The Sacramento Valley

 

Whenever l feel like I've lost my way, or everything just seems too much
There's a place I know I can go that will set me right again.
If you drive north of Sacramento for an hour or so
you'll come to a batch of small towns.
This valley is where my family on both sides have lived for generations.

Here, time slows down.
And yet everywhere the farmlands are teeming with life.

 

 

My Dad and his sister, our beloved and faith-filled Auntie Ellen,
have lived here in a house together for more than 20 years.
It reminds me of Matthew and his sister Marilla from Anne of Green Gables.
And like Green Gables this place is strong and wholesome.
Home.

 

 

My aunt has a garden that's seen us through all our joy-filled and rugged years together.
It's put vegetables on our table in the summer and fall.
It's allowed us to daydream in green during winter.
And it's brought us a healthy dose of anticipation in the springtime.
(Not to mention a lion's share of gardening for my aunt to do.)

 

 

Just now, leaves are everywhere you look: on the ground, climbing the walls,
and falling off the windswept trees all day.
The bees are busy.
Rosemary, mint, basil and lavender are at the ready.
The marigolds are standing up too,
awaiting their summer duties to protect the tomatoes
and their nearby neighbors- bell peppers, cucumbers, squashes, green beans...
The apple and peach trees seem to know something we don't.
How can they be so, so beautiful without a single fruit yet?
And the roses. The roses.
They're just tangled up everywhere.

 

 

No one knows what heaven looks like, but a well tended garden has to be pretty close.

 

The One and Only Ivan

The One and Only Ivan was a hard book to read. Poor, sweet Ivan stuck living in an enclosure in a mall is enough to break your heart into a million pieces. I almost stopped reading because it was too sad. But Ivan is an artist, so I wanted to follow him on his search for any sliver of happiness. Because I hope hope hoped the author was taking us on a journey to show us how creating artwork can bring about liberation. And lo! She was!

(Warning- Spoilers ahead). Ivan, a Silverback captured from the jungle as a baby, has spent his entire life in a mall enclosure. But now he's old and no longer the attraction he used to be. The only thing he seems to have left is his art. When Ivan draws, everything fades away. He no longer feels trapped in a dusty enclosure. But, he longs to draw differently. He longs to draw more than simply what's in front of him- banana peels, apple cores, and candy wrappers. He wants to use his imagination. "My drawings seem to pale next to Julia's," Ivan says, "She draws the ideas in her head, I draw the things in my cage, simple items that fill my days." Ivan wants so badly to draw like the janitor's daughter Julia who visits him while her father works after hours. "Someday I hope I can draw like Julia, imagining worlds that don't yet exist."

Ivan has to learn how to hope in order to draw better. It's such a beautiful metaphor. And the way he learns how to hope is so deftly human. A friend helps him. He makes a promise to Stella, the elephant who lives in the enclosure next door, just before she goes to heaven. Devastated by the passing of his friend, a stirring deepens in Ivan to keep his promise whatever may come. It forces him to think of what he can do. To use the only thing he has, his art, to find a way to keep the promise. And he does! The great hope and imagination that has always been in him, suppressed by a lifetime in a dusty glass cage, pours out of him as he draws a drawing in honor of Stella's memory. The drawing eventually allows him to keep his promise, be removed from the mall, and sent to a beautiful zoo. A whole tribe of gorillas, blue skies and dandelions surround him, at long last.

A February Hodgepodge

I have a new website! I hope you like it. I've been looking for a way to gather my blog and portfolio together into one place and I decided on Squarespace. To celebrate, I worked with Flourish and Whim to craft a new logo. Isn't she talented? And isn't it nice how even a small change can feel so spacious?

World Read Aloud Day is next week. March 6! The folks in New York are always finding ways to beat the drum a little louder, and this year we've added a number of personal stories to the blog. We wanted to share our most memorable read-aloud moments from when we were children. If you like, you can read about mine here.

There are lots of exciting things happening this year: a bus tour and after school event in New York City, and lots of Ambassadors around the world planning their own homespun celebrations. In Kenya, at the LitClub community in Kisumu, a celebration happened early this week due to upcoming elections and a school recess. Just seeing the photos makes me smile.

 

 

This month I also did some artwork for an event to help raise money for the El Camino Hospital Foundation. I worked on things like invitations, place cards, bookmarks, and a few other odds and ends. It was fun watching it all come together. The tables were set to match the colors I painted, and even the centerpieces were arranged with the roses, ribbons and lemons from my drawings.

I was also in LA a couple weekends ago. I met with Marla Frazee at a coffee shop on a warm Saturday morning. I bid on a portfolio review with her back in November to benefit those affected by Hurricane Sandy and we arranged an in-person meeting to coincide with my trip this month. Marla was open and generous and wise, as I imagined she might be. The Greats are all this way, it seems. She encouraged me to let the looseness and freshness from my sketches carry over into finished work. And to remember to use my color to tell the story- to let the boldness come through where necessary, and not all over. My favorite thing she said was to imagine all the illustration skills in the world as a wide piano. Each one of us feels safest playing in a range of favorite keys. But, if we can find a way to play the keys outside our comfort zone, that's when our work will really sing. Hard edges! Black! Dramatic size variations! It's a great challenge for anyone, she confessed. Meeting Marla was inspiring and I will always remember our little hour in Pasadena.

Our LA weekend was a stretch of all the warmth and shine February can muster. Saturday afternoon Lane and I climbed up the Solstice Mountain trails in Malibu. We walked for miles beside trees with owl holes so big you could sit in them. We passed by two homes that were burned to their bones by the wildfires that consume each October. In the end, we wound our way up to the overlooking edges. We caught views of the ocean that no one should be lucky enough to catch in February. Even back home, at 6am on a rainy San Francisco morning, I'm starting to feel the vibrations of spring on its way.