I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet

When people think California, they are interested in three things: Hollywood, the beach and earthquakes. The first two inspire glamour-envy and that last one makes everyone fear the shake zone. But I was in Tennessee during a tornado warning once and that one time was more than sufficient. The sky was a weird, ominous yellow and the air was filled with impending doom. I swear I could hear dramatic music the whole time. I’ll take earthquakes any day, thank you. And living smack-dab on top of the San Andreas Fault, one of the first things you learn as a Southern California kid is what to do during earthquakes. In fact, earthquake-preparedness--getting in doorways, under tables, away from windows--is so deeply ingrained in us that my brother John and I each caused an embarrassing public scene when beepers we had on vibrate went off the first time. What do you expect? He and I rode out the 1971 quake together in the middle of our parents’ careening four-poster bed. He was also the first call I got years later when an early-morning trembler trapped the very pregnant me flailing around like a turtle on its back while my roommate yelled for me to get to a doorway. Yet, even with all that exposure, I still can’t imagine the experience of San Franciscans on the morning of April 18, 1906. In Earthquake, Milly Lee tells a survivor’s story through her grandmother’s eyes. Maybe that day a tornado wouldn’t have seemed so bad.

http://www.amazon.com/Earthquake-Milly-Lee/dp/0374419469

http://www2.visalia.k12.ca.us/library/millylee/index.htm

Get Up And Go!

In the spring of 2002, I had a choice: move out of the apartment I couldn’t afford due to divorce into a smaller apartment or live nowhere for the summer and travel with my kids. So, I put everything in storage, tuned up and packed my little red car, Fury, bought Walmart, gas, and telephone cards for emergencies, MapQuested every destination I could imagine, wedged a portable TV/VCR combo in between the front seats facing the back and hit the open road with a four year-old and a second-grader. For the next two months, we didn’t live anywhere except campgrounds and the occasional motel room. I had purchased a little propane campstove and a pop-up tent that I could put up by myself in five minutes flat. We went to Black Butte Lake, Santa Barbara carousel and zoo, Circus Circus in Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and other places, stopping every two hours to stretch our legs. We traveled over two thousand miles eating, sleeping, browsing, playing and sightseeing whenever we wanted. We swam in the ocean, two lakes, and a bunch of swimming pools. We saw lots of new things and met some really wacky characters. It was an amazing summer and I’ll remember it forever. The dog from Debra and Sal Barracca’s Maxi the Star and his cab-driving owner drive from New York to California, seeing some incredible things, but coming home is the best part of their trip. I know just how they feel.

http://www.amazon.com/Maxi-Picture-Puffins-Debra-Barracca/dp/0140565574

http://www.amazon.com/Debra-Barracca/e/B000APPDJI

Te Quiero

I don’t know if I am a speech teacher because I love language and want to be immersed in it all the time, or if I love language because I am a speech teacher trained to recognize its infinite glories. Either way, words fascinate me, even those in languages I do not speak. Passing on this passion is such a drive within me that I began amassing a library of children’s books while I was still in high school. Consequently, my kids have more books than any ten children could ever use and I still keep adding to the inventory. So, two years ago when I was still reeling over finding out at forty, with my youngest a fourth grader, that I was getting back in the baby game, it made perfect sense to pick up Rebecca Emberley’s little board book Mis Colores, with very basic color and object translations, at a yard sale down the street. Having been born and raised in Southern California, where you pick up a good chunk of Spanish as a matter of course, I already knew many of the words and their pronunciation but it was interesting to read them aloud to Scarlett and realize that the only impediment these new little ones have to knowing literally every word in the human lexicon is our short-sighted inability to teach them. Languages are only hard for adults because, really, if you’re not even two yet, your heart understands that “orange” and “anaranjado”--and people--are the same.

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=129210

http://www.amazon.com/Colors-Mis-Colores-English-Spanish/dp/0316233471