The Joys of Tom Robbins

One of the best things that happened today was in my honors LA class when the kids shared their favorite parts of "Why I Live in Northwest Washington" by Tom Robbins. It started out slow, but then they spontaniosly started to stand up and really speak their favorite parts - with feeling and everything! It was very cool. One of my favorite lines: "The shore of Puget Sound is where electric guitars cut their teeth, and old haiku go to die. "

Their favorites:

• "I'm here for the weather.Well, yes, I'm also here for the volcanoes and the salmon, and the exciting possibility that at any moment the volcanoes could erupt and pre-poach the salmon."
• "I'm here for the rust and the mildew, for webbed feet and twin peaks, spotted owls and obscene clams (my consort says I suffer from geoduck envy)..."
• "...when the sky resembles bad banana baby food for months on end, and the witch measles that meteorologists call "drizzle" are a chronic gray rash on the skin of the land..."
• "And it will rain a fever. And it will rain a sacrifice. And it will rain sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem. "

Great examples of playing with language!