hope floats

The Brown Bookshelf has a great post with all the details about the ALSC 2009 Arbuthnot Lecture, which honors Walter Dean Myers this year.  The event is held at the Langston Hughes Library on the Children’s Defense Fund Haley Farm in Tennessee.  I wish I could go–tickets are free–but it’s right before my trip to Oregon…if anyone else goes, please write a report and share!  I discovered the CDF through my work with a Brooklyn youth collective; the director of the collective was involved with BSLN, the Black Student Leadership Network, and that org was somehow connected to the CDF.  I went to my first rally in DC for the CDF…we had such optimism back then (mid-’90s)!  I’m not a cynic (yet), but I see young people struggling to make a difference–in the classroom, in the world–and sometimes I wonder where my passion went.  When did I learn to hold back in order to avoid burning out?  My advisor in grad school told me to “be strategic”–you can’t afford to waste time and energy on petty battles with every random ignoramus.  A student came to my office yesterday and insisted feminists need to forge alliances.  “Yes,” I replied, “but some feminists have also found they can get a lot done by working on their own.”  I believe that, but she was nonplussed by the idea.  One day she’ll understand what I’m talking about…here are today’s haiku.  I got 5 hours of sleep last night, which is better than two…

a cardinal’s cry

insistent and unending

breaks my reverie

***

rain squelches his call

and breakfast begins as worms

ooze from sodden soil

(cardinals don’t eat worms, do they?)

***

Sarah Vaughn brightens

my gloomy garret office

with her sublime voice