Tell Me

Image by Dmitriy Gutarev from Pixabay

“‘Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.’   E.B. White

Wonder struck at the Oregon Writing Festival, on May 4th. In its 39th year, this annual event spearheaded by the Oregon Council of Teachers of English (OCTE) drew over 350 students from throughout the state to Woodburn High School to pursue the practice, the craft, of writing. In the offering of one young author:

‘What makes a writer?

People that choose to write

the time they take

the effort into each and every word

makes a writer.’

              —–Layla Gardner

 It was my first experience; it will not be my last!”

So begins the article I am submitting to the OCTE Chalkboard newsletter, a quarterly publication , as a required “Note from the President.” I have no doubts about the essence of this lede, though perhaps the White quote indicates my audience. What I worry about is the paragraphs that follow. Am I too preachy? Will I antagonize the very audience I want to herald? It continues:

“What we pay attention to dictates our state of mind, and it is so easy in an uncertain world, beleaguered and often disenchanted, to focus on the negative. This Saturday in May emphasized the counter-narrative. Volunteers accompanied groups of students as they attended workshops, listened to inspirational authors, and shared their writing with peers.

Reflections from participants captured their rapture. ‘The students? They’re amazing, just amazing. Aren’t they?’

‘Why wouldn’t I give up a Saturday to my students? They show up as writers everyday for me!’

‘My daughter reluctantly attended when she was in fifth grade. Now she’s a sophomore, and says the festival changed her writing life. She still talks about it.’

‘It’s the energy. I go back to class full of it!’

As the last workshop ended, clusters of students gathered by the booksellers’ tables, wended  their way to awaiting parents, paused to compare notes. ‘I’m coming back next year-for sure. Are you gonna be here?’ Eyes wide with wonder!

May the end of the year, the summer respite, be wonder-full!”

Of course I believe what I write. I am heartened, perhaps unduly, by an event like the writing festival. At this point, I substitute very selectively. I cannot ignore the challenges that exist for many (dare I say most?) teachers wherever I go. Do I see what I think could be done differently—and maybe with a better outcome? Of course I do, but my full-time career is over. I am a guest, a visitor. I do not want to pretend to know it all, or prescribe cures for those dealing with current daily ills.

I want to be a cheerleader, and when I see something positive, I want to celebrate it. I hear the echo of Mary Oliver’s words, “Tell me, what else should I have done?…Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?” I plan to share wonder.

A Slice of Reflection

“Learn. Learn. Learn.” (Benjamin Eder, 1980-2001)

At some professional development session offered by BER, a dynamic presenter emphasized the “magic three” as a writer’s tool for cadence, for rhythm, for attention. I had to begin with Ben’s quote today and add that there is no more powerful three-in-a-row, that profound anaphora, for keeping life interesting.

Of course this ultimate post of the Slice of Life Challenge, 2024, extends gratitude for all who participated, and as I firmly avow to anyone who stops by to read what I’ve written, “Attention is love in action.” I am humbled.

What I learned today is that, if I want to do justice to the folks who join in this annual event, I have to go back to go forward. Timing is everything. In this writing community, people come from many time zones. People’s lives are crowded with obligations and a panoply of personal timetables. Many of us write on a schedule. I’m a morning person on the West Coast. I usually write and comment in the early hours of the day. (Too infrequently do I return to see what’s happened after I’ve left. I apologize.)

For others, their days have already begun, and what’s early to me, is midday to them. Maybe they’re in the middle of a class or performing a lunch duty at school. Some are ferrying children to after-school activities when I’m walking on the beach, or putting children to bed when I’m putting dinner on the table.

This morning I went to yesterday’s writing invitation, March 30th, because I seldom read anything from the posting-late-in-the-day crew. What I learned is that if I do revisit the day before, I will meet many writers I’ve missed. Going back sends me forward to discovery.

There were 110 blog posters in our community yesterday,(111 if you include someone who posted today), and I could easily spend today catching up on yesterday. It’s a conundrum, but I will add some go-back-to-go-forward to my routine next year; I have learned!

I look forward to another year of Tuesday slices and to my eighth year when March, 2025 arrives.

Inspired by “Sick”

I don’t remember what year it was when I heard Shel Silverstein speak at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. What I recall from the event is something he said—or maybe in the revisionist view of my past—something I think he said about teaching poetry to students. Encourage your students not to be slaves to rhyme. It’s a hard sell when he is such a master and was popular beyond all others in my first and second grade classrooms. We do love rhyme.

Today a poem of his is running through my head, a parody of a poem, to be exact. I have had middle school students, on the heels of successfully playing with the copy-change methods from Dunning and Stafford’s Getting the Knack,

embrace the opportunity to play with the poems we’d share in class. Frost’s “Stopping by Woods…“, inspired such classics as, “Whose cheeseburger is this? I think I know…” or lines from William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just to Say” morphed into “I’m sorry I stole your bike from the garage…”

I have Shel’s “Sick” on my mind this morning. My sister-in-law gave me my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends where “Sick” lives happily surrounded by other Silverstein gems. On the inside front cover her son, now a 50-year-old, had written a note in pencil letting me know that he was giving me this book because it’s the BEST BOOK EVER MADE, including page number of his favorite poem, “Sick.” He had struggled to unlock reading, but Shel helped him find the key.

Sick

I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more—that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut—my eyes are blue—
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke—
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is—what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

From Shel Silverstein: Poems and Drawings; originally appeared in Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. Copyright © 2003

In my head I am hearing, “I cannot write a post today/all my ideas have gone away./my pen lacks ink/my thoughts, they stink/I can’t imagine what to say./ What if I never find my words/ is that a thought beyond absurd?/ Around me people buzz and prate/ they seem to think their words are great./They do say much I wish I could/but my stories really aren’t that good!/I know I have no writer’s skill/to face the page takes more than will./ I’ve told some tales that make me smile/but not today, I’ve lost my style./Wait, you urge, just give it time/those challenging days are not a crime./Who knows if later on today/you’ll not be grabbed by what to say?/ You’ve started now, you’re on a roll/ You’ll end this now; you’ve reached your goal!

Post 29 of 31! (Thanks, Shel🙏)

No…Not Wordle, or Connections

(Spoiler Alert: If you complete the New York Times “Flashback Quiz: Your Weekly History Quiz” and have yet to do so this week, 🛑!)

“Can you place eight events in chronological order?” This invitation greets me every Saturday morning, and I accept. Bear with me as I take you back through time.

We are given an anchor event. Today’s is from 1951 when a basketball scandal positioned the NCAA to rise to power over the NIT. “First held in 1938, the NIT was once considered the most prestigious post-season showcase for college basketball before its status was superseded by the mid-1980s by the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.^[1][2]” (Wikipedia).

Now the fun begins. Aristotle and his connection to monopoly poses the next challenge. Not really. Aristotle certainly preceded basketball tournaments, of that I’m 100% certain. I drag and tap to its correct position: Circa 330 BCE.

Next Lady Mercians and the Vikings, again not much to doubt. Vikings certainly came after Aristotle and before United States basketball tourneys. 912-17. Right again. Am I feeling smug? Heck no! I’m not even halfway yet.

The first inkling of challenge arrives with the publication year of Maurice Sendak’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are. Before or after 1951? Hmmm. I could Google it, couldn’t I, open a cheater’s window. Yes, but today this post is keeping me honest. I go with after-1951 and am rewarded! 1963 it is.

Hokusai’s unmistakable “The Great Wave” curls on the screen, one of my husband’s favorites. Google’s siren sings in the background, but I resist. After the Vikings? Yes, right? and well before basketball betting, no doubt. When I’m correct, 1831 to be precise, I wonder if some of my husband’s art history knowledge is sinking in.

Okay, it’s getting tougher with the question about the Treaty of Manila. The additional clue about 48 states at the time clinches it. I drag and tap and voilà: 1946.

Here I meet my Waterloo (June, 1815, btw) about five decades before Florence and the Crimean War 1860—about which I am woefully ignorant (so many wars). I have conflated her with Clara Barton, the Civil War, and founding the American Red Cross. I place her before Hokusai and RED chastens me. (Oh, Florence, you were right about the hand-washing!)

Are you following this? Here’s what we’ve got so far:

Alexander Pope is up next. Him, I know; all those English classes in college come in handy with the Flashback! Nothing but green as I drag and tap into place. 1711-17.

Last is Pompeii, the eighth event. I’ve taught this, can see an entire village frozen under volcanic flow, ash covering all. Before the Vikings? Absolutely. Before Aristotle? Absolutely not! 79.

And I’m done, 7 out of 8. I’ve done worse. And better still? I’m done with this post 2024.

From the Words of Others

Should I write about dogs? I just read about an assembly with seeing eye dog training volunteers, a family, a terrific post, and I have lots of dog stories.

Should I write about almost drowning in Palm Springs when I was a toddler? I just read a post—brilliant, btw—giving me the ABC’s of that desert place from my past.

Should I write about feeling like a failure when a post doesn’t materialize despite my commitment to writing every day? I’ve read a trio of six-word stories that dispels that feeling.

Should I write about junk drawers? Or junk spaces-bigger-than-drawers? I could never do it justice as this writer has done today.

Should I write about my book club? Nope, someone else has turned that page, and I could never compete with a tale, “shrouded in mystery.”

Should I write about March Madness and basketball brackets like this fan has? I have to pass.

Should I write about the letters I wrote to my son telling the tale of our growing up together in honor of the wonderful man he has become—even if it isn’t his birthday? Another mom has lauded her birthday-girl daughter this way today.

Nope…none of these work for me today. I guess I’ll just continue reading and commenting on my fellow-bloggers, and imagine Elisabeth doing the same.

Slow-to-Write Wednesday

“That people found the surplus psychic bandwidth to consider—or even worry over—anyone else’s interior seemed like an unheralded miracle. …there was a word for this: sonder. ‘The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.'” (from Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar 240)

I’ve been writing about Akbar’s book all morning, the back pages of my notebook filled with quotes and plot summary, brief moments, Revealing vignettes from different characters’ perspectives that haunt me. This book won’t let me go.

Today is about singular words though, the ones in isolation—is that even possible?—that capture my imagination. “Sonder” is one of them, a new addition relative to the long scope of the OED, having been coined first in 2012. It stays with me as a walking-in-this world prod, its truth like yellow caution tape wrapped around the perimeter of a crime scene, witnesses standing in silent regard.

On a lighter note, are you afraid when Friday the 13th rolls around? There’s a word for that: Paraskavedekatriaphobia, (Thanks, Denise!), and even more a word for a general fear of the number 13: Triskaidekaphobia. Thirteen barely registers as anything other than a number for me, but not for some.

Pádraig Ó Tuama’s recent Substack, explores contranyms, words that have opposite meanings: cleave, sanction, ravel. He focuses on “want,” both desire and lack contained in that one four-letter word. I was thinking about “cleave” yesterday, the biblical exhortation in Genesis (and echoed in other places):”Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Cleave to divide, to separate from has a violent face to show as well. Idle musing , and yet March is Women’s History Month.

This morning I read a new poem by Kim Addonizio, “This Too Shall Pass,” a reckoning with those phrases we mumble, attempting to console in the face of death, the grieving. “…Everything happens/ for a reason: more good tidings someone will try/ to trepan your skull to insert…” “Trepan” was unknown to me, a term for the saw used to cut a hole in the skull, also the act of cutting that hole. That boring, I can almost hear the whine; can you?

When I leave the house later this morning to go to the local pool, no one will know, as I don my goggles, tap my Fitbit, sink to start my swim that I am thinking about what they might be thinking about in their “vivid and complex lives.”

Happiness: Take Five!

Another day in the middle school means I need to open my browser and go to one of the four gmail addresses I check each morning, each one related to an aspect of my life. The one I check first this morning comes courtesy of my work as a substitute for the district.

I’m comfortable in this classroom, familiar and friendly with these students and their teacher. As I peruse, I find her journal prompt for her students in AVID, Advanced Via Individual Determination. (Could I speculate on how a group of educators or administrators or whomever came up with that particular acronym? Yes, I could, but that’s for another day, the day I explore my frustration with the proliferation of acronyms!)

“List five things that make you happy. Explain why.” I lift my eyes to stare at one of the titles on my bookshelf that made the trek across country with me when so many others were abandoned: Write Beside Them by Penny Kittle. And so:

1. This warm cuddle of black and white fur curled in my lap accompanies me each morning as I sit at the desk. Is part of it because his food bowl sits in the far corner, that he loves the warm indent I leave when I rise to get more coffee, or stretch my legs? Perhaps. It matters not. He is my muse and lights my life.
2. Through the still-dark window which graces me with a view of the attached shed beyond—even though I cannot actually see them yet—are rectangular planters filled with ever-bearing strawberry plants. At first the small starts seemed destined for disappointment, but good soil, a controlled climate, and direct light breaking through yonder window urges them to thrive. Grow, berries, grow!
3. Sunshine mangoes in the fridge chill beside furry kiwis and plump red raspberries. Minneola tangelos, dimpled and shout-out orange, rest on the counter. A fruit salad for lunch makes me smile!
4. I had almost given the Mark Cross pen up for dead, certain that it would never flow with the same river of ink that had carried me along for years. Suddenly the point clogged for no apparent reason. I stashed this gift from a special student many years ago, replaced it with a Lamy, and forgot about it. The a year ago during a fit of culling, I found it, tried a new refillable cartridge, cleaning the nib yet again, and voila! Its plump barrel rests like it never left on the writing bump of my finger. Happiness—pure and simple, with an old friend.
5. My silver MacBook, another stalwart, delights in its reliability, its resilience. Purchased in February of 2015 after I was accepted into the Rutgers University Educational Tech Certificate program, it saw me through—from exploring a range of tools to movie-making with garage band. It continued undeterred through travels and digital demands, accepting replacement parts and upgrades as needed. When the pandemic put me online teaching sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, it carried on. As I watch its increasing tendency to buffer, its memory capacity reaching its limits, I am resigned, understanding, and oh so happy it’s taken me so far.

Write Beside Them? Not exactly, but there it is: Five things that make me happy! (Six—I finished this post.😉)

Running Behind

Thursday morning, wrapping my brain around a second consecutive substitute teaching gig this week wondering, “How did I do this for 35+ years?” and, “Retirement has its logic!”—when I finally get to the bottom of my email inbox. There it is, aptly named, from Tammy Evans’ Substack, Inspiration and Magic,” Sunday Coffee Share. I always know it would be filled with writers’ gold to mine, and usually I pick at it before today, but it’s been a week!

She lets me know that Daylight Savings Time has already struck once again in her area. It arrives here on Sunday at 2 a.m. Like her, I have written about it before, and like her, I AM NOT A FAN. In a world of serious problems, this seems a minor one, but here it is, the seventh writing day in a 31 day month, and I am stimulated (a vocabulary word I must teach today in about two hours) by the trivial.

She calls it, “Jet lag without the travel,” a perfect characterization. (I wish I had her way with words.) I will stumble through next week, including the two days I committed to spending with middle schoolers, doing my best but always quite certain that my best is not what it usually is. I am a morning girl. For me the gradual light peeping through the window brings me joy. While others may be cuddled in their cavern of blankets, I’m up for it!

Earlier this week I admitted, after apologizing to a colleague following a rotten conference planning meeting on Zoom, that all my meetings should begin at 6:30 a.m.—not 6:30 p.m. My quota of good ideas has been exhausted by then. Even a healthy dose of added sunlight won’t rescue me!

In her “…Share,” Tammy invites us to write about JET LAG, “This could be social jet lag, travel jet lag or a made up jet lag!” I have further travel-related tales to tell, but the contemplation of Sunday’s switch has me stymied. This will have to do.

Thanks, Tammy.

Making Contact

In the middle of the night, 2:48 a.m. to be exact, I told my husband I thought that I had something on my calendar for today, but I couldn’t recall what it was. He said, “It’s not happening in the next hour or so, I’ll bet. So try to get some more sleep!”( Wisdom in those wee hours shared between aging insomniacs.)

When I looked at the calendar several hours later, this greeted me:

Ah ha. I was right, and I still had a couple of hours to wait, so I began my daily pages (sometimes less-than-a-page), getting my next Slice ready. It was 8:28 before I knew it. Time for the Slicers’ Meet.

No one was more surprised than I when I signed up—and actually showed up—for an in-person Slicers’ Meet in Anaheim, November, 2022. Something moved me though. Maybe it was the fact of our return to a face-to-face National Council of Teachers of English Convention, the first since Baltimore and the pandemic that followed that spurred my joining the group. I had been blogging with this community for three years. Writing had created bonds. They would not be denied.

What fun it was!

Then last year during the annual March Slice of Life Challenge, Two Writing Teacher wizard Stacey Shubitz offered us the opportunity to meet fellow bloggers on Zoom. No cocktails this time, no balmy Southern Cal breezes on the walk back to the hotel, but the magic of connection once again born from our shared commitment to daily writing one month (31 consecutive days!) a year.

When the invitation arrived this year, I took it. We chatted as a whole group then in our more intimate breakout spaces. It was wonderful to talk with people I “knew” through the stories they’d shared, the slices from their very rich lives. We laughed and talked “off-prompt,” a lot like those students who frustrate us with their off-task tangents. For us, anything worked.

We discussed writing , and teaching writing, our topics, our struggles, our plans—or lack thereof—all to feed the writing fire. And look what burns brightly here today:

Generous fellow-writers agreed to a screenshot. Thanks to the Two Writing Teachers community—the best way to keep the conversation going!

Showing Up

When I post this today, I will have completed 52 weeks of consistent blogging since the end of the March Challenge last year. It will be my second year to have accomplished that. I am proud, proud because even if some of the weekly offerings have been less-than-my best, I did what writers do: I showed up!

On Friday, we, this community of writers, will begin another year of blogging every day in March. While it always seems daunting to consider, the truth is that the daily expectation, the—okay, I’ll be honest—pressure to produce (self-generated and sustained for the most part) is actually easier than this once-a-week-on-Tuesdays in some ways. I bet I’m not alone in feeling this.

The writing habit, the daily certainty that we would begin with a notebook write at the opening of each class, is what I built into my teaching practice and while not universally beloved, it was grounding. In an unpredictable day, there is something reassuring about anything we can count on. Daily writing anchored us!

There have been Tuesdays when I was like the old woman in the shoe with so many children she didn’t know what to do. During the week, I had filled my daily “clear-the-deck” pages with a number of ideas that begged further attention, my gamboling “children.” “For Tuesday,” I would tell myself. Yet when the Tuesday showed up, the idea that seemed so promising a few days before held no attraction.

Just this week, I have saved webpages and emails that held promise when we first met for further exploration, but here I am writing about this. And what is this, exactly? Maybe it will serve as a reminder that we contain multitudes, that writing gives us an opportunity, an invitation to delve a bit more deeply.

Yesterday the Slowdown featured a humorous, yet compassionate, poem about our struggle with our physical selves, the fact that we are often dissatisfied and seek any solution to the inexorable passage of time, that we keep company with “surgeons and dermatologists,/faith healers and instruction-givers.” It resolves with the same “shame-red hands” trembling slightly as we are “holding novels in bed,” these words of another intentionally chosen and shaped to mine, “pain and joy…another mirror…in which we might meet/someone who says touch me.”

If words can have that effect, that ability to reach out with tender fingers, word by word, by chance to forge a bond with a reader, I’ll keep at it, and welcome others who do the same.

(Below is Tom Healy’s poem in its entirety.)

Mirror, Mirror by Tom Healy

What do we do when we hate our bodies? A good coat helps. Some know how to pull off a hat. And there are paints, lighting, knives, needles, various kinds of resignation, the laugh in the mirror, the lie of saying it doesn’t matter. There is also the company we keep: surgeons and dermatologists, faith healers and instruction-givers, tailors of cashmere and skin who send their bills for holding our shame-red hands, raw from the slipping rope, the same hands with which we tremble ever so slightly, holding novels in bed, concentrating on the organization of pain and joy we say is another mirror, a depth, a conjure in which we might meet someone who says touch me.