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.

A Thanksgiving Hike & Run

Click on photo to enlarge. 

After our hike and run on Center Hill in Weld, Maine... 

A Thankful Writer and Teacher...

A Thankful Writer and Teacher…

I am thankful for the six unpublished books that I have written: Summer Blue, A Field Beyond, Tracy’s Story, Goal Lines, The Guys, and Beyond the Rules.

I am thankful for the 6000+- hours I spent writing those books and the 69 rejections I received from publishing houses.

For the New England-based poetry editor who wrote to reject my poems about Weld, saying, “this is shit written by a dilettante…no substitute for the authentic stuff”… I am thankful.

I am thankful for my 1992 rejection to the UNH doctoral program.

I am thankful for the 60 rejections that I received for my published books and the 100’s I’ve received for articles and poems.

I am thankful for the following line from a book review…. “And finally, Richard Kent. Ah, Richard Kent who makes us all feel like we're not doing nearly enough. After reading his chapter, I felt a bit deflated. But I quickly moved on to others who seem a bit more realistic (but, yes, he does have great ideas).”

I am thankful for getting turned down for a job at Albion College in 1979 and at least a half dozen more places during my lifetime. 

I am thankful for the words of some of my portfolio-stressed high school students, including the following:

“Dear Mr. Kent, I hope you fucking die in a car crash on the way home.” [BTW, I made it home and called the student.]

“You are a horrible, untollerable, impatient, anal-retentive, conniving weasel.”

“Mr. Kent… as a teacher I don’t particularly care for you. I think your class sucks. There is a ridiculously huge amount of work in your class. Most of the stuff we read in your class is junk… I’m learning nothing in this class that will help me in any way in my life. I already know how to read and write and unless St. Exupery is going to do my taxes for me I’m not going to learn how to do anything in class that will actually help me in reality.”

Today, as I ran the mountain trails above Webb Lake, I thought of the no’s that I have endured and learned from. Not surprisingly, these disappointments have created both incentive and balance within my life….

Here’s to our failures and all those no’s… Happy Thanksgiving.   

"Don't worry about knowing what you mean..."

This funk that I've been in while writing this article isn't a funk at all. I'm not sure why I don't remember this feeling and this process when I begin a project. Why am I surprised by this? I suppose, really, I am not. I think my ego gets in the way as I think I should be better (i.e., more immediate, faster) than I am.

Peter Elbow brought about the term "freewriting" that resulted in his book Writing Without Teachers. In the book he writes,

"[D]on't worry about knowing what you mean or what you intend ahead of time; you don't need a plan or outline, let things wander and digress. Though this approach makes for initial panic [No shit, Peter], my overall experience with it is increased control" (1973, 32-33).

The poet William Stafford explored this issue, too. He wrote,

"I must be willing to fail. If I am to keep writing, I cannot bother to insist on high standards. I must get into action and not let anything stop me, or even slow me much... I am following the process that leads so wildly and originally into new territory that no judgment can be made about values, significance, and so on. I am making something new, something that has not been judged before. Later others--and maybe myself--will make judgments. Now I am headlong to discover. Any distraction will harm creating" (A Way of Writing, by William Stafford 1989, 18).

I am on page 9.

Slogging through "Sam's Journals" (or, somebody shoot me)

"Careening down Sugarloaf's famed Narrow Gauge Trail, downhill ski racer Sam Morse drops 2430 vertical feet in a little over a minute. The 16-year-old reaches speeds in excess of 60 mph on the mile-and-a-half-long World Cup downhill course. Sam’s parents, coaches, and teammates support his pursuit of podium gold... so does his writing." 

I'm still wading my way through this article. Yet again for the 1000th time, I've discovered that writing is hard. Duh x 1000.

On the plane ride out to Las Vegas last week, after pounding away on the article for 15+- hours, I stopped mid-sentence and decided--because I didn't have a %$#@ clue what I was doing--I had to think in a more linear way. So, I constructed an outline. I can't believe I created a quasi-traditional outline... Usually, I have a list of topics and go from there. But this outline (and as you'll see below, it's a list with Roman numerals, Duh x 1001) seems to have gotten me off the dime.

It's not that I didn't know what I was doing in the article. It's just that I hadn't discovered what the data (i.e., interviews and writing) was saying. Sometimes, we have to live our writing to the point of utter bewilderment before a tiny speck of light begins to twinkle on the computer screen's page. Duh x 1002.

I Introduction

           

1       Pix of Sam racing

2     Glimpse of CVA (Bode, others … check with Chip/website)

II Sam through his teacher’s and coach’s lens

1.     Mary Poulin

2.     Chip Cochran

III Athletes’ Journals

1.     Definitions

2.     Glimpse at Serena Williams’ journal

3.     Carlos Delgado’s AJ

4.     David Chamberlain

5.     Primary focus of AJ is sport (While the primary focus of an Athlete’s Journal is sport, other areas of the athlete’s life find their way into the journal. P 6/CB article) *

IV Writing to Learn

1.     Zinsser

2.     Murray

3.     What SM said

4.     What Charlie B. said

5.     What the BMA athletes as a collective said

6.     How do athletes learn? (Chart)

V Modes of Writing

1.     Expressive

2.     Transactional

3.     Poetic

4.     Examples from journals

VI The Psychological

1.     Benefits of AJs

2.     WOB connections

VII Sam’s First Journals

1.     Story of ski trips

2.     Story of agreement between Kingfield ES and Morse family

3.     Examples and explanations

VIII Sam’s Recent AJs

1.     Examples

2.     Evidence of expressive writing

3.     Evidence of writing to learn

4.     What these examples reveal (questions for Sam)

IX What we learn from Sam’s writing

1.     What makes an effective coach for you?

2.      

X Summary