Blue Egg

photo by Catherine Ledford

Linda and Tom,
Happy Easter from the Friendship Baptist Church in G'ville. I love the blue egg and hope you do, too.
Katy

Looking Out My Back Door

7:24 p.m.

A Package from the Publisher

I told you I had the sweetest damn publisher in the whole damn world.

We Miss You, Anna.

Anna leaves. The sky turns gray. A sad drawing appears on the beach.

My Author Copies Came!

Anna!

Walking in my colorful neighborhood   photo by msmasmushly

You will never in a thousand years believe who I finally got to meet: Anna. 

I've been following her blog for over two years. I'm crazy about her photos and her writing. She lives and works on a hill farm in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Her sister in L.A. just had a baby, so Anna flew over to see her and then made her way up the coast. Msmasmushly knew her first; and the three of us had the best time together. We walked, we talked, we ate, we took photos. We had our cake and ate it too, and then we walked some more.

Anna at Outerlands. We ate Outside at Outerlands no less. The big heat lamps did the trick.

Msmasmushly, Anna & me after eating the cake Aggles helped me with over the phone.

Standing behind Louis'  7:02 p.m.

Saturday Night Writer's Special

The Writing Salon readings at Progressive Grounds remind me of being read to as a child.

Reading Glasses

I'm reading The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham. A+

Back at our own Nitty Gritty City Beach

Somebody drew all over this rock!

Down the Coast

The woods above Moss Beach

Treasures found on Moss Beach

This is the second day of our 3-day vacation, which started on Sunday. Yesterday we drove up the coast and today we drove down the coast. Tomorrow can we stay home? Sleep, read Sunday's paper, have an egg sandwich for breakfast made out of leftover pizza? That would be heaven.

The world was our oyster

at Saltwater. Tom had oysters nephropidae with garlic butter, I had pizza margherita.

p.s. Oh no. I was afraid of this.

Everything you want to know about yourself can be found in your relationship with food.
~ Ashley Paquin (from Anna's blog today)

And from Jamie:

Am I to understand that you don't eat oysters? Oh Linda. I didn't until I was well into my forties, but with the gentle coaching of Eva B. one night in front of her fireplace, I learned to love them. And my heart breaks that you'd opt for a pizza. (This from the guy who once left Eva sitting at a restaurant alone, because I'd forgotten our dinner date and already "had a Tombstone pizza in the oven." No one in my group has ever let me forget that. They shouldn't!)

Crackers

Somewhere among the Olmec heads
that weigh ten tons and the axes smooth as water

and the little masks with faces you want to talk to,
if only you could travel–briefly, with a guaranteed

uneventful germ-free return––across the millennia
to admire the chiseled features and perfect

enameled teeth of the living models,
you no longer have to wonder what the subjects

would say to you, because they begin talking,
or mouthing murmurs from their pedestals

and plastic cases, lit from above or below
for maximum dramatic effect. Crackers, they say,

through their eyes, in perfect English, the words
emerging from their frozen features.

––That’s what we want. Crackers, the gluten-free jobs
with sesame seeds. A slice of cheese. Even a lowly

tortilla would do. And a cup of that fermented juice
whose formula has been lost to the jungle.

Crackers, they all say, lighting the shadows that hover.
The voices have spoken. As their emissary,

I head home to my pantry, on a sacred search
for crackers and some acceptable fermented substitute.

                                                                –Will Walker

We have a poet in our writing group named Will. This is the first poem I ever heard him read––and it was right after I had gone to see the Olmec exhibit at the de Young. (By the way, the title CRACKERS was a Round Robin prompt from two years ago, and that's how the poem came to be.)

6:23 p.m.  walking home, looking down on the ruins of Sutro Baths

Located at the westernmost point of Lands End, the historic Sutro Baths was once a lavish 25,000-person swimming facility and museum built in the 19th century by former San Francisco mayor Adolph Sutro. The facility’s six saltwater swimming tanks (ingeniously flushed by the tides), 517 private dressing rooms, restaurants, and arcades were enclosed by 100,000 square feet of glass. 

(From Parks For All Forever.)

6:33 p.m.  Coastal Trail

I wouldn't say that I like daylight saving time yet––I wouldn't go that far. But it is nice to be able to get outside a little later in the evening.

JANE & JACK, Universal Cafe, Kerry, Tom, me, linguine, crab, asparagus, beer, bread(!), coffee

Walking home  5:07 p.m.

Pom Pom Wall

I had a (much needed) big laugh when I pulled the Company Kids catalog out of the mailbox. The pom pom wall absolutely cracks me up. That's a new logo up there––they must have a new art director who is part kid.

The folks at Chronicle Books stayed late this evening and allowed us SCBWI people to crash their headquarters. I got to meet Victoria Rock. Twenty years ago my best friend wrote a story and I illustrated it. We sent it to Victoria. And she wrote us back! Well, she sent us a rejection letter, but it was a nice one.

6:23 p.m.

A Nice Review in Publishers Weekly

walking home   6:09 p.m.

The Writing Salon: Extra Perks

The Round Robin is a great invention. Every week you're given a list of seven prompts––one for each day of the week, and the name of a new partner to exchange your writing with. You write to the prompt for 10-12 minutes, and then you and your partner email each other what you've written. The next day, you comment on what your partner sent you the day before, and exchange that day's prompts. This continues for ten weeks––and every week you're assigned a new partner along with seven new prompts. It's a blast.

But there's another great thing about this class in addition to the writing. You meet the best people in the universe. Katie, for instance––my partner this week. We ended up taking a walk together and then plopped down in the sand with Primo to watch the sun go down.