glue and craft paint and a pair of pinking shears.

I picked out a satiny twisted trim in crimson red. I stood there and thought to myself, "How much trim do I need? If the tree skirt is a 60" diameter circle... what is it? πr²? No, that's way too much. 2πr? Yeah!" I double-check when I get to the lady at the cutting desk. "What's the formula for the circumference of a circle? Is it 2πr?" The lady says, "I just multiply the radius by 4 and add a little when I have to do that," and I think to myself, "Jesus, no wonder there are so many accidents on the highway."

So at the cash register it is not lost on me that the semi-cool tree skirt I saw at Crate & Barrel was $80, and I am paying $90 for supplies to make my own. It was the pinking shears that did it.

I begin. I fold the grey felt in quarters, then 8ths to make a wedge shape. I trim it so as to have the largest possible circle. I cut out a smaller circle for the tree to go in the middle, and a cut from the edge to the middle.



I set up the kitchen for handprints. Newspaper on the kitchen table, paint mixed on a plastic plate. Ivory and a little gold, for a swirly effect. I lay out that expensive red felt. I think to myself, "Try not to kill anyone if the paint spills or if they smear the paint or... whatever, just TRY not to murder anyone." We make handprints without incident. Oddly, Mr. Four and Big Man have virtually the same size hands, even though they are almost 2 years apart.



I decided on ivory paint on red felt because red paint on ivory felt would look like a bloody hand, but now that I'm looking at this, all I can think of is the Uruk-Hai. Oh well.

I start gluing down the trim. Rather than mark out a border that is consistently 2" from the edge, I use my thumb. This works pretty well.



Until I run out of trim.

I am devastated. I was so proud of myself for remembering high school geometry, and I fucked it up anyway. I didn't make a circle of 60" in diameter, I made one with a 72" diameter. DUMB. DUMB! I am shy about a yard of trim.

So. I go back to JoAnn Fabric to get some more. I go to the JoAnn that has all my life been on the highway near my mother's house. It closed last year. I go to the JoAnn that is near where we live. They have the twisted satin trim in every color but crimson. I go to the JoAnn that is comparatively far from where we live. They, too, are out of red twisted satin trim.

One Friday afternoon, I load Mr. Four in the van and pick up Big Man and our friend Nature Girl from school. "We're going on a road trip, guys!" I chirp, and then proceed to drive ONE HOUR north to get to the JoAnn Fabrics that is in fact hell and fucking GONE from where we live. Luckily, they had the red trim. I had to restrain myself from buying the whole spool, just to fuck over some other desperate overachieving underestimating Christmas crafter. But the spirit of the season was upon me, so, loaded down with $2 worth of stupid trim, I bought the kids gummy bears and we headed back to the ranch.

May I say? JoAnn Fabric is, in general, an ok place to buy craft and sewing supplies. There are cheap remnants of fun fabrics to buy as dress-ups for the kids, there are bolts of crazy tulle and strings of sequins to look at with your kids. Granted, it takes a little patience for a four-year-old to hang in there while you're waiting in line to get your fabric measured and cut, or to not destroy the world while mommy ponders which of 14 shades of green embroidery floss would best represent the oak tree foliage in the background of yet another cousin's baby blanket, but there is frankly no need for the gauntlet of candy that you have to run in order to get to the cash register. Really, they can keep it together that far, but once they see the candy, it suddenly occurs to them how OPPRESSED they have been throughout the store, and they suddenly realize that mommy's buying all stuff FOR HER and they are getting NOTHING, and they suddenly must have a solid-sugar pacifier or else they WILL DIE.



Back home, I finish gluing on the trim. This time, I cleverly put a vinyl table cover between the felt and the table - previously, I had not realized that felt is porous enough for the glue to go right through, and I had glued the tree skirt to the tablecloth slightly.

I have enough trim left for a border around the inside hole too, which looks good. I cut out the handprints and glued them to the tree skirt too. This is the point at which I glued my hair into the project. Goddamn hair.



Almost done! Except for the JoAnn Fabric fiasco, this project didn't take long AT ALL. If I'd been at it all at once, a couple hours max.

I dug out some cotton embroidery floss and a needle to embroider each of our initials on our handprints.

Hm.



That green floss sure looks great against the red felt. Maybe I should embroider a border around each of the hands. AWWW, NAW! DON'T DO IT! The killer is hiding under the stairs - don't go down there!

Too late. I blew it. I have spent the past week and a half embroidering borders. I decided to do four different stitches, because, if you're going to fuck yourself, you might as well do it hard. Wait. That's - errrr.

Anyway. I pulled out my embroidery stitch book and found a couple good stitches, one of which apparently can only be done in a straight line.


Closed feather stitch in the book.


Closed feather stitch on the tree skirt.

You know what I'm going to say in the future about this part? I'm going to say that Big Man did it. Seriously. I'm going to say, "He was only six! Didn't he do a great job? For six?" Yes, that's right. I'm going to lie. If I say it often enough he will believe it himself.



The stitch I really liked, though - a nice sprigged stitch my Grandma used between the blocks of the wool lap blankets she stitched together out of the leftovers from making clothes for my mom and my aunt - wasn't in the book. I examined it closely and duplicated it. That was a nice little moment. Grandma's stitches were so even - she was obviously a machine when it came to these things. I have three of those lap blankets, and each one must have eighty feet of embroidery on it.



Tonight, I finished the motherfucker. Looks nice. My fingers hurt. FTW.

Last-minute new picture books, kid-tested

last minute new picture books, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Skippyjon Jones and the big bones by Judy Schachner
Last year, Big Man's kindergarten teacher said of the Skippyjon Jones books, "I feel like I'm sort of being manipulated to like these books, and I really just don't." She couldn't put her finger on what she didn't care for, and I'm with her. After all, I LOVE the chalky, colorful, detailed illustrations that are both quirky and technically accomplished; I like the title character, who is both independent and imaginative, and his tattletale little sisters and no-nonsense mom, with their fun names; and I adore Schachner's use of Spanglish ("Hola, dudes!") throughout. Hell, there's even a song or two.

I think what always bugs me about these books is the plot, weirdly enough. Accompanied by his crowd of Chihuahua friends, Skippyjon Jones assumes his alter ego, Skippito Friskito the great sword fighter, and goes on an imaginary adventure in his closet. And I swear, it's the adventure story that always falls apart. Even my kids get confused looks on their faces during the part where Skippito battles the giant bee / dances with the dinosaurs / whatever. I keep reading these books though, because Skippyjon and his family are great characters and I love saying their names. You guys want to start calling me Mama Junebug Jones, you go right ahead.

A closer look, by Mary McCarthy
A neato book about observation and scale for the youngest pairs of eyes. VERRY reminiscent of Steve Jenkins, with strong colors and paper collage art.

Water Boy by David McPhail
A nice, weird book about a boy's relationship with water - the water in his body, the water in his bath, the water in the environment. Like a caring teacher, David McPhail's characteristically quiet, rich watercolors get right down in front of the boy to observe his reactions to the ordinary and extraordinary manifestations of water in his world. Four really liked it.

Calendar by Myra Cohn Livingston, illustrated by Will Hillenbrand
The sparse text here was a little abstract for my four year old, but the energetic, slightly minimalist illustrations somewhat made up for that.

Meet the meerkat by Darrin Lunde, illustrated by Patricia Wynne
Patricia Wynne is a contract illustrator for the American Museum of Natural History, and while her somewhat clumsy mice and hominids in books such as Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle's Bones, Brains and DNA make you feel like maybe she's overworked, the keenly observed drawings of meerkats in this book by mammalogist Darrin Lunde show you what she can do given a single subject. This is an appealing little book about a popular little beast, a rare item in the Easy nonfiction area.

Bean Thirteen by Matthew McElligott
The faux-woodcut illustrations in this buggy book about division are just fantastic. Chunky, hip, and expressive, with a sophisticated, punchy palette. The story? Mr. Four and I said "Meh."

Phooey! by Marc Rosenthal
Where Once Upon a Banana does cause-and-effect with road signs, Phooey! does it with onomatopoeia. A bored kid kicks a can ("Phooey!"), which hits a cat ("BONK"), who falls out of the tree ("flump"), etc. All the while the kid, complaining that nothing every happens around here, walks right past all the exciting action. Rosenthal, who calls Celesteville "my utopia" in his dedication, displays a love of clean line and clear color totally worthy of Babar. We went through it twice to catch all the action.

The Police Cloud by Christoph Niemann
Christoph Niemann does a lot of work for The New Yorker. Maybe that's why Mr. Four and I just kind of didn't get this book. Four didn't understand that the cloud by his very nature cannot be an effective police officer. Because he's a puff of vapor, right? And I didn't understand why you would write a book in which the premise and the plot are so completely at odds. Plus I'm getting kind of tired of illustration that looks like Colorforms. I don't care if it's trendy or retro - it looks lazy to me.

Tap dancing on the roof by Linda Sue Park, pictures by Istvan Banyai
Linda Sue Park here does for the Korean poetic style sijo what Andrew Clements recently did for haiku - her clear, funny examples of this short poetic form in effect show kids how it's done. After reading poems like:

Pockets
What's in your pockets right now? I hope they're not empty:
Empty pockets, unread books, lunches left on the bus - all a waste
In mine: One horse chestnut. One gum wrapper. One dime. One hamster.

...it's almost impossible to not want to try it yourself. And Istvan Banyai? Do I really have to say it? The Goran Visnjic of illustrators. You just want to sit and stare.