It was a super busy week–the ending of the semester for Vermont College of the Fine Arts students and faculty. I don’t know where my brain was when I drew up the semester’s schedule. Oh wait. As I wrote to several of my students…it was on painkillers. So when I got a box of the Advanced Reader Copies of my new novel, I didn’t even have time to open it.
About the only thing I let squeeze into the week was some phone conversations about the venue for the Seattle fundraiser for Ethiopia Reads, Open Hearts Big Dreams.
It started out as a fundraiser mostly to support the merkato school in Addis Ababa but has grown to be a fundraiser to support all of what Ethiopia Reads is doing. SO important! I loved having the conversations, too, and thinking about next Dec. 14.
But…now…
Eeeeeeeeeee.
A new book. In some ways, this book began when we evacuated from our house in North Dakota because the Red River was sprouting through holes in the dikes.
In some ways it began when we left Colorado and moved to North Dakota, taking our cat. Or with the cat before that who was killed by a car, much to our sorrow.
In some ways, it began when I was a kid in Ethiopia looking around and wondering…if God watches over sparrows and us, why do bad things happen to good kids? Why do the girls in Maji mostly not go to school? Why don’t some people have clean water to drink? Why? Why? Why?
Sorrow.
What do we do with it?
Sometimes we volunteer. Sometimes we suffer silently. Or noisily. Sometimes we pour all of our questions and our few puny answers into art.
