Chatting & Touring for DKTBG

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of participating in an online chat hosted at THE MOTHERHOOD on the topic of navigating food allergies around the holidays, particularly Halloween. My co-hosts included Lori Sandler, founder of Divvies Bakery (whose awesome ghost-chocolate is pictured here), Barbara Rosenstein from the Food Allergy Initiative, and Huffington Post writer/"Peanuts in Eden" blogger Susan Weissman. On the archive page you can view a transcript of the complete talk, but the folks at the site also put together a helpful summary that articulates seven primary tips:

-Take the Focus Off of Food 

i.e. emphasize costumes, house decorations, and games.

-Practice Allergy-Friendly Treating 

i.e. host parties or create treat routes entirely free of certain allergens.

-Empower Your Kids 

i.e. let kids be the ones to pick out of the basket, versus handing them candy.

-Think of New Uses for Candy 

i.e. focus on candy variety in terms of a scavenger hunt or Bingo card, instead of as food; or use as currency to trade in for safe prizes or even money, Tooth-Fairy style.

-Safety First 

i.e. guard against cross-contamination and unexpected sources of exposure, such as via masks and haunted houses.

-Be Available at Your Children’s Halloween Parties 

i.e. give the visual assurance that the party host is in on the food-allergy plan, from seeing them speak with parents to using color-coded serving ware.

-Take Care of Kids’ Emotional Needs 

i.e. pay attention to making kids feel not only secure, but included.

The conversation brought back memories of Halloweens past that I'd almost forgotten. My mother always let me put elaborate effort into my costumes, perhaps realizing that was the part of the holiday I could enjoy best. I remember one year my poster-board butterfly costume had a five-foot wingspan--and the tails unwisely extended below my waist, making for a rather comical effort to sit down at the cafeteria table when I got to school. I would ask my parents their favorite candies (Almond Joys, Mounds), so as to have something to hunt for in what were otherwise meaningless bowls full of chocolate treats. I was ecstatic at the sight of a Jolly Rancher or a mini-roll of Lifesavers. 


Helping run Haunted Houses, I'd tense up at the pumpkin "guts" or peeled grape "eyeballs" or squishy spaghetti bowls where people were asked to blindly plunge their hands. Even though none of those were allergens for me, it made me aware that food was on the loose. Cottage cheese "brains" didn't seem out of the realm of possibility. 


As venues go, I love The Motherhood. Everyone shares such a positive attitude--it is all about constructive volunteering of ideas--and the technical mode of chiming in couldn't have been easier or more user-friendly. I'll definitely return in the future. 


I logged in from a hotel room outside Birmingham, where the night before I had served as the inaugural guest of the Visiting Writer Series at Indian Springs School. So within 24 hours I connected with two very different audiences--the moms and the kids. It meant a lot to me to see teenagers buy Don't Kill the Birthday Girl not because they have allergies themselves, but because they were intrigued by the voice. Maybe it'll be the science that they remember, or maybe it'll be my goofy stories. Either way, maybe reading the book will foster a bit of compassion, too, even if they don't realize it...a serving of green vegetables hidden under the mashed potatoes.


These past few weeks have worn me out. Yesterday I woke up in Jackson; today in Greenwood; tomorrow, Oxford. Day 18 of life in a suitcase. Still, the conversations make it worthwhile. I never knew there were so many different kinds of readers in the world until I began touring for this book. 

Sidetrips

My crazy drive from the Kripalu Yoga Center to Boston on Friday was a little crazier than I let on--or rather, crazy by choice. When I had arrived in the Berkshires on Wednesday, I'd experienced an incredible rush of nostalgia for my days at the Millay Colony in upstate New York--the September 2006 residency where I wrote many of the poems that would appear in Theories of Falling. Though I remembered daytripping to Great Barrington during my stay in Austerlitz, I hadn't put 2 + 2 together that Lenox, Lee, and all the other little Massachusetts towns are just minutes down the road.


I miss those days of blind energy. I wasn't on book tour, back then; I didn't have a book to tour with. I was just a girl getting lost in the mountains by day, writing poems by night, not sure where it was all going. So I decided to drive out to see MASS MoCA, one trip I'd never made in my Millay days (though some of the other artists had gone and loved it). And I promised myself that if I saw anywhere I wanted to stop along the way, I would. 


Random lake surrounded by fire-crowned trees? Yep. 

Random roadside truck full of fall produce? Yep. 

I talked with this guy for a bit; he happily elaborated on which gourds were for decoration, which for eating. I thought back to the pumpkins I've had over the years, from fat generic guys we'd pick out as a family--I'd hunt for perfect symmetry--to an albino "ghost" pumpkin I carved on the floor of my Brown College dorm (which smelled of pumpkin guts for the rest of the fall), to the mini guys my mother gave me when I had my first DC apartment and no doorstep to set a pumpkin out upon. One bright orange kind I would have gotten had he not told me it was actually a squash. He'd heard people who kept that particular variety on display for three, four weeks, then went ahead and cooked them. That sounded weird to him. 

The one thing he doesn't do, he told me, is travel. 

While the pumpkin farmer may not travel, his pumpkin got to ride with me all the way over to Boston, then back to DC. I'll be on the road on October 31 proper this year: making my back from Mississippi in time for a visit to the FDA on November 1, then hopping on a train to speak at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia on November 2. So when I saw my sister last night (she got us front & center tickets to hear David Sedaris read! he was funny! she is awesome!) I entrusted this guy to her care and safekeeping. 

When I got to MASS MoCa I discovered it was a quirky complex of 19th-century mill buildings. It opened in 1986 after having operated for 40 years as the home of the Sprague Electric Company, which did everything from design some of the early at-home music players to contribute technology to building the atom bomb in World War II. They've has done a nice job juxtaposing the original materials--exposed brick and iron--with surreal contemporary pieces such as this black-blob structure by Federico Diaz that crawls along the exterior. This is "Geometric Death Frequency-141."

I suspect the changing exhibitions are chosen in part for their ability to occupy the museum's vast spaces. This installation by German artist Katharina Grosse, "One Floor Up More Highly," fills a room the length of a football stadium. Since the piece comes down at the end of the month, I was lucky to catch it--it has been widely celebrated, and holds the distinction of having been pictured on the cover of both ArtForum and Sculpture Magazine. The porcelain surface glow of the carved styrofoam was great--as if icebergs, or a scene from the set of Superman. I thought the mixing in of cloth swathes among the rubble was intriguing. I'd be lying if I said I had an emotional response to the work. Still, I appreciated the spectacle. 

In contrast, I loved a series by Nari Ward exhibited as "Sub Mirage Lignum." "Sub," as in both "underneath" and "in substitution for"; "mirage," as in false or fleeting images produced by desire, refraction, a trick of the light; "lignum," which MASS MoCA pointed out is a shorthand for Lignum Vitae, "a tree whose bloom is the national flower of Jamaica." To put it another way: Ward is an alchemist of discarded objects.

Approached from the mouth, "Nu Collossus"--which takes its form from a traditional woven fishtrap--is a gaping maw, swallowing up bits of weathered furniture and farm equipment. It feels like a mid-turn tornado, laid upon its side. But from the other end you can appreciate the grace and even delicacy of the shape; in this way I found myself thinking of Martin Puryear, one of my favorite sculptors to work with wood. 

The other piece I connected with was in the "Memery" exhibit on "Imitation, Memory, and Internet Culture," which was housed in a space often given to up-and-coming artists. Penelope Umbrico, a Brooklyn artist, first assembled a matrix of photographs she calls "Suns From Flickr (2006-2007)." The piece quickly spawned a secondary phenomenon: people taking snapshots with the wall of irresistible sunsets, then posting those images on the web. So here you have it: "People with Suns From Flickr."

And, since the inspiring piece (I was going to write "original piece" but that isn't quite right) was on the adjacent wall, here is my contribution.

It wasn't until I was leaving that I registered that the blaze of orange leaves I'd taken for granted on my way in were not growing up from the ground but rather, suspended from the air. This is called "Tree Logic" by Natalie Jeremijenko.

I got back on the road and discovered Route 2, which I needed to connect to Boston, was closed. I'd have to go back the way I came. It started to rain. It started to rain harder. It had gotten late enough in the day that the mountain roads began to be crowded with school buses, which then stopped every 100 feet. That's the thing about sidetrips: you can turn the handle on the jack-in-the-box but you never know just how high he's gonna leap when the lid comes off. You just have to go with it. And I did.

Kicking Off the Boston Book Festival

Last night I made a drive from the Berkshires to Boston in the pouring rain, arriving just in time to grab a seat at "The Art of The Wire: A Discussion with the Cast and Creators."  The panel featured fellow DC writer George Pelecanos,  Donnie Andrews (the real "Omar"), Fran Boyd (Andrews's wife and the inspiration for The Corner, which in some ways was the prequel to The Wire), Tray Chaney (who played "Poot"), Robert Chew ("Prop Joe"), and Jamie Hector ("Marlo Stanfield").

That's them, seated left to right--I surreptitiously snapped a shot of the stage from Row D. Sorry about the quality but I was nervous the director of the festival, who happened to be sitting in the seat behind me, would tell me to put my damn phone away.

As someone who watched and loved all five seasons of The Wire, it was great to hear their insights. Three highlights:

-George Pelecanos's brave admission (in response to an audience question) that The Wire, though it did have women writers on staff, "could have done better" by its women characters in terms of complicating and/or illuminating their motivations.

-The "real Omar," in response to the suggestion that the show reinforced stereotypes, said "How can you stereotype reality? ... Back in the day, I'd be walking down the sidewalk with someone--just two of us--and a white woman coming up the other way would clutch her pocketbook to her chest. I don't snatch pocketbooks! I might put a gun in your face, but I won't snatch your pocketbook."

-Finding out Robert Chew, who had previously worked for years as a theater teacher, had been assigned to coach the kid actors featured in Season 4 (the one that focused on the schools). I love the mental image of Prop Joe running lines. Several people on stage said Season 4 was their favorite.

I feel really, really lucky to be here. Today, I get to read from I Was the Jukebox and speak with Stephen Burt and Jessica Bozek on persona poetry at 10:30 AM; then I join Ben Ryder Howe, Carlos Eire, and Maisie Houghton for a panel on the art of memoir at 4:15 PM. You can find the full schedule here.