Laurustina

She bought the mask as a gift for his 19th birthday. It took all the charm she had to talk the antique dealer down to a price she could afford, but instinctively she understood that the boy and the mask belonged to one another.

After her death, six months later, the mask took on deeper meaning. It bewitched him, whispering dark secrets and filling his head with stories and colors he never could have imagined. In pencil and ink, his fingers flew, bringing the carnival of characters trapped within the mask to life.

For the boy, grief was not something to be discussed or expressed in ordinary ways, but it bled from his fingertips onto the canvas. With dark hues and haunting detail, his own tragedies intertwined with those which the mask inspired until even he could not untangle them.

Some nights, exhausted with the effort and frustrated by the medium, he painted his face, making his own mask and took to the stage as a merry minstrel. Make ‘em laugh. Make ‘em cry. Make them feel … anything. Afterwards, he’d go home, wash off the paint and stare at his naked face in the mirror … feeling empty, without identity. Then he’d lie down, put the mask on and let it fill him up again.

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One of my favorite writers just opened a Kickstarter campaign for his new book. If you don’t know what Kickstarter is, it’s a funding platform for creative projects, helping writers, artists and musicians raise funds to complete and produce their work. I’ve donated to a couple of projects in the past, one that met its goal and got funded and another that didn’t. I was delighted to have been a part of the one that made it and bummed when the second one fell short. In other words, I was invested in art from artists I believed in. This is another one of those.

I could wax poetic about Brendan Halpin’s books all afternoon, but here’s a couple of excerpts from my Good Reads notes on my favorites:

• on “Tessa Masterson Will Go To Prom” … Halpin shines here with his ability to create teenage characters who walk, talk, think and behave like teenagers. It is one of the things which drew me to his work initially and one of the things which keeps me coming back.
• on “Donorboy” … Charming, sad and funny. It’s a rare writer that can construct a novel entirely out of e-mails, IM conversations and journal entries and have the construct work FOR rather than AGAINST him. I loved this one and both Mouse and Ash did as well.
• on “Long Way Back” … a powerfully engaging read, equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and tearfully sad. An unpretentious and unexpectedly hopeful novel which should be added to your To-Read List posthaste.
• “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” is one of those rare books that somehow loved me back.

You can check Brendan out on Good Reads, Amazon and his blog. After that, please consider heading over to the Kickstarter page for “Enter The Bluebird” and tossing your lunch money in as an investment so a great writer can continue giving us great stories . $6 bucks will get you a free download of the book and larger donations will have even more sweet stuff coming your way.

[This guest post comes from Margaret Barton-Ross, a volunteer cook at Camp Ten Trees in the Pacific Northwest. Please make her feel welcome and spread the word about this great camp for LGBT families.]

It had never been my lifelong dream to cook in a summer camp, but after my daughter spent several summers volunteering her time to cook for the two week program known as Camp Ten Trees, I began to think it would be an interesting thing to do. And it had been a long time dream of mine to “drive” an industrial size Hobart mixer.

Camp Ten Trees has that very mixer in its kitchen. In August of 2008, I realized my dream of driving the mixer and was part of the kitchen staff at Camp Ten Trees.

I have long been a supporter of this non profit camp located in northwestern Washington. Camps tend to be special places to those who attend them. Camp Ten Trees has become much more than that for many of the campers who return year after year. The camp strives to develop “a camp community that honors creativity, individual choice, and community living.”

This camp exists to provide a safe environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LBTGQ) youth and their allies and for children of LBTGQ families. Camp Ten Trees has become home for these children and youth. Many of them say they spend fifty one weeks a year in the world, waiting for one week in the summer when they get to come home. For them, camp is home because they are safe and, after all, isn’t that what a home should be?

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This morning's breakfast consisted of a fried egg dusted with smoked paprika and a slice of sourdough toast with real butter. For lunch yesterday, I sliced up a piece of pita bread, brushed it with olive oil, sprinkled on some greek seasoning and baked it into pita chips which I ate with two heaping spoonfulls of roasted-tomato hummus. It amazes me that I can get un- hungry from so little.

My Go-To snacks are wasabi peas and popcorn with brewer's yeast, but I pick up one of those super-sized Hershey's Dark Chocolate bars every month and keep it in the kitchen drawer, eating it one square at a time when I get a craving for the sweet stuff. I'm the last person in the world who ever thought I'd eat like this. Simply. Moderately.

I was a weird little kid when it came to food.

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