Crows

 

On the way to Riley this morning the crows were picking apart a squirrel in the road near Glen Cove.  They had to fly into the air briefly whenever a car passed.  There's a beautiful view of Penobscot Bay from where they were eating their road kill.  

I bought myself a birthday present.  

It's a camera.

a boy

Mushroom flannel sheets, wind through cracks in bedroom windows, whistling radiator, dark, darkness, Spring a month away, not really, light creeps back in except not in the bones or heart, he feels pressure, on chest, heavy, not hopeful, not yet hopeless, but close, it's coming, old bedroom far away, never to be slept in again, on the radio, we all heard it, convicted, not yet sentenced, but sunshine will not crawl across a summer floor, not in this life, not in his life.

We sat at the same table drinking ten cent milk from little cardboard cartons, kindergarten.  Cookies too, a pack of six.  Snack cost twenty cents.  He had freckles.  He was short.  We lived near each other and walked home in the same direction, but not together.  He repeated a grade and so we didn't graduate high school together, but we walked home the same way, me carrying my french horn, walking past his house with the yellow ribbons tied out front on the trees. For whom?  There wasn't a war going on.  Someone said they were for his older brother, but I didn’t think that was really an answer.

He killed a man last year.  He thought it was a dream, he said.  Ten years addicted to pills and this was the last day he could manage, finally did not manage.  Stopped coping.  He owed the man money.  He owed him for pills.  Couldn’t have anymore, not until he paid.  No work.  Unhappy.  Addicted; he blamed it all on the one who wouldn’t give him the pills that day, his friend.  The one with the pills.  Oxy this.  Oxy that.  Narcotics.  Maine.  Despair.  He went in the truck, got a gun and shot the man.  Then went inside and took a lot of pills, hoping to die.  I wonder if he ever thought of when he was a little kid, those cardboard milk boxes and his quiet walks home from school alone?  I wonder what those yellow ribbons were for?  When he woke, having failed to kill himself,  (if he really wanted to die wouldn’t he have used the gun?)  he thought he had had a terrible dream … then he hoped like Hell that he had had a terrible dream.  He walked outside and was sick at what he saw.  He called the police; he said he did it.  They brought him to the jail, then to the hospital, then to the jail again.  He was in that hospital for a couple weeks, and I drove by everyday taking my daughter to school.  I thought of him and said a prayer.  What becomes of a soul who does that -- makes a tragic mistake?  He will go to prison.  But what about after that -- when he dies?  What happens then?

Samsara. There’s so much suffering it almost seems impossible to bear sometimes.  

We do bear it though, eventually.  

And we do come out clean after eons. 

Yesterday was my birthday.

Forty-two years old,

chilly.

Brown boots

scuffed.

Trying.

One dog a bully.

One child irritable.

Pretty Little Liars,

YouTube for her.

George Eliot,

The Goldfinch for me.

Hormones —

both of us.

Yes, the hair,

funny and short.

House aging faster than this body,

maybe.

Top kitchen drawer bed collapsed,

spilling everything everywhere.

Teaching.

Writing.

Trying to figure things out —

still.

Really?

Still.

The carpenter has an office,

writes letters, a

professional deep voiced man,

softening slightly,

thank god.

Not this,

Not that

(always).

Walk in woods.

Poems.

Papers.

Kids who need to be heard.

Think.

What did she say?

To help.

That is the big purpose, I know,

but I wake up in the middle of the night

having no idea what to do

or where I am, but it’s clear, at least, how I got here.

(Charlie fixed the kitchen drawer for my birthday.)

blind man's ink

black night
wraps
shoulders up
bats
hints of amnesic wind song
finch
standing in dirt
whispering secrets
India ink spilled
across blind man’s shirt
anonymous monk
wandering
foggy-eyed
down the path
not blind yet
but soon
all of them lost and forgetting
men, insects, birds, bats
grey pillow stitches
stones rise toward twilit sky
sun
moon
stars
finch
standing in dirt
branches of birch
white
brush and beetle underfoot
damp
not this
blaze black night
not that
blind man’s water glass
bedside desolation
tundra of sleep
painted orange sky
orchard pink moon:
syrupy medicine
for the hermit
living under mushroom rot
and moss
singing to the finch
and one veiny-winged bat
sweet sonorous songs of sleep

Blueberry fields

 

I'm nearly done with The Secret History, by Donna Tartt, but I went on an outing with Charlie this morning to the blueberry fields.  He said we should have worn skis but I was fine in my boots. 

My next book is going to be My Life in Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead.  I kind of liked Middlemarch, but I haven't read it for a long time.  

Tuesday will be my birthday.  I think this hike might have been my party.

Goodbye.  I need to read.

Writing

Writing these days is pretty exciting -- way more exciting than when I was in school.  I would have been completely hooked on digital stories.  I do believe that "composing" has to be, at least, in part the way we view the teaching of writing today.  Podcasts, digital stories, social media -- it's all relevant.  What we need to do is make sure that the eyes and ears of students are trained toward high quality composition.  They need to plan, do pre-writing work, write, revise, compose, edit, get feedback, think, mull, wander around -- generally be thoughful -- and revise some more.  They need to write cleanly, clearly, and with purpose.  When visual elements are added, the rules of good design apply.  In podcasts, students need to be aware of how their voices sound, that they speak clearly, pronounce words correctly, etc.  It's not a free-for-all because the field has opened up to include formats beyond the five paragraph essay.  Thank goodness the field has opened up!
Very high quality mentor texts seem crucial to me -- in essays, poetry, fiction, digital stories, podcasts, and presentations.
Penny Kittle and Troy Hicks both have very helpful books and websites.  The writer's workshop is dear to Penny Kittle and I believe that's still the way to go with students.  They need to begin to write about subjects that are personally relevant to them, so that they'll be invested and care about revising ... especially if they have a real audience in mind for the project.  As the students begin to really grasp the structure of writing, the process, the power -- then the other genres can be taught.
Here are a couple links to Penny Kittle and Troy Hicks.
I was just in Boston with my daughter.  We saw a young woman perform at the Wilbur Theatre while we were there who has become famous on YouTube.  She makes videos -- parodies, vlogs about her life, comedies, documentary.  Her name is Colleen Balinger and she has a YouTube channel undeer her own name and as a character she plays, Miranda Sings.  My daughter loves her.  This young woman is a perfect example of the participatory culture we're living in.  She's making videos, but she is putting all of the same planning into her work that we would hope our studnets would.  It might not be to everyone's taste -- but she gets constant feedback from her viewers, vlogs accordingly, edits carefully, keeps in contact with her audience through careful use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube comments.... After this show we saw, my daughter wanted to stand outside in the bitter, windy Boston night to meet Colleen.  I agreed to stand around and freeze, I had my Kindle.  But I didn't end up reading at all.  I was fascinated by watching the group of kids outside; they ranged in age from 13 to early 20's -- mostly theatre kids, performers of sorts themselves.  None of them began that evening knowing each other but by the next morning my daughter was connected to all of them (about 25 kids) on Twitter and Instagram.  They banded together in the cold and started Tweeting.  They laughed, their fingers didn't work from the cold, but they kept on Tweeting.  They started an organized (written!) campaign outside in the freezing night, standing in a Boston alley to let their wishes, en masse, be known.  And they got what they wanted.  She came out and took pictures and talked to all of them -- couldn't believe they were out there.  The security guards tried to hustle the kids away, acting like they were a nuisance, saying Colleen wouldn't be coming out, but the kids were already getting messages back from inside the theatre to the contrary.  They organized.  They wrote.  They had things to say.  I count that as writing.  Not an essay, but to me it seemed significant, as I watched them.  The next day, a group had formed via Instagram.  Fiona (my daughter) could search tags and find all the pictures and freinds she'd met the night before and add them to her contacts.  A new little social group of kids had formed over a common interest, kids who met for a couple hours in the cold in an alley.  They've continued to edit pictures, write, post, repost all week.  I love it. I look at what's being sent and resent, I talk about it all with Fiona and attempt to add some kind of historical context.  We're in a new place, it's pretty exciting.  I like sentences, paragraphs, words that are spelled like real words and so I still campaign for those things and teach them.  But we need to be open to all that's new.
I noticed someone had written about how Twitter can lead to in depth conversations in Digital Is, so here it is.  Could be a useful resource.
I also found a TED talk that made some sense to me.  This teacher, Rosie Slentz, is a Redwood Writing Project mentor and believes in taking her 5th grade students into the woods, to the shore -- to get them out into the world, firing up their imaginations and critical thinking skills so that they can learn and write and feel excited about it.  It's worth viewing.  Going outside, having experiences, adventures are great ways to get kids into their journals.  My daughter's science class was hiking last week and thought they saw a coyote.  They all ran right back to school and wrote pages in the journals -- of very dramatic material.  I'm surprised any of them survived.
Lastly, although this really isn't all I have to say on this subject, is that reading is mandatory.  How can we write, how can our students write, if we/they don't read -- a lot?  Yes, we need to view great digital story mentor texts, but I also believe we need to read books.  There are varying levels of interactive books, which I find interesting.  E-books, iBooks Author let's students (or anyone) create books on their computers to be viewed on ipads.
I have an ipad and a laptop, my daughter has the big desktop for all of her photoshop work, but my favorite little device is the Kindle paperwhite, nothing fancy -- justs hundreds and hundred of books.  I know from personal experience that the best way to learn to write is to read a lot.
I am forever trying to find the books that will grab kids.  When they get hooked, it's the best... and I know it will do wonders for their understanding of writing.

Miranda Sings

Multigenre Reflection

The project I made on Tumblr is up. It's multigenre, but I didn't use any digital stories or audio recordings this time.  I feel quiet.
It was pleasant to put it all together, but I wish I wasn't torn in so many directions these days; I'd have liked to have made a more in depth project -- over the course of months.  I still can.  I will.  Maybe that will become my project if I join forces with Phoebe this summer for some type of exhibit. 
Or I could accept the next Pecha Kucha offer. 
I did submit my This I Believe piece to the website of the same name. 

I showed the project to Charlie.  He laughed out loud about "three divorces in a skiff."  (He's one of them.)  Reading and looking through the whole project may have been helpful for him.  He seemed very absorbed by it.  He knows me and he knows I prefer to stay home and read books to going out to any kind of party at all ... but still, sometimes, I think he's not quite sure what's going on with me, and so he searches the multigenre project for clues.  
He's a good sport.  He's never given me a hard time about eating like a monk or spending days on end drawing.  Occasionally, he wishes I didn't abhor parties.
He likes walking in the woods too.  And he can be quiet.
He also likes stories and playing detective. 
He liked the diagram of my brain.  "What's up with Charlie?"  and "CAPE COD."  He looked for the parts that directly pertained to him.

I would make multigenre projects for the rest of my days, if I could get away with it.

The Weebly sites I looked at were nice.  People were wise to use that as a site.  I'd read about Weebly in the Troy Hicks book too and have recommended it for student projects.  I have one boy designing a website for his mother on Weebly.
 I decided to go with Tumblr because I still want to make a blog.  It's what makes the most sense to me ... in my transition from sketchbooks to digital.  It's an awkward transition sometimes.  And occasionally I wonder if I feel a little less grounded because I'm not in with the paper and pencils so much these days. 

13

Happy Birthday, Fiona!  xoxo

Bitter Wind Boston and Lady Diapers

 

Fiona made a present to bring to the girl who we're going to see at the Wilbur tonight.  There is a cardboard cat Fiona cut off of a Tyler the Creator sock package, an American Apparel gift card that a very nice German couple gave her today because they thought she was poverty stricken.  (I was giving her a lesson in how to organize her money so that when she paid for items she didn't haul wads of crumpled bills out of her pocket, but it may have looked like she was scrounging enough money to buy a warm winter hat to the Germans.)  There is only one dollar on the gift card, which I can't explain.  No one can.  The Germans had a terrible time at the store and so did we; the people working there looked very inconvenienced that they had to stray from their internet searches to tend to customers.   To show their dissatisfaction they sabotaged each transaction.

There is also a circle of Taza chocolate that is made in Somerville where my Uncle lives.  It's salt and pepper chocolate.  (No one likes that flavor very much.)  There are a couple of notes -- one explaining about the Germans and another about how much love Fiona has for the performer.  Finally, on the bottom, there is one lady diaper, because you never know when that will be needed and sometimes in city drugstores and also in airports they are not sold for some inexplicable reason.  It is a good gift and topped off with a red and white striped ribbon.

The new hat.  Tokyo.  Pink.  Right behind Fiona (you can't see her) is a little girl -- maybe four years old -- and she is licking the entire chair where she is sitting in this food court near the theater district.
A parental nightmare.  We were so cold and windblown that we sat and ate a late lunch and then came back to the hotel to read and swim for a while.  I want to go the the Natural History Museum at Harvard because that is one of my favorite places ... but the wind is dragging me down.

We had a very nice visit with Uncle John.  He brought the chocolates to us.  We ate the Vanilla and the Cinnamon with our lunch.  Here he is with Fiona by the Robert McCloskey Make Way for Ducklings statues.  We walked past Burberry and he told us about when his mother told him that he needed to buy a new raincoat ... and then she died.  He held onto the sleeve of Fiona's coat because it didn't look like she was paying attention, and told her that he came right home to Boston and went to Burberry and got a new raincoat -- and he still has it.  His mother, my grandmother, died in 1984.  I was twelve.  I was there and I remember how upset Uncle John was.  The whole ride back to Boston he ate M&M's in the car until he got so sick of them he threw the rest out the window.  My brother and I looked at each other; we would have helped him out with the M&M's, no need to toss them on the highway.  We had flown up to Pennsylvania from Florida where we'd been visiting our other grandmother.  Uncle John will turn 72 in April, which is the age his mother was when she died from a stroke in her bedroom.  She died on April 20th and his birthday is the 25th.  We had a very quiet birthday party for him that year.  My dad is like his mother ... more than Uncle John is.  My dad has the very same circulation problems that his mother had and he can hardly walk.  Uncle John still walks all over the city.
Last year my dad was convinced that he would die on Good Friday, just like his mother had.  We thought it might be true.  We were all down here in Boston with him after a surgery that had gone bad.... Terrible complications and he almost did die.  He was terrified.  And then once he was well enough he was angry ... because that's how dad is.  One day I was sitting in his room and he started ranting about John and how he doesn't even care, he just comes over to the hospital for the meals and the coffee.... And then, in the midst of a conversation with a nurse in the hallway, Uncle John replied, "I can hear you, Tom ... and I do care."  Uncle John was always bringing gifts for the nurses because dad was so rude to them.  Uncle John wanted to make something up to them.
It was awful for dad, but he used some very bad language and didn't behave well at all.
Years ago, dad took care of Uncle John for months when he had a series of open heart surgeries.  Dad can be very helpful.  But he does not make a good patient.  And he is scared to die.

Broken windows outside the city.
I better go read for a while.

Downeaster

Fiona and I are on the Amtrak Downeaster on our way to Boston.
Yet another snow storm landed on us last night, but Charlie was there to help shovel, thank goodness.
We watched The Big Lebowski last night.  I saw that film in 1998 when it came out but there are a lot of things I don't remember very well about 1998 and that film is one of them.  I also moved from Boston to Los Angeles in 1998.  I got myself a nice Mexican street dog named Henry in 1998.  I lived in roasting hot Culver City for a while before moving to Venice.  The snow is blowing past the window right now.  Fiona turns 13 the day after tomorrow.
I submitted my This I Believe essay, as the train shook and I was half-way staring out the window.  Fiona is watching Pretty Little Liars on her phone and trying to think of a way she can turn the research project she needs to do for school into a piece about Pretty Little Liars or rap ... or the joys of Instagram.

This is what we're doing for Fiona's birthday -- going to see her favorite YouTuber at the Wilbur Theater.

                                                                       Miranda Sings

Yoga Nidra

In between the waking and dreaming state exists a transitionary phase characterized by alpha brain waves.  This state does not usually last longer than a few minutes and is characterized by physical relaxation and withdrawal of awareness of the external environment.  In the hypnogogic state there exists a transient place between waking (externalized) awareness and sleeping (introverted state).  It is in this hypnogogic state, with its alpha brain waves, that Yoga Nidra occurs.

Students are experiencing stress in their lives; I believe that the most important lesson we can teach them is how to live peacefully in the world.  Yoga Nidra is a state of consciousness.  It is sleep with a trace of awareness — conscious deep relaxation.  The benefits to experiencing Yoga Nidra are many:
more relaxed state in the brain and a more harmonious pattern to the brain waves, increased dopamine production which increases feelings of contentment, increased brain activity and blood flow in the areas of the brain responsible for sensory imagery, decreased anxiety and depression, decreased blood pressure levels for those with high blood pressure, decreased blood glucose levels for those with elevated blood glucose levels, decrease in the release of stress hormones, improved digestion and assimilation of food, improved circulation, reduced pain, decreased inflammation, improved and stabilized mood, decreased heart rate, sense of wellness, can bring to conscious realization suppressed thoughts, emotions, desires and fears, may aid in the release of long-held anger, fear, and negative emotions, and can reduce the symptoms of PTSD.

Yoga Nidra can be offered in a Wellness Program, or as an after-school activity, and  interested teachers can provide mini sessions right in the classroom, if they choose.  Students lie on the floor with their eyes closed and remain still.  The basic eight steps of Yoga Nidra are:

1. Preparation — Cue students to repeat silently, “I will remain awake.  I will remain still.”
2. Relaxation — Systematically cue each part of the body, e.g.. “tip of the right thumb, tip of the index finger,” bringing the students’ awareness to each point, removing tension, worries and conflicting thought.
3. Resolve — The intention or objective.  Cue students to state silently in the present tense the thing they want most, e.g., “I am becoming more confident.”
4. Rotation of Consciousness — This is the practice of activating energy points in the body through through the use of guided imagery.  Cues are often given to experience sensations of cold/hot, pain/pleasure, heaviness/lightness as ways of becoming accustomed to and comfortable with ever-changing states of being.
5. Reverse Counting — mental alternate nostril breathing and reverse counting are cued to further stabilize the mind during the transition phases between external and internal awareness.
6. Rotation of Visual Symbols — The mind is guided into the subconscious mental state, but this is not hypnotism because the student is in charge of the Resolve.  It may be cued in this section for the student to ask for help from an inner guide.
7. Resolve — The Resolve from the beginning is silently repeated now.
8. Conclusion — The teacher guides students back into integrated, ordinary mind, and the session ends with, “The practice of Yoga Nidra is now complete.”

Image credits:
http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0097009/photos/107380081@N02/10704284454/ 
  http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0094009/photos/22068693@N06/2453419381/

Troy Hicks and Zazzle

I've been reading the Troy Hicks book: Crafting Digital Writing -- Composing Texts Across Media and Genres.  I picked up a lot in the report about Participatory Culture, and have been blending what I'm reading in Troy Hicks with that report when I think of projects for kids, and myself.
The report mentioned Zazzle, a site where you can make and sell items.  Students need a way to be invested in what they're making and see a purpose for it in the world.  Hicks lists sites where you can find good images.  My tendency always leans toward using my own images.

I've pulled quite a bit from the Hicks book already for student projects.  We've looked at the sites that pick apart the worst websites ever, and why they are the worst.  We've looked at quite a few successful multigenre projects, one about an avalanche.

So here is what I made on Zazzle: some playing cards.  

Response to On Writing, by Stephen King

Stephen King has been good early morning company.
For years, I meant to read, On Writing, but only ever skimmed it from time to time; maybe I was afraid of the part where he writes about his car accident, which I’d heard a lot about.
His opinions are strong and get me thinking:
If you don't read a lot then you're not going to be a writer, that's that.  If you don't talk to people and listen to others talk, then good luck writing dialogue.  Characters drive the story.  Plotting stories is for chumps.  Read, read, read.  Write, write, write.  Adverbs are your enemy.  Be clear, write what is true, story story story -- keep things moving.  Don't write in a passive tense.  Our troops defeated the enemy becomes the weaker: The enemy was defeated by our troops.  (Not his example, I can't remember his right now.)
The passive tense is for passive writers.
Drinking and drugs are not the answer, and I don't think he remembers writing Cujo.
He was pretty drunk for Misery but had great fun writing it.  He started it because of a dream he had during a flight to London. King wrote in the hotel at Rudyard Kipling's desk, sixteen pages on a yellow legal pad. 
I thought of this part of the book last week when I came home and quickly wrote down the basic outline of a story I heard during the day; I didn’t want the feeling of it to slip away.  I think of many of the anecdotes King shared, throughout my days — almost like they had been conversations with an insightful, generous friend.

Don't trust pronouns.  King cuts as many as possible in his second draft of a novel.  He says to write that first draft fast and furiously, keeping it to yourself -- writing with the door closed.  Self doubt can be a killer so just keep going.  After it's done he says there should be a minimum of a six week waiting period before looking at it for revisions and a second draft.  After the six weeks, that's when the door can open for sharing.
King’s editing set up sounds clean:  first draft, a legal pad, and writing utensils.  He used an example of a character stealing a few dollars from someone early in a story.  The note in the legal pad read something like: Amy would never steal money. Change this!  p. 91
Then, in the manuscript, he marks the spot in question with a bold note, knowing that if he makes that kind of mark he can always refer to his notes if needed.  This type of concrete explanation is comforting to me; he just sits down and does the work.  We all have to sit down and do the work.

Themes are not something to be afraid of, daunted by ... but the story should come out first and then let the themes emerge, take long walks and think it all over.  Don't sit down and write on a predetermined theme.  He thinks George Orwell even had the story for 1984 before the theme, and plans to ask him about it when he meets him in the ever after.   I’m not sure that Mr. King believes in Heaven or God.  His main themes are: if there is a god why do so many bad things happen?  Good people doing very bad things.  And the violence that runs through human nature.  The main themes of a person's life will be written about over and over again. 
Yes.

We thought a little about writer's block early this morning when I did not want to be on the treadmill or anywhere else.  Five hundred pages into The Stand (which I have not read) he determined that he did not know where to go... Code Red, CODE RED.  If he'd been 200-300 pages in he thinks he would have abandoned ship, but 500 pages was a big investment of time and energy.  He had a lot of characters to deal with and didn't know what to do, how to sort out where the story would go next, so he started to take very long, boring walks, which were very helpful although they didn't solve the problem right off the bat.  It took some weeks of walking.  But then, in a flash, the whole thing came to him.  He went home and wrote one or two pages of notes because he was so afraid of forgetting how it could all unfold.  I sort things out by walking around too; mostly I like quiet roads and lots of trees and moss.  No vans.
It's interesting to read descriptions of how he dealt with the nuts and bolts of certain stories.  It might mean a lot more to me had I read his books, but I love the descriptions anyway.  I love to know the story behind the story.

King says to have an Ideal Reader who you are always imagining as you write.  For S.K. it is his wife, Tabby.
The second draft should be 10% shorter than the first.
Research should stay as far in the background as possible.
Don't bore people with too much back story.  His wife told him not to bore her with what a character did for community service in the year he spent with writer's block.  He cut 2-3 pages down to a paragraph; no one cares about those details.  He watches to see when his wife will put the manuscript down.  He waits for the laughs, he watches her while she reads sometimes and she tells him he's needy.  He says writers are needy between the first and second draft.

Writing Retreats and Writing Classes
He thinks the retreat sounds like a great fantasy -- someone silently leaving a boxed lunch at your cabin door every day so that your creative process won't be disrupted.  The quiet woods, the gatherings in the evening at the lodge to roast marshmallows and talk about works in progress, other writers offering comments like: I like the use of tone and imagery... I can almost see it, like, you know….
Mr. King firmly believes first drafts need to be written with the door closed (and this retreat business doesn't allow for that) and the feedback might not be so productive anyway.
Writing classes can be good, and especially because a writer can connect with helpful people the way he did in a composition class as a young man.  He quotes a figure of 5% when determining how many writers actually make a living strictly from writing, hence there are a lot of writers out there teaching. Take their classes, learn what you can.
Agents
It's not so impossible to get an agent.
Get The Writer's Market, read the magazines you are submitting to, and write well-crafted letters to potential agents. 

This morning I got to the hardest part of the book for me to read --  about his accident.
The man driving the van was on his way down to the store "to get some of those Marzes-bars."  His dog, Bullet, was after some meat in a cooler which distracted him to the point where he came over a hill driving on the shoulder.  He thought he hit a small deer.  But then there were bloody spectacles on his passenger seat.  Mr. King had been hit and then thrown over the van, landing behind it just shy of a pile of rocks.  The EMTs didn't think he would make it.  One of them said to the driver as they got going in the ambulance, "You better hit it hard," and so they drove 110 mph on back roads to get him to the hospital.  They determined he needed to be life-flighted elsewhere.  His lungs collapsed as they began the flight.  The guy who hit him had another dog at home named, Pistol.  Stephen King was stunned that he had just nearly been killed by one of his own characters.  He wasn't sure he would make it.  He told people, "Tell Tabby I love her."  That made me start to cry.

The surgeon saved him, and his wife saved him ... but writing again helped a lot.  He had things to say, he had to finish this book.

He added in a section showing part of a first draft of a short story.  Then he showed the edits.  He had Strunk in mind.  Cut needless words.  Cut cut cut.  I think of them too — Strunk and White.  In life and in words.  Cut cut cut.
He also provided two big lists of recommended books.  Thank goodness; I love that.  Book recommendations!  Yay!

I still can’t read Carrie.  That would be too scary for me, but finally — I got to hang out and hear what Stephen King has to say. 

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture

Wow.  I read the report: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture.
It was packed with useful information.

A participatory culture changes the focus of literacy from individual expression to community involvement.   Right now, we’re moving away from a time when a few produce and many consume media.  Everyone has a more active stake in the culture that is being produced; students need access to the tools that will allow them to be participants. 
Kids are skilled at using media but limited in their ability to examine the media themselves.  They often take information at face value.  They need skills so they can determine how credible a game or site is.  Students need to understand that they’re dealing with a giant mall rather than a library.  Many kids have a difficult time picking out which pieces of a game or site are advertisements.

For this generation, games may be the best way to engage with learning.  Basically, games present a set of problems.  They’re certainly more interested in games than the stale prose in the textbooks. 
Railroad Tycoon incorporates spreadsheets, maps, graphs and charts into the game, for example.

One of my favorite pieces of media literacy has to do with appropriation.  This is the process where students learn by taking culture apart and putting it back together — in their own way.
Here’s a quote from the report:
Homer remixed Greek myths to construct The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Shakespeare sampled his plots and characters from other author’s plays.  The Sistine Chapel ceiling mashes up stories and images from across the entire biblical tradition.

To me, this is key — for beginning creators, appropriation provides a scaffolding — a place to start.
This report also names many great activities to do with students, many coming from The MIT Comparative Media Studies Program.  I love the lesson where students work on teams to transform an existing media (like a book, film, tv series or comic book) into a video games and then have to prepare a “pitch” presentation.

Another fascinating piece of information (to me) is the idea that multi-tasking is more important than attention span. 
Kids need to see the relationship between information coming at them from many directions, they need to make a reasonable hypothesis based on bits of information, fragments, or intermittent information — which is all a part of the current workplace.

Our society is in an apprenticeship phase, which I have to remember.  We’re all learning right now.

We need to stress working in teams …. We’re tapping the collective intelligence, where everyone knows something, nobody knows everything, and what any of us knows can be tapped by the group as a whole.
Unfortunately, education is still focusing on training autonomous problem solvers, mostly.  Collective intelligence communities encourage ownership of a project by a group,
but schools still grade individuals.
Schools should be teaching students to have a large background in many areas but also to know when it’s time to look to the larger community for expertise on a specific subject.

Tolerance can also be taught in cybercommunities.  They bring groups together who might never come in contact with each other in the physical world.  There are sometimes heated conflicts around values and norms, but as time goes by, this process may help an understanding arise about how different cultural communities operate.  In these cybercommunities many issues related to race, class, sex, ethnicity and religion can be worked out — over time.

The report identifies three core problems:

1. We must ensure that every child has access to the skills and experience needed to become a full participant in the social, cultural, economic and political future of our society.
2. We must ensure that every child has the ability to articulate her understanding of the way media shapes perceptions of the world.
3.  We must ensure that every child has been socialized into the emerging ethical standards that will shape their practices as media makers and as participants within on line communities.

So, kids need to play, perform, simulate, appropriate, multitask, tap the collective intelligence, evaluate the reliability and credibility of information, follow the flow of stories across multiple modalities, network (meaning to search for, synthesize and disseminate information) and they need the ability to travel across diverse communities respectfully.

The big goal here is that we ensure all students have access to the education, skills, resources and time so that they have opportunities in the new culture — so that they can be the pro- ams (professional amateurs) who network and find an audience for their work.  They need the chance to find out what their passions are, forge their own identities and lead expressive lives and enrich the lives of others.

Ideal Reader, an initial thought

Write with an ideal reader in mind.  That's what Stephen King says.  I read the comments from my group about the This I Believe piece.  It's funny to have a group whom I've never met.  I think things are going well, but I have to get to know people a little bit.  I'm back in the rabbit hole from Alice In Wonderland, not so sure of my footing sometimes.  Digital land.
I dreamed that I was growing plants out of my head in addition to my hair ... or maybe instead of my hair; there were white blossoms in clumps here and there.  It got heavy after a while, although it looked very pretty.  I also dreamed I was giving Steve Jobs computer advice. 
I seem to have people reading this blog ... and the one I'm trying to set up on Tumblr for my multi-genre piece.  I clicked on my email this morning and saw that someone had commented about what I'd posted, she liked something ... I can't remember now and I'm not going back to look.  I clicked on the name of the person who decided to follow me and YIKES!  It was not at all what I was expecting to see.  Apparently I don't have any filters on my computer.  This is one of my concerns in having students start blogs.  At school, I think all the filters are in place on the iPads, but what about at home?  Clearly, my home is not blocking the filth.  I need to get some help with that.  You never know what an innocent Google search will turn up.  I'll get Josh (Fiona's dad)  to help me when he visits later this month. 
But my ideal reader is not the lady with the fake boobs.
I think it's maybe a combination of a few teachers who have become my friends, and the boys who used to go on skiff rides with me, gunkholing.  And Maira Kalman whom I've never met, but I love her nonetheless.