tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56467977515275728852024-03-05T00:57:05.283-06:00Emily BrisseWriter. Teacher. Wonderer.Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.comBlogger258125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-89566779531941534232021-09-01T10:18:00.004-05:002021-09-01T10:25:14.055-05:00Where I've Been This Time (or, some links to new publications, including Parents)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY-_Z-wwnfLJHxRyOg_3I-FaF1ejUVHgzaEsqv2A-yKLT5PnZy3C2upnQAXylDTv5RR3JdIZT8LHN7pR5SRYoO6xAOkd6gxyNXIlpYQHBGkuKHDJ_sO3YCaJ7RXwPq9YXrnSyuxLVn4xsq/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY-_Z-wwnfLJHxRyOg_3I-FaF1ejUVHgzaEsqv2A-yKLT5PnZy3C2upnQAXylDTv5RR3JdIZT8LHN7pR5SRYoO6xAOkd6gxyNXIlpYQHBGkuKHDJ_sO3YCaJ7RXwPq9YXrnSyuxLVn4xsq/w640-h360/61267319ddb40d0fba1b64b7_o_U_v2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>As many of you know, the vast majority of my regular online writing life has moved to Instagram (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/emilybrisse/?hl=en">@emilybrisse</a>). But, since a fair few of you don't do the social media thing (good on you!), I thought it was time here for a brief update.</p><p>In addition to parenting and teaching and hiking and reading and road-tripping and <i>surviving </i>over the course of the pandemic (hope you and your family fared as well as possible), I've kept writing. It's been a slow but sure journey, and I'm happy to say I've reached a significant milestone in my big project: writing a novel. More on that soon! </p><p>Until then, check <a href="https://linktr.ee/emilybrisse">this link</a> for a list of many of my publications that can be found online from places like <i><a href="https://creativenonfiction.org/writing/this-is-my-oldest-story/">Creative Nonfiction</a>, <a href="https://motherwellmag.com/2021/02/03/one-year-after-having-a-baby/">Motherwell,</a></i> and <i><a href="http://wp.towson.edu/grubstreetlitmag/2021/02/17/nonfiction-feature-the-view-from-here-by-emily-brisse/">Grub Street Review</a></i>. My latest is a hybrid reported piece--a departure from what I typically write--up at <a href="https://www.parents.com/baby/childcare/how-shelling-out-for-daycare-costs-helps-you-your-kids-and-the-economy/"><i>Parents</i> about the economy, mom guilt, and the benefits of daycare</a>. If that sounds interesting, I'd love to hear what you think. </p><p>And if you <i>are </i>a social media maven, and we're not connected in that sphere, come find me! I share a lot of posts inspired by nature, my kiddos, my students, my reading life, and the occasional stupid joke. :)</p><p><br /></p>Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-15267425021757864502019-09-22T08:49:00.001-05:002019-09-22T10:39:24.698-05:00Where I've Been (or, some links to new publications, including The Washington Post)Right now, my two children are entertaining themselves in the playroom. I've spent the past twenty minutes lying in bed, listening to them in the midst of the relationship they share outside of me or my husband. Someday I will write about this, about the way it makes me feel suspended between lake and sky on a perfectly calm day.<br />
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But that is not the point of this post. I came here to craft a bit of a writing update:</div>
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In the spring, I had a string of print publications, including essays in <i>Grub Street, Lumina, Saw Palm, </i>and <i>December Magazine </i>(I was a finalist in a contest for this one), plus a short story in <i>New South</i>. None of these are available online, unfortunately, but they were fun to receive, hold in my hands, and share with the people I can hold hands with.</div>
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In the summer, I published an essay detailing my first experience with trapeze, called "Hup," in <i>Tahoma Literary Review</i>. <a href="https://soundcloud.com/tahomaliterary/emily-brisse-hup-flash-nonfiction">You can hear me read it here</a> (all my years of reading aloud to students helped in this regard), and starting tomorrow, it will also be available online for a short time.</div>
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A few weeks ago, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/09/10/teachers-five-tips-this-years-high-school-juniors/">the <i>Washington Post </i>published my essay about advice for this year's high school juniors.</a> This was a big deal for me, and the absolute best part was the way I was able to share something I'd written with my students and hear from them that it mattered. </div>
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And today, and old essay--the likes of which I would have written on this blog, which is probably why I thought of updating this space this morning--has been republished in <a href="https://www.creativenonfiction.org/form/sunday-short-reads"><i>Creative Nonfiction's Sunday Shorts</i></a> series. Rereading it--this collection of words I wrote years ago--takes me right back to my first summer in this house, and it reminds me of one of the reasons I love writing: how it captures moments, and allows you to both relive them and understand them in new ways.</div>
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As most of you know, I've transitioned <a href="https://www.instagram.com/emilybrisse/?hl=en">my sometimes-weekly in-the-moment writing to Instagram</a>, so if you haven't caught up with me there, please do so. I'd love to hear what you think of the pieces I've linked to above, or just learn how you are, which, I hope, is well. </div>
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It is now hours past when I first woke, and then discovered the mess the kids happily created in the playroom while I listened. They are fed now, and not yet dressed, but eager to get outside. I'm a lucky woman. Happy Sunday, friends.</div>
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Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-55264740755939697792019-06-16T13:57:00.001-05:002019-06-16T13:57:05.223-05:00Seven, for Father's Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(Below, an oldie but a goodie, <a href="http://www.literarymama.com/creativenonfiction/archives/2014/06/seven.html">published first by <i>Literary Mama</i> in 2015.</a>)</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You were never much of a hunter. Pheasants, yes. Squirrels and chipmunks, I suppose, when you were younger. But you never came home from a weekend away with a buck in the bed of your truck, because you never had much interest in deer season and you owned a sedan. I imagine some people from other places can hardly conceive of a Midwestern man without a shotgun over his mantle, a closet full of blaze-orange jackets, a copy of <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Field and Stream</em> next to the john. And yet when I think of you, I do see an outdoorsman. I see you paying attention to landscapes, to the shapes of clouds. I see you teaching me to love the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The lessons looked like this: leaf piles in autumn, the way you would dive into them wildly. And this: two ends of a strong rope -- one tied to the front of my winter sled and the other around your waist -- with which you’d tug me behind you as you cross-country skied. And this: you, walking bareheaded through the April rain. There were tree forts. Snow castles. Trips to the lake. Trips to the mountains. Trips to the prairie, the wind whipping at the grasses. There were all those toads and turkeys and garter snakes and robins and muskrats and owls and caterpillars you'd point out, whispering.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My favorite times, though, were when you'd drive all of us out of town on an early spring or late fall day. You'd stop along some gravel road, within some stretch of wooded hills. You'd sling a tattered backpack over your shoulder full of canteens and saltine crackers and licorice. We'd go hiking. Often we'd follow the dirt trails deep into the woods, so deep that the only sounds were nature sounds, the only smells were of wet or dry earth. When we veered off those trails, it was because you urged us to, or you'd taught us to, because you wanted to see the valley from a higher place, and soon enough we wanted to know what was down by that stream.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When you leaped up onto old fallen logs, walked across them like an acrobat, arms gracefully extended, we felt ourselves the luckiest children to have you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And once -- hunting season a week away, the air crisp -- you stopped mid-step ahead of me and slowly dropped to your knees. "Em," you whispered, "look." I hunched down beside you as quietly as I could and followed your finger with my eyes. There, at the top of the ridgeline, were three white-tailed deer, one a seven-point buck. I felt a certain bigness in that moment, and I felt your hand on my back.</span></div>
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<br />Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-42777677365218121332019-02-09T22:08:00.001-06:002019-02-09T22:20:23.719-06:00On Turning Six<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is something I want to say about you turning six. In some ways, it’s about how you look up sometimes, and in your eyes I see a knowledge that is more nuanced and vast than I was prepared to find. Yesterday I spent the morning of your birthday at your school, and while I sat with you at lunch—a room full of kindergartners and third graders and teachers and long tables and garbage cans designated for organics and recycling—I marveled at how you navigate it all without me. How you are doing so many hard things without thinking they are hard. How you are brave without knowing you are brave. How my instinct is to pulverize anything that would dare break your spirit, but I know I can’t, because now you are six, and turning at full tilt into the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But in other ways, it’s about the way you look when we are reading in bed, about the way you nuzzle into my shoulder, the way you choose to hold my hand, even though it’s no longer a reflex. When you cry, you look young. When you sleep, you look young. When I teach you how to open a milk carton, and I watch the way you tug its front lip forward with your finger—careful and unpracticed—I’m reminded that you are still so small. There are so many things I still have to teach you. I count out the days until you are eight, twelve, seventeen, and I tell myself there is time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, after we celebrated your birthday—the house fantastically loud with balloons and cake and snow pants and being six—your father and I went to a memorial for my cousin. There, too, we turned between reasons for gratitude and reasons to grieve.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is something I want to say. In the darkness, while I sit beside you as you fall asleep--frosting under your fingernails, your fingers on my wrist--the words spin around and around, and I feel dizzy from the great force of your life. Be brave. Be soft. Be wild. Be kind. Be six. Let me always know what makes you happy. Let me remember the way you look tonight.</span></div>
Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-66841774424084137892018-12-29T19:41:00.000-06:002018-12-31T12:11:43.292-06:00The Grant Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">One year ago I learned the great state of Minnesota was trusting me with an <a href="http://www.arts.state.mn.us/grants/artist-initiative.htm">Artist Initiative Grant</a> in support of my writing. This vote of confidence from strangers gave me a specific kind of momentum, and in these past twelve months I’ve published essays in great places ('<a href="https://www.creativenonfiction.org/products/true-story-issue-15">This Is My Oldest Story</a>" in <i>Creative Nonfiction's True Story #15</i>; "<a href="https://sweetlit.com/issue-10-3/essay-emily-brisse/">To Be Held</a>" in <i>Sweet</i>; "<a href="https://upnorthlit.org/emily-brisse-prose">Look At It Like This</a>" in <i>Up North Lit</i>; & "<a href="http://www.ninthletter.com/web-edition/summer-18/summer-18-cnf/301-brisse">Clean Lines</a>" in <i>Ninth Letter</i>), was a finalist in a nonfiction contest (<a href="https://decembermag.org/2018-curt-johnson-prose-awards/">Curt Johnson Prose Award</a>), received two nominations each for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (thanks, <i>Sweet, UPL</i>, and <i>Creative Nonfiction</i>!), taught an adult writing class through Minnetonka Community Ed (which I'll be offering again through the Plymouth Library system in late winter), and folks, I’ve gone and written a manuscript. I’ve barely touched its pages since school began in August, but something shifted over this last month, and the story is insisting it’s had enough rest. I say all this because I’m very grateful. And also because here it is: progress, vulnerability, accountability, my wildest dream. Anything can happen in a year. Hotdamn! Anything. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Here's to a 2019 that shines and sparkles and stretches us all.</span>Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-45540213076351798012018-09-14T21:27:00.000-05:002018-09-17T12:21:54.787-05:00This is How I Know I Love You<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNt4hcwEfhgEKLhwaovBxZTEcuFJl-Rx-VAjjNxtitX69X_782LA-tNcogg2mMy_a3xrUN9ik3pyepXKrUkaBjr_81DGSnDhOgQp-QStIzWpBLxtFFOiTyDUyCTG5D0K3FYrhyX1C0db9q/s1600/40675722_10156790946719729_2972561876472299520_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNt4hcwEfhgEKLhwaovBxZTEcuFJl-Rx-VAjjNxtitX69X_782LA-tNcogg2mMy_a3xrUN9ik3pyepXKrUkaBjr_81DGSnDhOgQp-QStIzWpBLxtFFOiTyDUyCTG5D0K3FYrhyX1C0db9q/s640/40675722_10156790946719729_2972561876472299520_n.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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Of course, there are many ways: the way my whole body splits into joy when you throw your arms around my neck. The way the sound of you singing splits the parts of me that have already been split into finer and more radiant halves. I look for me in your face: I see my mother, a photo of her as a young girl in a frilly white dress. Every day I run my fingers through your hair, which is my hair on you, and I feel gratitude, that we can be dark and braided together, curls springing up at our temples and the base of our necks when the air is thick. I look at you in the almost dark, of course, and I can't believe how beautiful you are, that you are mine.<br />
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It is an obvious love, mother love. I've written so little about it this second time, with you, my second child, because it feels as natural as waking.</div>
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But tonight, you and your brother sleeping, I padded through the dimly lit kitchen searching for a snack. There in the fruit bowl was one perfect peach, pink and gold, just a little softness between my fingers. I washed it. Sweetness rose up from its skin. And I remembered how I cut a peach for you this morning, and how you forgot everything else on your tray--bananas, and Cherrios, and a few bites of egg. That orange fruit was all you could see. "More," you kept saying. "More." And you laughed. And I laughed, the joy splitting and splitting, the sound bouncing off each piece. </div>
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Loving you is as natural as waking. But it still surprises me: that I get to feel this. Your arms around my neck. Your breath in my hair. I taste that peach even before, tomorrow, you place it in your mouth.</div>
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Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-24538388941695486152018-01-25T15:52:00.001-06:002018-01-25T16:06:02.922-06:00"This is My Oldest Story" in Creative Nonfiction's True StoryI'm happy to share that my essay <a href="https://www.creativenonfiction.org/products/true-story-issue-15">"This Is My Oldest Story"</a> has been published by <i>Creative Nonfiction's True Story</i>.<br />
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The title doesn't say it all, but it says a lot. With these words, I finally found a way to write about something I've been trying to process since I was eight:<a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/09/06/timeline-jacob-wetterling-danny-heinrich"> the abduction and decades-long disappearance of Jacob Wetterling</a><span id="goog_781854973"></span><span id="goog_781854974"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a>, a neighbor boy from my hometown. Even though--as I discuss in the essay--I still have reservations regarding writing about Jacob publicly, I had another conversation with another stranger just yesterday that echoed much of what I explore in this piece: how for Minnesotans, there was "a time before Jacob Wetterling's kidnapping and a time after it," how the entire region was affected by this boy's loss.<br />
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Sitting with these memories now still reduces me to fear and anger and heart ache. Which is why I wrote about them. Which is why I think we all do better when we leave the solitary shadows. By telling stories--especially the hard ones--our sense of power comes back as we find we're not alone.<br />
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You can <a href="https://www.creativenonfiction.org/products/true-story-issue-15">read an excerpt or buy the full essay here</a>. And if you're from the Midwest, please consider sharing the link with your social circles. I really do appreciate your support.</div>
<br />Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-74847977101387592332017-12-01T09:35:00.001-06:002018-01-19T21:43:03.950-06:00Artist Initiative Grant<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUq0Hup01iUwqp5ddp5OVE1hNtKAOtpDk6ef5RwU2AKopHOSpk2s-2nVcKCtrZvk9OxeNm5b2mT1WFie_WTYm0CdMUZMOhzHu1-qBrovVRhWIybMpzxCOS1UJNztali3bPa2-cEwai5RKl/s1600/MN-State-Arts-Board-logo_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="313" data-original-width="193" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUq0Hup01iUwqp5ddp5OVE1hNtKAOtpDk6ef5RwU2AKopHOSpk2s-2nVcKCtrZvk9OxeNm5b2mT1WFie_WTYm0CdMUZMOhzHu1-qBrovVRhWIybMpzxCOS1UJNztali3bPa2-cEwai5RKl/s200/MN-State-Arts-Board-logo_1.jpg" width="123" /></a></div>
<br />
Aside from Thanksgiving, which I love, November can be a gray month in Minnesota. But this year, it brought me some bright news: <a href="http://www.startribune.com/david-mura-gayla-marty-john-reimringer-among-minn-state-arts-board-grants-winners/454699003/">I was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in support of my in-progress essay collection</a>. It's a big honor and a big responsibility, and to say I feel overwhelmed by the expectations I have set for myself is an understatement. But there is no time like now. Perhaps this--in addition to the new baby and preschooler and fixer-upper house and demanding job--explains why I have been so absent from this space? Fingers crossed that absence here means presence in some bound hard-cover pages one fine day.Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-84828437874597154692017-09-20T12:18:00.003-05:002017-09-20T12:18:52.972-05:00"Confluence" in Santa Fe Literary Review<div style="text-align: center;">
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Popping in quickly here to point to you a story of mine that was recently published by <i>Santa Fe Literary Review</i>. <a href="https://www.sfcc.edu/literary-review/confluence/">It's called "Confluence,"</a> and it's a bit of a sad one. But sometimes life is like that. Here's a snippet:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">"It was astonishing to her that the water just kept coming, that it passed by her for one instant and then was on to someplace else. She assumed the creek led into the Sauk, the river that ran through Albrun—the town five miles west of them—but then where did it go? What happened next? All this water mixing, these long trails that moved across counties and states and into oceans without anyone accounting for their individual particles—it scared her that there was no way of linking even one molecule to the snow on a hillside in a small country yard."</span></blockquote>
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I wrote this one years ago now, so I'm grateful <i>SFLR</i> gave it a home. Thanks for reading, all!Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-45100792811067567742017-06-12T10:28:00.000-05:002017-06-16T07:50:46.683-05:00What I've Been Into - Spring 2017<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All,</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's...the middle of June! How that happened, I can't explain. Well, I can, but the explanation will be a very simple one: baby. Baby, baby, baby. How sweet she is, and how sweet it is to be her mother. All the feels. All the gazing. All the lazy afternoons in bed. And now that her brother has joined us for the summer, all the ways in which we are settling into the new dimensions of our days (and nights). Who knows when I will read a full book again!? No matter. I am reading other things: cries, coos, wide eyes, the width of her milky thighs, the way she responds to the wind. It is not for everyone, this mothering, but I am glad it is for me.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Books:</b><i> </i></span></span></span><br />
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><i>Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into The Mystery and Art of Living</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"> by Krista Tippett -- I really truly think this was the only book I read this spring. And if I was going to read one book only, I'm so glad this was it. It was one of my favorite books that I've read in years. It's not one to read quickly. You can't, really. There's too much to think about, too many quotes to transcribe somewhere, too many moments of authentic wisdom. I checked it out from the library, but when I find my feet again, I will walk leisurely through a nearby bookstore, buy it, reread it, and keep it near.</span></span></span></span></span></li>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>TV and Movies:</b></span></div>
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Avatar: The Last Airbender</i> -- My husband stumbled across this Nickelodeon animated series when he was in his early twenties, and he's loved finally being able to share it with our son. I've watched some of the episodes, and they're pretty good! Lots of humor mixed in with kid-accessible morality & philosophy. My husband insists I'm Katara, and our son has gotten really good at pretending he's bending the elements. ;) </span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Hook</i> -- Yes, the one from 1991 with Robin Williams. We watched this days after our daughter was born, and we felt a lot of nostalgia for our own childhoods.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Poldark, Seasons 1 and 2</i> -- The newest BBC Masterpiece set in Cornwall in the late 1700s. So melodramatic, yet so gooooooood.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Manchester By The Sea</i> -- Heart-wrenching. Lord. But superbly acted.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Gilmore Girls, Seasons 1 and some of 2 -- </i>Because I was uninterested in it when I was Rory's age, but now that I'm Lorelai's--and now that I have a daughter--I get it. (Some of my students insisted I would.) Cute literary references all over the place, too!</span></li>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Find and Arrow Signs:</b></span></div>
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://therumpus.net/2011/04/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-71-the-ghost-ship-that-didnt-carry-us/">This Dear Sugar column</a> about deciding between having and not having children, and moreover, about the sister life you aren't living.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-blue-house-by-tomas-transtromer-2014-4">"The Blue House" </a>by Thomas Transtromer, the poem referenced in the above article.</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.clifbar.com/products/luna/luna-protein/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough">Luna Bars</a>. The chocolate cookie dough kind. This spring, they've saved me. </span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Three-letter-words. Our son is starting to read. Makes me all melty and eager and proud.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Enjoy these full and lovely months, friends. As always, please pass along your recommendations for anything and everything. xo</span></div>
Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-24151877399791154392017-05-02T21:15:00.000-05:002017-05-03T10:13:38.800-05:00Baby GirlIn the middle of April--all the leaves reaching up and out above the marsh, the ground covered with green shoots and blades, the air full of fresh breath, the sky blue with rain--our daughter was born. We named her Charlotte. And to us, she is sweeter than anything else that is clean and fragrant and hopeful this spring.<br />
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With my first child, words came naturally, and fast. I felt a need to say all the things, to record somehow the way I was feeling, the way it all seemed, how particular were the moments I spent getting to know him, getting to know myself as a mother, getting to know the newly defined world. I reread those musings now, and they still feel exactly right. I can remember who I was when I wrote them. I can remember how that version of the world felt, as viscerally as I can touch and sense my own skin.<br />
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But with this baby--there is less urgency. I'm not sure exactly why this is, as she will be my last child. I know she will never be eight pounds again, her days of being seven pounds already something that slipped away with April. I know there will come a day when I will realize her sounds are less murmurs and more requests. When her gaze is less dreamy and more direct. When her cheeks are not this impossible softness. I guess, this time, it is more about being still, being quiet with her, watching her eyes blink open and shut, thin petals blooming in my arms.<br />
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Tonight, the maple leaves are wide enough that they obscure everything but my neighbor's twinkling porch light. All winter I have watched its reflection in the ice and water of the marsh, a kind of star: Here a child would be born. Soon the leaves will wave so thickly that everything that came before them will be memory. Which is why, I think, I watch that shimmering light tonight upon the water, beautiful and mysterious, with me like this, in its perfect and transient form, right now.<br />
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<br />Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-1689441595354488662017-03-01T08:02:00.000-06:002017-03-03T20:34:10.419-06:00What I've Been Into - Winter 2017<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hey all,</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don't know about you, but this has been a strange and sometimes scary but often wonderful end-of-winter. To say that it is already March feels bizarre, but at the same time, here in Minnesota we've experienced one of the warmest winters on record, so...despite my reservations about what this means for our planet, I'm already in spring mode. And since I'm due to meet my second baby in early April, there is no rewinding for me: Spring is arrival. Spring is wakefulness. Spring is revelation. I say: Welcome, welcome.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'd love to hear what you've all been up to. I'm not sure how much reading I'll get to in the coming months (buh-bye, hands-free bedtime routine!), but I always keep a will-read-later list running. Suggestions, please! And I hope the sun warms you in these coming months all the way down to the bone.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Books:</b><i> </i></span></span></span><br />
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Madness</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><i style="color: #444444;">, Rack, and Honey</i><span style="color: #444444;"> by Mary Ruefle -- Ruefle was a professor of mine in grad school, and the title of this, her craft book, about sums her up. I wrote the weirdest, most magical, most unpublishable piece in her class, but the experience of writing it is one that I'll never forget, simply because I </span>felt myself in a space created by madness and honey, both. I didn't read every essay in this bunch, but what I did read made me wish I was back in grad school, notebook on my lap in Dewey Hall.</span></span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>A Sense of the Mysterious </i>by Alan Lightman <i>-- </i>I liked the essays that verged closer to memoir more than the ones that examined--in lyrical style, no less--the difference between applied and pure mathematics. No surprise there, I guess. I am glad I finally picked up one of Lightman's books, though, and I'll likely return to another when I find the urge to understand how the STEM people think. :)</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> by Marie Kondo<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> -- Who knew how interesting the proper method of folding clothes could be? I read this right after winter break began, and it kicked off a major nesting impulse. There really is something to creating a space at home that mirrors the state of mind you desire.</span></span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Homegoing</i> by Yaa Gyasi -- An incredible book following two ancestral lines--one that leads through the slave trade and colonialism in western Africa and the other that leaps across the Atlantic, following the experiences of African Americans coming to terms with their place in society. Ambitious and realized, I stayed up late to read this one. </span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Commonwealth</i> by Anne Patchett -- I read <i>Commonwealth</i> because I heard an author say it was a "perfect book." I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but I was interested in this story about two broken families, largely told through the eyes of the children as they aged. </span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>News of the World</i> by Paulette Jiles -- Part western, part history of America (specifically Texas) after the Civil War, part heartfelt tale about an older man and his transport and eventual care-taking of a young girl who had been taken hostage by a native tribe, this novel started off slow, but eventually took off as the relationship between the man and the girl developed. I wouldn't have read it had it not been recommended to me, but I'm glad I did. </span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Open City</i> by Teju Cole -- I was hearing a lot about Teju Cole, so I decided to pick up his first novel. Despite all the praise--and I can appreciate why that praise exists; there is SO MUCH in this book, so many ruminations--it just wasn't for me. My guess is if I had more time to read slowly and consider, I might enjoy it. But, in my experience, it was too much essays-in-novel-form, when what I was wanting was straight novel.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> by</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Robin Wall Kimmerer -- Although I didn't read every essay in this large collection (it's comprised of over thirty individual essays tied together by theme), I loved many of the pieces I did read ("The Honorable Harvest," "The Consolation of Water Lilies," and "Burning Cascade Head" come to mind). I had a repeated impulse while reading to look up Kimmerer on Facebook, follow her, and somehow take a class with her in the future. She's a modern sage. </span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">O Pioneers!, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Great Gatsby, </i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and various essays and poems by Symborska to Hughes -- all curriculum rereads.</span></span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>TV and Movies:</b></span></div>
<ol>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Song of the Sea</i> -- We just started official family movie nights with our son, and this animated film--an Oscar nominated one--was beautiful, and one that my husband and I enjoyed just as much if not more than our almost-four-year-old. It was based off of Irish mythology, and the visual style, music, and bond between an older brother and a little sister? Thumbs up from me!</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Fall, </i>Season 3<i> -- </i>So dark! Why do we watch this stuff? Still, we watch this stuff. And we think about it and wonder at the limits of humanity.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Westworld</i>, Season 1 -- In a random conversation, my husband and I realized that both my students and his clients had both been talking about this show, so we decided to dive in. It's HBO, so it was violent in a way that was eventually too much for me, but the premise--a western theme park populated by highly sophisticated artificial-intelligence-driven "hosts"--was thought-provoking, and it's easy to see why it has inspired so many conversations.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Minimalists -- </i>A well-done and great reminder of how little we actually need the stuff we buy. Reduce, reduce! Definitely something we are trying to bring into our home more consistently.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Boyhood -- </i>When this film first came out, I heard and read a lot about it, as the concept was interesting (a team of filmmakers and actors who got together over the course of something like fifteen years in order to show the true passage of time and how it might affect a boy through his formative years). The movie itself was good--sad--but likely pretty realistic in terms of what a lot of kids experience. I know it reminded me of a good number of my students. We all just want to know we are loved and have purpose.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jim Gaffigan's <i>Cinco </i>stand-up show -- Because we all need a little humor in our lives.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Americans</i> -- Just started. Into it!</span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Find and Arrow Signs:</b></span></div>
<ol>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Eula Biss. I've been taking an online essay writing class the last few weeks (I'm crazy. But with Baby #2 coming, I felt I had to take advantage of whatever clarity is left in my brain while I still have it.), and one of the things I've loved the most about the course is how the instructor has pointed me to a lot of great nonfiction writers I hadn't previously read. Biss was one of them. I'm pretty impressed by her. <a href="http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6414&context=iowareview">"Time and Distance Overcome,"</a> her essay first on the telephone, then on telephone poles, and later how they intersected with the lynching of black men, kept me rapt from beginning to end. I'm going to pick up one of her essay collections and swim my way through soon.</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some dear friends have brought out their first books (Yes, this makes me both proud and stir-crazy. Someday, Emily! Someday!). Please do check out Kate McCahill's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Patagonian-Road-Alone-Through-America/dp/1939650542">Patagonian Road,</a> </i>Cheryl Wilder's <i><a href="https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/what-binds-us-by-cheryl-wilder/">What Binds Us</a></i>, and Tyler Dorholt's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Flowers-Tyler-Flynn-Dorholt/dp/0991065794">American Flowers</a>. </i></span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Although I'm generally what I consider the farther thing from a political writer, I couldn't hold in my observations about our recent election and how it impacted my classroom. What I wrote (eventually titled "Silence for the Sake of Peace: On Politics, Huck Finn, and Lies We Tell Ourselves") was published just before the inauguration by <i>Atticus Review</i>, and <a href="https://atticusreview.org/silence-sake-peace-politics-huck-finn-lies-tell/">you can read it here.</a></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/transcript-president-obama-on-what-books-mean-to-him.html?smid=fb-share">This article</a> from the <i>New York Times</i> about President Obama's thoughts on books, reading, and writing. It's no wonder he's always struck me as a deeply thoughtful man.</span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Birds chirping this morning as if it were May. Hope these words find you well, friends.</span></div>
Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-38988624748408384422017-02-21T09:47:00.000-06:002017-02-21T09:47:07.071-06:00Ecola State Park, Oregon: In Photos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com4Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, 92343 Fort Clatsop Rd, Astoria, OR 97103, USA46.1298421 -123.890314820.607807599999997 -165.1989088 71.6518766 -82.5817208tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-74907836207266292602017-02-14T14:50:00.000-06:002017-02-21T09:47:32.728-06:00Haystack Rock, Seaside, Oregon: In Photos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com4Seaside, OR 97138, USA45.9931636 -123.922638545.904892600000004 -124.084 46.0814346 -123.761277tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-46535250685726389542017-02-05T16:51:00.000-06:002017-02-05T16:55:08.778-06:00Lewis River, La Center, Washington: In Photos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A few weeks ago, my husband, son, and I journeyed out to the Portland, Oregon, area to visit family. As luck would have it, we arrived just two days after one of Portland's biggest snowstorms in years and years. (Apparently, when people out there encounter a snow event, they abandon their cars on the highways and somehow hitch a hide home, ostensibly on the nine snowplows Portland has for the entire city. Suffice it to say, this baffled us Minnesotans. :) Our luck involved landing at the airport <i>after</i> it was up and running again, and also being able to enjoy an already gorgeous part of the country under a blanket of fresh and frosty white. I took these photos on a solo walk along the Lewis River one early morning. It was a beautiful way to greet the day, and <a href="http://landingoncloudywater.blogspot.com/2013/02/for-you.html">it reminded me of a walk I took at the very end of my pregnancy with my son</a>. This time, I whispered to a new baby, and despite the single-digit temperatures, I was warm.<br />
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Happy February, friends. Spring is near, and yet let us not forget how important it is to be able to see through the trees.Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-40888136293913141192016-12-01T08:00:00.000-06:002018-01-20T10:12:25.650-06:00What I've Been Into - Autumn 2016<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hello world,</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What an autumn, huh? In Minnesota, the weather has been fantastically long and glorious. We didn't have our first frost until just before Thanksgiving. That meant a lot of time outside, and some grateful leniency with how long we had to rake up all those millions of yellow leaves. And also, there was the election in there, which threw everyone I knew for a loop, no matter which side of the political line they landed on. It's still something many of us are sifting through, and the mess has been hard to see around at times. But it all keeps moving forward, doesn't it? I'm holding as many people's hands as I can.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As we crest into the holiday season, however, I've decided to focus on how very much I have to be thankful for. Did you know that <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/expandinggratitude">there's a lot of research on how practicing intentional gratitude on a daily basis actually has positive effects on one's health</a>? It's no shock to me, but I like knowing there is science behind it. My family's biggest point of gratitude is, as I alluded to in my last post, the promise of a new child who is due to join us in April. Being parents is not easy, and my husband and I are nervous at how another wee one will complicate our already busy lives. But our son has brought us so much joy. We feel a sibling is one of the most lasting things we can give him, so -- April, darling. You will meet this new little companion in a few short months. We will keep working on being patient. :)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hope each of you are doing well in your respective places. Let us remember that where there are words and a way to connect them with the hearts and minds of others, life never has to feel lonely. And that, indeed, is something for which to feel grateful. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Merry (early) Christmas!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Books and Journals:</b><i> </i></span></span></span><br />
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<ol style="background-color: white;">
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>An American Childhood </i>by Annie Dillard <i>-- </i>Although slow in places, the overall effect of this memoir was gorgeous and moving and take-up-your-banners-in-defense-of-place inspiring. The last section of the book? I felt like I was in the middle of some orchestral finale. </span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">American Gods</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> by Neil Gaiman<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> -- A student left this book for me at the end of last year. I've heard great things about Gaiman's writing, and I used to teach a class on mythology, so I thought this one might be right up my alley. But -- ehh. I stopped half-way through. I think it was a little too male for my tastes.</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Love Warrior</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> by Glennon Melton Doyle -- I encountered Doyle's Momastery blog when I was a new mother, and I've appreciated her authentic voice ever since. This was the first actual book of hers I read, and although much of the content was not surprising, I read it quickly and with feeling. We are all just doing the best we can.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">River Teeth, Autumn 2016 edition -- </i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One of my essays came out in this literary magazine, and I then had the pleasure of reading the other fantastic work within the same edition. Great narratives -- about driving rigs down a remote Alaskan highway, about twin children who almost drowned (tears, people), and a fantastic and complex ender by Alex Lemon called "How Long Before You Go Dry" that I had to read in pieces and digest, digest, digest. Brava, </span><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">River Teeth</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">!</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Upstream</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> by Mary Oliver -- A collection of essays written by a poet. Yes, please. The first essay "Upstream" is worth the cost of the entire book, although I also loved her musings on her relationship with other writers and thinkers like Whitman and Emerson.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To Kill a Mockingbird, The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time, Oedipus the King, The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, </i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and various essays and poems by Thoreau, Emerson, Douglas, & Dickinson -- all curriculum rereads.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>TV and Movies:</b></span></div>
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Bloodline, </i>Season 1<i> -- </i>We learned about this show from some "series you are probably overlooking on Netflix" lists, and we were not disappointed. There is strong acting in this family drama, and although we won't continue into the second season (it was becoming too much of a cop show for our current interests), we were glad we found the first. And I miss it now, like I often do when I finish a good book. </span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-style: italic;">Black Mirror</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> -- </i>This had been dubbed a modern Twilight Zone. I can't comment on that, as I never saw TZ, but in any case, many of these episodes penetrated deep into my head and kept me thinking for days. Each one is its own mini-movie, so some episodes are definitely better (and others distinctly weirder) than others, but they provided great fodder for conversation between my husband and I after our boy was in bed.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">13th -- </i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A look at how the 13th amendment, which made it illegal to own slaves, in many ways led to the injustices existing in our current prison system. A stark, take-your-breath-away, infuriating documentary, but one I think everyone should watch.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mockingjay - Parts 1 and 2</i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> -- Because it was finally time to know what my students were so upset about two years ago. :)</span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Find and Arrow Signs:</b></span></div>
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/634093">"Don't Turn Away" in <i>River Teeth</i>, Autumn 2016 edition</a> - In the ways of the internet, somebody has made a PDF thingie of the hard copy version of this recently published essay of mine. If you get a moment, I hope you check it out. It's short and weird, and easily one of my favorite things I've written lately. </span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.thefourthriver.com/index.php/2016/10/the-fourth-river-o-3-fall-2016">"Spring Forward" in <i>The Fourth River</i></a> -- This is an old blog post revamped. Thank goodness for this little Landing on Cloudy Water space. Though I am barely here anymore, it still serves as a voice in the back of my head reminding me that I can write whatever I want whenever I feel the need.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.healthykidsrunningseries.org/">Healthy Kids Running Series</a> -- Our son participated in the 50 yard dash in this running series at the beginning of the season, and he LOVED it. I wasn't sure about the six week commitment initially, but our guy was so excited for all of his races, and as expected based on all the running he does around our house and yard, he's pretty darn quick. :)</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/24/the-absolute-best-place-to-grow-up-in-america/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This article from <i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">T</span>he Washington Post</i></a><i style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </i><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">was fascinating: Minnesota as a top place to raise a family, yes, but also how "geography is destiny." </span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Soup. Always soup in the fall.</span></li>
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Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-44265684601153270942016-11-24T01:00:00.000-06:002016-11-24T01:00:04.638-06:00I Will Show You This<div class="MsoNormal">
Littlest One,<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is snowing outside. Last week the grass was green, my
begonias still vaunting their soft pink petals. And tonight, your brother
asleep, the night a quiet dark, I watch the way the white changes everything
over into something new.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You do not know yet, the way things fall at different
speeds.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You do not know yet, the way a cup of hot tea can calm.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You do not know yet, the feel of soil between your fingers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You do not know yet, the sound of singing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You do not know yet, the possibilities of a daydream.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You do not know yet, the scent of wood smoke. <o:p></o:p></div>
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You do not know yet, the pleasures of the body.</div>
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You do not know yet, how humans can disappoint. <o:p></o:p></div>
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You do not know yet, this snow softly falling, this apple on
my tongue, how beautiful and fragile it all can seem.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have tried to guide your brother. “Look,” I tell him.
“Look up, look low, look there, look under, smell that, touch this, listen to
that crow that chickadee that owl. Breathe deeply. Do you sense how it
feels, on the inside?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I will do the same with you. I am not the loudest, Baby, I
am not the bravest. There are others who lead more boldly. But I will offer you
what I know is good. I will bring you into this imperfect world, and I will demonstrate for you the way I pray: with my attention.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is snowing outside. You are warm and safe and probably
sleeping, sucking a tiny thumb, stretching small limbs, pressing in the quiet
dark against the only home you have ever known: me. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is more for you to see. Every day will be new--not perfect, but worth it. I will
show you. <o:p></o:p></div>
Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-36254011060120274092016-11-12T16:49:00.000-06:002016-11-12T16:50:41.303-06:00"Spring Forward" in The Fourth River<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiyGHhyphenhyphenaAcMazQLPQlPKx0ZMnkqi1cK7dRurPso7rO5mutBh_VQUZzfL5JAM3G-zTMitVzpcuHY8KoWXl6EE0YE6fgQvWdQQTAnOj5kpOuW_YZGr39-dQDrINLBV9tMKirhQKbC2Mzsoq_/s1600/page_1_thumb_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiyGHhyphenhyphenaAcMazQLPQlPKx0ZMnkqi1cK7dRurPso7rO5mutBh_VQUZzfL5JAM3G-zTMitVzpcuHY8KoWXl6EE0YE6fgQvWdQQTAnOj5kpOuW_YZGr39-dQDrINLBV9tMKirhQKbC2Mzsoq_/s400/page_1_thumb_large.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Because sometimes you need to think not cold but warmth.<br />
Because sometimes you need to think not dark but light.<br />
Because sometimes you need to think not fall back but spring forward<i>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Here's an old essay, friends, that I first tapped out right here in this space that has, in the meantime, become a newish thing, a reminder that we can find a balance between two unsteady places.<br />
<br />
Visit the most recent online issue of <a href="http://www.thefourthriver.com/index.php/2016/10/the-fourth-river-o-3-fall-2016">The Fourth River</a>, and once you open the PDF, read the other wonderful stories, essays, and poems, and then find my essay "Spring Forward," on page 96, at the very back.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading. And believing in the transformative power of art. It is what will save us. It is what always has.<br />
<br />
<br />Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-44487541176976348452016-08-31T15:18:00.000-05:002016-08-31T15:40:02.925-05:00What I've Been Into - Summer 2016<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hi Friends,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'll be saying this with a sigh, but O Summer! </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am already deep into classes with my students, and where it does feel good to be back with young minds talking about things that matter, summer is a particular treasure. We were everyday outside, at parks, at beaches, in lakes and rivers and streams, up to our armpits in our garden flowers. We also spent a lot of time with family and friends, at cabins, birthday parties, splashpads, and swimming lessons. My boy learned to fish. He wanted to fish every day. He would spot the earthworm wiggling into the hole behind the branch and grab it, lift it up, study its perfectly spaced indentations. I watched his body lengthen, and I listened to him tell me stories, and it is a little astonishing to me, that I have been in this world for three and a half years with him, and he is still articulating things with the lift of his eyelashes that I hadn't known existed. I am a proud mama, a happy mama, a mama thankful for a season in which to love him in every stage of light.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am thankful also for books, of which I read more this summer than I have for a while. I will let my descriptions below stand for themselves, but let me also share that I led a book discussion on <i>The Round House</i> yesterday with a group of students. And Louise Erdrich, the author, happened to be sitting next to me, too. It was strange, how quickly it became simply about books--how we both loved them and believed in their specific power to tell the stories that need to be told. Still, Louise Erdrich was sitting next to me. I won't forget that. Fuel for something future.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I hope you are well, friends, and that you also had summers full of what you chose. Here comes another school year, and another autumn, and another winter, and another set of changes that I can faintly foresee, and yet how freshly they will arrive. There is always something new. Let us embrace it. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZbjHgb0KTZ2sJBlVOzx1kQctG1NHsLHKcvOz5eaLVIEl-6A_eDZCzR0W3DLApFyA3ztZW2l5RSUlmzW3LnvP5t5t0AYZ5PyOZOAMQ_wjkxdulgFVoBv-Rl6m_eJ5g8IocSp5koOiOXTsZ/s1600/IMG_2477.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZbjHgb0KTZ2sJBlVOzx1kQctG1NHsLHKcvOz5eaLVIEl-6A_eDZCzR0W3DLApFyA3ztZW2l5RSUlmzW3LnvP5t5t0AYZ5PyOZOAMQ_wjkxdulgFVoBv-Rl6m_eJ5g8IocSp5koOiOXTsZ/s640/IMG_2477.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Books:</b><i> </i></span></span></span><br />
<ol style="background-color: white;">
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>The Crucible </i>by Arthur Miller <i>-- </i>I read this play about the Salem Witch Trials (and indirectly about the Red Scare) in a day. So creepy. But also so good. </span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>T<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">he Wild Gardener</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> by <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Martha Hellander -- After taking my students for the second ti<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">me to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden just a few <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">blocks away from where I teach, I stumbled a<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">cross a pl<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">aque <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">de<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">dicated to <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">B</span>utler, the garden's original c<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">reator. It me<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ntioned she was a teacher of botany in the early 1900s who often brought her students into the wild for study. My <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">curiosity was piqued<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. I found this bio<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">graphy, and read it with <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">a notable degree of interest. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Butler was an</span> incre<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">dible women <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">who contributed greatly to the history of Minnesota.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><i> </i></span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>The Signature of All Things</i> by Elizabeth Gilbert -- My first true summer book, and what a massive, impressive book it was. About a female botanist in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and also about so many many other things. It's the longest book I've read in a while, and although I felt myself reading quickly over some of the historical details, by and large, I was wonderfully engaged.</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>The Death of Jim Loney</i> by Jim Welch -- A goal for my North American Literature class is to incorporate more Native American texts. <i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">L</span>oney</span></i> was a possibility. I didn't love it, but I wonder if that's because I can't relate to the extreme disenfranchisement that Jim Loney's character experiences? It was so sad, so dark. But maybe -- yeah -- exactly right. (If you have more suggestions along this line, I'd love to hear them.)</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>LaRose</i> by Louise Erdrich -- It took me a while to get into this one<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, but the braided stories eventually hooked me, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and I found myself desperately rooting for Maggie.</span></span></span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> by Virginia Woolf -- <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">T<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">he turn-of-the-cent<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ury women of Butler and Gilbert's Alma made me want to revi<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">sit some of the classics. I didn't love Mrs. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Dalloway--it often felt like work reading the pages--but I was remi<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">nded why it made such an i<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">mpact, and some of the passages did strike me as brill<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">iant.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Awakening</i> by Kate Chopin -- Swept away by this one. I remember reading this when I was in high school or college, thinking about how very old Edna was. And now her character is my age! A good reminder at how interesting it can be to reread books at different times in one's life.</span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<li style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Goodnight, Mr. Wodehouse</i> by Faith Sullivan -- Another turn-of-the-century female character, but this time about a women in small-town Minnesota written by a well-loved Minnesota author. Not my favorite read of the summer, but I enjoyed how Sullivan was able to tell the story of an entire life--and a growing nation--in one book. </span></li>
<li style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Half Wild</i> by Robin MacA<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">rthur -- This <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">one was extra extra fun to read because it was written by a friend from Vermont College of F<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">i<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ne Arts<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. She is a place person, i<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">n all the ways I <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">appreciate</span> my place people, so reading her stories was a deli<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">c<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ious dip into the Vermont woods <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and its <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">folks</span>, a reminder of what I loved about my time there and what I love about people, no matter wh<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ere they <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">call home. If you're hankering for some solid short stories, friends, check this <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">collection</span> out.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<li style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Mindsets</i> by Carol Dweck -- A nonfiction psychological/self-help book I read for school. We talking a lot about the growth mindset this past year, so the information wasn't particularly new, but it was helpful to slow down my mind and really think through how I can make Dweck's research an even greater contributor to how I structure my classroom and the feedback I give to students.</span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<li style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Gift of Failure</i> by Jessica Lahey -- Another summer reading book for school. There was some great information here, for teachers and especially parents. I believe in this research whole-heartedly. We must allow our children to make mistakes when they are young. How else will they ever learn to work through struggle and find the lessons in the challenges?</span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<li style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Round House</i> by Louise Erdrich -- As I said above, I lead a discussion of this book with a group of students who read it over the summer. It was a reread for me--one I first devoured while I was home with my infant son--and even the second time through made me grab at my heart when Joe and when Cappy. Uh! Cappy! Erdrich is such a talented story-teller.</span></li>
</ol>
<div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">
<div style="color: #666666;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">TV & Movies:</span></b></div>
<div>
<ol>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Narcos, </i>Seasons 1<i> -- </i>This was recommended to us by a lot of people, and where the history of the Columbian drug wars was interesting, I was kind of give-or-take<i> </i>half<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>way through. I think this was because the voice over drove me crazy. And also, don't start a series talking about magical realism unless you are going to live up to that literary greatness, a la Gabriele Garcia Marquez.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Concussion -- </i>One of those movies--when I still watched full movies regularly--I used to sit back, think about, and enjoy. I was happy to find it now.</span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
<i>
</i>
</span>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> Jason Bourne -- </i>This movie will forever stick with me because of how old it made me feel. I really liked the first JB movies, but this one was so non-stop-action that at one point I had to close my eyes, shake my head, and just laugh. After, my husband turned to me and said, "I feel like I just went to the gym." Oh, Hollywood!</span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
<i>
</i>
</span>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Mad Men</i>, the final season -- The show lost some of its luster for me a while ago, but I'm a sucker for resolutions, no matter how ambiguous. </span></li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif;"> </b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Finds</b> & <b>Arrow Signs</b>:</span></span></div>
<ol><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://twohawksquarterly.com/2016/05/31/slips-away-emily-brisse/">"How it Slips Away" </a>-- An essay of mine up at <i>Two Hawks Quarterly</i>. It's a sad one -- dreams deferred, I suppose -- but it was fun to write. Check it out, if you want!</span></span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2016/08/i-am-still-here-by-emily-brisse/">"I Am Still Here" in </a><i><a href="http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2016/08/i-am-still-here-by-emily-brisse/">Hippocampus</a> -- </i>I wrote a specific post about this essay, but do give it a read if you haven't already. I'm humbled it seems to have resonated with a number of people, especially fellow Minnesotans who remember Jacob Wetterling.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.writingclasses.com/">Gotham Writers Workshop</a> -- Although I intended to take a class at The Loft in Minneapolis, the ones I was interested in filled up before I got my butt in gear, so I decided to take a chance on an online course through Gotham out of NYC. It was on the (gulp!) novel, which, yes, was something I began this summer. I'm happy with what I came up with so far, and I suppose this means the class was a success. I liked the online format more than I thought I would, too, so that was a nice surprise. </span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">n intriguing</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">piece</span> from <i>The Guardian</i> about women who walk: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/29/female-flaneur-women-reclaim-streets">"A tribute to female flaneurs: the women who reclaimed our city streets"</a></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/24/the-absolute-best-place-to-grow-up-in-america/">This article from <i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">T</span>he Washington Post</i></a><i> </i>was fascinating. Minnesota as a top place to raise a family, yes, but also how "geography is destiny." </span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nutella and marshmallows. I blame Bre. </span></span></span></li>
</ol>
Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-85733257388760744082016-08-11T21:59:00.001-05:002016-08-11T21:59:19.574-05:00"I Am Still Here" in Hippocampus MagazineTaking a break from my plant-focused summer to point you all to a recent publication of mine in <i>Hippocampus Magazine. </i>It's a very short essay, called <a href="http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2016/08/i-am-still-here-by-emily-brisse/">"I Am Still Here,"</a> which focuses on my immediate reaction twenty-some years ago to the abduction of a neighborhood boy. As one would assume, the events surrounding his kidnapping haunted me as a young girl, and still do. For me, writing is generally a matter of trying to figure something out. This boy's case has now gone unresolved for decades. I doubt I will ever stop writing into the center of that night, not at least until some closure is reached.<br />
<br />
So: there's that. Not flowers or bouncing summer grasses. But one of my earliest memories of understanding the necessity of story, and how upturned and unstable things can feel without one.<br />
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Also, as a result of this essay, a young woman from a college in Massachusetts read it, and asked for a short interview for one of her classes about publishing. I'm including my responses here because I find these kinds of insights from other writers interesting, and because the happy truth is, friends, though I have not been here on LOCW much, I have been writing more consistently this last cycle of seasons than I have in years. And that means, yes, I can take questions like these and answer them and not feel like a fraud (at least most days). :)<br />
<span class="im"></span><br />
<ol>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;"><b>How much of your time do you spend writing?</b><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">This
would have been much more difficult to answer before I had a child. Now
that I do, while teaching a full course load, I have to schedule in
time to write. I give myself permission to write for three straight
hours one morning every week (for which I wake up extra early). I tend to set these hours aside for new
writing. I fit in revision in the creaks and cracks of my days. This
set-up would have seemed paltry and pathetic at an earlier part of my
life, but now it is the only way I get creative work done, and because of that, I
cherish those hours, and I get right down to business. </span></li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;"><b>When you were submitting to literary journals/magazines, did you have anyone edit your work before you submitted it?<span class="im"></span></b> I've
received feedback on early drafts from teachers and mentors, but I've
never worked specifically with one editor before I've mailed work off. In
the past year, though, a colleague and I have established a monthly swap
where we each send each other new work and give the other one feedback.
This has proved invaluable; she always has excellent recommendations of
where I can strengthen and pare. </li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;"><b>How do you deal with rejection?</b> I
try not to think about it too much. When a rejection comes in, I sigh and doubt, but I've learned there really is no better
next move than pressing delete on the notice and diving back into
something creative. I'm never going to entertain or intrigue or move
everyone. The important thing is that I continue to enjoy the process of
writing. If I'm doing that, my work will find an audience eventually. </li>
<li style="margin-left: 15px;"><b>How do you measure success as a writer?</b><span class="im"></span> To
me, the fact that I'm still writing new work and publishing it while
working full-time and parenting a small child is success. The sane thing
would be to quit and take up cooking. But, no. Writing is an integral
part of my identity. Those three hours a week refresh me, and keep my
sights set on what is possible.</li>
</ol>
<br />
How about you, dear friends? What have you been working on this summer? When can I read about it?Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-55039041860939265352016-07-20T10:36:00.000-05:002016-07-21T17:44:14.651-05:00June in July<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<ol>
<li>Bittersweet nightshade</li>
<li>Eastern daisy fleabane (aster family)</li>
<li>Some kind of lovely leaf -- who knows what this is???</li>
<li>Daisy</li>
<li>Creeping bellflower</li>
<li>?</li>
<li>?</li>
<li>Some kind of grass ???</li>
<li>Motherwort</li>
<li>Clover</li>
<li>?</li>
<li>Common mullein</li>
<li>My boy, out in it all</li>
</ol>
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Quite a few plants I couldn't identify this month, folks, so I need your help. What did I get right? What did I miss? Goodness, this world is a wild and beautiful place.</div>
<ol>
</ol>
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Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-7698971845288018172016-06-20T21:44:00.000-05:002016-06-21T10:10:45.177-05:00May in June<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
For those of you who have been here since the very beginning of Landing on Cloudy Water, you might remember my early attempts to learn and document the names of what I saw growing around me. First there was <a href="http://landingoncloudywater.blogspot.com/2011/04/plant-literate-1-snowdrop.html">the snowdrop</a>, then the <a href="http://landingoncloudywater.blogspot.com/2011/04/plant-literate-2-squill.html">Siberian squill</a>, then the <a href="http://landingoncloudywater.blogspot.com/2011/05/plant-literate-3-forsythia.html">forsythia</a>, then the <a href="http://landingoncloudywater.blogspot.com/2011/05/plant-literate-4-tarda-tulip.html">tarda tulip</a>, and finally the <a href="http://landingoncloudywater.blogspot.com/2011/06/plant-literate-5-wild-columbine.html">wild columbine.</a> Well, a child came into my life a bit after all that, and naming him, I suppose, claimed my attention. I am happy to say, though, that he is now at the age where <i>he</i> wants to know what he's seeing, and that has given me new cause to do the same.<br />
<br />
So, I bring you yet again, a series in wild identification: Plant Literate! (Although I seem to be always a month behind, and have no time for individual posts, so it will most likely happen in bursts. Ah, well. Better something than nothing, is my current motto.)<br />
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This is a doubly-sweet endeavor because what I've been learning these past months has been focused on the growing and blooming things in our yard, the edge along our driveway, and the marsh behind our house. Already most of these wildflowers are long gone with the light-blocking leaves, so who is to say how much of anything I'll document this summer, but that's half the fun, too: we'll just have to wait and see.<br />
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Here is what I've identified so far, following the order of the photos above. Please feel free to correct me if I have something wrong. I'm learning.<br />
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1) Wild ferns<br />
2) Halberd-leaved violets<br />
3) Early meadow rue<br />
4) Wild lupine (this one I'm not totally sure of, as it was quite a bit smaller than most lupine I've seen, but it's the closet I've been able to get)<br />
5) Garlic mustard (which, I've been told, spreads like crazy)<br />
6) Sand violet (I think?)<br />
7) Wild geranium<br />
8) False solomon's seal<br />
9) Dame's rocket<br />
10) Jack-in-the-pulpit<br />
11) Wild Columbine</blockquote>
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We also have true solomon's seal, bloodroot, cleavers, a patch of creeping charlie along the driveway that I naively believed was just a lovely flowering ground cover (good thing someone smart advised me not to transplant it to a border area along one of the gardens), and a host of fast growing bushes and vines that I haven't even started to try to identify. I suppose that alone could keep me busy for much of the summer.<br />
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As always with these kinds of posts, I place this information here for me, so that I might come back to it next year when all these names evade me, but I hope it's helpful or interesting to a few of you, too.<br />
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It's the longest day of the year today, friends--9:42 pm just now and still light seeping in through the windows--so, let us welcome whatever this summer will be. Cheers to you all on this solstice. Isn't it incredible how much of the world bends toward the sun?<br />
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<br />Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-6940311227196669672016-06-07T07:30:00.000-05:002016-06-21T07:38:25.484-05:00What I've Been Into - Spring 2016<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Friends,</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today is the last day of school for my students, and although I'll continue through the end of the week with my colleagues in workshops and other wrap-up activities, summer has arrived. It's been another wonderful year, but I can't think of one solitary person who doesn't love these two words put together: summer break. Summer break! Oh, for a few months in which to go where the wind blows me, do what the whims insist! Perhaps I'll show up here a bit more? Or perhaps I'll disappear still deeper into this marsh that is my back yard, what with its wildflowers and ferns and maples and oaks and ash and cottonwood and beech and tamarack stands. I am rippling with contentment. Can you tell? Like the leaves. Like the air, blue and redolent, and so very very close. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Books:</b><i> </i></span></span></span><br />
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>The Progress of Love </i>by Alice Munro <i>-- </i>The entire collection is wonderful, but "Miles City, Montana" struck at my heart with a force.</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>The Small Backs of Children</i> by Lidia Yuknavitch -- I took a class with Yuknavitch in April, and although this book jumped around a bit too much for me, I do appreciate the way that--as she explained in class--the body is given a point of view. I am interested in reading her much acclaimed memoir <i>The Chronology of Water.</i> <a href="http://blog.ted.com/lidia-yuknavitch-tells-her-story-at-ted2016/">Here's her TED Talk.</a></span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "utopia" , "palatino linotype" , "palatino" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>The Liar's Club</i> by Mary Karr -- Started, but did not finish. A bit too similar in feel to <i>The Glass Castle </i>(although I know <span style="font-style: italic;">The</span><i> Liar's Club</i> came first...).</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian</i> by Sherman Alexie -- I've only been hearing about this book for a decade. I'm so glad I finally made a point of reading it, because it's very clear why this is required reading for a lot of middle schoolers.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Knockout</i> by John Jodzio<i> -- </i>There is never a dull moment in Jodzio's fiction. His sardonic style and subject matter is generally not what I gravitate to, but he's a Minnesota writer who I've worked with in various capacities, and I have to champion his work. As I read through these stories--"Great Alcoholic-Owned Bed and Breakfasts of the Eastern Seaboard" being one of my favorites--I kept thinking, "John, how do you come up with this stuff?" Here's <a href="http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/03/11/john-jodzio-knockout">a cool interview</a> he did with MPR.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>May Day</i> by Gretchen Marquette -- A lovely collection of poems that center on loss: of a lover, a brother, a place. Marquette is another Minnesota writer who I have recently connected with, and it's been great bringing some of her work into my Minnesota Writers May Program class, especially "Colossus" and "Ode to a Man in Dress Clothes." Here's <a href="http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/05/06/mn-poet-gretchen-marquette-finds-beauty-in-trying-times">another MPR story</a> featuring her book.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Wilding</i> by Benjamin Percy -- This was the most "male" book I've read in a long time (father, son, grandfather, hunting, war, machinery, bears), but a lot of it connects to the natural world in a way I respect and enjoy. And Percy lives in Minnesota now, and I've been meaning to read something by him for a while, so I'm glad I finally did.</span></li>
<li style="line-height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Of Mice and Men, The Things They Carried, Merchant of Venice, </i>and lots of short stories and essays ("The Woman Warrior," "Memory and Imagination," "Boarding School in Switzerland," "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," "Barn Burning" "Superman and Me" (...should I go on?) -- all curriculum rereads.</span></li>
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<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">TV & Movies:</span></b></div>
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Nurse Jackie, </i>Seasons 1-4<i> -- </i>Addiction is real, people. This show pulled us in because of that fact. (And Zoey! Love her character.)</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <i>Interstellar</i> -- We watched this in two chunks (parents of a young child, hello!), so maybe that was why it didn't amaze me? Decent story. Eh.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Gravity</i> -- Non-stop thrill ride, for sure. Some amazing special effects. It's interesting to me, though, that the scene that stays with me the most is when the protagonist finally makes it into a spaceship--safety--and all her racing and movement stops and she just...floats.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="color: #666666;">Mile, Mile and a Half -- </i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A documentary about a group of friends who set out to hike the John Muir Trail, and document the entire thing with film, photography, music, words. </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> cinematography alone was enough to keep me watching this one.</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Into the Wild</i> -- I never view movies with my semester classes, but this May Program I'm taught a course called These Wild World, which focuses on nature writing, and this film was perfect for that group in so many ways. Gah. Alex Supertramp is a complex character--easy to love and hate--and that's one of the reason why his story is such a great watch.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>House of Cards, Season 4 -- </i>The earlier seasons were better, but I am <i>just waiting</i> for all that nastiness in the first seasons to come back and bite the Underwoods in the butt.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Game of Thrones, Season 6 -- </i> Because we can't not watch.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif;"> </b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Finds</b> & <b>Arrow Signs</b>:</span></span></div>
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://twohawksquarterly.com/2016/05/31/slips-away-emily-brisse/">"How it Slips Away" </a>-- An essay of mine up at <i>Two Hawks Quarterly</i>. It's kind of a sad one -- dreams deferred, I suppose -- but it was fun to write. Check it out, if you want!</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/song-myself-i-ii-vi-lii">"Song of Myself" </a>by Walt Whiman -- I always forget how much I love this looooooooong poem until I reread it (well, at least parts of it) in spring.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.oldnaturalist.com/sights-and-sounds-of-spring-2016/">"The Old Naturalist"</a> -- A local blog run by an educator that helped me identify a few bird calls. </span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/20/how-do-you-mark-the-end-of-class-a-faculty-member-explains-her-own-ritual/">This article</a> about final gifts to students (Thanks, Pat!)</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.press53.com/Jodi_Paloni.html"><i>They Could Live With Themselves</i> by Jodi Paloni </a>-- I haven't read this one yet, but Jodi is another VCFA alum who is making waves in the literary world, and I am really looking forward to reading this collection of stories this summer. </span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.omnomchocolate.com/products/lakkris-sea-salt">This licorice + sea salt chocolate</a> from the Icelandic brand Omnom might be the best chocolate I've ever had in my life. No joke.</span></li>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"></span></span>
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://landingoncloudywater.blogspot.com/2016/04/melaque-mexico-in-photos.html">The beach in March</a> -- Because: 90' and no humidity is good for the soul (in doses).</span></span></li>
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<i>How about you? </i><i>What will you be doing this summer?</i></div>
Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-58513464838879352522016-05-20T08:00:00.001-05:002018-01-20T10:14:18.720-06:00Welcome<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yesterday, on our drive home, my son asked to stop at the local elementary school playground. It was a beautiful afternoon, and I was antsy from grading final essays inside all day, so I willingly brought us there. For the first few minutes, I followed him protectively as he circled through slides and ladders and bridges, dodging the older and sharper movements of the kids also there playing as a part of the after-school program. Eventually, though, I told Elliot I was going to rest on a bench nearby, and not thirty seconds later, I observed him introducing himself to an older boy sitting in the shade underneath the slide, playing with an assortment of small objects.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />"Hi," I heard my son say. "Can I play with you?"</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />I couldn't overhear how the other one replied, and because of the age difference--I would learn later he was in second grade, easily four or five years older than my son--I felt myself again on guard, wondering if El would be able to read a social cue signaling "leave me alone," not wanting to have to intervene, but ready to.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Instead, the two of them sat across from each other pleasantly, companionably even, and I realized quickly that I wasn't needed at all.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />I watched the other boy ask Elliot's name, ask him if he was in pre-school. I heard Elliot immediately return the question: Tyler.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />"I'm making a motorcycle with these wood pieces," Tyler said, and El leaned in, interested.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Not long later, two other boys Tyler's size began a game of hide-and-seek, or hide-and-boo, or spy--some kind of game that instantly makes sense to school aged kids, which, I realized--amazed--included my son.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />"Do like this," Tyler instructed, lining up his body behind a pole, and Elliot complied. In fact, he more than complied. He invented. He protected. Tyler was already the boy on his team.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Each time his face shifted my direction, I looked for signs of distress--those boys <i>were</i> bigger, maybe he was feeling intimidated or overwhelmed or--I didn't know. He was the child that just this last Christmas at a holiday concert cried half way through because the singing had become too loud for him. He was the infant who didn't smile at strangers, went serious the moment he entered a new situation, the one everybody called "observant," which I always took to mean sensitive, a likely introvert.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />I expected, I suppose, among the new boys and the new games, to hear him call for his mama. </span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />But I understood with growing clarity that he was closer now to that pack of boys than he was to the baby who had once filled my arms. </span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />And he was smiling. The easy, amused smile of a boy already aware of the wonder of the next moment.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Eventually, Tyler's mom arrived, calling him to the car. Before he left, he found a multi-colored piece of paper from his backpack that he had folded into a fan.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />"Here, Elliot," he said, holding it out with one hand, and then with the other, gently patting El's arm. "It was fun playing with you."</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />As he walked away, El called, "Where are you going?"</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />"Home," he said, "but I'll be back tomorrow!"</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />I watched Elliot watch him go, already the friendship something to be lost.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Lucky for him, the two other hide-and-seek boys were waiting--"I'm Kai and this is Finn"--and soon they were off exploring a big branch that had fallen and talking about quicksand. Later, after I'd joined them, I timed all three as they ran loosely around the school's track, Elliot's laughter ringing out over the field as he moved farther and father away.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />I kept on thinking about my earlier precaution, how grateful I was to discover the kindness of second grade boys, how innocent and sweet they were: one's long hair hanging in his eyes, the other's rosy cheeks, the other's light hand on my son's wrist. How they welcomed my boy into their world.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />But I realized again, of course, that Elliot had been a part of this world for a while.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />That the one who needed to be welcomed was me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5646797751527572885.post-8205653591589231512016-05-09T13:34:00.000-05:002016-05-09T13:34:38.341-05:00April in May<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I meant to get these photos up two weeks ago, but I suppose I was too busy admiring everything popping up all over our Minnesota yard. We've lived in our new house for just over a year now, and it amazes me how much I don't remember seeing last spring, but also how much more familiar everything feels. It has been an exhausting year in many ways, but my dear my dear my goodness oh my, does all this green and new and colorful make my entire being come alive.</div>
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Photo notes (more for me than anyone; I really am learning!): </div>
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-- Blue-purple flowers: Siberian squill (early to mid April)</div>
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-- White flowers: Bloodroot (early to mid April)</div>
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-- Purple flower: Periwinkle/Vinca Minor groundcover (late April)</div>
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-- Leaves on the trees: (April, April, April, Hallelujah)</div>
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And happy belated Mother's Day!</div>
<br />Emily Brissehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03784086623918098981noreply@blogger.com8