Karen Sandler

Author: Karen Sandler

  • Dance Camp!

    I’m heading off to a week-long dance camp today in Stockton, CA. This is an annual pilgrimage for my husband and me (and a 100+ other dancers from around the world). On the schedule this week are classes in Portuguese, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Israeli, Vintage, English Country, What’s Hot in Europe and Square dance. We stay in the dorms of the University of the Pacific and eat yummy (not so much) dorm food.

    Here’s what my piles o’ packing look like:

    You’ll notice the kitties are a little apprehensive of all the disarray. We have a great housesitter lined up to stay with them, but they don’t know that. They don’t like it when we leave.

    In the third picture, those big black bags are clothes on hangers. Since we’re at dance camp for a solid week and because we’re dancing our little footsies off for several hours a day, we need lots of changes. Plus there are parties every night, some of them that involve costumes. So hubby and I need lots of changes of clothes.

    I like to make sure each outfit–skirt, blouse socks (yes, socks with a skirt. You can’t wear dance shoes barefoot, and it’s mighty hot for hose)–to be color coordinated. So I put them together on hangers so when I go to the closet for an outfit, I don’t have to think about where everything is.

    Even still, in my don’t rock the boat/rock the boat fashion, I’ll probably end up mixing everything up. And there are also the bargain finds at the rummage sale which I might end up wearing.

    Here’s one of my coordinated outfits:

    On Wednesday of the camp, we all have pictures taken. It’s nice to wear a costume that night. Last year I got a screaming good deal at the silent auction on a German dirndl costume. At the live auction, I bought a complete lederhosen costume for my husband, so we’ll both be well outfitted for picture night. I am part German although I don’t know that my German Jewish great-grandmother would have ever worn a dirndl.

    I’m hoping I’ll have enough spare energy this week to post to my blog about the camp. My goal is every day, but it may end up being just a few times during the week. One limitation is exhaustion (have you ever danced 8-10 hours a day?). The other is that my grandbaby will be at camp this year for the first time and I hope to help babysit her. But with luck you’ll see posts from me complete with cool pictures.

  • Censored by fear of saying the Wrong Thing

    I have a very weighty blog entry in mind, one that will be full of things I find scary to say, but things that really must be said. This is not that blog entry. This is the one about how often I keep my lip zipped due my to fear of saying the Wrong Thing.

    That is not to say that I never say anything awkward or clumsy. Au contraire, I’ve always had a real talent for putting my foot in my mouth (literally, as well as figuratively–doh, there I go again putting an embarrassing image in your minds). From childhood, I have blurted out the Thing I should not, the Observation that should have remained unsaid, the Critique I should have kept to myself. I’d get scolded, I’d feel mortified, I’d feel terrible for anyone whose feelings I hurt.

    In my more mature years, I’ve managed to put a pause on my patter. Most of the time I can take a moment before spewing out the Thing that impulse is goading me to say, to consider whether it’s such a good idea to make that joke or commentary. Sometimes I say it anyway, many times I do not.

    The downside to this is that I’ve become a bit of a coward. I’m so worried about who might be offended that sometimes I say nothing when I should be speaking up. I’m particularly worried about what I post online because of the varied audience and the permanence of words on the internet. I have this fear that I’ll spout an opinion or make a declaration that will anger some group of people so heartily that they decide they’ll Never Buy My Books. Then they’ll tell all their friends, and they’ll start an internet campaign and pretty soon no one will ever buy my books.

    Okay, that’s a wee bit on the irrational side. But it lurks in the back of my mind and I sometimes (often) wonder if those fears end up watering down what I write. Maybe my blog posts, tweets and Facebook statuses are more bland than they could be. I think I’m braver in my books, but there’s at least some self-censoring going on there too.

    I’ve been working on it though. Getting myself accustomed to definitively declaring my stand. Not in every little thing (I try to keep politics out of it), but when it’s something that’s important to me, like in this post, I’ll make a statement.

    Someone once described me as “Don’t rock the boat/rock the boat Karen.” Meaning I hate to rock the boat, but at the same time I feel compelled to rock it. I think it’s time I did a little more rocking.

  • Dystopias & Apocalyptic Dreams

    Two or three times a year, I have a post-apocalyptic dream. Not recurring; it’s different every time. Some disaster has occurred on earth. I’m living with my family under a freeway underpass or in a cave. My life as I knew it has been thoroughly altered.

    Just by itself, Freud would probably have had a field day with a dream like that, but to add to the weirdness, I really like those dreams. I always wake up with a sense of Wow, that was cool! In the dreams, I have it together, I’m powerful and doing a great job taking care of my family and battling whatever the forces are that created the apocalypse. The dreams give me a sense of well-being. Yes, very peculiar.

    I’m guessing that one thing I like about the dreams is the story aspect of them. While I’m in the dream, I’m living that post-apocalyptic life. I’m a part of the landscape, living it first-hand. When I wake, the storyline doesn’t necessarily hold up, but while I’m in it, it’s like experiencing my very own post-apocalyptic movie.

    No surprise that I love reading post-apocalyptic and dystopian books. My first YA, Tankborn, is a dystopian novel. Emptied, a work in progress, is post-apocalyptic. They’ve both been a blast to write.

    So what’s the difference between post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories? Are they essentially the same thing? Definitely not. An apocalypse is a sudden event. Life goes from complete normalcy to utter chaos within a very short time. An asteroid hits earth and the resultant dust cloud & radiation wipes out millions. A disease escapes from a secret lab and kills three-quarters of the population on the planet.

    The story would then proceed from that event, the characters struggling to survive in the midst of disaster. Alliances would be formed, enemies would sprout up to to try to defeat our main characters. By the end, our heroes would have vanquished not only the villains but the desolate landscape itself.

    The creation of a dystopia is a much more gradual process. In a dystopian novel, the evolution of the society it portrays is all backstory, and the main story reveals only hints of how that society came to be as events proceed. If the author were to detail the entire history of how the society developed before she got to the action, her readers’ eyes would glaze over and they’d toss aside the book or delete the sample from their Kindle/Nook/iPad.

    So we jump right into Hunger Games‘ staging of gladiator-style games in which youths fight to the death without knowing exactly the path society took to get there (although it’s a believable extrapolation). The Adoration of Jenna Fox doesn’t detail the decades of scientific development it took to get from today’s medicine to the mystery of how Jenna came to be. Ditto for the Uglies series, where Scott Westerfeld uses another masterful extrapolation to create an entire society that revolves around beauty and fame, in which becoming beautiful is an everyday rite of passage for teens. But none of these worlds/societies happened overnight or due to any sudden, cataclysmic event.

    An apocalypse could lead to a dystopian society, could be the trigger for it. The Forest of Hands and Teeth would qualify, in which a virus of some sort leads to a plague of unconsecrated (i.e., zombies), which then leads to a quasi-religious dystopia. But in Forest, that society took a couple hundred years to develop to the present day depicted in the book.

    If there are examples out there that prove me wrong re: the definition of dystopians vs. post-apocalyptics, I’d be interested in hearing about them. I’d also be interested in more dystopians triggered by apocalyptic events. Leave the titles in a comment.

  • Horses & Barn Doors

    My mare is an escape artist. She let herself out of her stall today and went walkabout. I arrived for a ride to discover her stall gate wide open and the stall empty.

    Who me? Open my gate? I would never…

    Luckily, she stayed on the property. Why not? All her buds are there and there’s all that grass to munch.

    And she was a good girl when I went to catch her. She’s been known to woo-hoo all over the property evading capture. Since she was likely out for several hours, I guess she was ready to come in from the cold.

    Yes, I am beautiful.

    Of course, when you look at that face, it’s hard to stay mad. But next time, I’m double-locking that gate.

  • Happy 4th of July

    Just a few 4th of July memories.

    • Fireworks over the lake.
    • Burning my fingers on sparklers.
    • Picnics at Grevillea Park where we slid down the grassy hill on cardboard boxes.
    • Putting pennies on the train tracks so the train would squish them flat.
    • Chasing a bird at the park with a salt shaker (because if you put salt on their tail, they can’t fly and you can catch them).
    • Setting off fireworks in the driveway of our house.
    • Potato salad and deviled eggs
    • Singing the Star Spangled Banner

    Happy Independence Day to everyone in the U.S.A.