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Friday, March 6th, 2009
 Ellen has organized a film series at the local library, movies about adoption. The series kicks off on Sunday afternoon, with Barbara Lee's documentary Adopted; Ellen has an interview with Lee at Patch.com.
 And another piece by Ellen, in The Motherhood: What this movie has to offer to people who are not in adoptive families.
posted morning of March 6th, 2009: 2 responses
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Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
 Lots of pictures of Lola and Pixie (and various other shih tsus around the neighborhood) are up now at the READIN family album.
...And here is the article that Ellen was taking those pictures for: Shih Tsus in South Orange.
posted evening of February 22nd, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, February 15th, 2009
Yesterday I was talking with Ellen about Elizabeth Costello, how Elizabeth is herself a novelist and there is a lot of discussion of reading and writing in the book; Sylvia interjected, "It would be cool if there was a book that had someone reading the book that had someone reading the book that had..." Nice!  We talked about mirrors for a little while. And then, this morning we were looking at xkcd's Sierpinski Valentine, and checked out Wikipædia's article about Sierpinski Triangles (which has a nice animation) -- I asked Sylvia if she knew what infinity meant, she said "Yeah, like something that never ends." And she made reference back to the book she had been talking about yesterday -- I found it pretty exciting that she would make this connection.
 And this is funny: apparently David Foster Wallace made the claim that Infinite Jest is structured like a Sierpinski triangle.
posted morning of February 15th, 2009: Respond
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Friday, February 13th, 2009
At the park near our house, Ellen got some great shots of a large bird that we believe to be a hawk (Update -- apparently it is a juvenile red-tail hawk):
-- also there are some pictures of Sylvia's classroom at the Family Album. Ellen has written a new article at Patch.com, about what summer activities are available for kids around here: Look No Further Than Your Own Backyard.
posted evening of February 13th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, February 8th, 2009
 Ellen uploaded a set of pictures of the Girl Scout troop at the Children's Aid office. (Click the picture for more.)
 Update: Ellen's write-up of the project is on Patch.com.
posted evening of February 8th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, February 7th, 2009
This morning we went over to the NJ Children's Aid and Family Services office in South Orange, for the culmination of a project Ellen has been working on with Sylvia's girl scout troop for a couple of months now, the Bright Red Bookcase. The girls collected children's books and painted a bookcase, and this morning we brought them over to the Children's Aid office along with some flyers about reading to children and signs encouraging kids to take a book home. The staff of the office were very happy to have the books on hand for their clientèle, and the girls were excited about the project. It was great being around all that enthusiasm for a little while! Ellen is writing the project up for Patch.com, I'll post some pictures when we upload them.
posted morning of February 7th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
A new local website for South Orange/Maplewood/Millburn is now online at Patch.com. And one of the contributors, none other than Ellen! Her author page is here; AOTW she has three stories up:
posted evening of February 4th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, January 10th, 2009
Looking through Ellen's old poetry books I am glad to find a bilingual edition of Pablo Neruda's poetry, Fully Empowered. (Translations are by Alastair Reid, and I'm making a note to myself to look up this guy whose name is on much of the mid-century Latin American literature that interests me.) Take a look at the first stanza of the first poem in the book.
Deber del poeta
A quien no escucha el mar en este viernes
por la mañana, a quien adentro de algo,
casa, oficina, fábrica o mujer,
o calle o mina o seco calabozo:
a éste yo acudo y sin hablar ni ver
llego y abro la puerta del encierro
y un sin fin se oye vago en la insistencia
un largo trueno roto se encadena
al peso del planeta y de la espuma,
surgen los rÃos roncos del océano,
vibra veloz en su rosal la estrella
y el mar palpita, muere y continúa.
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The Poet's Obligation
To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or dry prison cell,
to him I come, and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a long rumble of thunder adds itself
to the weight of the planet and the foam,
the groaning rivers of the ocean rise,
the star vibrates quickly in its corona
and the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating.
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 A couple things -- why does Neruda say "casa, oficina, fábrica o mujer" -- is he meaning a woman is something to keep you cooped up like a house or a factory? This sounds sexist in a pretty retrograde tone which is not something I'd expect from Neruda; but then I don't really know that much about him -- think of him vaguely as progressive, which I take to imply egalitarian. "Adentro de... mujer" leads me to think of a fetus but I'm pretty sure that is not who the poem is addressed to... In the phrase "un sin fin se oye" is "un" a pronoun -- is this literally "something hears itself endlessly" -- I had thought "un" could only be an article, is this a poetic usage? This is beautiful imagery; but I don't think I can read it closely enough in the translation to realy appreciate it -- I expect this is a failing more of my own reading than of the translation. I'm really happy to have read the observation (I think I read it first from Daniel Hahn; I've seen it referenced several places since then, most recently by Katherine Silver, so maybe it is a commonplace) that translation is a form of reading closely -- this is opening up a new understanding of how to read closely for me.
posted afternoon of January 10th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, December 18th, 2008
 Ellen tells me she has gotten me two books for Hanukkah, both featured on this year's reading list: What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire? by António Lobo Antunes, and The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. Thanks El!
posted morning of December 18th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
 (Darcy's library includes books about our greatest presidents.)
posted evening of November 9th, 2008: Respond
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Kate Beaton is cleaning up her office. She's put up a lot of her hilarious 