night at the smithsonian

They're filming the sequel to "Night at the Museum" in D.C. this week, and for some reason this makes me inexplicably happy. I never saw the first movie, but I'm always excited about seeing something filmed in a place where we spend so much of our time. (When we lived in Cambridge, Mass., my husband and I rented every movie about Harvard that we could find, including "How High," which didn't even attempt to make it look as if it were taking place in the Northeast.)

Anyway, we spent Sunday buzzing in and out of museums with our friends Tom and Cece and I passed a display at Natural History that could be a horror movie unto itself. This particular display has fascinated me ever since my kids and I first ran into it a couple of years ago during a mad race to the bathroom. My son stopped dead in his tracks, his bodily needs temporarily frozen.
"What's THAT?
"What are they DOING?
"What is WRONG WITH THAT MAN?"
The exhibit was a little dusty when we first saw it, and I seem to remember red lights, but maybe I made that part up. Anyway, I was glad to be able to share it with Tom and Cece, if not our children, whose eyes were covered. And I snapped a couple of pictures so I could share it with you. At the very least, this helped me grasp why the theory of evolution is a little scary for some people...

Car seat on a what?

Just returned from Florida without going to Disney World which is either an amazing triumph or rodent blasphemy, depending on your point of view. The highlight, other than seeing extended family at the bat mitzvah of the only 13 year old living in Boca Raton, was the Kennedy Space Center. My husband and I emerged, misty-eyed, from a number of the exhibits and films, all of which promoted the idea of a world without borders and people working together to reach the stars in something that looked like it shouldn't even make it to Palm Beach. The mantra: Nothing is impossible. It was hard to go out of there a pessimist, though the guy behind me on the last leg of the bus tour was working hard at it; I think he was disappointed because he kept missing the alligators when the guide pointed them out.

More on that trip later.

For now I wanted to take a second to mention another trip, written up in How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel, an anthology of essays about traveling with children, edited by Sarah Franklin. My contribution is about my first trip to New York with (mobile) kid in tow. But there are many other essays by many other writers. I'm not so good at self-promotion, never having had to do it before. It will probably be easier if I promote THEM, so when I finish the book, look for a few notes on my favorites.

i will survive

So sings Gloria Gaynor. So sings me!
I made it through my reading tonight without blowing into a paper bag (though it was touch and go there for a moment). I wore a skirt and am certain it was crooked when I was on stage. BUT I survived. They are very brave, those poetry people, putting it all out there night after night. I'd consider doing it again. Next time I'll wear pants.

new years resolution part three

At the beginning of the year I made a resolution to do a public performance of some kind. I hadn't done anything in public since I was a bee in ballet class, unless you count marching band-- though who could see me under the hat? Anyway, I started by playing guitar at my daughter's preschool, just three chords while the kids sang. Mission accomplished.

Now I'm going public again, with a poetry reading on Monday at Busboys and Poets in Shirlington. Fortunately, I will be with the five other, more experienced poets who were part of this year's moving words competition for Arlington. Our poems will be published on buses here and in Fairfax County. We'll each read for 10 minutes or so, followed by an open mic night (which means if you go, you can bring a poem of your own).

Before this, I had threatened to be a part of an open mic night or even a poetry slam, which is something I'd always wanted to do in college, but didn't because a. I was chicken and b. I spent every waking minute at the school newspaper. I always had some regrets that I didn't do the artsy thing because I figured that was the only time in my life when doing the artsy thing would be an option. It was certainly the only time of my life I could've gotten away with wearing a beret.

I will not be wearing the beret on Monday, but I will be trying to tap into that creative side that has spent the last 20 years buried in newsprint.

P.S. I'm still chicken.

advice

I try not to go too heavy on the parenting advice, the underlying reason being that basically I'm just winging it. But I just thought I'd mention that, if you happen to have a 6-year-old boy and he happens to have a best friend, it is a very good idea to take the training wheels off of their bikes at the exact same time.

tv turnoff week

I should not be posting today. I have this little internet problem and TV Turnoff Week (April 21 to 27) is about screen time, not just TV Time. In other words, they're talking to ME. They're saying: you don't really need to play Scrabulous on Facebook this week. They're saying: you don't really need to read a half dozen blogs. Shouldn't you be writing? Shouldn't you be practicing your guitar? Shouldn't you be going outside with the other slack-jawed, zombie-eyed children and trying to catch some sun?

So just this short note, to direct you to www.tvturnoff.org. And to recommend that if you happen to have young children, you should start TV Turnoff Week at the library. I did, and came away $44 poorer (see previous post about daughter's book-ripping incident). But I also came away with 20 books, including Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator.

Tomorrow, hit the hardware store and buy some seeds. Climb a tree. Write a poem.

Tomorrow night, consider listening to NPR for your election returns. Consider taking a valium to make it easier.

anniversaries

I've started this post five times, talking about anniversaries and why newspapers cover them the way they do and what we should remember and what we should forget and what changes and what stays the same and the Iraq War and Blacksburg and thousands and 32 and what we should read and what we should avoid and what we should learn and what's too much and what's too little and gun laws and law suits and learning and ignoring and birthdays and funerals and brothers and sisters and parents and husbands and wives and children and survivors and ribbons made of magnets and pixels and cloth. And silence.


Ross Abdallah Alameddine
Christopher James "Jamie" Bishop
Brian Bluhm
Ryan Clark
Austin Cloyd
Jocelyne Couture-Nowak
Kevin Granata
Matthew G. Gwaltney
Caitlin Hammaren
Jeremy Herbstritt
Rachael Elizabeth Hill
Emily Hilscher
Jarrett Lane
Matthew J. La Porte
Henry Lee
Liviu Librescu
G.V. Loganathan
Partahi Lumbantoruan
Lauren McCain
Daniel O'Neil
Juan Ramon Ortiz
Minal Panchal
Daniel Perez Cueva
Erin Peterson
Mike Pohle
Julia Pryde
Mary Read
Reema Samaha
Waleed Shaalan
Leslie Sherman
Maxine Turner
Nicole White