Friday, January 30, 2015

STAR STUFF: Carl Sagan and the Mysteries of the Cosmos is a NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children Honoree

I am happily floored at the new that Carl Sagan and the Mysteries of the Cosmos is one of only FIVE books given the honor. Here is the link to the National Council of Teachers of English. Feeling proud- thank you NCTE!

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Dolphin Watching

About two weeks ago, our very kind and generous neighbors invited us to go out with them on their boat to go dolphin watching. Inge and Michele are delightful neighbors. They retired here last year from Paris. Inge is originally from Germany, and Michele is French. I speak German with Inge and Fred speaks French with Michele and somehow, we manage to communicate and enjoy on another's company. 

Anyhow, one of their children and her husband and their kids were here on holiday and one morning, they popped by to see if we wanted to come with to look for dolphins. YES please!

They have a local skipper who took the whole group of us to the south of the island neat Tamerin. There we stopped and had some sandwiches that Inge had made and hung out around this tiny little island that appears on a lot of post cards around here. I'm not sure what it is called, but here it is. 




We spent most of the day spotting one or two dolphins...and then headed back to the north. On the way back there was a crazy rain shower and some choppy seas and then, at the end of the day, when we had given up the idea of really seeing dolphins, the sun came out and there they were. A lot of them. Everyone got snorkels, masks and flippers on and dove into the water. Tristam saw a dolphin and they looked at each other- who was the more curious about the other? Tristam had a experience of looking in to another being's eyes and seeing there a real intelligence - a real being. I think we will all remember that day of for the rest of our lives. 

Thank you Michele and Inge!

Paddling

We have been back in Mauritius for almost a month. Tristam is back in school (and thankfully loving it), and Fred and I are working tweaking our work and home schedules to keep the balance we had just a few weeks ago- before thing got BUSY. The last couple of weeks, very slowly, it began to happen again...the days got chopped up into "to do's" - which totally blows, because the nothing really happens and down time vanishes for no good reason- and then the ever elusive goal of "balance" falters and becomes even more distant. Life becomes more maintenance than focus- because it gets partitioned out into little bits that are not enough time to get into anything...

This morning though, I headed back out onto the Indian Ocean on a paddle board. There was an extreme low tide- magic! No boats were able to get out into the water because it was just too shallow- not so for the paddle board. The water was calm and crystal clear. The creatures and corals that I saw this morning were the sorts of things I pin on my Pinterest boards- the kinds of life where you just marvel that this creature actually exists! I met a French man out in the water who was laying down on his paddle board looking down into the water and then sometimes he would turn on his side and look up at the towering tropical clouds. We were the only ones out on the water and he told be about some islands I could paddle to and explore- and so I did. I glided over reefs with wild looking corals and brightly colored fishes. I saw the ocean floor like I have not seen it before because the water was so clear and it was so calm- no boats. It was an experience I hope to always remember. 

At the end of it though- a bit of sadness - a hit an area with coral that was a ghostly white- it was dead. There were few fish there- and when I looked up- dozens of fisherman. The local fisherman struggle to make a living as the coral ecosystems are taxed and over-fished and the fish they have depended on for generations become more scarce and smaller....I wondered as I came in what the future of the coral reefs will be...if someday the creatures I saw out there will be limited to aquariums. 

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Holiday Recap



For christmas this year we wanted to give Tristam something that he could enjoy for the next number of years. we didn't want to do some brainless thing like a DS or other mind numbing video game- we wanted something that didn't rely on a time constricted platform and something that he would have to physically engage and grow with...so I called up my old friend Scott Kam at Rootamental Skateboards and he made Tristam this custom board. The board is big enough to be easy to learn on- with soft squishy wheels, but has customizable features where he can take the board to a skate park, for example, and do some tricks there as he progresses with the sport. My thoughtful parents provided him with helmets and every pad and piece of protective gear made and we all gave it to him on christmas eve. He was floored! Couldn't believe it! He was beside himself- we had always said "no" to a skateboard and he felt like he had been at a dead end with the whole thing- and now he gets a board made by a passionate, hardcore skate aficionado like Scott and the kid is over the moon. Hurrah! So now, I take him to vacant parking lots and places where he can learn without car traffic and the kid is catching on quick...Scott said this is the kind of board a kid can have all of his life...awesome. 






 Sushi in Shell Beach- gorgeous...delicious. Fred and I decided that there is no sushi in Mauritius..doesn't seem to be an understanding of the concept...most of it are these dense hockey pucks of rice with some pink stuff in the middle..funny- it's an island!




 Christmas Eve at my parents house with my sister, brother-in-law and their kids. We were all playing games and laughing. Family togetherness- a beautiful thing. 


Me mid-festivities relaxing with Fred and a glass of wine in may parents' home- cozy, lovely. That night my childhood friend, Davy, popped over unexpectedly with his family- the whole holiday was full of family, friends, and good simple pleasures. 

California Drought, Mauritius Rain

Just weeks ago I was home in California and there was welcome rain- so much rain that the forecasters said that we would be out of the drought if the rain continued in the same pattern...that was so 3 weeks ago...today this  and here in Mauritius- a cyclone just passed by. Before it passed it built up an unusual amount of energy over the Indian Ocean (which has much higher than normal temperatures). For the last 4 days the cyclone bobbed and wove (and dumped over a foot of rain)- it changed direction and hovered- gathering strength from the warm waters...today, thankfully, it headed east and left us with some wind gusts and rocky waters. A small globe, a changing climate- two sides of the world and two extreme plays being acted out on their respective stages. 

Monday, January 05, 2015

And Then I Got to See STAR STUFF: Carl Sagan and the Mysteries of the Cosmos in a Bookstore



Since the book came out in October and I was here in Mauritius, I had not yet walked into a bookstore and seen my book there. This is my local B&N where I got to share shelf space with friends like Sherry Shahan, Sharon Lovejoy and Jay Asher. The feeling of seeing my book there and to be among such company was gratifying and thrilling- and a bit surreal. As an aside, every B&N that Fred and I went to after that was sold out of STAR STUFF! 

Just before heading to Minnesota for Christmas, I stopped in at Tristam's school for a little author's visit- the kids made me these awesome stars ! One girl even drew an excellent portrait of Dr. Sagan. 

Tristam's wonderful teacher Rebecca organized a super fun time at the school. In almost every classroom I visited, the kids were talking about wanting to explore space and some of them talked about going to Mars.

Back and Forth and Back Again

No posts for awhile- I have been traveling. 

In early December I headed back home for two weeks to check in on things and to do some work related things. It was lovely to be back in California. There were winter storms and big waves and I had a fire in the fireplace almost every night. This time I decided that I wasn't going to drive myself nuts trying to clean and organize everything. I will save that for this summer when I am back for longer. 

 From a far, we have been reading and hearing about the drought back home. It was so nice to walk along a rushing SLO stream downtown and to wear rain boots and walk through puddles and smell rain in the air. It was joyous. 

 There was plenty of seasonal color on the trees- golden fig leaves and fuzzy sycamore. 


 There were several storms in the short time that I was home. During the largest one, I was over at good friends Diana and Rob's next door. Rob had gone down to the pier and bought several delicious Dungeness crabs and they both kindly invited me over to share the feast. Both of them have been such wonderful supporters of STAR STUFF. On another evening I went over to their house to watch their nephew on the Discovery channel- he is a NASA engineer and worked on the Mars Rover Curiosity. It was so great to see people doing exploratory science on Mars and that the same thrill of discovery that Carl Sagan described in his work with robots on Mars goes on and that he inspired so many of the scientists working on these missions today.  


The last time I was home, I didn't make it down to the beach even once. I was doing a top to bottom cleaning and organizing of the house as well as taking care of some other things- this time I walked to the beach often. The smell of the ocean says home- it's one of the main reasons we changed houses here in Mauritius to a home that is closer to the sea. 



And then there was the garden- I had my hands in the soil and weeded and planted and enjoyed every minute of it. I don't have an after picture, but this is the before.