Yesterday, Brian and I headed out in the bus. Our goal: to test the systems and troubleshoot before Robbi and I hit the road at the end of the month. We started out tired. Brian has been working on the bus around the clock. I have been managing non-mechanical tour...
Yesterday the bus started to feel a lot more like a home. We got up early, grabbed our rollers and brushes and many cans of paint and headed to Brian's house, where the bus has lived for the past few months as he continues to magically domesticate it. While I opened...
The bus exterior has been amply documented. But in case you missed it, here it is, colorfully adorned with a literacy-themed mural, painted with love and persistence by Robbi and me and a bunch of our friends and a few hundred kids and community members. "But what...
Last Thursday we spent the afternoon with the students and teachers of Rock Hall Elementary School. They had used their Title I funding to purchase a hardcover book for each student and teacher. Robbi and I talked observation and storytelling with a group of preK–1st...
Last night around 9:30... After a marathon session of outlining clouds and applying a layer of clear coat, we finally finished the mural. Surely there will be nicks along the way and the necessary patchwork that follows, but for now we are done and moving on to the...
Robbi painted all night and wore out her brush. This morning at 8:30, I put out a call for a #8 round replacement brush to our Chestertown community, and by 9:30am, I was back at the Barn with six new brushes—and a jar of pear sandalwood body butter from Chester River...
The color is in. So it's time to add the final line. It's patient, painstaking work, but the results are so gratifying. This stage of the process is all Robbi, so my work for the moment is bringing her snacks and loudly exclaiming. Delight and calories in equal...
Switching for a moment from bus to books... We just found out Cookie of Perfection (book 3) was included on the American Library Association Summer Reading list (alongside such creators as Kate DiCamillo, Jason Reynolds, Dav Pilkey, and Jenni Holm, among others)....
Last week, the kids made a great start on the mural coloring. Yesterday, we recruited a spirited corps of semi-professional painters to continue the work. We divided and conquered, expanding the sky, filling the fields, and mixing a new shade of green to round out the...
This is the Daily Minute for May 3, 2022. In which gray and black have given way to white and blue.
Day four of bus mural painting was short but gratifying. We set aside the black paint and picked up the white and blue. Suddenly, the sky came alive, as did the pages of the many books that dot this literary landscape. It's so fun to see the outline turn into a living...
Good night from Milford State Park in Milford, Kansas, where we were not planning to sleep tonight.
We started the day in Oklahoma and loafed a while before driving north to Tanganyika, an interactive wildlife park in Goddard, Kansas. We fed romaine to giraffes, tortoises, and guinea pigs, little tubs of milky fluid to lorikeets, and craisins to lemurs. We pet kangaroos (who were surprisingly chill). Kato fell in love with the lorikeets and Augie with the guinea pigs. I’m guessing there will be another power point presentation in my future.
Afterward, we drove to Wichita and found a grocery store. The kids stayed in the bus to do their homework, and Robbi and I spent a few minutes strolling the aisles, totally alone except for the other hundred or so people in the store. It was the closest thing we’ve had to a date in a while. We were hungry and probably bought more food than we needed, including an inadvisable box of Peeps-flavored cereal.
Then we drove two hours to our next campsite, a lovely spot on the banks of a lake, where we parked and set up camp only to discover the bathrooms were locked for the “off season.” The “off season” ends in two days, but Robbi couldn’t wait that long. She scowled profoundly by the lakeside as I packed up the bus for departure. She consulted the Google and found a new park an hour down the road.
On this drive, I made a terrible error, opening my driver window at the wrong moment and creating a draft that blew my favorite lei from Hawaii out the window. I despaired, but Robbi did not. We turned around, found my lei, and rejoiced as the sun set.
Then we drove another hour to a new park where we poked around in the dark for a bathroom that worked. The first set of bathrooms we found was also locked, but we persisted and finally found a set with doors that actually opened. More rejoicing transpired.
Now we are parked and Dumbles is getting his frisk on. Robbi is making a salad, and soon we will all pile onto the mattress on the back and watch TV.
It’s good to be back in Kansas, where I lived from sixth grade through the end of high school. Stay tuned for blasts from my past.
#busloadofbooks
In which we recount tales of triumph and woe on the byways of Kansas.
The Daily Minute: 3.29.23
In which we get up close and personal with a pack of peckish lorikeets.
#busloadofbooks
Good night from Coon Creek Cove in Newkirk, Oklahoma. Some days we wake up with a clear sense of what’s going to happen and other days we’re utterly surprised as weather shifts or opportunities present themselves.
Today was some of both. We spent much of the day at Olive Elementary, hosted by librarian Barbara Smythe. It’s a day we’ve been anticipating for 18 months, and it was just as fun as we’d hoped. We’ll tell you all about it soon.
What surprised us was what Barbara said as we were leaving. In addition to being a librarian, STEM teacher, and mother of four, she’s a volunteer firefighter and wondered if we might want to tour the fire station on our way out of town.
We nodded enthusiastically and Barbara called the chief to set up a tour. As it turns out, the chief was her husband Tim, who has recently taken over for his dad who had been chief for forty years prior.
Tim couldn’t have been more gracious or warm. He spent almost two hours showing us the various trucks, opening every compartment, demonstrating where the various hoses, ladders, tanks, and tools are stored and how they’re used. He let us sit in the cab, turned on the sirens, and gave us a demo of the heat sensors the firefighters use to find people or animals during a search and rescue.
All of the vehicles are customized to the specific needs of Tim’s community. In addition to two decommissioned military trucks Tim has converted into 2,500-gallon tankers, there’s a fleet of pickups set up to combat brush fires, which are the most common call for the Freedom Hill Station.
Tim showed us the office, the classroom where he runs trainings for firefighters from other towns, and the bank of lockers where the firefighters have their coats, pants, and boots carefully hung and folded for easy access at a moment’s notice.
I’d never known how much goes into setting up and running a fire station. It was incredible to hear someone so knowledgeable walk us through how everything works. Thank goodness there are people like Tim and Barbara willing to devote so much time and energy for the good of their communities. It was an honor to meet them both today.
#busloadofbooks
