It’s been a weird week for family stuff – we got a call from my husband’s parents that his grandmother has been moved into a hospice, and may pass away soon, (she is 92, but it’s still sad) and that his little brother was admitted to the hospital. He was eventually released, thankfully. It sucks when these things happen and you’re 3000 miles away.
My hotmail account has been down, so if you’ve sent me any e-mail via hotmail, I haven’t gotten it. Hopefully it will up soon, but my account is still down as of this blog posting.
In other news, it seems I owe NPR some kind of money this year 🙂 So, not only will Garrison Keillor be reading “Spy Girls” on the 16th on Writers Almanac, but the local NPR station, KUOW (kuow.org) will be broadcasting some of my Open Books reading on their local Seattle show, The Beat, with Elizabeth Austen, on June 12th. So, Seattlelites, keep your radios on KUOW between 2 and 3 on the 12th. I will be at school (again!) so I will have to rely on the podcast of the Beat – or have Glenn record it for me. Thanks NPR!
And, those of you who are sending out your first book manuscripts, don’t forget Steel Toe Books has its Open Submissions this month, so send in your work! It doesn’t charge a fee, they just ask that you buy one of their books.
Also, for a very amusing commencement speech, check out this commencement speech by Stephen Colbert for Knox College. My favorite part:
“There are so many challenges facing this next generation, and as they said earlier, you are up for these challenges. And I agree, except that I don’t think you are. I don’t know if you’re tough enough to handle this. You are the most cuddled generation in history. I belong to the last generation that did not have to be in a car seat. You had to be in car seats. I did not have to wear a helmet when I rode my bike. You do. You have to wear helmets when you go swimming, right? In case you bump your head against the side of the pool. Oh, by the way, I should have said, my speech today may contain some peanut products.
My mother had 11 children: Jimmy, Eddie, Mary, Billy, Morgan, Tommy, Jay, Lou, Paul, Peter, Stephen. You may applaud my mother’s womb. Thank you, I’ll let her know. She could never protect us the way you all have been protected. She couldn’t fit 11 car seats. She would just open the back of her Town & Country—stack us like cord wood: four this way, four that way. And she put crushed glass in the empty spaces to keep it steady. Then she would roll up all the windows in the winter time and light up a cigarette. When I die I will not need to be embalmed, because as a child my mother hickory-smoked me.
I mean even these ceremonies are too safe. I mean this mortarboard…look, it’s padded. It’s padded everywhere. When I graduated from college, we had the edges sharpened. When we threw ours up in the air, we knew some of us weren’t coming home.”