Yesterday I went to see the incredible David Hockney portrait retrospective at LACMA. A master draftsman. He says his portraits have ” to be directed through my heart to my eye to my hand.” One of the most curious parts of the exhibition were the cases of open sketchbooks. A computer screen displayed the hidden pages of all the sketch books. Most of the quick drawings, paintings were not very good. I hesitate to call them junk. Even a master does many, many unhoned mediocre works. I saw a parallel to my writing. All those notebooks of unfinished words. Out of that sometimes grows a treasure, a fully formed finished work.

I was so pleased to see SHIVER ME LETTERS mentioned in the July 3rd issue of US News & World Report in an article called Books to Battle Brain Freeze. I guess my book can help kids from becoming complete fog heads over the summer!

Today I spent a wonderful day connecting with my community. The city of Thousand Oaks just opened an incredible children’s library wing complete with a 3,600 gallon fish tank. I shared a booth with our local nationally acclaimed authors Alexis O’ Neill, Joan Graham and author-illustrator Carol Heyer mainly to promote our “existence” to our town. It was so much fun just to meet local families, teachers and book lovers. I must admit I relished seeing a two year cry because he couldn’t have B IS FOR BULLDOZER. I also enjoyed a child reminescent of Adam who could name every piece of construction equipment. I am always heartened seeing a crowd that will endure 99 degree plus heat to visit the world of books!

Last night my 14 year old son Adam and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore’s film about the urgent problem of global warming. I was more disturbed by the fact that Adam was the ONLY person in theatre under 30 than the message of the film. I was shocked and dismayed there weren’t any high school or college students in the audience. This was a small theatre so I had a good look around. Global warming is a more crucial issue for the next generation whose lives will be profoundly affected by these changes. I don’t know what it will take to wake up my sleepy suburbanite neighbors baking in their 100 degree backyards. Do they think a dip in the pool will save them from global warming?

It is our moral imperative to at the very least replace all our light bulbs with flourescent ones….or our great-grandchildren will be entertained by stories of that long lost curiosity called a snowman and those strange old sports of skiing and snowboarding!

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