Julia Likes Frogs

Surgery was a month ago. Since then I have been sleeping, writing, painting (a little) and playing with my children. Each child alone is a pleasure, although the two together are baking soda and vinegar. I'm not saying which is which. Finally, Laurent took smallest monkey to France, where smallest monkey will spend a whole month alone with his grandparents, because we all needed a break, including Emile. He might even start maternelle, preschool, there, for a short while. Everyone gets a break, but I miss him like crazy. Starting tomorrow, I will be going to Boston every day for radiation - that's three hours round trip for 15 minutes of being turned into the Hulk. I'm doing it because they will also be giving me more chemo, and I apparently love chemo that much... Every day is hard. It's a mixture of crabby because I might die within the next five years, and blissed out because life is so beautiful, and crying when I hug my family. It's extrem...

NaNoWriMo and Escapist Literature

My name is Julia, and I am addicted to escapist literature. I'll read far into the night, even through the night, to get to the end of a story. Even a cluster of not exceptional YA fantasy stories, like the ones I've recently brought home from the library. (Librarian: "You know those are from the young adult section?" Me: Blank look.) Or maybe the stories are good, and I've just had a temporary raising of the bar for books in general, from having finished Abigail Thomas' memoir, Three Dog Life . Which is one of those books full of truth written beautifully, that often made me laugh, about loss of what we know, and loving what takes its place. Profound, in other words. Most of what I read isn't profound. My mother, who worked in a bookstore for part of my childhood, brought home great boxes of books without their covers. Some of my all time favorite books, of which I know every illustration, I wouldn't recognize on your coffee table at a ...

Sharron Loree

There are so many comings and goings these days that I can't keep anything straight. I will just share one end point of an internet thread I pulled ("surfing" sounds too pointless, less tangible). Emile has loved something I picked up for a dollar outside the bookstore, a hardcover called The Sunshine Family and the Pony , written and illustrated by Sharron Loree, published in 1972 by the Seabury Press, New York. The images are a simple black and white style, accompanied by minimal written storytelling, recounting the experience of moving into a commune and acquiring a pony for the children. On a whim, I started to poke around to find out how the hippie story really went. Sharron Loree, born in 1938, was on the vanguard of the 60s revolutionary guard for women. Many of her paintings reflect her complex understanding of the differing family roles, particularly when both the woman and the man are painters. Loree is mentioned as the person who helped writer V...

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