The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": The Family Vacation and Non Momish Moments

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Family Vacation and Non Momish Moments

Warmer weather is here, so that means one thing: we are going to embark on a family trip. I always thought I did a pretty good job at planning these, but at a very informal meeting (right after I come back from BJ's with a fresh arsenal of pizza rolls the kids usually herd around the kitchen island), I discovered there may be some problems with my planning.

Before I begin, let me say that it is very difficult to plan lessons for a long time and not try to weave in some kind of theme when planning trips. I have been accused of making family vacations "like something our English teacher would force us to do" and I've been working on that. I keep forgetting that while I think it's amazing fun to go see Edgar Allan Poe's headstone, the kids are like, "Wait, did he write Twilight Zone?"

So for this year's Easter break, we came up with the idea of getting a Philadelphia City Pass that offers tickets to six attractions. Emma wanted the aquarium, I wanted the zoo, Christopher and hubster wanted the National Constitution Center, Philip wanted the Franklin Museum and everyone wanted the double decker bus tour. For the sixth, we had to choose between the National Science Museum and visiting the Eastern Penetentiary which houses Al Capone's cell. Of course, I picked the museum. They just put in a whole new butterfly wing.

"We knew you would," Christopher said, "because you want us to learn on a vacation."

"There are worse things."

"Nope," Emma said, "there aren't. You also make it so we have no time to relax. It's like every two seconds, we have to go somewhere or watch something."

"What did you want to do?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Relax in the hotel. Float in the pool. And you're like, 'Philip, show Emma how to do the back stroke.' "

I do remember saying that.

"So we're going to the penetentiary," Christopher said. "It's supposed to be haunted."

I was worried this would be too dark a destination for Emma. She looked right at me. "I definitely would LOVE to see a ghost. That would be the best vacation ever. A very not Momish vacation."

Momish? I make up words, so I guess I can't say anything.

So after a consensus, we are going to visit Al Capone's cell. Here is a picture of it:

I DID find out that the Eastern Penetentiary was the first place that believed in rehabilitating criminals rather than punishing them. It was based on Quaker beliefs that if you isolated prisoners, they would be able to refect on their crimes in the silence. They even put hoods over their heads when taking them out for meals so they didn't interact with other prisoners.

In fact, I found out a lot of facts about the Eastern Penetentiary, including ghost sightings and lots of legends. I did a little research so they might learn something - a very Momish thing to do.

10 comments:

Jemi Fraser said...: A very Momish thing to do indeed. :)

I get that kind of response all the time. I love learning new things - love seeing cool stuff. And I think they secretly do too - they're just not going to tell me :); Thursday, 18 March, 2010
Bish Denham said...: I LOVE that, a Momish thing. In our house we were all assigned chores by "the volunteered by Mom committee." A committee of one, Mom.; Thursday, 18 March, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: I know they like the zoo more than they let on, Jemi. But I was terrible when they were younger - I would give them books on each state we passed through and make them find ten facts (each) about the state before we could stop for lunch. I've mellowed.

Yes, I love that, Bish! A committee of one. I think most houses DO run on that singular committee, but only some come right out and say it.; Thursday, 18 March, 2010
Shannon said...: I definately think that as much as us kids want to chillax during our summer vacations, it's also fun when there's a plan - you're not going on vacation just to float around. For example, my parents planned an "American History" East Coast tour, and we went to Boston and went to a lot of museums there, then on to Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, and then to Cooperstown for my dad, (we all love baseball, but he's a nut.) I guess it also helps that we all like reading and learning about new things - we watch the History Channel for fun - but how my parents would make it better if they knew my sister and I were getting bored was to promise an ice cream in the afternoon. Not every day, just maybe two times during the vacation so that my parents would get to see what they wanted to see and we would get dessert. ^____^; Thursday, 18 March, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Well, that's good to hear, Shannon - that you guys like a plan. I tend to like all the educational stuff, and my kids like the bungee trampoline stuff.

And I've "caught" my oldest watching the History Channel, so I'm glad for these comments. Makes me think they secretly do like all my planning and little factoids, but they have to posture like, well, teenagers.

(Are you the Shannon who was "doomed" by the Donne poems - from the email? Sounds like you, but I wasn't sure); Friday, 19 March, 2010
Marcia said...: That's a pretty nice cell. I don't think AC got rehabbed, though, huh? :); Friday, 19 March, 2010
Christy Raedeke said...: Is that cell for real? I would actually pay to stay there in seclusion for a week or so!

Have a great vacation.; Friday, 19 March, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Marcia, I'm not sure anyone, not even the most patient of Quakers, could rehab AC. But according to their philosophy, they would try. I didn't know exactly how "bad" AC was until I just read about him. Yikes. And he is said to be there still, well, in spirit.

Christy, you have a braver soul than I do. I would like to stay at the Hilton with room service. That's way more my idea of seclusion. Of course, you might come up with some insanely good paranormal in that cell...; Saturday, 20 March, 2010
Adrienne said...: Stopped by to say hi...

I've seen one famous prison cell - the one Socrates occupied. I'd say Capone had it a lot better. Have fun on the road, and save time for goofing off.; Tuesday, 23 March, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: You're back! Nice to hear from you again!; Thursday, 25 March, 2010

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***