Friday

Well it's been a busy and weird week, but it's Friday.

The Oregon Book Awards finalists will be announced Monday.

I started Pastoralia by George Saunders the other night and I've been enjoying it.

Tomorrow Laura has a soccer game in Sandy. I think Max and Michael might go to the PSU football game tomorrow night. It's the last weekend of September - hard to believe.

Here's a Stafford poem for all of us tonight:

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot—air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

—William Stafford

Football

Last night we had a little adventure and drove out to Estacada, which we had never driven to before. Michael, Laura, Max and I watched the Estacada football team get stomped on by the Gladstone Gladiators. One of Laura's counselors from Outdoor School is a cheerleader, and Laura wanted to see her cheer. High school football is fun to watch, especially on a crisp fall night. Finding our way back to Portland in the dark was a little confusing, but we made it! I was thinking it would be fun to drive to a different small Oregon town every Friday night to watch football. Or maybe just once a year, pick a different Oregon town. Or maybe just go once to Estacada and then not go anywhere else, but remember how much fun high school football games were when you were in high school, and how they still are fun to watch. And then go to the high school that is actually in your neighborhood, three blocks away, and watch games there.

Max has a football game today, and Laura has a soccer game starting in 40 minutes. Which means I'd better get moving!

Michele mentioned yesterday that Marianne Boruch is coming to PSU for a reading, and maybe even a craft lecture. So last night I ordered In the Blue Pharmacy: Essays on Poetry and Other Transformations by Boruch.

Sunday Daneen and I are getting together to talk about poems. Yes.

It's Official

I'm old.

How do I know this, you ask? Well. I was in a store today and I saw the latest issue of Grand, a magazine about being a grandparent. Donny Osmond was on the cover, with his new grandson.

Donny Osmond is a grandparent!

He was a teen idol when I was Laura's age. I used to buy Tiger Beat so I could get pictures of him. Holly and I used to watch the Donny and Marie show on Saturdays.

And now he's a grandparent.

It's official.

Wicked

We saw WICKED last night at the Keller auditorium. It was great, and we all enjoyed it! It's interesting to take a story that everyone knows and then imagine some other stuff about it (okay so that's not super insightful critical commentary, but it's Monday!) The sets and costumes were really amazing and very green. I like how they made up words. Dancing Through Life!

I saw Daneen and Zanni today (hey look, Zanni, I blogged about it first! But you can give the fashion report). It was great to see them and I hope Zanni returns to the Pacific NW soon. Yes! I think Zanni would make a good Professional Urban Cowgirl. We'd call her P.U.C for short! Then we'd just start calling her Pucky, and about ten years from now we'd forget why, but it wouldn't matter because she would always be our Pucky.

Max's team lost their first football game, but it was close.

Ploughshares has a blog, I discovered today.

Today is September 11.

We Recall 7th Grade

Anyone remember seventh grade? Did you like it? I can't remember if I liked seventh grade. I do remember when our Social Studies teacher read us all of Longfellow's Evangeline, and warned us he might cry at the end and then he kind of did cry.

Thanks to Josh Corey's blog, I found this - she talks to poets about what it was like to have their first book out. The Andrea Baker one was interesting. And Tony Tost didn't know what his book cover would look like until he saw it on Amazon!

Nico emailed me about the poetry bus. It's coming to Portland!

It is too hot I wish it were cooler.

Laura started seventh grade today. Our thoughts are with her.

Michael and I watched Elizabeth last night, the Helen Mirren one. I wonder if they would mind at my new job if I began to speak in the royal we all the time. Or at home; what would my family think?

We believe they would think we were freakin' weird.

September

Max starts fifth grade today! Laura begins seventh grade tomorrow.

Very sad about Steve Irwin. Laura and Max used to watch Crocodile Hunter all the time.

Last night I couldn't sleep so I started Veronica by Mary Gaitskill. I haven't read her in a while; I'm liking this book. I also read the new Poetry, which had an interesting article by John Barr on the state of poetry in America.

The only first day of school outfit I can remember very well is a dress I wore in Palo Alto - I think it was sixth grade? And the knee socks that went with it.

Summer went fast.