Ann Marie Gamble

Kids in the Kitchen

Friday, August 12th, 2011

We went blueberry picking with the gang: a reluctant but competitive crowd of teenagers, toddler, non-fruit-eaters, and adventure buffs, plus a few adults who compared the prices of already-picked berries at various stores around the Midwest.

After an hour or so, we had 17 pounds of berries. (We should have weighed a couple of the kids before and after.) We’ll freeze most of these, but for the rest of the weekend, blueberry everything. One of the kids suggested blueberry pie, and I suggested this recipe. (more…)

Posted in Parenting, Play, Travel | 2 Comments »

Letterboxing

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

I’m posting about a vacation activity, whether you’re at home or on the road, at the Pop Culture Divas.

Our letterbox got chomped by a woodland creature

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Vacation/Research/Life

Sunday, September 5th, 2010

Guédelon, France, summer 2010

It’s been a while since I’ve been at the blog: our summer ended up chock-full of away-from-the-keyboard adventure (and inspiration). There are those who consider it impossible to get much writing done if you don’t log off. I get a lot out of the Internet, as far as research goes: old-school facts and figures, maps and photos and nowadays videos and accounts from a wide range of people. I get enough that I forget that stumbling through a specific physical space gives you ideas that a general read-about doesn’t. (more…)

Posted in Creativity, Process, Travel | 1 Comment »

Blog Party

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

My e-friend Karen Quah has been blogging for one year this month, and in honor she’s posting interviews of some of her frequent guests. Today’s post is an interview with me (me me me me me!). That reaction is one reason I’m getting such a kick out of this, I suppose, but I’m also hugely enjoying learning more about people who’s avatars I’ve gotten to know from the comments.

Getting to know Karen encapsulates everything I love about social media. I had just joined Twitter. My goal was to post once a day. (more…)

Posted in Blogging, Play, Travel | 1 Comment »

Convergence

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

This is a sample of columnular basalt in the Field Museum in Chicago:

The famous place I’ve heard of this formation is the Giant’s Causeway, a cliff on the northern coast of Ireland. There’s a geological explanation and a legendary one, a tale I enjoy because the hero actually dodges the issue and defeats the villain with a trick instead of a fight. In Rite of Return the hero and heroine end up at Giant’s Causeway at a moment when the heroine is questioning why she’s in the country. It was a scene that took me a long time to write, and I did a lot of staring at photos of columnular basalt while I was trying to do it. (more…)

Posted in Creativity, Rite of Return, Travel | 1 Comment »

Small Town Views

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

I made a comment a while back that it turns out I need to clarify. I said that when I went off to college in the Big City, I didn’t know how to use an elevator, and apparently created a vision of a youth spent among cargo cults or the Amish. “We went into a room and closed the door, and when we opened the door we were in a different place!” Nothing so dramatic: I though that when the elevator was on the upper floors, one pushed the down button to summon it, rather than the up button to tell it where I was headed. Fortunately the school had 40,000 students and those guys were German majors so I never saw them again.

On the scale of cosmopolitanness, living in college towns gives you the effect of many thousand more than the actual population size would indicate—another hosannah for libraries, concert series, and independent cinemas. But it’s a not a well-known effect. (more…)

Posted in Play, Travel | 5 Comments »

Turning Japan into Ireland: Life and Writing

Monday, August 24th, 2009

This was the year I learned to tie a necktie

Before reading Rain Fall, what my year in Japan reminded me of most was a year my family spent in England. Instead of an eighth-grade teacher, I was the student. Superficial things: the food is different, the language is different, the kids wear school uniforms. Deeper attitude things: both are island nations with a sense of apartness from the geographical region (Europe and Asia are Them, not Us). In both places I felt tagged as an outsider. In Japan, obviously so, but to be perfectly clear, 96.9 percent of my family tree originates in the British Isles (and the rest is northern European): one might think that in Manchester I would have blended in.

But everyone in my school of nearly 2,000 knew that I was the American kid.* When I walked down the hall, someone would start singing “We’re the Kids in America” (a song I think is stupid to this day). In English class we read To Kill a Mockingbird, and I was the translator for cultural questions. Another teacher wanted to compare the educational system with the United States. (more…)

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My Ideal Office

Monday, June 1st, 2009

Lately this is the kind of space that appeals to me. Fresh air, breezes, the twittering of birds . . . I think I could get a lot of thinking done in that hammock.

It turns out that these aren’t just fantasy movie sets. (more…)

Posted in Process, Travel | 2 Comments »