"Apple juice?"
"Read it again."
"Can we go to City Park?"
"Push me on the swing!"
"Can I sleep in your bed?"
"Wanna play Pokemon?"
"Let's get a snowball."
"I'll race you!"
"It's pizza night!"
"Read this poem I wrote."
"Can I have some money?"
"Where's my Metallica t-shirt?"
"I'm sorry."
"Whatever."
"Wait... listen to these lyrics."
"Just leave me alone."
"Thank you."
"Cool story, Bro."
"I'm taking the car."
"I love you, too."

I drove as we laughed
so hard I could barely see the road ahead
I drove as you slept
and watched the shades of sand shift

in the cloud shadows
and the miles of bulbous sage bushes
that greeted us on our journey
It cannot really be sage green
unless the orange rocky earth is
illuminated behind it

 

I drove through towering rock formations
shale, granite,
limestone, volcanic
grey, black, brown
Sedimentary
striations
dry, moist,
jagged, flat, worn,
some molded by a child's hand
Others like vital signs on the horizon

I drove with
white-knuckled grips
on the steering wheel as our blessed tires
whirred on the winding roads
9500 feet high
Guard Rail Damage Ahead
Falling Rocks 
Drastic Grade Change
The sunlight swam in the
whitecaps of the blue ocean below
way below
and then close enough to
Park, walk, explore
Collect along the shore
Park to buy avocados
10 for a dollar
sweetest strawberries and ripe cherry tomatoes
You two delighted in the champagne mangos
"If butter were a fruit... this is what it would taste like."

 

We drove until
in the distance there was an iconic sign on a hill
But all around us was the grey of concrete
tourists and souvenirs
"Let's keep driving."
We found solace in the Santas
Catalina, Monica, Barbara, Cruz
Cold morning walks to the harbor,
to the lighthouse
to diners, coffeeshops, trendy stores
I followed behind
Two young men
the babies I once held
the babies who altered
the landscape of my life
The grains of sand swiftly sift

The fog set in and we shivered
The new generation of hippies
on Haight Street
asked if we could help them out
again and again
Tattoos and interesting fashion choices
"Ya got any new ink?"
"Why do homeless people always have dogs?"
And the Victorian houses were
snug and colorful
like a rainbow's wavelengths
The Golden Gate Bridge... check.
The Painted Ladies... check.
Dinner in Chinatown
Dessert at Ghiradelli
The litter, the drug deals, the sirens...
and a hotel room right next to an antiquated elevator
Time to return to nature

Ah...
Waterfalls, Riverflows
El Capitan and
the Tuolumne Meadows,
Sky-scraping sequoias
and pine trees that dropped oversized cones
A destination even for European visitors

"C'est magnifique!"

  

We drove some more
Through deserts sprinkled with
roadside stands selling Native American wares
Hot wind blasted our faces
Our resources depleting
Our spirits fleeting
Until the green hills and crisp, fragrant air
enveloped us again
This is our last stop.

We gathered under a black sky
where white stars were splashed
on the entire canvas
as if by Pollock's paintbrush
Awakened by the fluttering of hummingbirds' wings
and the chirpings of chipmunks,
we sipped coffee as we marveled at Mount Blanca

At breakfast in town,
we met a man with Desiderata
tattooed on his forearms:
"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world."

My laptop's hard drive fried... again. I had recently backed up, so I wasn't too devastated, but I'm missing a few things that I just can't let myself dwell on... or it'll make me scream, especially since summer hours are slipping into the past. I don't know if I can rewrite those pieces at this point.
I was sans this appendage for two whole days. I had phantom limb syndrome.
It's like when the electricity goes out, but each time you walk into a room, you switch on the light. I tried to write on the desktop, but I couldn't. I needed my particular spaces and nooks.

Anyway...
I miss fiction this summer. I've been reading so many expository texts. I just found this clip from one of my favorite authors:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzD0YtbViCs&feature=related

Stand on the top of a cliff, and jump off, and build your wings on the way down. 

Love what you do, and do what you love.     -Ray Bradbury

Our SAWPsi members had a phone conversation with Peter Elbow today! He discussed his latest work Vernacular Eloquence, reminding us that talking is writing. He emphasized that we have to read aloud our writing, that sharing our pieces is one of the most important parts. We have to hear it, fiddle with the words in our mouths a little. It was thrilling to talk to him.
I started to think of some ideas about a professional piece on evaluating writing. I've been working on this a little so far this summer. I interviewed a few teachers in SAWP about rubrics and checklists. Elbow still uses contracts. He stated that "student grading is the most challenging and causes the most problems in teaching." Amen.
We're sending him a copy of our anthology. Peter Elbow may read one of my pieces!

Now, I'm baking my Peter Elbow macaroni Kugel for our literary-themed dishes for tomorrow's Visitors' Day. Get it? Elbow macaroni!!

Parting is such sweet sorrow. I can't believe tomorrow's the last day.

Oil Seeps Into Lake Pontchartrain

Tar Balls Washed Ashore in Texas

"This isn't going away. This isn't a sneeze or a hiccup. This is diarrhea for a long time..."

-Jerry Biggs, a commercial fisherman in Pass Christian, Mississippi

Umbrella

There are people out there who

will….um….Who offer you their umbrellas  And some of those

people hold the umbrella more over you than over themselves   You try

to stand close Closer  And then  you realize they’re drenched Entirely  And only

your legs and feet are wet  Those people who offer you a ride And when you get in their car  They have to move the books, papers,  Ziploc bag of crumbs Off of the seat, Throw it  in the back to deal with later  “My car’s a mess!” The radio station is set to NPR  They get situated  They smooth down soaking wet hair In the rearview mirror  The hair that that they wore down despite the humidity  Long, brown, wavy hair These people who make sweet small talk As they slowly  drive you  to your car in the  downpour...

You

Observe

 them

peripherally

As best

you can

Soaked,

drenched

Because

they

held

 the

umbrella

over you

soaked

drenched

kindred

Those who

                                 feel                         that the

                        umbrella                           should

                              be  over                      you

                                          more  than over

                                           themselves.

                       

           

“She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?”                   -Norman Bates, Psycho

YES, emphatically YES!!
Yes, sorrowfully, yes.
Cycles of hubris
Waves of malaise
And sheer madness
purple, silver,
brilliant, flourescent
madness

Nearby? Projectile
Entangled in this web?
Dismissed
Like a discus

Yet tethering

Each strand
Sits out there
lonely
Swaying in the calm breeze
With the sorrowful confusion
of a refugee

When can we return?
Will it ever be the same?
Shall we start anew elsewhere?
Join the diaspora of defeated hearts

I am the quake
the hurricane
the scourge
the woman who has gone
MAD
You forgive me, don’t you?

I am sitting at Madhatter's, reading journal article after journal article for a group content analysis project. I am at the sole table in the 'library'. In the room to my left is a baby shower that ends at 11:00. In the room to my right is a group of women waiting to get into the room to my left for their shower that starts at 11:00. I can feel the employees' tension.
A little girl, about age four, but clearly quite precocious in her big girl's dress and fancy shoes just walked in with her mom and an aunt. She is carrying a baby gift almost bigger than she is. I am sure she insisted that she arrive with the gift in tote. I can't help but envy this little girl. She will be surrounded by the women in her family today. She will hear their stories, watch their body language, unconsciously adopt their mores and mannerisms.
When I was about her age, maybe slightly older, my mom and I picked up Aunt Janice for a baby shower. My Aunt Janice has four boys around my age, two older, two younger than me. Brian, the second to oldest, could not understand why he couldn't join us for the baby shower. "Boys aren't allowed to go to baby showers," she stated. As the mom of four boys, she must have relished such an invitation.
This was unacceptable to Brian. It didn't make much sense to me either, although I felt pretty lucky. My aunt walked to my mom's car muttering about the kind of boy who would want to be with a bunch of women all day and then fussing at him to stop throwing a fit (in her choice words). Just as she slid into the front seat, we heard a loud crash from her front porch. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" We all jumped out of the car and headed to the porch. Scattered broken glass littered the floor and Brian stood on the other side of the glass-paneled door with a bloody fist. My family is nothing if not passionate. I'm sure Aunt Janice dealt with him accordingly. I can't remember anything else that day, not even whose shower we attended or if we attended at all. What I remember is that Brian knew then the power of a bunch of women coming together to celebrate, to swap stories, to laugh, to advise, to gossip, to be women amongst women.

One room has cleared out, and the women to my right have started to migrate over to my left with fancy flowers and decorations. I MISS my family!!!!

Brian's third baby recently joined our family. He has attended all showers and celebrations.

Science: To Know

"Many of us are familiar with the science format, which has the student progress from hypothesis to procedure to observations to conclusions. It may be a neat, clean organization, but not one that mirrors how people actually learn. Our minds do not separate our observations from meaning-making structures. The students are constantly making observations, conclusions, and hypotheses all at the same time. Our attempts to separate thinking into subskills may result in losing important aspects of a scientific study" (Sakai & Leggo).

I envision a Prezi presentation with multiple circular paths to explain the scientific process. Some paths take you right back to where you started; some lead you to new inquiries. As students journal, they synthesize new meaning based on their observations, prior knowledge, and collaborations with peers and teachers. Can't these journal entries be stories? poems? paintings? comic strips? We need to help them to see science as fun, as social and personal and as an exploration. Despite what the text books or FOSS kits reveal, the answers to the unit may not be known ahead of time. How many of you have encountered questions from your students that puzzled you? Wow... that's a great question. Let's find out. For me, it seems to occur almost always during our science lessons. 
I like science. I like to teach science, but if it had been equated to story-telling and infused with choice and creativity, I would LOVE it. Summer goal: explore the TEKS with my colleagues and create interdisciplinary lessons that facilitate inquiry and exploration. It's never too late. When I love it, they'll love it. 

Mathematics of Light by David Morley

The wavelengths of daylight 

register on bright equipment:

flutterings across a spectrum

from infra-red to ultraviolet.

Discover me at an ice age,

at a midnight of colour,

in a place where rainbows

unbind themselves completely.

But you stand in the noon.

Shadows are inventing themselves

over your quickening retina;

the day moves on to shade

when spires are like pen-strokes

in the heat haze… It’s

like Newton’s gold trances

as he skimmed slates on the sea,

like Einstein’s chatter over tea,

borealis, wispy cigarettes. It’s

down to the human to live it, take

it in. Keep my sunlight warm for me.

 "A Harvard research team, headed by Jeff Lichtman, has duplicated the way that a television monitor uses varying amounts of just three colors (red, blue, green) to produce a huge array of resultant hues. They have applied this technique in the brain using fluorescent cyan, yellow, and red pigments--varying amounts of which can produce 90 possible color combinations to label individual neurons" (Batts, 2007).  How pretty. 
"Ages ago, educated people were often artists AND scientists (like Leonardo di Vinci) and the pursuit of knowledge and fact fed into their desire to understand aesthetic beauty and the creative process" (Batts). 



Batts, S. 2007. The technicolor brain: science and art. I found at this website: http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/11/the_technicolor_brain_science.php, but it's no longer there. Search 'Shelly Batts'.

Sakai, A. & Leggo, C. 1997. Knowing from different angles: language arts and science connections. Voices From the Middle, 4(2), 26-30.

It's That Time of Year

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.

And be it gash or gold it will not come

Again in this identical disguise.

-Gwendolyn Brooks

Politics permeates practically everything... like the new social studies curriculum in Texas. Sensible teachers MUST continue to bring in primary documents, paint an accurate picture from various perspectives, and foster inquiry that will allow students to draw their own conclusions, make their own connections, and build their own knowledge.

Critical thinking skills should permeate everything.

I share many of my life's stories with my students. They're the best audience. I write the stories on our desktop and it's projected to our screen while they're writing in their journals. They see me revise as I write. They see me revise as I read it aloud. They give me feedback and advice. I even had a student create a fictional tale of meeting Will Smith in Hollywood with similar elements to my real account of almost meeting Betty White in L.A. fifteen years ago. Today, one journal choice was to write all they knew about their favorite singer, actor, author, or poet. I had recently read a Time article on Justin Beiber and wanted to impress them with my pop-trivia. During their pre-writing chit chat, one of my girls turned to her neighbor and stated that Ms. Blady was her favorite writer. She didn't say it for me to hear. I was tickled. It was the first time (and hopefully not the last) that I had ever heard someone say such a thing. Tickled.

A Call for Interdisciplinarity!

Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's latest report (2010) finds that kids who can read on grade level by the end of third grade are more successful in school, work, and in life. The report also reminds us that there is still a wide gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children. Sixty-eight percent of 4th grade public school students in the United States scored below proficient reading level in 2009. In Louisiana? 82%! Egad. Texas has 72%. With what we have gathered from decades of research in this area, why are we still seeing these kinds of statistics?
The "...current policies and funding streams are too fragmented, programs too segmented by children's age and developmental stage, and key interventions too partial to get widespread positive results... Twenty two years ago, while analyzing why so little of what is known to work gets applied in practice, Lisbeth Schorr wrote of 'traditions which segregate bodies of information by professional, academic, political, and bureaucratic boundaries', and a world in which 'complex intertwined problems are sliced into manageable but trivial parts.' The Foundation's latest report finds this to be true today.

For more information:
www.datacenter.kidscount.org/reports/readingmatters.aspx

it's the people
that define our lives
seek them
be sought
find them
be bought
take them
give them away
time to leave
let them stay
connect
fibers astray
cry
scream
play
it's the people
each person
one word
one glance
first impression
second chance
know me
see me
let me be
try me
cross me
set me free
it's the people
all of the people
like stars in the galaxy
promises and negotiation
Wilt by association
to our foibles, a foil
to our charge, a coil
All of those people
impressions branded
or a whisper stranded
in a far away place
a shadow of a face
a scant trace
an embrace
a place
where you were
with those people
each person
a reason
a choice
architecture of our voice
Those people
the words exchanged
decorum rearranged
but the laughter...
with those people
the ever after
with those people
Tattooed
Imbued
with their light
The people
to whom we are plighted
connected and ignited
it is those people
that define our lives
who are we?
from them it derives

One More Bites The Dust

"...the former director of a nonprofit death-penalty appeals group, permanently surrendered his law license Friday. Picou, 49, pleaded guilty in March to state charges in New Orleans that he stole more than $200,000 from the Capital Appeals Project between 2005 and 2009."

-Written by Bill Lodge, The Advocate, May 1, 2010

This is my former boss. $200,000!? Boy, oh boy! Before education, I attended law school and worked at the Louisiana Indigent Defense Board and later at a private firm. This blows my mind! He must have gone Katrina-Krazy! What about all of his clients? I contrasted the slime balls at the private firm to this intelligent, passionate advocate. You think you know a person...

The HeArt of Conversation

Brenner and I decided to eat at Double Dave's tonight. Kane was running around town with his friends and had already eaten at his job. I mention Kane's whereabouts because I am definitely not one to judge others' parenting skills, but I witnessed a sad exchange or lack of one tonight between a father and his three-ish year old daughter. First of all, let me note that I don't know how old she actually is because I don't talk to strangers just because they have a small child or a baby. I don't go ga-ga over babies in public. Oh, how old is she? Aww, he's so adorable. I'm just not made that way.

While dad prepared her plate at the buffet, she kept coyly peeping at Brenner. He does go ga-ga over little ones, but they seem to be crazy about him, too. We think it's because he looks like a large baby himself. At least he did before the beard. Once dad arrived with their plates, he started to text. He texted and texted and texted and texted while this little girl sat there silently eating her carrot sticks. This is where I would like to talk to people in public: Look at your daughter!! Explain things, ask her questions, tell stories, make her giggle! Before he knows it, she'll be running around town with her friends and their only communication will be via texting.

Earlier today, however, while sharing a story with me, a colleague revealed that she still reads aloud to her son, who is in junior school... at his request! I hope someone's reading to that little girl tonight.

Trying to recreate a moment
is expensive
and apparently
utterly pathetic.
White Russians don't taste the same here.
In this place.
In this time.
Anachronistic Elixirs
They used to taste like bliss.
Earned Bliss,
promising, potential, passionate
Bliss.
Now...
potent... only in their
somniferous effects.
Bon Nuit.

Mardi Gras Beads For Sale!!

I attended a pre-Institute meeting this morning with my new fellow San Antonio Writing Project teachers. Kelly shared her best-practices presentation as a model for the rest of us. She had us read an excerpt from her story titled Radio Flyer. One of the writing extensions was to write a connection to this piece or to a Patricia Polacco book. I immediately connected to the wagon story, remembering the day Shay, Mary, and I decided to sell Mardi Gras beads to... well, here's what I wrote:

The joke in New Orleans is that all of our houses are sinking because of the grocery bags and boxes full of Mardi Gras beads that we collect in our attics. Other cities may call them beaded necklaces, but we just call them beads. These beads should have been dress-up heaven for me and my two younger sisters, but we didn’t really value the things that were thrown en masse off of floats for free, unless of course they were the long, shiny ones we called pearls, and even those lost their appeal on Ash Wednesday.

Until my dad built us a wooden, girl-operated go-cart, the wagon was our own Mardi Gras float as we pretended to be the ones who could afford such a luxury. As the oldest sister, I designed the daily schedule, and they usually blindly followed, depending on Shay's mood. One day I decided that we would profit from the volumes of beads in our closets. “We're going to sell these beads to people walking by." We lived at a busy intersection where North Jeff Davis Parkway met Bienville St. The traffic was divided by a huge neutral ground. Other cities call them medians. People were always passing our house: nurses walking to Mercy Hospital, waiters on their way to the local restaurants. Canal St. was only two blocks away.  

We decorated our wagon with signs advertising five cents for the small, insignificant beads and 50 cents for the long, shiny pearls. "No one really needs or wants beads," I realized. “We’re adorable little girls. Anyone will buy from us, “ the youngest, Mary, pointed out. That’s when I realized that she was the most adorable of us three, so we needed to work that angle. Shay and I lavished beads all over her. She wore them as crowns, bracelets, necklaces, and anklets, and she sat on top of mounds of beads in our red wagon. I  pushed the wagon from behind as she steered with the handle to make sure our Queen of Mardi Gras was the first thing pedestrians saw. Shay followed, ready to collect our dough.

“How adorable. Here you go, baby." 

"Oh, look at these girls trying to make a living."

Shay collected many nickels and even quarters when we wisely decided to sell 7 beads for 25 cents. What a bargain! Of course, we also were ignored or heard things like, "What the hell do I need more Mardi Gras beads for?" Mid City, New Orleans was nothing if not interesting. 

After selling for about an hour, making our way up and down the cracked sidewalk, a man in a matte grey El Camino flashed a dollar bill out of his window. We followed him halfway down Iberville St., hooting and hollering because that was the first dollar of the day. He pulled up to the curb, I shouted to him from the sidewalk, "What kind of beads would you like?" He smiled and didn't reply right away, but he still held the dollar out of the window. I knew right then that something was amiss, but my sisters and I really wanted to make our business venture a success. 

"OK, this works like a real Mardi Gras parade. You just drop that dollar, and we'll throw you some beads." 

"The dollar will blow away. Just come here and get it and give me my beads." 

Darn. I looked at my sisters' faces. Eager and earnest. My bad feeling was growing. The presence of such a feeling is why my dad let me 'rat the streets' so much, why my stepmom left me in charge of my sisters, but on this day, my greed overcame my street smarts, and I approached his car with the beads, the crappy ones, of course.

My sisters know how this story ends. The comical parts: trying to rapidly flee while pushing a loaded wagon, one sister (I won't reveal which one) shouting, "I want to see! I want to see!",  and my only term for his anatomy being an expletive (thanks to little boys at school) when I frantically retold the events to my dad. Mid City, New Orleans and my childhood... nothing if not interesting. We never did get that dollar. 

My students had a READ-IN this morning, which morphed into a GAME-IN after 30 minutes. They were playing cards and board games. Three students asked if they could meet with me to share the books they are in the process of writing (not for a class assignment). The four of us discussed their works. I told them about foreshadowing and irony because they're ready for such techniques. One of them caught an anachronism in the other's piece. They gave advice to each other and soaked in each new term that I revealed to them. We discussed similar themes in other books we've read and movies we've seen. We recommended titles to each other. This writing conference lasted about 25 minutes. Those were 25 magical minutes.

University of Central Florida has created Knights Write, which will provide support to faculty members in all disciplines to integrate writing into their courses. Their goal is "to help students develop into more effective and versatile writers. UCF's would be only the second writing across the curriculum program at a Florida public university. It could potentially grow into the largest such program in the country" (Heston, 2010). 

We need to encourage this in elementary, junior, and high school: journals, reflections, multi-genre writing. 

"...preservice teachers, at a minimum, should complete at least one course dedicated to process writing and/or writing-to-learn concepts and strategies. Anything less will leave them ill-prepared to incorporate such ideas and methods into their own classrooms (Totten, 2005)."

Heston, G. April 29, 2010. New department a potential 'national model' for writing. UCF Newsroom.

Totten, S. 2005. Writing to learn for preservice teachers. The Quarterly 27(2). 

I hate when people 

pompously pick apart poetry.
I know it's their interpretations,  
but I think what they're really thinking

is quite simple,
and they embellish in a pathetic attempt

to connect to the poet.
If you don't connect to a poem, 
find another one,

write your own.
If these readers could simply, honestly reflect, 
they just might contribute to Poetry.
Poetry is nothing if not real. 

How to Start?

by Livia Blackburne, a graduate student at MIT. She describes her blog as "A Brain Scientist's Take on Creative Writing."

1. Generic beginnings: Stories that opened with the date or the weather didn’t really inspire interest. According to Harmsworth, you are only allowed to start with the weather if you're writing a book about meteorologists. Otherwise, pick something more creative.

2. Slow beginnings: Some manuscripts started with too much pedestrian detail (characters washing dishes, etc) or unnecessary background information.

3. Trying too hard: Sometimes it seemed like a writer was using big words or flowery prose in an attempt to sound more sophisticated. In several cases, the writer used big words incorrectly. Awkward or forced imagery was also a turnoff. At one point, the panelists raised their hands when a character's eyes were described as “little lubricated balls moving back and forth.”

4. TMI (Too Much Information): Overly detailed description of bodily functions or medical examinations had the panelists begging for mercy.
* This reminds me of a story that I wrote and shared with my students. They were not pleased that the protagonist's mother was pregnant. I didn't think it would bother them so much. I asked my class again this year, same result. "That's weird. You shouldn't make her pregnant." I've since stopped impregnating women.
5. Clichés: "The buildings were ramrod straight." "The morning air was raw." "Character X blossomed into Y." "A young woman looks into the mirror and tells us what she sees." Clichés are hard to avoid, but when you revise, go through and try to remove them.

6. Loss of Focus: Some manuscripts didn't have a clear narrative and hopped disjointedly from one theme to the next.

7. Unrealistic internal narrative: Make sure a character's internal narrative—what the character is thinking or feeling—matches up with reality. For example, you wouldn't want a long eloquent narration of what getting strangled feels like—the character would be too busy gasping for breath and passing out. Also, avoid having the character think about things just for the sake of letting the reader know about them.

Not Always, Yeats

Out of the quarrels with others,

words sting, then fester

Out of the vituperative exchanges 

with this person for whom you'd surely die 

When your eyes are squeezed tight

to restrain the bubbling ire, 

Your vexatious and vehement words 

have already been released

That's when Sorrow takes its nascent steps

Out of the quarrels with these others, 

The path becomes inexorably altered

and Poetry opens its sleepy eyes

As for the quarrel with ourselves?

It inhales each fiery syllable

and exhales the sorrowful poetry 

Out of a quarrel with others we make rhetoric, out of a quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.  -Yeats

The first call for a writing conference between student and instructor came in the 1890s in the university setting (Lerner, 2005). Education writers called for differentiated instruction to avoid mass-producing mediocrity. The writing conference is inherently differentiated. In that one-on-one context, a teacher can extrapolate the student's readiness level and interests. In that individualized setting, she can also completely extinguish a child's natural gift for story-telling, squelch his or her zeal to imagine and create. 

My first writing conference came in the 1980s. My third grade teacher accepted my Prince and the Revolution-inspired massacre where everyone bled purple. She also knew me well enough not to fear any psychological aberrations. She understood that I wouldn't, couldn't write about rainbows and ponies. Almost twenty years later, she introduced me to the Greater New Orleans Writing Project. 

Lerner, Neal. (2005). The teacher-student writing conference and the desire for intimacy. College English, 68(2), 186-208.

Art by Nanami Rio

Rain as metaphor 

Again and again

As science 

When arid conditions set in 

Cyclical, seasonal, a reprieve

Rain as meteorology 

The amounts we'll receive

Rain as memory

Each drop that plops

A soul is fed, 

A moment stops

Rain as mischief-maker

Rain as home-taker

The dark sky, 

The fresh scent

From heaven, 

Earth bent

Rain as history

before the rebirth

Rain in abundance

From our dance in the dearth

Again

Mom called again.

She was dying Easter eggs alone again.

Sent her love to Kane again. 

Wished he was little again.

Inquired about Passover again.

"I'll just move there," she suggested again. 

Updated me with her lively anecdotes again. 

Asked when I was coming home again. 

I just found this piece on one of my flash drives. It was selected for the Crescent City Farmers' Market Second Annual Aubergine Monologues. Reading it made me hungry and homesick, so we ordered our dinner tonight from a nearby po-boy shop that actually buys their french bread from N.O. 

-----------------------------------                                                                                                           What's in a Name? by Shannon Blady

Aubergine, Get your butt in here and clean up this mess, girl.

Every time you fry those eggplants, you get breadcrumbs all over the place.

And look at that grease ya let pop all over the floor.

Don’t you know how to put newspaper down?

Good Lord, Auby.  How many eggplants did you buy?

….Eggplant…Why they call it that anyways?

Eggs don’t grow on plants and they sure ain't white like eggs.

Aubergine, what color's that? Purplish black? Sure is pretty.

Looks like a bad bruise, huh? It’s like the hair color of that little

punk rock girl ya go to school with.

Ya put a little salt on ‘em first?

That gets rid of that little bitterness ya taste sometime, ya know.

Ya doubled up the paper towels? Gotta absorb that oil.

Ooh, they sure are hot.

Let me taste just one to make sure ya know what ya doin’.  

Oooweee, Aubergine, girl I taught ya right.

So crispy and they melt in ya mouth.

Now let’s clean up this mess and eat ‘em all before your fat Aunt Ambrosia gets home. 

Era after Era

As soon as this post is written, I'm going to watch Legend of Billy Jean, thanks to our new Netflix account. I'm going to watch it from this thirty-something persona, which intrigues me and makes me cringe at the same time. Then, it was all I could do not to blast Pat Benatar and cut off all of my hair, invincibility and rebellion permeating each thought. Maybe it should just remain iconic in my memory. Celebrity Apprentice with Cyndi Lauper instead? Great, the other celebrities are trash-talking another 80s icon. 

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Recently, a colleague asked to borrow something that required some digging, and as I searched, I discovered one of those photographs, the ones that shake your current reality. Is that really me? I remember that girl. Later, I heard a song that unleashed more nostalgia than any picture could ever unharness. The song was from the same era... an era that was about as desolate as they come, but one contrived of enough convolutions for me to implore...

"Come down and waste away with me."

Invincibility entangled with insouciance... a lost era. 

Being an adult is a mixed-blessing.

First-Year Brainstorming

After lunch yesterday, we visited Half Price Books. I picked up a used copy of the NWP's publication Because Writing Matters. I've taken a few notes including:

"...Teachers still receive little instruction in teaching writing. Elementary school teacher training focuses on reading methods, and only a handful of states require a course in writing pedagogy for certification. Writing can support learning in all disciplines, including science and math, but relatively few high school instructors in those content areas have been exposed to research-proven, effective strategies for using it" (p. 17). 

As my research explores the writing conference as a potent tool to improve student writing skills, I need to find out how teachers learn the appropriate protocols, dialogue, strategies. Possible sources may include mentors, student teaching experiences, professional reading, university courses, and the big one... common sense. I also need to find out which states have the writing course requirements. 

If there are multiple sources, there are multiple strategies. 

"If teachers within the same school have distinct or unexamined expectations for good writing, it can be confusing to students and a source of misunderstanding among faculty" (p.15). 

However, after reading Brenner's students' pieces, some of which are heart-breaking, I have a participatory action research project in mind, too. I would just like to stay clear of that relationship in mainstream media where the white teacher works to save the inner-city kids. If it's participatory action research, the participants and the researcher enter into a collaborative relationship in which they both pose the questions to be pursued and work together to gather the data to respond to these questions. "It entails a cycle of research, reflection, and action" (Marshall & Rossman, 2006). 

Look at this overgrown mess back in November. In January and February, it all turned grayish brown and lay lifeless like ignored road kill.

This is March! I extracted all green shoots from the pebbles by hand. There's a variety of vegetable seeds buried in the garden. My fingers are crossed. Those are strawberry plants on the bottom left and right corners. I also planted morning glories and sunflowers along the fence. I'm hoping to have vines creep along as they did in our back yard near our clubhouse on Jeff Davis Pkwy. I was amazed by how they greeted each day with such élan and shortly thereafter retired into their own. Sunflowers remind me of my mom and of Julio's garden on Murat St, the lively, chromatic setting of Kane's childhood. 

Reggie approves of spring.