Sad Things, Happy/Confusing Things

Let's start with the Sad Things, shall we? The world at large has lost two wonderful artists last week--Luciano Pavarotti, fabulously amazing opera singer, and Madeline L'Engle, unparalleled sci-fi/fantasy author. According to my news sources, which I may or may not be reading correctly, they both died on Thursday. It may not interest anybody but me, but I'm going to share a memory or two of each of them.

I'm not strictly an opera fan--I don't dislike it, but I don't usually choose it, either, and I'm sadly uninformed/uneducated on the subject. My mother, on the other hand, is at least a bit more aware of who opera singers are, and who she likes the best. Pavarotti was always one of her favorites. When I was little, she had a record (yes, a record, does anyone still know what those look like?) of him--I can't remember what the album was, for the life of me, but he was on the front of it, wearing a pierrot-type clown costume. She played that record sometimes when she was cooking something Italian (like baked ziti, yum!). I forever associated his voice with that clown costume and with my mom's best food--needless to say, I have fond memories of his singing.

Madeline L'Engle was much more present in my consciousness during my young life, and still today. Her books, with their inevitably fascinating blend of science fiction and fantasy elements, as well as a truthful and compelling portrayal of characters who seemed like real, actual people, were favorites of mine. There was the best known set, A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which nearly everyone my age has read, but there were so many others that I discovered and loved later on... An Acceptable Time, Many Waters, A Circle of Endless Light, and on and on. There was one summer when I entirely devoured every book by Madeline that the library had. I think it actually took about a week and a half, because I couldn't put them down. Her blend of science and spirituality and her vivid metaphors helped shape my understanding of the world, and have remained with me ever since. In the Fantasy class that I took last fall as part of the Children's Lit program, I was shocked that none of Madeline's books were on the syllabus; out of that amazing assortment of fantastic writers, she was the only one of my idols who was missing, and her absence seemed incomprehensible to me. I've been thinking that maybe I should email the prof, who's teaching the course again this semester, and ask her to consider fitting something from the vast L'Engle bibliography into what is otherwise an amazingly complete and diverse study of the genre. At any rate...we'll miss you, Madeline.

Now, on to the Happy/Confusing Thing. I have an interview for an internship in the design department at Candlewick Publishing! This is a very good thing! I want to go into book design after I leave Simmons, and an internship is the ideal way to learn the ropes, not to mention the computer programs I should know, before I start applying for real jobs at publishing houses. The only problem is, I already have four (count them, four!) jobs this semester, and I'm taking two classes. Fitting in 12 hours a week for an unpaid internship is next to impossible. I think what I'm going to do is explain my situation to the interviewer, and try to work out whether the week-to-week schedule for the internship could be flexible enough to allow me more time when I can spare it and less time when I can't. If that's not possible, then I'm going to ask them to hold on to my application until spring or summer, when at least one of my jobs will have ended, and consider me for the internship at that time. But really....YAY I'M SO EXCITED THEY EVEN ASKED ME TO INTERVIEW!

That's all the news...sorry it's been so long since my last post!