Our new spread for the “Practical Taxidermy” section of the book I’m blogging: The American Boy’s Handy Book, by Daniel Carter Beard, at Boy’s Almanac!

Finally, I’d like to show you my little project that I’ve kept under wraps. I’d like to introduce you to the Boy’s Almanac. I mentioned it on Flickr, but in my absentminded bliss I forgot to post a note here. That’s what it’s like being blonde. I should consider dying my hair.

Boy’s Almanac is a blog about one year, three boys and one book: The American Boy’s Handy Book by Daniel Carter Beard. This is the book every nostalgic man has kept in his library, the book many dads have cherished for their sons, but sadly, the book most boy’s aren’t really carrying around anymore because fun has become dangerous! For one hundred years, this book has taught young boys how to make blow guns, build huts out of pine boughs, rig ice yachts–it’s taught the art of dangerous living way before The Dangerous Book for Boys. Well, we picked the ‘Handy Book a while back and couldn’t resist the urge to follow some of Beard’s ideas, just so I could prove what a nut job I really am. And to prove, just for kicks and grins, that it’s a far more dangerous book than its modern contemporary.

For the record, I’m not alone, either, my cohort Alis is just as nutty. She’s dragged her son Seth into this, too. That accounts for the third boy, just in case you were assuming I was pregnant again. Because I’m not.

Hello?! Crazy!

Boy’s Almanac is a *fantastic* time sink, what with all the projects we are trying to replicate. You’ve seldom seen me at this space lately for good reason. It’s been somehow easier to vacillate, minutes at a time, between Flickr, twitter, Facebook even (shudder) but not here. The decision purely selfish; I need to renovate this space, I need to feel like coming here because it’s satisfied me enough lately to do all the above, quite frankly, and the sheets here smell so musty! It’s time to do the laundry. So, if you don’t mind my humming as I throw a load in and dust off the sidebars, I’ve got some cleaning to do. It would please me to no end if you left me to that business while you go check out Boy’s Almanac!

Thanks!

*s

Ford is in that whirlwind of development right now where literacy unfolds and reading kicks in. He is devouring books. On any given night you might find him lying on his back on the sofa, nose in a spy book, quiet as a mouse. I have been longing for this day. Suddenly, the whirlwind rests, content and cerebral.

He started his own pictoblog last week! a place where he can post his doodles and an outlet for his creative writing practice. This enables him to quickly express himself by dictating a story to me. I’m encouraging him to write his explanations at the bottom, too, so he can actually practice his penmanship. At this point, it’s faster to dictate, and the momentum isn’t lost– these small baby steps are very important.

If When you visit his blog, you’ll have to register as a user in order to leave a comment. Though it’s an initial hassle, from that point onward you’ll only have to login in order to comment and his site won’t get flooded with spam. Please leave him an encouraging comment and tell him what you think of his project. Feedback is a tremendously powerful thing at this age and I’d love to see a commitment from him strengthen over time as he realizes that an online sketchbook can become a place not only for self-expression but a springboard for storytelling and discussion and making new friends.

Thanks!
*steph

Alas, I don’t make girls.

On the other hand, the olive tree is in fruit.

So I picked some for a brining project.

I have no idea what I am doing! Does anyone out there have any pointers?
I’m following Mother Earth New’s “Cure Your Own Olives.” There are no expectations attached to this project, other than pure curiosity; this year the yield is low and this batch will be small. In fact, at this point, the joy is all in the harvesting–the sun on my shoulders; the cats gophering around my feet; the dog looking up at me with a ball in his mouth, just waiting; the feeling of connection I get with this land, caring for everything living on it and taking, in return, a small harvest in thanksgiving. It’s great.

For about a decade now I’ve watched people walk around with digital cameras strapped to their necks, and it’s been an uninspiring image: the stale, black camera strap either yawns alone or shouts out “CANON EOS” or “NIKON” expletives, as if we had any say in the matter. Insipid digital cameras!

This past year I’ve had a mission on my agenda: to find a vintage camera strap like the one my father used to hang his Yashika 35mm from. I figured it would be an easy task, but the lack of product out there on the resale market left me wandering around looking for something new? Some kind of replica? Why was I the only person looking for something like this? Why was everyone so complacent with the black camera strap advertisement? I mean, this is a basic accessory! Like a pair of good shoes, you’re going to wear this thing every day.

About a month ago I found this “vintage” tapestry camera strap from B&H camera, and ordered it. About a week later it arrived, but guess what? It was BLACK. I think I started to twitch. “Excuse me,” I started in on customer service, “but WTF?!”

Turns out, B&H staff has to pick, at random, whatever color strap comes out of a big box of assorted camera straps. You can’t request any particular color or pattern; you get what you get and you then throw a fit.

Enter a savvy businessperson with an eye for what’s NEEDED in the world of photography fashion: Souldier Straps. DUH. Thank you. Based in Chicago, these women buy out a warehouse of vintage rickrack and trim and then spin their gold in the form of guitar straps, camera straps and belts. And then they go the next step and hit the music festivals.

A couple of weekends ago, Damon & I were at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, half-drunk and sweating our boots off, and when we cooled off under the market tents, we discovered these way-cool straps and treated each other to our 2008 souvenirs. I bought him a floral guitar strap; he bought me this beautiful turquoise and gold camera strap. It only took us about an entire concert slot to decide on the final patterns. But man, was it totally worth it.

Words, captive in my head, vibrate like freshly-trapped squirrels in a dark, hollow crate. Spinning ceaseless, going nowhere, all in a panic. I can barely construct what I want to write, but I’m free to demonstrate my difficulty doing so.

My days are this: thin. Spread taut between nails, rapidly drying out at sunrise and split by the rising full moon. There is no honeycomb for thoughts, and very little time for guesswork. Each mark feels indelible: a pursed lip at the first grade classroom door, extracted by Ford’s exhausted teacher; the moment I yell at Chas for screaming joyfully into my ear (quite by his accident); the angular tension between my eyebrows.

Some people more in tune with their bodies and minds would suggest I can’t think straight because I am trying to do too much. I say I am fumbling while trying to live on my own terms.

True, I could focus on one thing or another. I could scour books tonight about childhood development to find a possible cause of Ford’s intense participatory excitement in school, or I could shrug it off to an active boy trying to live life on his own terms, as well.

I could say one hundred Hail Mary’s for the trauma I inflicted on Chas, who was just as angry with me for shrieking as I was for his screaming in my ear. How insane it is to expect a 4 year-old to ignore the power of his own ego: “Give it up, world! I’m the shit in this beeping, light-up Ben 10 Omnitrix watch!” You can’t hold in that kind of joy.

Who’s to blame, really? The energy within this house bounds, unmitigated, through each and every one of us within its walls in completely different ways. Some of us channel it better than others, that’s all. I think Damon rides this force on his bike all the way to work, through his day and back home again, for example. At the other extreme, I grab it by the throat, wrestle it into the box within my head, and let it vibrate for a couple of hours each night.

That probably explains the exhaustion.

Just when I think the well’s all gone dry, someone nudges me and reminds me that, No, all you have to do is write. You’re good enough. Its good. It’s all good.

Actually, I’ve been spending time elsewhere. Not on a longboard in Santa Cruz, I’m afraid (although, come to think of it, why not?!) but elsewhere online, a side project I kick-started recently that, when it’s all tweaked nicely, I’ll be ready to share.

For now, there’s quiet. A deep, resounding quiet out my bedroom window, streaked softly with an occasional passing freight on Interstate 85, about a mile away from my ear. It’s a quiet like the vaccum before a storm; we leave for Austin tomorrow morning, a long weekend. I don’t even know where our bags are. I might be happy enough just boarding the plane, empty-handed.

It’s the soulful quiet of contentment in the middle of a wild, roving universe.

Sleep tight.

In traffic she peeks over a ridge, and we point at her out the open window as we drive along the corridor, a narrow, quiet strip sidling the subduction zone between Klamath Lake and a steep weedy grade. And when the grassy plains appear, silver sage and golden verbascum, she takes shape as a queen of the valley below, blue and magestic, cloaked with white cloud and basking in the noon sun. We are at the rest stop on highway 9, just inside the California border, when she reappears this way. And we stop with two other cars to shake our legs and breathe her grassy yawn.

Like a lion cub, Chas scampers and climbs roadside signs and stone walls and hops over benches and under barbed wire fences. Ford, no less enthusiastic, shouts and sings, leaping off retaining walls and I, the lioness, shakes the flies off and squints in the sun, unfazed. Coralling them with a camera in hand, I watch them with soft eyes while keeping the horizon in sharp focus, taking a picture of each leap and pacing myself for the remaining voyage home. Occasionally I stop and squeeze sage leaves between my fingers. It smells of summer to me now. It is a new smell, a western delight, emblazoned on my brain by five summers spent in California.

Some people here believe that, if you live in California two years, you can easily return home (in our case, Austin). But if you stay five years, you will never want to leave. I wonder, is this true of all places? Does our limbic system operate by formula, gathering and stockpiling sensorial mementos as phantom roots spread? I had forgotten about the three summers we had lived here, when Ford was born. I remember on the return to San Jose, smelling eucalyptus among five o’clock traffic on 280 and savoring the sinister blend of aromatics and hydrocarbons like the way a friend smells when you embrace them after a long journey. I had not particularly wanted to return to California. I was very happy in Austin.

I crouch down, closer to the ground, to get my head closer to the bees and the swinging grasses. The boys are yelling and chasing each other, and Damon is paused on a bench. The bees circle my head and I grip a sage branch and give it a good, oily squeeze. And I smile.
Dare I say I’m growing very happy here, as well?

Shame on me! I haven’t shared my BFF, the girl that gets me places, freshly updated with her fancy new inverted moustache bars and stretchy turquoise cork wrap. Ok, that sounded weird. Introducing La Luchadora sin nombre: JUA!!! JUA!!

We are off tomorrow to the southern cascades for some pyroclastic bombastic redwoody goodness at Lassen and Crater lake. I’m packing all cameras, a hank of yarn, a tiny sketchbook and a uniball pen. The rest is up to mother nature.