Orono Buddy

Bailey has a new caretaker/buddy in Orono. Sam is the 8th grade son of Heather Pullen, one of Rich's colleagues at the University.  Bailey and Sam hung out on Saturday while Rich ran a conference. Clearly, Bailey had the best time.

Bailey & Sam

"Do I have to go home, Dad?"

The Architect

Fall 2004, Western Mountains of Maine

I learned this week that Michal Cicala, my 2004-05 Slovakian exchange student, graduated from college as an architect. Fantastic!

Michal studied for six years at his university in the Czech Republic. During summers, he worked out on the west coast of the United States managing a sales team of international students. He learned a lot from that experience, especially managing people.

Michal used his exchange in Rumford to the max. He had a slew of friends, joined sports and activities like soccer and ski racing, and left a lasting impression among many folks in Rumford.

Over the years, Michal has kept in touch via email, Facebook, and letters. I share email letters each month with his family. Michal's sister Tania did a yearlong exchange in Maine just after Michal, and now their little brother Martin is gearing up for his year abroad.

I look forward to the day that I'll visit Slovakia and meet Michal's wonderful, warm, and successful family.

Here's to Michal... Happy Graduation! Much success! I'm proud of you.

2005

2010

   

Life's simplicity

Really, life's as simple as this: you roll in poop, you get a bath.

We had our first run of 2013 at Black Mountain today. The cross-country trails are snow covered and firm perfect for running or for skiing (with Universal Klister as a kick wax).

On the highest point of the XC trail, Bailey discovered a ripe, wet poop. He rolled and rolled in the mess until I saw him and screamed. Then, he rolled some more.

I tried to clean him up with snow, but that did not work. I tried tossing a treat in a stream--he got the treat but the water didn't affect the mess. So, as always, off to the back deck with buckets of warm water and an oatmeal dog shampoo with a lemony scent. I know it looks like he's smiling in these pictures, but I'm thinking he got some soap in his eyes.

Saying goodbye, but knowing it's not...

Bar Harbor, c. 2009

My sister Barbara died last week. For 8 years she lived with ovarian cancer, undergoing a dozen clincial trials and more than several surgeries. When her tumors began to grow over the past 6 months, she and her husband Ken faced the decision of her undergoing tumor debulking surgery.

After the surgery, in her chemo-weakened state, Barbara's kidneys began failing. She endured dialysis, transfusions, and other procedures, but her body could not recover. We moved her into hospice on a Sunday, and she died peacefully on a Tuesday afternoon with her husband and me by her side.

Throughout the month and one day that followed her surgery, her kids, my brother Rob, Ken, and I held vigil in the hospital,  giving her foot massages and applying hot or cold packs to her forehead. Rob called it the "spa treatment." Each day during my stay, I wrote and sent email updates to the family about her condition and about her day like who visited, who sent notes, what she said, when she smiled. During the final few days I read notes from family, placed phone calls, and talked to her about the many people in her life that loved her. Neighbors, girlfriends, fellow cancer patients, her chemo nurses, and her doctors came to her bedside to say goodbye.

On Wednesday in Winchester--just outside of Boston--the family gathered with friends to celebrate Barbara's life and professional career. Her obituary from the Boston Globe is here. After the memorial and reception, we met at Tanya and Michael's home in Winchester. Small and large groups stood sharing stories about Aunt Barbie. Up until that gathering, I'd been pretty sad about losing my sister, one of the people in my life. But when I looked around the house at her 3 kids, 7 grandkids, her brothers, nieces, nephews, and friends, I had an overwhelming sense that she's still here in all of us.

As a family, we grew closer over these past few weeks, and really, over the past 8 years. We'll miss her--that smile, her fist pump and wink, her directives (after all, she did grow up with 4 brothers in a mill town), and her many gifts. We all agree that we feel blessed to have had her in our lives.

  

Winter Blues...

It happens every winter. Dark days mount up; unwanted snow keeps invading the radar screen; long, slushy drives back from Orono raise my angst; and the quirky characters on reruns of The West Wing seem like my closest friends. Last night during Season 5, Episode 4, I actually gave advice to Josh, the nimrod. (Who am I making fun of? The other day I took out my car key and pressed "Unlock" as I stood squarely in front of my office door at the university. I am a professor, after all.)

It is what it is.

But like a lot of people, if I get out and hike or run, my dampened spirits begin to melt away with the rising temperatures. That was the case today. I hiked up through the neighborhood, onto a logging road near the reservoir, and in 17 minutes hit the snow mobile trails. From there,  I run, jog, or slog along while Bailey investigates Every.Single.Smell. And 66 minutes later, I'm home--tired but rested and knowing Spring is nearly here.

Here are some pictures from the last few days.

Bailey on the back deck during snow flurries. 

One of the Three Sisters taken from my second floor. 

Again, one of the Three Sisters. 

Mr. Fournier's home with the Three Sisters in the background. 

Books, snow... books and snow. 

Winter/Summer

More snow heading our way for Wednesday, Thursday, and perhaps Friday. The XC skiing will be perfecto this weekend!

Another weekend storm...

After the run

There's a cardinal in a backyard bush. The winter's ice is inching its way off the roof. Out on the back deck, the sun has me hatless and sipping water while rocking in my chair. Today, it's 40 degrees in western Maine and there's a sprig of spring in the air. The weather calls for a storm over the weekend. Six to 10 inches of snow. But for now, after our run, it's the rocking chair and this sunshine that matter.

Was that a blizzard?

Nah, not so much. But the feathery western powder made for great XC skiing today and easy shoveling (wicked easy since the neighborhood teenager, Miles, snuck over and shoveled my front walk while we were out skiing!). And then, of course, there's the comfort food... lasagna, black raspberry yogurt ice cream... did someone say wine? No, not in the middle of a natural disaster! Unh-unh... no wine at such a time.

Apres ski rest...

Comfort food for the storm. 

New Book!

Click on card above to enlarge. 

To order a copy, just click on this cover:

Click on cover for ordering information. 

The Multigenre Paper

In our online class, Writing and the Teaching of Writing, we're developing a Multigenre Project, an activity created by Tom Romano. Ours will be an autobiographical Mulitgenre. For example, in 2009, Meg Hall wrote a MG on her passion for baking bread. She put her final product on a blog that you can find here.

In Tom Romano's own class, he asked his college students to create a Multigenre paper over a book. Here's an example written on the stunning novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. More examples and ideas can be found on our Class Resource Website on Writing, scroll down 3/4 of the page and look on the left. You can also Google Multigenre to see more examples.

Some writers begin this project with a central idea (e.g., "My Children") and let the various genre surface as they write. Another approach is to make an outline and list the genre with a brief explanation. That's what I've done below as I've outlined a Multigenre about my family and our connection to ski racing. Click on the picture to enlarge!

Click on the picture to enlarge. 

 

Good classrooms

My UMaine office. 

In 1991, at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English, my teacher the late James Britton spoke these words during class one summer day. The next fall because of Mr. Britton, Dixie Goswami, my grad school classmates, my writing, my reading, and these 8 words, I revised my high school English classroom and, in a real way, myself.

Zen & the Art of Snowbanks

Bailey's Swiss heritage as a farm dog leads him to look out over the pastures and sound the alarm if a stranger or predator intrudes and to provide companionship to his people. I love watching this Zen-like stance when he's in the yard. This past week we've had vicious temperatures with wind chills reaching –25 to –35 degrees F.  But whenever Bailey went out, he clicked into the I'm-protecting-the-back-forty stance. Good dog.

Stupid is as stupid does Part II

I'm a moron.

On the coldest night of the year, with the wind bending my four-story Blue Spruce trees, I left the door from my kitchen to the unheated mudroom ajar (insert "open").

Throughout the night, the wind-chilled -25 degrees refrigerated the mudroom. I can picture the arctic air seeping into the kitchen and weaving down the hallway to the only thermostat on the first floor. I could hear the furnace blasting away at my ignorance. Could I be any more careless? Oh yes.

I brought Bailey into the mudroom and let him out into the backyard. When I went to head back into the kitchen, I couldn't open the door. The night before, as always, I'd locked that door and somehow the locking mechanism held fast (insert "I pushed the locking button when I went out").

I'm no dummy. I sprung into action. I turned on the gas stove in the room to keep me from freezing to death in the next 2 minutes (uh?) and weighed my options.  I thought about having to run to my neighbors for help. I pictured myself skipping across the street to the Sullivan's house in my pointy-toed slippers from Kazakhstan, a gift from Jan's parents.

Flashback. 1957.

I'm 4 years old. It's winter--or at least in this version of the story it is. Somehow, I'm alone on the first floor of our house on Lincoln Avenue in Rumford. I probably came down to watch Saturday morning cartoons. I decide it would be a good idea to head out onto the porch. I close the door, look up and down the quiet street, and head back in ... again, the door is locked. I pound on the door, but everyone's sleeping on the two floors above.

Our home on Lincoln Avenue in 1957 is a duplex. Our neighbors, the Mayer's, are awake and hear me. I'm rescued. In my mind today, they treat me to a nice breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup and a big tumbler of OJ....    

My blue slippers...

My 2013 plans do not include showing off my slippers on Prospect Avenue. I could climb over the 60 bags of pellets in the front hallway and dig through the bags leaning against the kitchen door to find the door knob, and slip open that door, tearing away all of the insulation I have stuck in and around the door frame. Or! I could see if there was anyway I'd left the second-floor door unlocked from the sports room to house.... I had. I'm in.

Another lesson learned.

Stupid is as stupid does....

When we make the mistake of leaving 3/4 of a box of dog bones where we thought they couldn't be reached...  we sleep on the first floor in front of the pellet stove just in case our dog lets loose from one end or the other, and we'll be closer to the back door. How could I be so stupid?

Poor Bailey.

Fame is fleeting

For no apparent reason, my book's website, WritingAthletes.com, went wild with hits the other day. That made me feel pretty good, but it also made me curious. What caused this onslaught of interest?

I started searching the Internet to find places the website had been cited. I found one place, a coach's website, and I shot her an email just to say Hi. Come to find out she used my team notebook protocols with her college team. She wrote, "The concept of team notebooks has improved our program in ways I could not have imagined!" We went on to trade ideas, and I even invited her to add a quotation to an article I've been writing.

I never found out how the website went mini-viral, but I did meet an interesting and thoughtful coach from Nebraska.

Stats page of hits from WritingAthletes.com... Remember, click to enlarge.

Self Promotion

The other day I posted my Amazon Author's Page to my Facebook page to increase traffic and yes, to sell some books. It was an act of shameless self promotion--and not my first! That's part of what authors do. My friend Monica Wood has a stunning new memoir out, When We Were the Kennedys. She spends weeks and weeks on the road as witnessed by her travel schedule for last year and this one. Click here. But when do you get a chance to write? Like everything in life, writing successfully in the 21st century is a balancing act.  

The Double Dog Dare Factor of Rejection

No matter how long you've written or how much you've published––unless you're Steve King, Toni Morrison, or Richard Russo––rejection is as much a part of the writing process as revision.

If you've been keeping up with this blog over the past year, you'll know that I started interviewing 16-year-old ski racer Sam Morse back in March of 2012. Sam has been keeping ski racing journals for about 9 years, and the article I wrote about him, "Writing Toward Podium Gold: One Athlete's Journals," just got rejected by the editors of a sports research journal.

These days, not much gets my energy flowing like rejection; it's like a task challenge or what we used to call a double dog dare. The editors said the article "didn't quite fit." I knew that when I submitted it, but I like to push boundaries. Most of the articles in their journal are quantitative research pieces; mine's a story, or what we call qualitative research. Last year, I broke into a quantitative journal with a story... man, I loved that feeling.

I have two other journals in mind for the revised version of the article. One journal asks for articles of 10-15 double-spaced pages--right now, it's 25 pages long. The other journal, which is not accepting submissions for a year, is shorter still.

So now, I'll push aside the bills, books, and bits and pieces on my desk to begin trimming 10 to 12 pages from the manuscript... After 60+- hours of writing on the initial article, this pruning sounds plain ugly, doesn't it? But you know what?

I think the story will be better.

Celebrating Wendy

We've lost our Slovakian Golden, Wendy Cicala, age 12 1/2.  I first met Wendy in 2004 when her "brother" Michal came to America as an exchange student. Wendy lived her life in the company of a beautiful, active family... she had a wonderful life and gave her family many happy memories.  Here's to Wendy... a good dog, a great friend, sadly missed by family and friends.

One Writer's Dog

Waiting for Dad to put away the silver box! 

Click on the line above to see the video. 

:)

First Ski

Bailey and I took our first ski of the season. I used a new GoPro camera to capture some video and edited it at home. To watch this video in larger format, go to my Facebook site.

Writing and learning through President's Obama's eyes

Trevor Parent, one of my former athletes and now a college coach, sent me a message today. "Do you read Time? I was reading an article about President Obama, and he spoke about the importance of writing in his life. I thought you would find that quite profound."And I did.  

The President said in this interview with Time Magazine what many of us believe about the place of writing in our learning, the way we can use writing to discover what we think. His words parallel a line I wrote in a recent article, an adaptation of several different authors' quotations (e.g., Grace Paley): "We write to discover what we don't know about what we know." 

Click on this paragraph to expand.

Bailey & the Green Sea Turtle

Our neighbors The Sullivan's gifted Bailey a green Sea Turtle. So far, the squeaker has died but the turtle has survived. Usually, the boy has stuffed toys disemboweled within a few hours.  This time, I kept an eye on him as he pranced around the house with the turtle in his mouth. Every time he'd settle in on the floor and start tearing at stuffed toy, I'd say, "Gentle." It may have been the tone of my voice, but Bailey took it easy on the little green toy.  On to Day #3!

Seasons Greetings from Slovakia

Royal Wendy the Golden and playful Whiskey the kitty send holiday greetings from Slovakia. Warmest wishes to the Cicala Family from Bailey and me!

Snow time!

I've heard that milking cows prance and dance in the pasture when they first come out of the barn after a long winter. That's Bailey when he hits the snow in the backyard. He sprints and leaps and looks as if he has been set free. Here's to winter!

Can I stay outside and play?

Happy Christmas! Bailey, Zack, and Mazy.

Our friend Bailey Means adores... revels in... Christmas! Several years back as a graduate student in teaching, Bailey came to our university class ringing bells and singing songs as she proclaimed, "I just love Christmas!"Since then, she's delivered home-crafted cards with personal notes and Christmas gifts. Most recently, as The Human Companion to Mazy the Golden Retriever, Bailey has sent clothing for Bailey Tuckerman. This year, a tie for holiday parties!

All dressed up and waiting for an invitation!

A few weeks back I happened to run across Bailey on campus. The first question, of course: "How's Mazy?"

"I never knew how much love I had to give," said Bailey, "until I got this dog."

 Our dog friends are nodding.

Happy Christmas! 
Bailey, Zack, and Mazy. 

Clancy, Paddington, and Sharon... OhMy

Two days with Clancy (German Shepard), Paddington (Golden), and Sharon (Homo sapien) tuckers out Bailey Tuckerman.

November sunset

Every so often in a dull, absent November day, we have a piece of the spectacular.