Alliteration amoré

Because I love alliteration, and because a master of the form, William Safire, died this week, I'm dedicating today's post to this sentence he penned as a speechwriter for U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew:

"In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club -- the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."

A reading reduction

Left to right, from top: Sam tells his joke; Chaja, Sam and Annie read about harpies; Amelia goofs off before taking the stage; Max reads his riddle.

Let's Write poetry slam
Serves five children, plus their families

One chapbook (PDF version)
25 flutes of sparkling juice
2 strings of twinkling lights
40 cream puffs stacked in a small mountain
Two pounds of melted chocolate in a fondue pot
A friendly audience

Simmer for two hours. Taste the sweet success.

All photos by Marcel Levy at Dance in the Kitchen.

Let's write

One of five participants in my writing workshop. Photo by Dance in the Kitchen.

Five kids met regularly at my kitchen table to write this summer. It was a skill swap with a friend: She gave my kids art lessons, I taught hers writing. I seized on this arrangement because she's an excellent art teacher, and I'd never given a writing lesson.

Plunging into uncharted territory, I researched the broad subject of writing with children, and the particular topics of poetry and comic writing. Among the arsenal of books to guide me in developing a workshop, I relied most heavily on "Don't Forget to Write: 54 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons for Students 6-18." Armed with this excellent book, I developed a syllabus. Here it is, along with my class notes:

Message in a Bottle -- For years, desert island poets have sent their deepest thoughts out to sea in bottles. In this workshop, students create postcards and send them out into the world to find their way back.

Kids left their postcards in grocery aisles, tucked into library books, launched them with balloons and dropped them on sidewalks. One postcard made its way home, and, oh, how we cheered when it arrived in the mail!

Tiny Tales -- Celebrate in a small way. Eat tiny cakes, drink tea from tiny cups and write tiny stories that consist of just a few paragraphs. Learn the basics of story-writing on a small, manageable scale.

The most-anticipated class by the students, who gobbled up the petits fours and drank copious amounts of sweet tea. In the future, I'd divide this into two classes: The first focused on story craft, the second spent creating the book. The free tutorial I used is at Making Books with Children.

Weird Science -- Facts take a backseat to fiction in this inventive workshop. Students compose their own wacky faux-science journals.

This class was a hit with my active and younger kids because it involved shorter, directed pieces of writing.

Everyone’s a Comedian -- Introduction to joke writing and puns encourages word play. Leave with your very own riddle book!

The final class was the most challenging. Having never succeeded at retelling a joke myself, I was nervous and relied on the examples of how to write baseball jokes featured in "Don't Forget to Write." But my group of kids (all soccer players) didn't know baseball. Their lack of knowledge about the game made it difficult for them to manipulate language and come up with jokes like this one:

Why is a catcher a good dinner guest?
Because he is always cleaning the plate.

So I quickly moved on to the "How's business?" joke model found in Joanne E. Bernstein's "Fiddle with a Riddle" and met success. Example:

I'm in the diaper business.
How's business?
It stinks.

In addition to these topics, each class introduced a new vocabulary word (all fabulous insults such as popinjay and stinkard) and poetry form (such as couplet and haiku). Two great books I used were "Poetry from A to Z: A guide for young writers" by Paul B. Janeczko and "Poem-Making: Ways to begin writing poetry" by Myra Cohn Livingston. The Shakespearean Insulter was the source of the vocabulary list.

My students will read their poems and short stories at a poetry slam and art exhibition in my backyard this weekend; I'll share sights and sounds from the event in a future post. I believe the energy, time and money spent teaching kids what I love to do was a wise investment. Their art hangs on my wall. Their stories inspire me.

Quid pro quo.

Diktat

dik-taht
noun

Photo courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

Oops goes the flour. Out comes the vacuum. One is never too young to understand the diktat: Clean up the mess.

1. A harsh settlement unilaterally imposed on a defeated party.
2. An authoritative decree or order.

Glorious, garlicky soup

Photos courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

Sunday often tastes like the dregs in the bottom of the coffee cup. The day has a bitter grittiness to it: The weekend is over and the family is tired of the activities, the chores, and each other. But occasionally a perfect day comes along filled with mellow autumn sunshine, stolen naps, and garlicky soup for the many runny noses in my home.

In the bowl:

44-Clove Garlic Soup with Parmesan Cheese

44-Clove Garlic Soup with Parmesan Cheese
Adapted from Bon Appetit, February 1999 and Smitten Kitchen

Serves 4

26 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 1/4 cups sliced onions
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme, chopped
18 garlic cloves, peeled
3 1/2 cups chicken stock or broth
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated
lemon wedges

Roast 26 cloves (I used a whole head) of garlic in a small ceramic or glass dish. Add olive oil, salt and pepper. Cover with foil or lid and bake until garlic is golden brown and tender, about 45 minutes. Cool. Squeeze garlic between fingertips to release cloves.

Melt butter in soup pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and thyme, and cook for 6 to 10 minutes. Add roasted garlic and 18 raw garlic cloves. Cook 3 more minutes. Add chicken stock, cover and simmer until garlic is tender, about 20 minutes. Working in batches, puree soup in a blender and transfer back to the soup pot. Add cream and bring to simmer. Season with salt and pepper.

Divide grated cheese among your bowls and ladle soup over it. Squeeze lemon wedge into each bowl and serve.

Manneken Pis

Photo courtesy of bEbO.
Manneken Pis, Dutch for "Little man, urinating," is a famous Brussel's landmark.

My sons' third-grade teachers are actively discouraging their students from using the restroom or getting drinks of water during class instruction time. Apparently, there was too much wildplassen going on (Dutch for random acts of peeing), so instructors came up with a thoughtful solution:

Each student has a "credit card" good for five trips to the restroom or drinking fountain in a week. Need to pee? Your card gets punched. Feeling thirsty? That's a second punch. Maxed out your credit card by Wednesday? My sons shrugged for lack of an answer. They don't ever plan to get to that point, they assured me. They're going to dominate their bladders until noon, when everyone is allowed to pee freely.

My initial reaction to this policy looked something like this:

"Angry sandwich" courtesy of Sakurako Kitsa.

What kind of teacher would develop a policy that could lead to bladder infections, constipation and embarrassing accidents? But, keeping in mind the excellent advice about experiencing discomfort from Geek Feminism's post "Notes from a PTA mom," I decided to let my boys solve this.

Each morning, they fill bottles of water to keep at their desks. Each afternoon, they make a beeline for the bathroom. Get out of their way; otherwise, urine trouble.

An ending

"Raking walls" courtesy of bricolage.108.

A robin hangs out under the pergola, picking grapes off the vine. Pinch. Drop. Pinch. Drop. But the third grape the robin swallows in one giant, grotesque gulp. The patio stones are littered with rejected grapes in various degrees of decay, which attracts flies. At the feet of the picnic table and under the benches are tangled messes of sticky web that crackle when torn. The widows that spun these webs hide and wait.

But I know that soon: The grape will shrivel. The robin will migrate. The fly will die. And the widow, stiff from the cooler night and maybe a little hungry from lack of flies, will expose herself to the waning September sun to thaw out and warm up.

And I will squash it.

Absolution

"Do they taste nice?" courtesy of publicenergy.

Since I was raised on the Catholic model of confession and penance, I'm sharing this deadly sin: I am a glutton.

I blame it on the box I'm sending to Heather, my friend in Spain. I thought it'd be fun to include her family's favorite candy bars, but, being at the grocery store without a list of what they liked, I decided to guess. Into the cart go Butterfingers, Snickers and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Once home, I discover I was 60 percent right in my guesswork; nobody likes Butterfingers.

What else could I do but eat it?

There I am, crunching this too sweet, too crumbly candy bar that's sticking to my teeth, and I'm not enjoying it. I toss it. Growl. Open the Peanut Butter Cups to get rid of the cloying taste. As I eat this second bar, I realize that Dark Chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are much better, and actually congratulate myself on eating the candy bar intended for my friend. Now I can go back to the store and buy Heather the better candy bar.

This wrapper joins the half-eaten Butterfingers in the trash. My stomach feels funny from so much sugar, my conscience is pricked. I am unable to forgive myself for my lack of self-control, my binge, my guilty pleasure in chocolate.

The Snickers sits on the counter.

I eat it.

A key

Photo courtesy of alicia rae.

"Memories remain incomplete in your head but sometimes, if the memory is shared, you can pool resources and come up with a version that feels true."
-- Molly Young of Magic Molly.

I'm thinking of a particular memory. We -- me, my brother Joe -- were sitting on the back of the yellow Honda Civic, clutching the metal bumper as the car weaved and hiccuped across ... what? I remember a potted dirt road. Joe swears it was an alkali flat. I was, maybe, 12. Joe, 9. He says we were fighting, and our dad had stopped the car and told us to walk home. But who's idea was it to ignore the order and jump on the back?

I only remember the dust and coughing. Of legs, too long, scraping against bushes. Of feet dragging. I remember my fear mingling with, first, shock that my dad was actually trying to throw us off the back of the car, and, second, determination to not let him succeed.

I think Joe may have fallen off. When I asked my dad about it, he just smiled and denied it happened. But each of us -- Joe, my dad and I -- got a third of the memory. Next time I see Joe, we'll unlock it and fill in the gaps.

Inspired by Molly Young's post "Not a cloud marred the blood-red sun." For more thoughts on keys, visit Sunday Scribblings.

Celerity

suh-lair-uh-tee
noun


Chaja reads in twilight, courtesy of Dance in the Kitchen.

She read with celerity, devouring the teen-age vampire story in two days and craving more.

1. Rapidity of motion or action; quickness; swiftness.

Woohoo for the workers

Hoorah for the secretary! An old ad courtesy of Olivander.

After this weekend's work -- sanding a door, painting a wall, scrubbing a house -- The Slow-Cooked Sentence is playing on this day dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.

A story written with frosting

A 2-year-old's cake.

My daughter, Chaja, celebrated her birthday Thursday and frosted her 11th cake. When she was small she smeared "raspberry-fluff icing on an angel-surprise cake" a la "Bunny Cakes." Now that she's crowing that she has just two more years left before she's a teen-ager, she asked for a yellow cake with chocolate frosting as dangerously dark and delicious as the vampires in "Twilight."

The same girl, nine years later.

Here's the to-die-for recipe:

Foolproof Chocolate Frosting
adapted from Cook's Illustrated March-April 2008 issue

20 tablespoons (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioner's sugar
3/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa (I used Hershey's cocoa)
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 ounces chocolate, melted and cooled (I used milk chocolate)

Cook's Illustrated recommended mixing the frosting in a food processor, but I didn't read the recipe ahead of time, and poured everything into my mixer. Didn't make a difference in the outcome.

Process butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt until smooth, scraping sides of bowl as needed. Add corn syrup and vanilla and process until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Scrapes sides of bowl, then add chocolate and pulse until smooth and creamy, 10 to 15 seconds.

Licking the bowl with her brothers. All photos by Dance in the Kitchen.

Farewell summer

"A leaf's view" courtesy of Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton.

Watching
yellow leaves fall
in a late summer wind,
my small son looked at the trees and
yelled no.

For more poetry, go to Sunday Scribblings. I particularly enjoyed Quin Browne at a gasping little voice, Dee Martin at Thoughts Have Wings, and the concise piece published at GlowbyWords.