Posts for category ‘the world’

It’s about to get bananas up in here, y’all. Forgive me if I become scarce for the next couple of months or take longer than usual to deal with my various in-boxes. The Great In-Box of Life & Work calls.

Meanwhile:

- Over at Teen Fiction Cafe we are celebrating our third anniversary. To kick it off, I posted a reflection on the last three years of my career, including some Stuff I Have Learned. Today, Wendy Toliver posts, and there are going to be such posts every day between now and the 13th. Prizes, too, people. As in: free stuff.

- Good news for Once Was Lost: It’s been named to the CBCC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center) Choices list—their best of the year. Thank you, CBCC! And, a lovely five-star review from a teen reader at TeensReadToo. Thank you, Melanie.

- Wow, that was a good Olympics. So much epic drama! (If you were fascinated by the Vonn/Mancuso story arc, you will love Sara Bennett Wealer’s book Rival, coming out next year.) But man, we watched every minute of prime time coverage and it was exhausting. Back to 9:30 bed times.

- Huge thanks to Jacksonville Much Ado About Books for taking such good care of me at the Fest. Sometimes it’s hard to believe my “job” involves being served hors d’ouvres and forcing my own personal party escort (hi, Cindy!) to take pictures of me pretending to talk on the phone in a prop phone booth. It was especially great to meet the teens at the Mandarin Branch—many thanks to librarian Donald Carpenter for setting that up.

- So apparently I’m not being an alarmist when I fret over the future of our brains. Study shows kids spend every waking minute online. In related news, parents “can still make rules and it still makes a difference.” You don’t say!

- The founder of Taco Bell died and much to my surprise, his last name was Bell. When I relayed this bit of information to my husband, he was quiet for a second and then asked, “What was his first name?” (If that is not hilarious to you, I don’t know what would be.)

- Interesting article on snacking culture, though it doesn’t reach a satisfying conclusion, which to me is: Fifty years ago when we did not have rampant obesity and metabolic disorders, people were mostly drinking whole milk, eating delicious fatty meats, and not subjecting themselves to spinning and Pilates. Guess what didn’t exist? The snack food industry. (Read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food.) A nutritionist quoted in the article says kids will self regulate. But we already know nurture can trump nature, and if adults are constantly offering snacks, eventually kids will lose touch with hunger.

- Do you read Tayari Jones’ blog? You should. She always finds the best links for writers. For instance.

- Story on NPR this morning about areas of Haiti where communities are coming together to help each other though outside aid is not reaching them. Moving.

The great thing about a migraine (I know, stay with me) is that it gives me a chance to lie in the dark and catch up on podcasts. Sure, I am a fan of This American Life, Selected Shorts, and old time radio shows, but the best thing going, if you ask me, is Wisconsin Public Radio’s/PRI’s To the Best of Our Knowledge.

Today I listened to an episode in TTBOOK’s Future Perfect series, this one on the theme of “our money,” in which a bunch of thinkers talk economic theory. Sounds boring, I know, but if when you think “economy” you only think about how much is in your bank account vs. the total of your outstanding bills, and how that situation might improve or get worse based on what politicians do, take a listen. There is so much more world out there, and the interviews with Muhammad Yunus and Greg Mortensen are particularly full of pictures of self-donation and downward mobility. And I mean those two phrases the way Jesus might mean them, not the way Wikipedia does.

Listen here.

There have been a number of times during my hiatus that I’ve wanted to pop back in and comment on something or another going on in the world, but I decided those things will keep, and stuck to my guns.

But this Uganda thing is bothering me so much, I’m poking my head out here because whenever this kind of bullshit goes down in the name of “Christianity” I feel like I gotta say something.

In case you haven’t heard about it, here’s a summary. And here.

Throughout Advent I’ve been doing the Book of Common Prayer readings every day. That has made me spend a lot more time in the Old Testament than I’m used to, and as you may know a lot of us modern Christians have an uneasy relationship with the O.T.  There are a lot of harsh, weird rules about things. People who think the Uganda laws are a good idea may use some of those rules to justify their position. But in my readings, I have really been struck that the overwhelming message of the O.T. isn’t this harsh weird thing that is the opposite of what Jesus talks about. The overwhelming message is that God is pissed, yes, but the reason he’s pissed is his people have not loved justice, shown mercy, been humble. They’ve been corrupt. They’ve been too comfortable. They’ve sat in their palaces while people starve in the street, they’ve oppressed the poor, they’ve taken self-serving advantage of  their power instead of using it to take care of widows and orphans, and after being freed from slavery themselves, they’ve re-entered a culture of slavery by enslaving and oppressing others. They have failed to trust God, and have failed at what Jesus later tells us are the two most important commands: love God, love others. This is the overwhelming message from the prophets.

If Ugandan Christians want to love justice—yes, prosecute those who engage in sex tourism and sex trade that exploits children and the poor, sex crimes against children, rape, abuse. A sex crime is a sex crime, no matter what body parts are involved. According to wikipedia, over 75% of Ugandans live below the international poverty level. How about some justice and mercy there. There is a history of government corruption, civil war, mass murder, and genocide. Good reasons to show humility.

And while U.S. Christians are speaking out against the Uganda policy, it is a good opportunity to look at how well we’re doing at speaking for human rights here in our own land of the free.

Okay, retreating back into hiatus. Peace on earth.

Until about an hour ago, I had an Internet-free weekend—yay! But I have the kind of week ahead that made me want to get some emailing and bloggy stuff out of the way before tomorrow so here we are.

- Here’s an interview with me over at Moonlight, Lace & Mayhem. In it, I talk a little bit about what I like about writing for anthologies. Anthologies such as…

- Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd, which is apparently in a store near you! Oh, so you have the ARC? Well guess what, my story isn’t in the ARC! Mwwaaahahahah! (Through circumstances totally not in my control, I swear.) It is a great collection including contributions from so many of your favorite YA writers. So many!  Like Lisa Yee, Barry Lyga, Wendy Mass, John Green, Scott Westerfeld, MT Anderson and MORE. (If you’ve ever traveled to meet in person someone that you only knew online, Kelly Link’s wonderful story will make you squirm in the best way.)

Shop Indie Bookstores

At BEA, some of us supergeeks got together to celebrate the book through a random act of bowling. I took it very seriously.

Maybe I got swine flu from that bowling ball, or from Andrew Smith of Little, Brown, the fabulous publisher of Geektastic.

- Have you seen any or all of Michael Apted’s “Up” series? I have seen all of them. ALL OF THEM. On a recent episode of the fantastic radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge, one of the subjects of the “Up” films talks about how he got picked for it in the first place, and why he still participates even though he has some issues with Apted and the way the series is edited. As a fan of the series, I was fascinated to hear a participant talk outside of the context of it. You can listen to the segment here.

- Are you getting CSA this summer? Not sure what to do with all your veggies? I have invented something I like to call CSA Slaw, and it requires no cooking. Grate anything you got that’s grate-able: carrots, zucchini, raw beets. Chop finely whatever is choppable and edible raw: fresh corn, green beans, garlic. Toss it in a bowl. (I like to add cabbage, too, from the regular store since it’s not coming from CSA yet.) Make a dressing out of: equal parts plan yogurt and peanut butter, then add lime juice, salt and pepper and hot sauce to taste. I sometimes add good curry powder and possibly more garlic. You could use tahini instead of peanut butter if you like it and have it on hand. Mix all! Serve with something you grilled, or just throw in a can of garbanzo beans to make it a complete veggie meal for a hot night.

That ought to tide you over for awhile. And then some. (I need to learn how to write shorter blog posts, methinks.)

• Amanda Coppedge interviews me on her blog about Once Was Lost, and about being a writer who is a Christian, but not a “Christian writer.” I expect I’ll be engaging in lots of conversations about this over the coming year, which is fine with me, especially if the questions are as thoughtful as Amanda’s.

• This link is kind of old, but I just discovered it: Frank Schaeffer (aka Frankie to evangelical insiders who saw him grow up next to his father, Francis) articulates his regret over being part of the movement that established the Christian Right as a political movement. The interview is not just about regret; Schaeffer does a crackerjack job of deconstructing exactly what went wrong and why, basically, the entire movement was/is in theological error. Coincidentally, I found this interview on the same day that Robert McNamara died. McNamara also publicly humbled himself in regret – in his case, for his role in the Vietnam War (if you haven’t seen The Fog of War, you should). In both cases, of course, the expression of regret or apology does nothing to change history or alter the fallout and in that way is dissatisfying, but it’s so rare for a public figure—or for that matter, anyone, in a culture that is so much about staking your position and digging in your heels—to say “I was wrong.” I like these examples of humility, and how it’s possible to change, evolve, and come to new understandings about things you once thought were absolute.

• The National Book Foundation has kicked off its “60 Years of the National Book Awards” blog: “The blog will run from July 7th to September 21st, starting with Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm, ending with Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country, and including works by Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Alice McDermott. Discover lesser known but equally talented National Book Award Fiction Winners such as Conrad Richter, Wright Morris, and Robb Forman Dew. Then return here, on September 21st, you will have a chance to select The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards, the first time in its history the Awards will open to a public vote.” (I’m not sure I’m clear on that last point…) Anyway, add the blog to your feed and join in the discussion.