Visiting O.W. Holmes Elementary yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting Patti Smith’s students, discussing bullying and Buddha Boy and why we won’t show just anyone our deepest thoughts; herewith are pictures taken to prove I do so know how to work my camera, you guys, when someone helps me switch it from video to still.

I came to know about Patti’s students, who are visually impaired, through Cory Doctorow’s heads-up request that downloadable YA books be sent her way, so the kids would have age-appropriate Braille material.  I also learned that many Braille textbooks are staggeringly expensive; Patti had a middle school geography textbook that might as well have been printed with gold leaf in midtown Atlantis, it’s so costly.  Check out these figures, from the Alternative Media Access Center:

The following figures are provided only to aid our customers in approximating a rough cost estimate.

Price per page of embossed Braille:

• Literary texts $3.45
• Math texts 6.00
• Science texts 6.00
• Foreign Language 5.00
• Music 7.25
• Computer 6.25
• Illustration (embedded with text) 4.95
• Embossing Only(books in NEON) 0.62

Illustrations Only: $35.68 per hour

Please note that the transcription and illustration costs include all materials, embossing, final production, and shipping (free matter for the blind).

To have to pay this much money to  have a book you can comfortably read seems quite a hurdle for readers who already have hurdles enough to surmount.

Titles, titles, titles, who’s got the title fight tonight?  Is it Heart, You Bully, You Punk vs. “Anotherloverholenyohead”?  Is it “Editions of You” vs. Book of Longing? Living in Ether with Confessions of an English Opium-Eater vs. “Both Ends Burning” and “Plastis Wafers” – actually pretty much anything Of Montreal will kick your ass.  Getcher front row seat, turn it up loud, louder, loudest. Kulchuh!

This is nice to see – straydog barks again!

And this is wonderful to see – the Michigan Humane Society gives us all a way to help the forgotten and the lonely and the cold.

So there we were, Cornelius Fortune and I, talking about writing, and comix as an influence, and workshops, and writing, and genre as playfield, and why Shirley Jackson’s advice is the best, and writing.  And the street was busy and the store was a haven and we were surrounded by the words and pictures of those with something to say, to tell, to show, to give.  And we talked and talked … Thank you, Leopold’s, for the ambiance, and for the company of friends.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a celebration of Citywide Poets, recipients of a 2009 Coming Up Taller Award, an initiative of the President’s Committee on the Arts & Humanities – an award conferred by Michelle Obama (swoon!) in a ceremony at the White House in early November.

Back home, at the ceremony hosted by MOCAD, we the people got to hear from poets Myriha Burton, Robyn Arnett, Lena Cintron, Joseph Verge, and Andrew Hawkes, whose poetic conflation of meatloaf and saffron, the immigrant experience meets meat’n'potatoes USA, was one of the evening’s  highlights; and there were many.  Shout out to young Detroit poets! You made me laugh out loud, you made me go silent, you made me feel your energy, your imagery, your passion.  You make us all proud.

(Photo from InsideOut.)

From a newsletter stylebook:

“How to calculate readability:

Count the total number of words in the story.

Count the total number of words with less than five letters.

If 70% of the copy has words of five letters or less, it is very readable!“

Italics mine.  Also mine is the four-letter word expectorated (read: spit out) after absorbing this advice.  I guess it works OK if you’re a jar of pasta sauce or a stop sign, though.

This review of straydog (originally published in the Manila [Philippines] Bulletin, was written by Carlo Cordova, and encapsulates a reader’s emotional response to a writer’s voice in a way so direct and so lovely that I gave up trying to adequately paraphrase, and am just reposting it (with Mr. Cordova’s permission). Thank you, Carlo, for putting that emotion into words we can share.
THERE GOES MY HERO
straydog by Kathe Koja

People who affected me in the past, I find, turn up in my present in the strangest ways.
It was in 1992 when I first read Kathe Koja’s sexy “Angels in Love,” a girl-next-door horror story of searching for something to transcend a drab day-to-day existence. Ms. Koja’s debut novel, The Cipher, would later be the initial offering in Dell Books’ “Abyss” line of psychological horror novels. I bought her next three novels too: Bad Brains, Skin, and Strange Angels. I read a few more of her stories, including one in Omni, “Queen of Angels,” which put me on the verge of tears, and which I then passed on to the poetess Karen Kunawicz.
Most likely, I failed to convert Karen but my admiration for Ms. Koja was not without good reason. Her characters did not lead ideal lives. They eked out a living (as record-store clerk, or metal sculptor, etc.) and then something would happen – life would get worse and their lives would change forever. Looking at Ms. Koja’s photo at the back of each book – she’s wearing a leather jacket and that look in her eye – just gives one the idea that this woman knows what she’s writing about, that she’s been through a lot, but then she came out ahead. Who wouldn’t believe in someone like her?
Somehow, though, I never found a copy of her fifth novel, Kink. My admiration, as years passed, was transferred to persons who were accessible to me. Then I started seeing Kathe Koja’s name again in young-adult books. I was dumbfounded: Was this the same Kathe Koja who once wore a leather jacket, and taught me that death could be sexy?
It’s not the only time, though, that a well-loved horror writer turned her back on the genre and tried her hand at something else. … The question is, whatever she chooses to write, can a writer still impress with her style, with whatever it is that separates her from other writers? …As for Kathe Koja, I was a bit hesitant to buy her first young-adult book that I found, especially since it’s about — a dog? But surprise, surprise, surprise: Koja’s characters in this book are as similarly endearing as the ones in her adult novels.
Teenagers Rachel and Griffin are both social misfits. Rachel, especially, seems always headed for arguments with her mom and dad; and with Melissa, her supervisor at Brookdale Shelter, where she volunteers.
One day, a feral collie is brought into the shelter. When Rachel sees this collie, whom she names Grrl, she forms an attachment to the dog which will later result in her learning a thing or two about life.
Koja’s writing is as dramatic as it used to be, especially near the ending. Although straydog was meant for younger readers, Koja doesn’t spare us the brutal facts about stray animals’ existence. The book ends with a high degree of emotion, and with even adult readers knowing they are not being fooled. This is not a book that will get turned into a Walt Disney animated film.
The dialogue between Rachel and Griffin, after they’ve gotten close to each other, seems so beautifully natural. It’s like the first time I heard a song by my favorite band, where every word in every line counted and made a direct connection.
I knew, just looking at her old photo, one ordinary day in 1992, that there was something special about Ms. Koja. Now of course she looks different, more like a teacher, and she’s chosen a different genre. The messages, however, like this line from straydog, remain priceless: (p.39, “It’s like the pain is a splinter in the joy…but only both of them together can teach you how sweet joy really is.”)
Reading straydog, my feeling was like being reunited with someone I danced with at prom night, finding out that the music had merely paused,  and she and I could pick up where we left off.

I remember a saint I once knew – I can’t remember his name, sadly, but he was a teacher of writing, and I was a wary lump at the back of the classroom.  And he gave us an assignment, a writing exercise, and we did the assignment, and the next day he stood in front of the class and said, “Everyone here completed the exercise the way I suggested.  One person did not.”  That was me.  He read my story and praised my story with its unorthodox POV, and his praise was so whole-hearted that I remember it still.  I wish I knew his name.  I wish all our saints, living here or in memory, all the ones who did us good, or helped us most by keeping hands off when we needed to do it alone, I wish for all those saints a dazzle and a rest commensurate with their achievements, unseen and unsung, maybe, but still reverberating.  Thank you, teacher of writing in the St. Clair Shores school district, thank you very, very much.

What’s your Halloween costume this year?  I’m going to a steampunk party, so I’m busily constructing a garment worthy of the affair, taking into account my (extremely limited) crafting and sewing skills (though I’m hell on wheels with a glue gun, yo, kind of).

But what if we really did have to come as we are to a Halloween party, any party?  Not as we look, but as we ARE?  What in the world would we wear? Forget wear, would we even go? Naked as little shell-less turtles?

This is a tough one.  Please pass the candy corn.