I'm in a Calendar! No, not that kind...

Before I became a full-time artist again in July, I worked at Dolphin Scholarship Foundation, an incredible independent nonprofit organization that provides undergraduate scholarships to children and stepchildren of U.S. Navy submariners and Navy members who've served in a submarine support capacity.

It was a meaningful job, not least because my husband is a submariner, and I am very proud of him and what he does, and hold deep admiration for the sailors who serve our country from deep beneath the sea, often with very little or no contact with the world above.

DSF gives back to this community, in the form of 137 scholarships each year (each Dolphin Scholar will receive $3,400 for the 2008-2009 school year). If you know someone who might qualify for a scholarship, please have them take a look at the eligibility requirements.

The Foundation held a novel fundraiser this year, a virtual submarine race to the North Pole, in which each dollar donated in the name of a submarine counted as one nautical mile for that boat. This "Race to the North Pole" commemorated the 50th anniversary of the first crossing of the North Pole, not just by a submarine but by any ship, on August 3, 1958 by the USS NAUTILUS (SSN 571), which you can explore here, and which was first to the North Pole again, although with some heavy competition this time around...

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to commemorate the "Race" with a contribution to another DSF fundraiser and longtime tradition, the annual cartoon calendar.


If you are interested in supporting the submarine community by purchasing a calendar of your own, they are available now, for $8.50 each, plus shipping (and sales tax for VA residents). You can find the contact information here.

Cherry-Picking #7: Steve? It's Your Wedding Day!

Today's story is one of the funnier things that happened to me when I worked on A Wedding Story, and it's all in what wasn't said.

The wedding was at the Venetian in Las Vegas (and both the crew and wedding party were staying there as well).

The groom's name was Steve.

As an associate producer, it was my job to get footage of the groom getting ready for the wedding.

So I called Steve up in the morning to find out when we should meet him.

"Hi, Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"It's Alison."

(pause) "Uh, hi?"

"Hi! Just checking to see when you're going to start getting ready for the wedding?"

(longer pause) "The wedding?"

"Um, yeah, your wedding. Today?"

(another long pause) "What?"

"You are getting married today, right?"

(no pause at all). "No."

(long pause on my part) "This is Steve, right?"

"Yes."

"Steve Smith?"

"No, this is Steve Jones."

Wrong room. Wrong Steve.

***

Here's the conversation as I interpreted it after we hung up:


"Hi, Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"It's Alison."

(pause: Alison. Alison. I don't remember meeting an Alison. But I was pretty wasted.) "Uh, hi?"

"Hi! Just checking to see when you're going to start getting ready for the wedding?"

(longer pause: Wedding? The wedding? ) "The wedding?"

"Um, yeah, your wedding. Today?"

(another long pause: My wedding? My wedding! Holy &#%@$! What happened last night? Oh, god, I've always heard bad stories about Vegas. Mama told me not to come.) "What?"

"You are getting married today, right?"

(no pause at all). "No."

(long pause on my part: Is this some kind of joke by his groomsmen? Or did the bride and groom have a fight? I do NOT want to call the producer and tell her the wedding has been called off.) "This is Steve, right?"

"Yes."

(This cannot be happening to me. What do I do?) "Steve Smith?"

"No, this is Steve Jones."

When I Get a Little Money, I Buy Books...

When I get a little money, I buy books, and if any is left, I buy food and clothes. -- Erasmus

Because I am a DIY-er through and through, and because I've got books on my mind, I am going to write my own meme. I am sure it won't be that original, just like the title of this post, but I'm going to live dangerously and not even look to see if it's been done before.

If love books the way I do; if your palms start to sweat and you breathe a little faster when you walk past a bookstore; if you never turn down a free book, even it's about gastrointestinal health or in a language you can't read; if you remember the names of characters in books you read when you were ten better than you remember the names of people you went to college with; or if you just want to fill out the meme, then please do, and let me know.

(I know these answers are mostly fiction titles, but I have plenty of nonfiction books I love as well.)



Favorite Book(s): Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, A Wrinkle in Time and And Both Were Young by Madeleine L’Engle, Song for the Basilisk by Patricia McKillip, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery, Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee

Favorite Author(s): Madeleine L'Engle, Patricia McKillip, L.M. Montgomery, Orson Scott Card, Charles de Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay, Neil Gaiman, Joanne Harris, Isabel Allende, Tom Robbins, Ivan Klima (in no particular order)

Favorite genre(s): Fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, espionage and old-fashioned British mysteries (by Margery Allingham and M.M. Kaye). But really? I'll read anything.

Best beginning to a book, ever: Well, that's a hard one to answer (I know, I wrote the question), but I like these two lines:

"If I had cared to live, I would have died," from Silverlock by John Myers Myers.

"This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it," from The Princess Bride by William Goldman



Best ending to a book, ever: Water for Elephants, by Sarah Gruen

Book pilgrimages you've made: To DeSmet, South Dakota (Little House on the Prairie) and Cavendish, Prince Edward Island (Anne of Green Gables)

Funniest book(s) you've read: Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, by Laurie Notaro.

Book that picks you up when you're in a bad mood: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman or anything by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Book that most surprised you: I had to read a book about the Peloponnesian Wars when I was in middle school, that I thought would be so boring -- I mean, it was a nonfiction history book about war, which was not a subject my girly-phase preteen self found all that interesting -- but I could not put it down. Absolutely captivating. Wish I could remember the title.

Book everyone else loves but you can't finish: Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and, um, I am embarrassed to admit it, but I can never make it past the halfway point of The Two Towers in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I keep trying, though.

Most memorable book you just happened to buy on a whim: Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by Bruce Sterling. A Wrinkle in Time aside, this is the first science fiction book I remember reading, and it kindled a passion in me. And I just bought it because I liked the bright and colorful cover. Tsk Tsk.

Book you mistakenly judged by its cover: The Merchant of Marvels and the Peddler of Dreams, by Frederic Clement. I was working at B. Dalton in Newport Beach and this book was on the counter for months. I thought it was so ugly. One day I finally picked it up, said out loud, "Who would buy a book with such an ugly cover?" and promptly bought it. Amazing, wondrous, marvelous, splendid book!

Best recommendation you've received: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card and Silverlock by John Myers Myers

A random recommendation: Tell me about yourself, and I'll recommend a book. Fiction, nonfiction, cooking, fantasy, business, history, whatever.



Books from your childhood that you still re-read: The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin, and anything by L.M. Montgomery or Madeleine L'Engle

Book you're reading now: The House on the Strand, by Daphne du Maurier

Book you've been actively reading for the longest time: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman

Favorite guilty pleasure book: Anything by Judith McNaught. I'm not a romance reader, but I love her books. Total escapism.

Number of books you own: About 1,500 (Al keeps trying to talk me into getting rid of some, but I bet the total weight of my books is less than the weight of his beloved motorcycle. Okay, maybe not, but it can't be that much more.)

Number of books you own that you've never even read: About 100

Other random bookish fact about you: I collect copies of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in different languages as souvenirs when I travel. When I was six, the other kids called me Alison Wonderland. Drove me nuts back then but now I think it was, and is, totally fitting.

Al bought this for me in Spain.

Cherry-Picking #6: Theater Tickets, Anyone?

My mom wouldn't let me get a job in high school because she wanted me to concentrate on school.

Which worked, I suppose, because I had a 4.0 GPA, was my high school valedictorian, and received a full scholarship to college.

(Yes, I told you. I am a total nerd and not ashamed.)

But it also meant that when I did go job-hunting, at my father's insistence, one summer in college, I was terrified, and jumped at the first job I could get.

Telemarketing.

Considering that I hate talking on the telephone and hate asking people questions or to give me something, it's odd that this was just the first of many jobs that required me to do both: telemarketing, journalism, television production.

But it wasn't such a bad gig. I sold season tickets for South Coast Repertory, and I was actually pretty good at it, so I made a decent commission, the base pay wasn't bad for a college student, and I won a few prizes, like tickets to an Angels game, for selling the most tickets in a given week.

The best part, though, was that I was selling something I wanted myself, for an organization I believed in.

And while not everyone I spoke to was the kindest, friendliest person in the world, only one person was ever outright mean to me. So mean, in fact, that it was impossible to take him seriously. But as a result, I am as polite as can be to people who call my house, because they are, after all, just doing their job.

Cherry-Picking, #5: The U.S. Constitution

Image downloaded from www.archives.gov

I carry a copy of the U.S. Constitution with me.

Not everywhere I go, but I keep it in my calendar, and I take that most places I go.

(I know. I am a complete and total nerd, and I am not ashamed, because I have come to realize over the past eight years just how important this document is. The Constitution, not my calendar, although my calendar is certainly important to me.)

I used to just carry the Bill of Rights, in my wallet, you know, just in case I ever needed that. It was a lark, really.

But then Al and I visited the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and they have little pocket copies of the Constitution for grabs at the ticket counter (typed, not a copy of the original as seen above).

Why settle for a few rights when you can have them all?

The print is so small I can barely read it, and I don't really spend a lot of time reading it, to be honest, but I like having it with me. Just in case I need it.

Cherry-picking, #4: I Find Myself Fascinating

I mentioned here that I find myself fascinating. And I really do.

But I think that statement deserves a little more clarification. It's not in an "I'm-so-cool-as-I-lean-against-my-red-sportscar-and-flip-my-hair (like-a-character-from-an-80s-movie)" kind of way. It's more in the way an infant stares at its hands, like, "Whoa, dude, look at those amazing things! Lordy!"

First, I find my life fascinating.

It actually usually feels quite routine (which I am discovering is not such a bad thing), but when I take a look back at the experiences that have happened to me, the things I have made happen, intentionally or unintentionally, the places I've gone, the people I've met, the things I have seen, I think, Wow, what a crazy, interesting, lucky life I lead!

I can't take much credit for it all, because I don't see myself as being in control as much as being a guide for my life, sort of loosely shepherding it in this way, or that, and waiting with anticipation to see what comes next. Even when something happens as a direct result of a conscious decision on my part, it usually unfolds in a completely unexpected manner.

Second, I do find myself fascinating.

But it's as if I were someone else, a subject to study, and I am starting to learn that I am not the Alison I thought I was.

I am 33, at the age where you start having doctors who are younger than you are, which is a bit of a shock, really, and you realize that all that worldliness and wisdom you thought you had in college and your 20s is replaced in equal parts by certainty and uncertainty.

In other words, even though I am pretty sure I know a few things by now, I am also aware that I know nothing, really. And I'm okay with that.

My life changed pretty drastically three years ago when my husband and I got married -- I left my job, and, really, my career; I left my friends and some of my family behind; I left my beloved city of Philadelphia; and (this is the one that I had the most trouble adjusting to, because I didn't expect it to be difficult at all), I left my name.

Essentially, I, who had never had a problem with dramatic changes and had gleefully jaunted off to live in countries where I knew no one and spoke none of the language not once, but twice, stepped into a major identity crisis and fell, and kept falling for a long time.

I did not know what hit me.

It has taken a lot of time to climb back out of the hole I fell into, using a ladder constructed mainly of two things: the patient and supportive love of my husband and this new life as an artist.

As I've climbed out, I have discovered that I am not the person I thought I was. In some ways, I've changed. In other ways, I just never was that person. But I find this new me as interesting as the old one, as I get to know myself all over again.

(And I am discovering that, in many ways, I have come full circle, and that, deep at the core, I am still just me.)

Funny Money, Honey

Washington, DC on $85 a Day

Originally uploaded by Musely

Okay, okay, okay. Sorry about that post title.

But it IS funny money! So, so funny.

By Brendan McKeon, via Prêt à Voyager.