Whatever happened to Willa Jean?

   Earlier this summer I sat for six Australian shepherds – mom, dad, three offspring – so that their owners could go on vacation. Careful readers will remember that I have done this before and that one of the dogs, Willa Jean, is mine.
     Used to be mine?
     It’s complicated.
     And sad, which is why I haven’t told the story here before.

      I brought Willa Jean home as a puppy in February 2023 and named her for a Beverly Cleary character. From the beginning, she got along well with her people – my family and me – but was shy around strangers and other dogs. How shy? At first the only way she would walk is if I carried her a few blocks, set her down, and followed as she scurried home.
      She got over that but remained wary of other dogs and other people. At puppy school, she was the one who barked and lunged at her classmates, all of them sitting perfectly at their owners’ feet and giving her looks that said, “What’s up with you?” The puppy school trainer was optimistic, but two vets and a second trainer were less so. 

       I read all the books and doled out all the treats. I still think everything might have been fine if Willa could have stayed at the same puppy school. But I moved and could not immediately find a congenial training spot in my new city.   
      (Note: If you like dogs and want to make some money, consider a career in the canine-industrial complex.)  
      And so Willa continued to be smart and affectionate with family 

at home and a challenge elsewhere or with guests. Our walks were at odd times in remote locations lest she overreact to either dog, cat or person. 
     Still, I never thought she’d actually hurt a fellow creature – until one evening in November when she did.
     Rather than drawing out the suspense, I’ll just say that Willa attacked an innocent whippet named Snorkel, and now they both are fine. In Snorkel’s case, this required many months, vet visits and bills paid. Now I see her around the neighborhood sometimes and she greets me happily, no hard feelings.  

     As for Willa, I returned her to her birthplace the morning after the incident. At home in the country, she doesn’t have to contend with other dogs or people on busy sidewalks. She and her littermate, Theo, the one with the chew toy

in the photo, are best pals and happy to wrestle endlessly.   
     Do I want another dog? Looked at one way, Willa is still mine, she’s just “on extended vacation with her family,” as I tell my granddaughters. And occasionally dogsitting the pack almost fulfills my desire for canine companionship. If you're wondering, Willa does remember me, wags her tail with delight and rolls over to be belly-rubbed as soon as she sees that it's me. 
    This breaks my heart every time. In fact, I have to ghost Willa Jean when I leave her to return home. It was hard to say goodbye the first time, and it still is.
     

Tea Drinkers Don't Like Whisky

I recently asked my Facebook friends to rate the following beverages in order of preference: coffee, beer, tea, wine, whisky. I had started with a hypothesis (which I did not reveal because that would have skewed my data!), but the answers - even apart from whether they bore it out – proved to be interesting.

They are also statistically meaningless. The sample size, 57, was too small and in no way random. My FB friends, I suspect, are older, better educated and fitter than the population at large. (Also more clever, attractive and ethical – these are my friends, after all.)

    That said, I will now make like a real professor and derive all sorts of truth from my results.

First of all, coffee is easily the world’s favorite beverage – selected No. 1 by 32 respondents (56 percent), and No. 2 by an additional seven.

Next up is tea, chosen first by nine people (16 percent), and second by an additional 11.

Beer was chosen first by five respondents, wine by three, and whisky by one – hey, Cousin Phil!

As for my hypothesis – here it is: People who like whisky also like coffee and probably do not like tea. My idea was that there are two kinds of people, those who like strong stimuli and those who don’t. Thus, if you seek a powerful caffeine jolt, you also seek a powerful alcohol jolt. (Also, coffee and whisky in general hit the tastebuds harder than tea and, say, beer.)

Did the results bear out my hypothesis? Mostly. 

Of the 12 people who chose whisky as third or higher, nine ranked coffee first – or, in the case of Cousin Phil, coffee second. Sadly, the three who did not rank coffee first undercut the hypothesis by picking tea as their No. 1. Mere outliers? Statistically significant? Or maybe they drink really really strong tea.

Thanks to the chattiness of my Facebook friends, my study also incorporates a qualitative component, which I mention because it buttresses the hypothesis. In other words, two tea lovers made comments about whisky: “You can keep it,” and “One time in my life and never again.”

Another tea drinker made a similar comment about coffee, “I can’t stand even a sip.”

All in all, my study – while almost certainly sufficient to get me a PhD and possibly a Macarthur – raises more questions than it answers. What if I had specified black coffee? What if I had specified red wine? What if I had specified Scotch or bourbon?

As is always the case in academe, more research is needed.

Yam and Cornbread Stuffing

By Lea Bergen

Cornbread:

1 c yams, roasted, skinned and chopped (about one medium yam)

4 eggs

1.5 c buttermilk

2 1/3 c yellow cornmeal

1 c flour

one-half c sugar

1 T baking powder

1.5 t kosher salt

.5 t t baking soda

one-half c cold butter, cut in pieces

Preheat oven to 375F. Grease a 13 x 9 baking pan.

Combine yams, eggs and buttermilk in a bowl and mix well.

Combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a food processor and pulse briefly to combine. Add butter and pulse about 10 seconds. Add egg mixture and pulse till you have batter, about 10 seconds.

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. For dressing, cool and cube.

Dressing:

one recipe cubed cornbread

one half loaf sourdough bread, cubed

1 c diced onion

1 c chopped carrot

2 T butter or equivalent

2 c roasted, skinned chopped yams (about two yams)

1 c roasted pecans

1 T thyme

1 T rosemary

1 t kosher salt

1 t pepper

1 c veggie or other broth

1 c half-and-half

Sautee onion and carrot in butter till soft, about five minutes. Add yams, pecans, herbs, salt and pepper. Cook over low heat for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and toss with bread cubes and liquids. Transfer to a baking dish or casserole; cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove cover and bake for another 15 minutes till top is toasted.

A #BadPoem Only for Dedicated Fans

Thanks for actually clicking through to my Website to read this! I promise it’s worth your while. Not only does it rhyme, it’s long! Please feel free to poke around while you’re here. Drop me a line! Buy a book or two! And as always, thanks for reading.

Let the monsters in your soul 

Taste wine instead of blood.  

For breakfast, serve a jelly roll; 

Protect their toes from mud. 

Dress them up in khaki suits, 

Curate their TV stations,  

Offer friends of good repute 

And aimless, mild flirtations.  

Otherwise, those toothy guys  

Will rend and chew and stuff  

Their bellies till they’re supersize  

And Soylent Green is us,  

Thereafter form societies 

Based on most base behavior,  

Establish wicked pieties,   

A nihilistic savior.    

C. Achebe and Bill Yeats  

Were right: Things fall apart, 

Like other writers, some first-rate, 

Saw darkness at the heart. 

When Edgar, known for “nevermore,”  

Laid low that house once great –    

Well, duh! That was a metaphor  

For everybody’s fate.  

Life’s not fair. Are you surprised?  

The bad guys win, or chaos. 

I say fight truth with kindly lies.  

Give them the chance to save us  

Study Aesop, Sandra B.,  

Not Tarantino, Capra! 

Skip the blood-soaked Odyssey 

And asp-bit Cleopatra. 

Like myst’ries? Read that Christie dame.  

For spy tales, Fleming, Ian.  

George Smiley may deserve his fame,  

But stick with oh-oh-seven.   

Because M. Sendak wasn’t wrong 

To bring home Max, that sinner, 

The charm of majesty less strong 

A lure than Mom’s hot dinner.  

(And while we’re on forgiveness,  

Think on misconstrued McGregor,  

Combatting lagomorphic threats  

To carrots, peas and taters.) 

Since life may end in hemlock  

With no promise of hereafter,  

Re-read an Archie comic book;  

The Princess Bride’s forever.  

Appease the monsters in your soul  

Who guzzle wine with blood, 

Want bacon with that jelly roll.  

Their toes delight in mud.  

No Beer for a Year

A year ago today I quit drinking.

Those who know my fondness for all things whiskey (except Canadian – blecch) or who know me from my cherished affiliation with the Fishtown Beer Runners, may be surprised.

The decision was partly financial. In the weeks preceding the decision, I had awakened a few too many times feeling, shall we say, not my best, which meant I was not so productive, which meant, being as how I am a person earning my own way in the world by scribbling, that I would not earn much money that day.

I couldn’t afford to drink!

Around the same time, my friend Mary Ann told me about something called No Beer for a Year.

I looked it up.

No Beer for a Year is, effectively, a service. You send them money. They send you quotes and literature and what-all with the aim of inspiring you to forego not just beer (that’s for the rhyme’s sake)  but all alcohol for a year.

Heck with that, I said to myself.  

I am way too cheap to send money. I will just stop drinking till next Oct. 13.

And I did.

Full disclosure: I have drunk two beers and one half-glass of rose in the last year – all in situations where declining would’ve caused unnecessary commentary. Maybe if I’d sent in the money, I would’ve had the willpower to decline even those few ounces of alcohol. We will never know.

So how did my dry year go?

At first, I missed the nightly treat of a beer, or a wee dram, or a few. “At first” probably means the first couple of months. Eventually, I trained myself to look forward to a nightly treat of kombucha or jazzed-up iced tea. Most recently, I have been drinking a lot of fake beer. Many years ago, Clausthaler got me through my pregnancies, and currently their dry-hopped ale is not bad.

Shout-outs also to Brooklyn Brewing Co.’s Special Effects and ABC’s Run Wild. That said, there is room for improvement in this market! Capitalism, please step up!

So the first couple of months were the hardest – and then the holidays hit, and all that merriment that everyone else seemed to be sharing, but I was not or at least not to the same degree. And probably that was the worst of it if not the most surprising. Because here’s the thing: People are more fun, funnier even, if you have had a glass of something.

I know, right? Breaking news? So call me slow, but I think the reality of it felt like news to me.

I mean I’m an extrovert! Practically the definition of same! And as often as not in social situations, I found myself thinking I’d rather be home with a book. (In fact, I have gotten a lot of reading done this year.)  

And what about the benefits? Am I clearer-headed? Is my memory better? Most importantly, am I more productive?

Clarity/memory-wise, I am not sure, but I think so. I am famous in my family for an episode known as “Rosa got an A in French,” which dates from the time I was told twice within a short span about my daughter’s grade and responded with equal surprise and delight both times.

Nothing similar has happened in the past year.

I also think… maybe… that my memory for the minutiae of new friends’ lives is a little better than it was.

As for productivity, my original motivation: I think yes on that one, too. This year I finished a manuscript I have been laboring on since shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated. (It’s dystopic. Are you surprised?) Maybe not drinking had something to do with that productivity. Most assuredly, I can say that I sleep a lot better and never wake up feeling the least hung over.

I didn’t tell everyone I know about this no-beer business, partly because I didn’t want to involve myself in a bunch of big discussions and partly because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stick with it. The people I did tell often responded, “Boy, you picked a tough year – 2020 – in which to quit drinking.”

In retrospect, it was probably the best possible year, though. If I had been drinking, I certainly would have been drinking to excess.

So now what, right?

Here in the pandemic, I socialize more often with my family than with anyone else. My son-in-law has laid in a bottle of bourbon with my name on it. My daughter keeps asking which takeout cocktail from which Boulder watering hole I want first.

Do you think they are looking forward to the return of my more jolly social self?

Tonight, I may mark the occasion by drinking one of the two real beers that have been in my fridge for months.

Or I may not.

I have gotten pretty fond of a good night’s sleep.

The bigger question is whether I can have a beer now and then, a wee dram now and then, without falling back into bad old habits. I don’t know the answer to that question yet. I will keep you posted.

What's wrong with people?

When the financial crisis struck in 2008, I wrote a one-page explanation of the whole thing for my kids. It was brilliant. You can take my word for it.   

The current tough times have prompted me to do something similar, try to understand what’s going on by distilling human failings to their bare essentials.   

And if you’re tempted to call me out for being guilty of same myself, you needn’t because I call myself out. I’m human, too! In fact, even devising such a list makes me guilty of laziness (5) insofar as I’m trying to come up with a simple, overarching explanation for everything rather than conceding that truth is usually more complicated than theory.   

Still, by thinking this all through, I am striving to be better. And that’s the hopeful part. We can all strive to do better. And if we succeed, perhaps we will also thrive.    

And so, without further ado, the five flaws of human nature that pose the greatest threat to our survival:  

1) Lack of imagination 

For example: Inability to imagine that an illness is real unless we or someone right in front of us has suffered from it; inability to imagine how discrimination and its repercussions feel unless we or someone right in front of us has suffered for driving/walking/protesting/existing lawfully; inability to imagine that climate change is happening on any given cool day when our neighborhood is not burning down or being washed away. I would argue this is also related to fragile estimation of self (4), in that we fear the implied loss of identity that goes with making the imaginative leap of empathy and also to laziness (5) because imagination takes effort.  

2) Innumeracy 

For example: R-value? What’s that? Exponential? That means you add ten, right? Graphs. Wait. Did we cover those in algebra? Actually, what is algebra? On a related note, believing that there is no discrimination in America because Morgan Freeman, Beyonce and Kanye seem to be doing okay, and likewise all our friends of varying skin tones, which adds up to several. So what could the problem possibly be? This one also relates to laziness (5) because even a blockhead like me can do basic math if I put in some effort.    

3) Resistance to change 

These changes might include, for example: Adopting even a painless and simple habit like wearing a mask or bringing our own bags to the grocery store; adjusting resource usage, domicile, mode of transportation or eating habits in service even to a widely accepted goal like Earth’s well-being; removal of a comfortable and familiar statue, flag, mural or other symbol that glorifies ideas or deeds that are despicable.   

4) Fragile estimation of self  

In other words, an estimation threatened to the point of defensiveness by, for example: Anyone who worships, dresses or speaks differently; the suggestion that our possessions or wealth do not result entirely from our own initiative and hard work (to which I’m tempted to reply: Show me your wrists, misshapen from decades of picking strawberries, and we will talk); unfamiliar ideas (see resistance to change (3)); anyone more educated, knowledgeable or expert. 

5) Laziness 

This is what causes us to shirk the hard work searching for the truth behind complex phenomena, prompting us instead to embrace emotionally appealing, fairytale, Q-style, meme-friendly, troll-amplified explanations. Related to this is our minimal tolerance for uncertainty. It makes us nervous.    

Thoughts? Post to FB or Twitter or click the “contact Martha” tab above.    

Holy guacamole, a book sale!

 

For a limited time, I can make four of my favorites available in hardcover for the low, low price of $10 each, $5 for paperbacks. Better yet, I'll personalize them! To order, use the "notes to Martha" tab on my website or email me at martha@marthafreeman.com.

 

Who Stole New Year's Eve?  Who stole all the ice sculptures from the College Springs winter carnival – and why? The case ought to be perfect for 12-year-old sleuths and Chickadee Court residents Alex Parakeet and Yasmeen Popp. Unfortunately, Yasmeen’s dislike of Eve, the new girl on the block, threatens the friendship. Is Alex on his own this time? Or is Eve his partner now? Before the detecting’s done, Alex will march in the holiday parade, celebrate Eve’s New Year’s Eve birthday, sniff out tricky clues all over town, and confront explosive danger in the dark. As always, Luau the ace-detective cat, is on hand to help out. With its fast-paced plot, humor and enticing clues, Who Stole New Year’s Eve? will draw in even reluctant readers, according to School Library Journal.

The Orphan and the Mouse  Set in a Philadelphia orphanage in 1949, The Orphan and the Mouse has the feel of a classic and the pacing of contemporary thriller. Caro is a kindhearted and reliable 10-year-old whose mother died in a fire. Mary Mouse has a high prestige job, art thief, in the mouse colony that lives in the orphanage wall. Caro’s rescuing Mary from a wicked cat sets off a series of events that changes both their lives and exposes corruption at the heart of both the colony and the orphanage. Bank Street Best Book of the Year, and Junior Library Guild pick.

The Case of the Ruby Slippers When the ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” go missing, White House kids Cammie, Tessa and Nate are called on to get them back and expose the thief. Complicating matters are a family surprise party, a visit from a teen-age singing sensation, conflict in a certain nearby nation, and the too energetic White House dog who has a thing for slippers, even if they’re priceless. Loaded with plot twists, villains, action and hilarity, this puzzling story proves there’s no place like home – especially when home is the White House.

Who Stole Halloween?  On a gray and spooky October afternoon, the kind when trees look like skeletons and shadows look like ghosts, Alex and Yasmeen see a missing-cat flyer posted in a cemetery. Weird place for a flyer, thinks Alex. This could be the start of another mystery! thinks Yasmeen. Soon the kid sleuths are searching for a black cat named Halloween at the same time they try to solve a 100-year-old murder blamed on a cat. A Texas Bluebonnet pick.

Cookie Recipes!

Shortbread cookies

1/2 c. old fashioned rolled oats
1 ½ c. all purpose flour
1/4 c. cornstarch
2/3 c. powdered sugar
1/2 t. salt
1 cube (1/2 c.) plus ¾ cube (6 T) butter, cut in pieces
 
Heat oven to 450 degrees. Briefly process oats in a food processor till reduced to about 1/3 c. of oat flour.  Add to this the all-purpose flour, cornstarch, powdered sugar and salt, and pulse to combine. Or – if you don’t have a food processor – use a blender to make the oat flour, and combine with the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Drop butter pieces here and there into dry ingredients and pulse or mix briefly just till dough forms and pulls away from the side of the bowl. Remove dough to floured board, press into a 10-inch circle, pierce here and there with toothpick and cut into eight wedges. Place wedges on cookie sheet and bake. Check after 12 minutes, but it will probably take more like 18. Edges should be just browning.  
 

#Badpoem for When You're Down in the Dumps

Existence is meaningless, so we believe

In fairies, and Zeus, and in Adam and Eve,

In Mohammed, Paterno, Bumgarner and Jeter,

In Jesus, LeBron, Click and Clack, and St. Peter.

Call it fate. Call it nature.

It’s hard-wired our brains

To seek cause for effect,

To seek that which explains

Why Meursault shot that guy in the sun in Algeria,

Why ISIS beheads the do-gooders in Syria

Why heroes who selflessly care for the dying

Not only get sick but endure vilifying.

In her last fevered anguish at bleak Bergen Belsen,

Anne walked back her thinking on people’s essentials.

The fables of Aesop, the suras, the psalms

The wisdom of ages. Forget ’em. They’re wrong.

When the universe speaks, it speaks with asperity

Sit on your butt and forget about charity.

So there’s that. . .  but take heart, slip the slough of despond

By turning your eyes from the doubtful beyond.

By sugaring oatmeal and lacing up shoes.

By sweeping the stoop and foregoing some booze.

Give a dime to the homeless, recycle that bottle,

Grow organic tomatoes and improvise doggerel.

See each action taken, both little and small

As heroic defiance by us against all.

Make beauty, speak truth, do extravagant kindness.

How unwise. How absurd. And how else to define us?

Grandpa's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Anybody can make chocolate chip cookies, but these have a couple of Grandpa’s secrets to make them light and chewy.  

Grandpa’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

(Makes about four dozen)

1 cup softened butter

1 cup white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup oat flour (see note)

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons hot water

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (preferably Ghirardelli or another premium brand)

1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In large bowl of a mixer, cream together butter and both sugars until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water and add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, oat flour, chocolate chips, and nuts (if using). Drop by tablespoons onto ungreased pans. Bake for about 10 minutes or until edges are just brown.

 Note: For oat flour, grind a scant 1 ¼ cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant and not steel cut) in a food processor for about five seconds to yield 1 cup oat flour.

Fame

Go ahead and praise me.

I promise I don’t mind.

These would be pop lyrics

If I weren’t so refined.

They say a no-talent can play

Bass adequately well,

Approximate the chords and fake

That teen spirit smell.

All I need’s a camera.

I’ll gel my hair in spikes,

Break out with a Youtube hit

And get a zillion likes.

Dire Straits wanted MTV,

And Warhol 15 minutes,

Icarus flew too near the sun.

Does that mean there are limits?

Still I’d risk the frightful plunge,

Shell out my last few dimes

For Facebook love and Googles of

My insubstantial rhymes.

But how ironic it would be

If these poor verses are

Not Twitter faved and Pint’rest craved

But TLDNR.

Go ahead and praise me.

I promise I don’t mind.

These would be pop lyrics

If I weren’t so refined.

Crazy Cat Lady 2

The crazy cat lady was so far gone

By the time the medics got there

That all they could do was tag her toes with limericks,

Hide her hair under a pink beret,

And draw daisies on her cheeks in Sharpie.

The cats were too busy playing to the cameras to care

Till Animal Rescue arrived and doused them with Glade,

And linked them tail-to-tail on a ribbon chain  

Like elephants in a circus parade, only

(Like I said),

They were cats. And weren’t they a sight?

The neighbors threw popcorn. Vultures came, and other thrill-seekers.

A din ensued and the cats slipped away, Animal Rescue foiled.

Much later, the crazy lady awoke, sat up, read the limericks out loud,

Scrubbed at the daisies, pulled down the beret and set out to wrangle cats,

Someone else’s or her own,

Last seen scanning the shelves at duty-free

For Toblerones and gin.

On Growing Up

Some people never want to grow up.

Many people see growing up as grim necessity.

And a few – but not many -- think the whole growing up deal is pretty good.

That’s what I learned when I asked fans of my Facebook page to complete the following: You’re not really a grown-up until….

There were 33 responses, which makes this a valid scientific survey offering insight into the state of contemporary society. I know this to be true because I live in a university town and can plot coordinates on a graph, not that I have any intention of doing so. Also, it’s the only survey I got, so I am going to draw provocative conclusions in hopes that I will get media attention and eventually major funding from some nonprofit that also gives to NPR.

The No. 1 reason people offer for being happy about growing up is that they no longer feel bad when they act like kids. Grown-ups, for example, don’t feel stupid when they tell bad jokes. Likewise, grown-ups can eat candy for breakfast.

This would seem to fly in the face of the well-known lyric from “Peter Pan,” wherein Peter worries that growing up “means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree.” A real grown-up, according to this model, climbs a tree any old time he feels like it.

Sadly, this is a minority view. For most people, the life of the grown-up is a hard life.

Several people saw growing up in terms of enduring. This could be personal tragedy (undefined), the death of parents, or a child’s trip abroad.

The most common response had to do with taking responsibility: for making your bed, taking care of an animal or child, paying student loans or a cell phone bill, cleaning up your own messes, confronting crises without whining, carrying Band Aids, or putting a coaster under your glass. My own responses came under this heading. A grown-up makes her own bed and a grown-up flosses her teeth. Any of these could also be framed, I think, as heeding the internalized voice of whoever it was that raised you.

A slightly more positive spin came from those who noted the grown-up’s changed taste in material goods. What makes a grown-up happy? Buying a new vacuum cleaner or washer and dryer.

For a couple of moms, being a grown-up means facing with equanimity the disgusting, such as a child handing you his chewed gum, or throwing up in your bed.

And several people saw growing up strictly in terms of perception. A grown up thinks following Peter Pan is a bad idea. A grown up does not believe in magic. A grown up is anyone who identifies as one. Similarly, the day you realize you sound like your parents, are grateful to your parents, or carry a plastic rain-bonnet the way your grandmother did – that’s the day you officially grow up.

Three people said they hadn’t grown up yet, and at least one – like Peter Pan -- didn’t plan to. Ironically, Peter sings “I Won’t Grow Up” as a lesson for his followers, the lost boys. According to the lyrics, growing up means “I must prepare to shoulder burdens with a worried air.”

In other words, grown-ups not only have work to do, they also have to stress out about it!

It’s enough to make you wonder what ideas about adulthood we’re projecting on our kids. Maybe we’re all just a little too gloomy. Maybe we should be buying more sweepers and washer-dryers to cheer ourselves up.

Finally, one respondent saw growing up as realizing you’re as competent as you’re ever going to be. This response is simultaneously bracing – go for it! -- and terrifying. What if as competent as you’re ever going to be isn’t very?

In the 1960s there was a commercial for a headache pill in which an adult daughter snaps, “Mother, please, I’d rather do it myself.” I'd say that about sums it up. For most people, growing up means letting go of the idea that someone else -- your mother, a genie, a handsome prince – is going to rescue you and clean up the mess. Growing up means self-reliance. Oh, and it also means headaches.

BadPoems

I have been trying my hand at poetry for fun, encouraged by friends of mine who (gulp) write a poem every day! This I accomplished for a short while before life got in the way. I call my poems "badpoems," because that way I don't have the pressure of making them good.

Children, don't try this at home.

More accurately, they are "fastpoems" because I write them in 30 minutes in the morning before breakfast but after coffee. It is very much a matter of seeing what comes into my head at that time then trying to make something of it.

In honor of fall, Halloween-to-Holidays, here is "Ghosts and Angels."

I repurposed the tissue-paper ghosts

As angels

By adding cardboard wings.

Their eyes and mouths are only dots of ink,

But I splurged on their voices.

I hired June Foray.

My angels are not aloof like Mary Oliver’s.

In fact, they will perch on your shoulder

And provide advice

While they await their devil companions.

Who Stole New Year's Eve?

“Who Stole New Year’s Eve?” has what I think is the best first line of any of my books:

“The first time I ever saw Eve Henry, I was holding a chocolate cream pie.”

That’s Alex Parakeet talking. Along with his friends Sophie and Yasmeen, and his cat, Luau, the 11-year-old has earned a reputation as a detective. He doesn’t yet know it when he meets new neighbor Eve Henry – and delivers a chocolate cream pie to her family -- but he is about to be presented with a new mystery, the most puzzling one yet.

“Who Stole New Year’s Eve?” is the fifth Chickadee Court book. The idea for this one began to germinate when my friend Becky Collins, librarian at Park Forest Elementary School, mentioned that her students feel left out on New Year’s Eve. I might not be able to solve that problem in real life, I thought. But I can solve it in a book – and so I did.

All the Chickadee Court books are set in College Springs, a fictional small town with a big university. I never know exactly where my zany plots come from, but they are inspired by what’s around me, and for 18 years I lived in State College, Pennsylvania, a town not unlike College Springs.

My books are characterized by slapstick, twists, turns and surprises. So you can pretty much expect those in “New Year’s Eve.” Along the way you’ll also find an Ice Carnival, a spooky, unfinished house, a costume pet parade (with prizes!), a fluffy white dog named Marshmallow, a technology-challenged teleconference, competing college professors, an explosive chemical reaction, a tight-knit neighborhood, and plenty of delicious pies.

And speaking of pies, you know what The Three Stooges said about a cream pie in the first chapter, right? It has to be thrown at someone in the last! If you want to find out who stole New Year’s Eve – and who gets hit with a pie – there’s one way to find out: Read “Who Stole New Year’s Eve?”