Where is Suzi?

Here's a hint -- we were at Dempsey Middle School in Delaware, OH, a very happenin' place. Only insiders, however, can tell where Suzi is in this picture. For more information on Dempsey, follow the link above.

Okay, these were the best prepared students for a visit that ANY author could hope for. Here you can see the student body (and me) congratulating two of the winners of the poetry contest. Raucous applause! The judges for the contest were AP English students at Hayes High School -- how cool is that for peer review?



At a different assembly, tech students presented me with books that they had made where they chose cool graphics to go along with poems that they had written based on my work. They took the first couple lines of one of my poems and developed the poem on their own, kind of like using sour dough bread starter. The responses were creative, honest, thoughtful -- taking my poems to the next -- and more personal -- level. Here's just a sample chosen at random -- all the writings were very cool.

Wrong

I'd rather starve myself
Or pay a million dollar fine,
or serve a lengthy sentence of the solitary kind.

I'd rather sky dive
or do fifty pages of homework
or get thrown out of Wal-mart
Cause my little sister bit the manager

Than to say I'm wrong

Holbrook/Dawson

One final idea (also with an assist from the tech teacher) is displayed on the bulletin board in this final picture. Media Specialist Karen Hildebrandt is pictured here beside power point slides that the students created in computer class. Why not combine a poetry lesson with power point instruction? Now, look carefully and you will see Jesus' notebook, from Sheldon ISD outside of Houston now proudly hanging on a bulletin board in Delaware, OH. Poetry does indeed bring folks together, building bridges!


Big big thanks to Karen for all her hard work getting the kids and the staff jazzed in advance. Lots and lots of work. And thanks to all the teachers for seeing that poetry can live outside of language arts class.

But . . . but . . . but . . . where is Suzi?

St. Thomas Aquinas/St. Phillip School Cleveland

LOVE this photo. The woman who took the picture was disappointed and took a couple more, explaining I wasn't in the first one. But this is the shot. Not only because I don't particularly like looking at myself (which I don't) but because I'm hoping this is a representation of how my poetry impacts kids -- that I am somewhere in the background, a not-quite memory, nudging them on.

Why I like the catholic schools of today: First, they all have great sound systems. They have bingo and family events and they know the importance of mortals making themselves heard to one another. They have VERY committed teachers who work for even less pay than most teachers because they really want to be there. They seem organized somehow. Usually small, they seem more manageable than some. And finally, they are not the crack-your-knuckles-with-a-ruler places made infamous on stage and screen and at dinner tables. In fact, compared to some public schools where the unintelligent-design folks have taken over, these schools seem freer to pursue education free of outside intervention, including the restrictive perils of NCLB.

None of these musings made a bit of difference to these kids, though. They were just having a good time at a poetry assembly, pushing to be in the picture. Thanks to Janie Reinhart for inviting me to meet her students and to Principal Sr. Michelle for sending me the picture below of the eighth grade girls practicing "talk to the hand."

The basecoat

"It was my Granny who taught me to sew"

That's a line out of a poem I wrote on the occasion of my grandfather's 100th birthday. Thinking back on their house, the sweet smell of bacon, whir of the manual lawnmower, rose garden, and the goodie drawer, the memory of Granny was stronger. I think Pappy, Willie Holbrook, was never quite sure what to do with his (at that time) six grandchildren, all girls. He'd raised three boys before we came along. Visits to Akron consisted of good meals followed by the men sitting in the living room discussing politics (no girls allowed) praising the U.S.military (between the four of them, they represented all branches, Pappy having been a Marine) and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company while condemning Franklin D. Roosevelt in the strongest language possible without using profanity. Well, an occasional "damn" might slip out, but only in reference to Roosevelt. They'd talk and then spontaneously jump up and go wash cars. It didn't occur to me until years later that what I perceived as Pappy not having time for his grand kids might really have been him still raising his sons, veterans trying to assimilate into a rapidly changing world. That was back when I thought being grownup meant you had it together. What did I know?

These were the post WWII Eisenhower years, prosperous and full of hope -- as long as one was a white male, which everyone in the living room was. Pappy worked 40+ years at Goodyear, only taking 2 days off -- once to get all his teeth pulled and two half days when his sons came home from war. A veteran of WWI, his life went from ox-carts and a log cabin in Hickory, KY to space shots. After his war, he never picked up a fire arm or committed an act of violence. He did his job, raised his sons, married three times, the last time at 72 when folks said it wouldn't last and was married to Lela for 23 years. Until he died at 103, he still read the newspaper, took no medication and always raged against Roosevelt. He was frugal in a way that is considered un-American these days -- he wasted not, not anything, not ever.

I remember meeting him at the bus after work, placing my leaf of a hand into the powerful mitt he wrapped around a mallet to beat rubber into molds for earth-moving tires for 8 hours that day -- and every other day. It may be the only memory I have that we shared, just the two of us. I know him mostly from the stories he liked to tell and retell until we knew all the words and could sing along. I can't remember why I ever thought that was annoying, but as a teen, I did. He had dropped out of school in the early grades to work in the tobacco fields, later reading his son's textbooks a chapter ahead of them as they went through school so he could help them with their homework. In his growing up days, before life took him from a log cabin to Versailles, wisdom was passed along through stories. He had landed in Akron, OH, blustering with industry, far away from the old homeplace. He knew how to adapt. My father and his brothers all went to school, grew to be accomplished men, fathers, and republicans, never having to labor as Pappy had. Their bank accounts may have been larger, but their hands never grew to the breadth of his.

Pappy owned rental property, part of what carried them through the depression when Goodyear cut its workforce back to one or two days a week. Rather than laying men off, the union made the company keep everyone on at reduced hours, living on oatmeal but not starving. That was back before all the laws were changed to favor shareholder rights and workers still had a say, before the country forgot about Roosevelt and what he stood for, Eleanor going into the coal mines with the workers, and Eisenhower's grim predictions about the military industrial complex. Pappy was a rubber worker but he was also a handyman, wallpaper hanger, painter, whatever it took to keep things running while Granny stirred Fels Naptha into the laundry and had a hot meal waiting after every job. They were cast into those roles in their youth and lived them well and by all appearances, happily, a hard concept for all the female grandchildren to understand as we grew to take our roles in life as moms, a business owner, writer, professor, artist, dentist and activists, and new-dealers (save one), living an egalitarian life even Roosevelt couldn't have envisioned.

When Pappy's rental property changed hands, everyone was pressed into service painting. Gender wasn't an issue. If you could hold a brush or a broom, you were in. It was my Pappy who taught me to paint. Only dip the brush into the can part way, don't scrub at the wall, smooth strokes, paint into where you have just been to reduce brush marks, the first coat is more important than the last, and never try to paint with a dry brush. My first job was to paint a closet. He put me onto the task with a bucket of paint thinned to white wash and a sawed off broom. Latex paint either hadn't been invented yet or was under some kind of cloud of new-fangled suspicion, because we used the old, smelly kind. That first experience resulted in the closest I think I ever came to hearing Granny use profanity, as she later dipped my ponytail into turpentine, yanking the brush through my thick hair and mumbling under her breath. But that was just the first in a series of painting lessons.

This past weekend I painted the basement hallway and stairs a warm ivory, thinking of Pappy as I do each time I pick up a brush. I carefully applied the base coat so that subsequent coats would go on smoothly using oil based primer (which is still the best), meticulously brushing into where I had just been, not counting on the finish coats to cover up mistakes on the base, repeatedly dipping the brush only partway in, trying not to streak with a dry brush.

Just the smell of paint brings Pappy to my mind. I don't think he would have approved of all the disposable products available in the paint department these days, but he probably wouldn't have been too critical of the job I did on the staircase. He had a way of looking over flaws, part of what carried him through 103 years. I think he would have been damned proud of the fact that I found a $5 gallon of paint at Home Depot to do the job.

Back to School in Houston

Today I visited three elementary schools in Sheldon ISD. My thoughts about foreign language skills fresh in my mind, I asked every group, "How many people here can speak two languages?" In every case, the majority could! I let them know how much I admired their skills. I think it's important to let kids know that being multi-lingual is an amazing opportunity, not an embarrassing disability.

I had a great time sharing poetry with a whole lot of help from my friends -- call and response with attitude! In each school I was impressed with how attentive and involved the principals were with what was happening. In each school, kids had prepared questions leading to some fun discussions.

And then there was Jesus. Most students had prepared one question or maybe two. At the end of the assembly there was the usual gathering of kids who had more to say about their own writing or other cool stuff to talk about. Jesus came up with his small notebook and asked me a question. I talked to other students and Jesus stepped forward again -- he had another question and when I responded, he carefully wrote down the answer. More interaction and I noticed, there was Jesus again.
"How many questions do you have?"
"Six"
"Okay, let's hear 'em." And he seriously asked each, writing down the answer.
One of his questions was, "What did you want to grow up to be when you were a kid?"
"A reporter," I answered. "You know, for a newspaper."
"Like the Houston Chronicle?" Jesus asked.
"Yeah. Exactly like that."
Jesus wrote that down. I asked to take a picture of Jesus' notebook and he agreed. I had to enhance the photo so that his careful note taking showed clearly in the photo.

A reporter needs to have the tenacity of a pit bull and and an unquenchable curiosity -- the urgent need to get an answer. I never made it as a reporter, but today I think I met a young man who really has the stuff.

Hable Espanol?

Here's something I don't get and it's come up in casual conversation twice in the last two days -- once with a guy buying aspirin for his bad knees in the check-out line at Drug Mart, me holding my soon to be new hangers. "All these people speaking Spanish. They should just learn to speak English." And not a soul around us was speaking anything but English. It was pressing on his mind enough to blurt out his viewpoint to a stranger (me) in line, along with the entire story of his knees, soon to be replaced but not without major fighting with the insurance folks. No, he hadn't seen Sicko, his son is a physician.

Another situation of "what I should have asked."

What's the harm in learning some Spanish? Taking it one step further, what's could possibly be the benefit? Some people (Fox News?) treat English as if it were a religion and any other language as pure blasphemy.

The USA is the ONLY industrialized country that routinely graduates students who are NOT fluent in another language. So, what's the problem with that? Doesn't most of the world speak English? Ah, no, as a matter of fact, they don't. More people speak Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish than speak English as a first language. Add in the second language speakers and English scoots ahead of Spanish and Hindi, but doesn't even begin to approach the over 1 billion people who speak Chinese. In fact, only 5.6 % of the world's total population speaks English.

Doesn't it kind of make sense that if we English speakers are engaging in a global marketplace our future citizens should be able to talk to their business partners? I've seen enough spy movies to know that translators don't always give it to you straight. If the news from abroad is any indication of our ability to make our needs known(China re: toys and dog food, Iraq re: the war to name two) we could benefit from some better communication skills. Where we going to get those? At some school that throws in token hello-how-are-you language courses only at the HS level?

Ten years ago I visited a classroom of second language learners in Stockholm (the Swedes take in a lot of political refugees). In the classroom, the Hindi kids sat here, the Bulgarian kids there, over there the Arabic speakers, and in this corner the Cambodian kids and so on. If the kids had a question on the lesson, they turned to their neighbor for clarification in their mother tongue, to their teacher to whom they spoke in Swedish or to me in English. I was there to teaching the writing of poetry in English -- their THIRD language. The children were in fifth grade. They all wrote poems in English. Nice poems. Funny. Adorable poems.

In this country an ESL school has a stigma -- instead of being seen as a place where students can get some extra language skills along with fractions and phonics, they are seen as second class. What kind of backwards thinking is that? No one ever died an infection of foreign language or was denied a job for diversity of language.

When I was growing up outside of Detroit post WWII many many of my friends had a grandmother in a back bedroom who didn't speak English. DPs they called them. (these women, always made the best cookies, perogies, and pasties btw). The parents might have had a lingering accent, the kids spoke perfect English but were also defensively conversant enough in that other language so that the parents couldn't pull the wool over their eyes. Hamtramack had street signs in Polish, Greektown in Greek, so that the DPs could get around, helping one another out in their selective groups while they assimilated into a new culture and struggled with the language. We all thought we were very cool learning to swear in those languages plus of course yiddish which was the funnest of all. The thing is, we grew up with a hands on, day in, day out awareness that not everybody in the world talked the same and diversity in language and cookies could be a very good thing.

As I visit International Schools I am so impressed with the students' mastery of languages and can't help thinking that they have an edge up over our home grown kids. Do you think the next generation of engineers might have an advantage if they can talk to both the executives and the folks working on the factory floors, no matter where that factory is or what language is being spoken? Yeah. We are not helping our kids by insisting on "English only," we are holding them back. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for hearing an unfamiliar language; we need that kind of reminder in places like Mentor, OH, that there is a whole world of people out there who aren't exactly like us. And that's okay, and they are okay people, and we are all struggling to make ourselves understood.

I want those days in Detroit back. I want to share them with my kids and my grandkids. Do kids need good English language skills to succeed today? Of course they do. NOT developing these skills WILL put a definite cramp on future employability.

But putting self-imposed limitations on language learning is like restricting your snack diet to Oreos. They're okay, but there is so much more out there.

Now the real work begins

The editor sent an email today that she's sending edits on Informally Yours. This book was such fun to write. Two years ago Allan Wolf and I thought of the idea on the plane home from IRA -- a book of boy/girl love poems. We had known one another since the 1995 National Poetry Slam where his team beat my team to take first place because I went overtime and we lost by .6. Not that I dwell on such petty trivia, you understand, I barely remember it. Right. It was like missing a lay up in the final moments of a championship game.

Anyway, Allan and I have been friends ever since. Not calling friends, but speaking when we see one another and respectful, feel free to call for advice friends. Now, after writing this book, we REALLY know each other. In order to write our adolescent love poems, we had to talk about all the geeky, paralyzing, heart stopping memories stored in our own experience databanks. Confessions. Revelations. OMG, you've got to be kidding me stories. Like the time I was sitting in the movies with a date and he passed me the sweet tarts and his hand brushed my knee and I almost threw up. I don't think I've ever eaten a sweet-tart since. The first line of the resulting poem is: Do not bolt screaming, clutching all your stuff.

That's the thing about memories. You think you put them to bed and the pesky things keep crawling back down the stairs. Bunch of intruders, memories. Like the time I went overtime on the stage of the National Poetry Slam and . . . STOP IT. GO TO YOUR ROOM!

I'm sitting here waiting for Allan to call so we can discuss the pictures for the book. This is the first time I've sold a book with the artwork. These are photos that Allan and I took and I doctored up on photoshop. The editor said she has made her comments on the manuscript. It's time for the editing to begin. This is the work of writing. The weighing, tossing, pruning, straightening. Something to look forward to.

And the truth about that sweet tart story? I had been widowed once and divorced and was out on my first date and it suddenly occurred to me that there weren't parents at home to set the boundaries. Who said adolescence ends at 18, or 16 or whenever it is supposed to be over?

Maybe adolesence is like the past. It's never really over. Not in my line of work, anyway. It's listening on the staircase, making sure I get it right.

I wonder if the phone will EVER ring?

safer, smafer

In Florida they have a law named for Jessica Lunsford, the poor girl attacked and killed by a neighbor, a repeat offender, a kind of scum lower than whale poop. In response to this attack (which did not take place on school grounds during a busy school day by a school contractor, let's remember) the Florida legislature has created a law requiring anyone who is paid to come to a school to be fingerprinted and have a background check.

Okay, so far. Sounds fair. Sex criminals shouldn't hang with kids. Makes sense.

Except these fingerprints have to be taken in the county where the work is to be done or a certified location elsewhere. Oh, there is NOT ONE certified place to have fingerprints taken in OH and sent to FL. PA either. TX has one, but only in Dallas. And the background checks are country specific, meaning you can't get statewide permission to visit schools, it's on a county by country basis. $85 a print.

Besides, getting a background check in OH is useless since OH can only check OH offenders and FL can only check FL offenders and never the twain databases shall talk to one another. Wasn't Homeland security supposed to do something about this? Pedophiles never move, presumably, to do their dirty work? Oh, there's a federal database, but that only tracks federal crimes, which pedophilia is not (unless the offender crosses state lines with the kid AND gets caught).

And this law only applies to paid contractors of the school. This means if you come in to repair the copy machine or (just say) provide a poetry assembly, you need to have the background check. If you volunteer in the library or to chaperon an overnight trip, you do not.

What?

A person could volunteer to spend the night with a group of kids on a field trip and NOT get a background check, but a different person needs one to do an assembly for 400 kids?

Now every school district has had to hire a full-time person to monitor these background checks on the paid contractors. These employees must have the patience of an acorn or limitless refills on their meds to put up with irate contractors calling to try and figure out complex systems designed by the wonderful folks who brought you the tax laws, complete with commensurate sections and sub-sections. One more salary not going to educate kids.

The good news is that other state legislatures are so worried about being viewed as negligent in protecting kids from dangerous (say) poets who come to deliver programs to large groups of kids that they are in fact racing to put their own state-specific, non-comprehensive background check laws on the books.

None of which would have saved Jessica.

These laws mirror the complex entry systems designed and sold to schools that harried school secretaries bypass with a little buzzer. Think about it. Other than the Chechnyan rebels, has there ever been a school shooting perpetrated by anyone who would have not been buzzed in?

The fact is, danger for kids most often lurks among those they know. A fact that has never stopped private enterprise from making a killing off of systems purchased by nervous institutions. Gee, I'm feeling safer already.

Summer Reading

I was all over the place this summer in books -- Africa, Pakistan, Peru, Chile, colonial America and perhaps the most frightening land of all -- adolescence. I didn't have a summer reading list and I'm not facing a quiz. I can't figure out if this is an advantage to being out of school or a loss because I only read what I want to.

A Long Way Gone, Memoir of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah -- This is an amazing account of a boy recruited into the army in Sierra Leone and his subsequent return to civilization after UNICEF bought him out at 15. The imagery is so strong and the writing poetic -- it's hard to believe it was written by a second language speaker. They kept the boys fighting by getting them addicted to blood and speed. Asked in an interview on the Daily Show if it was harder for him to become a killer or harder to rejoin society and he said the rejoining. Several books I read this summer served as reminders of the violence that lurks under the skin of us all.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini -- This is by the same author who wrote The Kite Runner and is just as spell binding, visual and haunting. It is a girl's story this time. Two young Afghan women overcoming cruelty and death to find friendship. Last year I read three or four books about Afghanistan and finally had to take a break -- the situation there is so desperate, particularly for women and children. What made this novel memorable for me is the intricate descriptions of the places and cultural detail.

Left To Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza Did not like this book. I'm afraid to say that as it is about the Rowandan genocide and the author's survival. By saying I didn't like it I run the risk of sounding pro-genocide. Maybe it was the endorsement by Wayne Dyer. He has this industry of books and tapes which all say "visualize it, pray for it, and it happens." When heartless "other" publishers didn't pick up her story, he did. And he provided her with a translator (whose work was horrendous, putting her story into American slang) who saw to it to inject his "visualize,pray and it happens" philosophy throughout. Frankly, I just saw the book as a vehicle for him to promote his own stuff.

Twisted by Laurie Halsey Anderson I liked this one okay, but I wanted to love it as I did Speak and that didn't happen. This is a young adult novel in a boy's voice and I never quite suspended by disbelief that this was really a guy talking and not Anderson talking like a guy. There are plenty of positive reviews floating around and it wasn't awful, I was just disappointed. I thought it was a little too neat how the protagonist snaps at his abusive dad, dad says "oh sorry I was such a dick for your entire life," and then they are immediately okay. Where are the years of therapy?

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathanial Philbrick Why wasn't my history book in school as engaging as this guy? I don't usually read heavy non-fiction like this -- and this book is heavy in detail, but what a lot to learn about the stubborn souls who chose to venture and stick it out in a brutal environment. This book didn't help my cynicism about human nature one bit. The settlers had arrogance and modern weaponry on their side (along with small pox). Not very appealing to claim as relatives. But the native americans had some ego problems too -- leaders who sold each other out with designs on one another's territories. This book has more detail than you can imagine -- did you know there were two dogs on the Mayflower? A spaniel and a "slobbering mastif." Since Michael's mom raises mastifs, this descriptor made me laugh. That was about the only laugh in the book, but it was a muddy, bloody, sad but glorious read. It makes you wonder what like could have been like for all if alliances were kept and the native people honored, faiths and spirits united to bring community wealth instead of wealth to a few.

Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind by Suzanne Fisher Staples This is also a young adult novel, but one of those that should not just be relegated to school libraries. It follows a young desert girl in Pakistan whose love of freedom, the desert and her camels must be tempered as she learns to obey. There is no neat ending to this one, she is tamed and forced to marry the older man her family has chosen for her. I loved Fisher Staples book Under the Persimmon Tree and this one did not disappoint. Although Shabanu has been out for almost 20 years, it increases in relavancy due to political situations. Now I need to quickly read the sequel Haveli so that I am ready when the third book in the trilogy comes out next month.

Ines of my Soul by Isabel Allende I just love Allende. I love plunging into the mystery and spirit world of her stories. What a story teller she is. But this book really charts new ground for her as she follows the true story of a woman who helped to establish the first spanish settlements in Chile. It begins in Spain, moves to Peru and then across the desert and mountains into Chile. The cruelty to the indigenous peoples is documented in horrific detail right along with the intimate details of her relationships with serial lovers. I remember hearing Allende speak one time in Chicago where she said as she advance in years she has come to regret every man or desert that she passed up. In this book, she passes up nothing. It is fantastic.

Cesar's Way, The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan. This is really a spring book that I bought to help in house training Suzi. It didn't help with that, but I loved this book and think that every teacher should read it to help with classroom management. He notes that only humans will follow a neurotic, unstable leader. In the dog world such a leader would be deposed immediately and probably killed. Lesson there. I love the way he describes the "calm, assertive" leader. Every pack needs a leader or they go a little nuts, the idea is to establish yourself as the leader and take the anxiety out of the pack. Now, what teacher couldn't benefit from a reminder on that score? Loved it.

Driving through Somerset County

Coming home from visiting Kelly and family today we hopped off the turnpike to take winding route 30 through PA. Coal country. Laurel Highlands. 2909 elevations. Towns too small to make the map. Whoever heard of Shanksville? That is before September 11 when Flight 93 dropped out of the sky into a field there. At the Coal Miners Tavern we picked up a Somerset County Visitors Guide with a yellow-eyed eagle on the cover. In fact it is titled the Flight 93 Somerset County Visitors Guide, the rest of the sites in the country having been parsed into eight pages in the 32 page booklet. That's what happens when planes fall on your side of the mountain.

I learned from the booklet that flight 93 took off 42 minutes late on that day. I studied the list of names and tried to picture flight attendant Lorraine Bay in her uniform. Wondered how old Andrew was or Honor Elizabeth and who was missing them on this perfect August day -- a day not unlike that day weather wise.

We also passed a fellow walking for peace from Chicago to D.C. The road was narrow and we were passed him before fully absorbing who or what had just whizzed past. Since then we've found the young man on YouTube -- Mario Penalver http://www.funnytv.us/Mario-Penalver--Peace-Walker__bhQoeGuZ6HM.html
Michael said at the time we should turn around and give him some money for his trip, but regrettably we did not test the turning radius of the car and the alertness of oncoming drivers and stop on the narrow road.

Why do we turn off of main highways? To see something different? To get away from it all?

But there is no getting away, is there? Not really. There it all was in Somerset County, somewhere left of nowheresville. Pieces of the whole mess. The downed airplane. The puffed up patriotic eagle brochure asking for donations for a monument. The details, the names, the memories. And the young man walking to end the subsequent war unjustly blamed on the events of September 11. And how many sons and daughters of coal miners are over there now?

That crater in a corn field is as wide as the planet and as deep as a mother's pain -- but instead of healing, it just seems to keep on growing.

This Can't Happen

This cave in, this hurricane, this almond-sized explosive device found in the breast of my daughter Kelly. This can't happen. That's what I said when I heard about the lump, what I said on the phone, what I said to friends, and what I continued to say until 3AM on the morning of her surgery when for one agonizing hour my tired mind wrestled with the possibility that maybe it could happen. Tragedies happen.

But this tragedy did not happen. The surgery was quick and slick as an oil change without the efforts to upsell an air filter and winter wipers. The pathologist called before we got home to tell us that the lump was free of cancer.

The burden of worry that I wouldn't allow to happen was lightened in stages yesterday rather than in one swoosh. The sun kept getting brighter, the music of the day a little more bouncy until relaxing by the swings with the kids last night a moth fluttered by pulling the last of it into the twilight.

Whew.

Nothing but fun

What could bring 3 generations of chicks together for a fun night along with a gender, age, race, economic diverse audience of great music and smiles, dancing in the aisles, albeit somewhat pricey -- joy?

American Idol comes to Cleveland in concert. Okay, okay, I know. But as an event to take a wide-eyed six-year-old (Stephanie) to, it sure beat the skates off Disney on Ice. We sang, we danced in our seats, on the floor, and (in our imaginations) on the big stage. Maybe that's the difference between an Idol concert and say a Bob Seger concert (which may be the last big concert I attended). I think the audience pictures themselves as being part of the act, you can see it in their eyes and smiles.

It has all the trappings of other concerts, products at inflated prices and gold plated popcorn, but it is one of the few events you can take a kid to and know there will be something for everyone. Latisha sang a version of I'll Always Love You that should make Whitney Houston go hide under the bed. Blake nailed Shot Through the Heart and tried to teach everyone how to beat box. Yes, there was Sanjaya. Dressed in white coat and red pants he moonwalked to a Michael Jackson tune, as usual, his personality far outshining his voice. Melinda recreated the magic of Motown for a new generation with Natural Woman and Jordan just can't possibly be only 17 -- what a voice.

A whole new rendition of "This is Entertainment."

National Poetry Slam 2007

Austin is hot -- once again. I mean the thermostat in the car read 108 one day. That's hotter than a match head, as the saying goes.

For the first time in a few years, Cleveland sent a team. They are a young team with lots to learn about reading the audience, but they performed well the first night taking their bout. They took a third place in the second bout, but that was enough to get them into the semi-finals since the new rules allow 25 teams to compete instead of the old 16. Unfortunately, that's where they ended their Slam experience, but everyone was hugging and smiling. I think they'll be back.

For me, there were three poems that made the event worthwhile. Titles are never announced, but the gist of the pieces was this -- Buddy Unicorn's piece about the death of his mother that can be heard here: (rated adult for language and content) http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=88280051
From the same team (NYC Louder Arts) Rachel's piece about being (obviously) pregnant in an uncertain world and her commitment to go down fighting and finally Denver. This is the Denver team that won last year and in my mind had THE most memorable group piece, If you see something, Say Something about immigration. Very powerful. But this year's piece for five voices was even better -- a prayer, a plea to God, voices begging please let it be negative, help me, some humorous, some hideous, all painfully personal. Perfectly executed and choreographed, it was the highlight of the entire 80 team, 400 poet event for me. (not that I saw everyone, no one could have).

Here's the truth. I didn't even go to the indi finals following this match. These pieces moved me so much that I was emotionally spent.

Last year I was featured as a legend at the Slam, this year I just went to listen. Listening is good. Hopeful. No matter how dark the poet's piece is -- some THING has happened to that writer and he/she/they've recorded the happening and are still standing to deliver. That is hopeful.

Hideous

I was browsing blogs, putting off working on taxes and the evil treadmill and I came across this phrase: "Michael Vick and the hideous dog fighting scandal" and thought, great word! Hideous. You don't hear that word so much anymore. The irony here is that there's so much that is hideous in this world. But then the word implies feeling -- and aren't we beyond all that?

Special effects in horror movies have caused many to build up an immunity to blood and gore, maybe we don't need the word anymore. A head explodes, a hand's cut off, skin melts and the audience isn't even supposed to flinch. If we don't feel revulsion, what's the use in a word like hideous except to inject it into something relatively benign? Say, Cher's face.

So along comes real blood and gore. What's more hideous than war? I watched a clip from The Guardian about Iraq -- the U.S. soldiers are clearly being driven mad by their deployment, shooting at everyone/thing that moves. I would, too if snipers were shooting at me. There was a shot of an Iraqi man who'd had his feet blown off, sitting and screaming, frantically looking around for help, his feet, a hand out of the mess. Not reality T.V., but reality. It was too gruesome for the U.S. news. I put in a link to the video above, but brace yourself, it is indeed hideous. Are we too conditioned to horror to flinch, weep, scream?

Hideous: the word itself works on the psyche like a flesh eating disease, ripping away the protective layer to reveal raw emotion. It provokes bad images, but it is a good word. One we need to have in the pocket to pass around to remind us that somethings are beyond acceptable and refuse to be satisfied by a simple shrug.

To quote that AV sage Dr. Phil, you can't change what you don't acknowledge. Hideous is a word of acknowledgment, a feeling word not only standing up to the un-feeling, but backhanding it across its botoxed face.

open door policies

We keep the doors open in the summer. For the dogs. Or that's the excuse. The sliding glass door off of our bedroom, the side kitchen door. When we are home, they are open. I like it that way. Did the same thing at my last house.

Guests helpfully close the doors or comment, "oops, door's open." No oops about it, that's the way we like it. It's my suburban version of camping, experiencing the outdoors with an ice machine and warm running water. And here's a little secret about bugs -- they like it better outside. Sometimes a fly will come in to explore the bathroom or sink, but they take off for open spaces as fast as they can find their way out. Bugs who seem to be expert at finding their ways into houses are complete dunces about finding their way out -- you have to leave the door open.

I could maybe find some glorious metaphor for keeping our doors open in a dangerous world except I also love our 8 foot privacy fence. I can pull weeds in my pajamas, use the hot tub with naked impunity, and walk outside without worrying I will get caught up in scrutiny or conversation with anything but the morning glories. Maybe it's a result of living a semi-public life certain times of the year, times when entire assemblies of kids are invited to ask me anything they want to and I feel strongly that I want to respond with honesty.

Did it hurt to get your ears pierced? Did your dog really die? Why do you want to write? You don't seem that rebellious to me. Are you rich? Do that poem about the dog who ate the homework again. What's your scariest (funniest, saddest, silliest) poem? What kind of car do you drive? How old are you? How do I get my stuff (my kid's poetry, my aunt mildred's religious poetry, my story, my book) published? Do you like Michigan or Ohio State? Do you have any poems about war? Who's your favorite American Idol? Who are you wearing? How much did your shoes cost? Are you married? Why not? Where's your doorknob? I think in the summer my response button needs a little time to heal.

For the past weeks I have pretty much withdrawn while at home. A little writing, a little working on images for the new book, some submissions, limited correspondence about next school year, and lots of alone time. This is my version of putting peaches up in the summer, savory fruit of last year's labor vacuum sealed to carry me through the winds of busy airports next winter. Next week I rejoin the "arterial rush of traffic" to quote Salinger.

I think I'm ready.

Nothing trumps crab grass

I dream about crab grass. What a pathetic confession! Crab grass slinks into my gardens, sending its scouts ahead of each invasion like spacewalkers suspended on life lines. Its tentacles lurk beneath the grass as it races to strangle all growth. I love growing things and have tried to live in harmony with crab grass, but it chokes out the blooms on my lavender, thyme, and yarrow and I hate it.

Night before last I took a break from pulling crab grass and walked around the neighborhood with a letter to our city council about our disgust with the way the developer at the end of the street is mutilating and overdeveloping a small plot of ground he wheedled out of the financially strapped school system without paying them any cash. There is so much wrong with this development, it's hard to articulate without beginning to splutter like Daffy Duck. Anyway, up and down the street I went looking for signatures on my letter. Apparently the developer doesn't read the papers or even look at the ubiquitous FOR SALE OR LEASE signs in the city and doesn't realize the real estate market is depressed, because he keeps gaily ripping down trees and playgrounds to build structures no one needs on not only this, but several sites in town. Deer are committing suicide on the freeway. See what I mean about the spluttering?

So, I approach a neighbor I've never really talked to before who is standing on his lawn with his smiling wife and adorable 18 month old. He is a young guy, overweight in shorts that might have fit him better last summer or the five before. His hair is leaving him. I explain the purpose of the letter, its 6 points including traffic snarls, flooding, lack of classrooms in overcrowded schools for the three story townhouses the developer previously assured us would be populated by retirees (see above on financially strapped schools). This is a lot like purporting that a used car was driven to and from church by a little old lady when in truth it was a rental car. Maybe this young man does in fact sell cars. At any rate, he knows the game and that we're being played. I want his signature.

"Yeah, I'll sign," he says. "I don't want any shines moving in down there."

I haven't heard the label "shine" since I was a kid, before the riots in Detroit. Before MLK professed his dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Before Brown vs the Board of Education, the exact same decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court this week, went head to head with the likes of George Wallace. For two days talking heads have been debating on the media whether race is still an issue in our "united" states. I want to introduce the Justices to this young man.

He said, "shines," and he looked at me hard as he said it. Measuring me? Daring me? His wife and child smiling at his side.

I stood silently as he signed the letter. I don't have to agree with him on everything, right? I don't have to make a scene in front of his wife and kid, do I? I can just smile, whisper insults under my breath, and live in harmony with his guy. I don't have to take on every asshole I meet. We can be in agreement on the over-development and disagree on race relations, can't we?

Can we?

The letter feels dirty to me. It sits on the dining room table unsent. Evidence of a compromise that I can't square in my mind.

This neighborhood is being strangled by unseen tentacles, arrogant and bold. Words of hatred uttered by people wearing their patriotism and religiosity on their car bumpers. Uncompromising, bolstered by ignorance and unapologetic greed. It's always there, aggressively trying to choke out what could be beautiful. More than any one pair of hands can pull out.

It gives me nightmares.

The News?

Everyday I read the Huffington Post the way my Dad used to read the Free Press in Detroit. Today I read that some high school scholars took Bush to task for his stance on torture, that politicians take money from big tobacco (like this is news?) and that Murdock is close to firming up his deal to buy the Wall Street Journal, which is just one more reason to get the news on line. I read the business section to see who has been arrested recently and the living section to investigate new ways to relax, which in light of the current news is a hot topic.

But when I saw on the front page today a picture to click to read about Paris Hilton's release from jail, I passed. Not because I wasn't at all interested, the story is like a flat tire on the side of the road, you glace over just because it is there. I didn't click on the story because I know somewhere, someone is counting. The people who choose the news are counting clicks and I don't want to add to the pile. Particularly since I read yesterday the Michael Moore was booted from an interview on Larry King where he was to talk about the health care crisis so that Ms. Hilton can tell all about how hot her prison cell is.

Mostly I get my news from Democracy Now, Huffington Post, Think Progress, BBC, and Alternet. Once in a while MSNBC. And of course, The Daily Show. These are channels my Dad and Walter Cronkite never dreamed of.

And before marketing moguls started counting clicks, measuring the next newsflash against how much interest a related story received the last time. How else can one explain Anna Nicole outplaying troop casualties on the nightly news?

I know, I know. The topic about as welcome as a nasty doormat. But unless we keep hosing it down and occasionally beating the tar out of the doormat, we are just going to keep tracking dirt in.

Beaches

Our family flows toward the Atlantic each summer with our rafts, sunscreen and spawn. We go there to study our familial three R's, to relax, reconnect and recollect. Memories of past trips to the beach are filed in my head going back to when I used to hide True Story magazines under my mattress to be secretly studied with my cousins while the grown-ups drank beer and played cards in the swaying cottages we'd rent in places like Ocean City, Maryland and the Outer Banks.

This year (as in the past 3) we have trekked all the way to Oak Island, NC. I'm not sure how many of us were there in total, the extended family has a lot of extensions. But in our bank of four cottages we had twenty-one sun-toasted surfers.

Beyond celebrating the sun and the sand, we also celebrated my Uncle Bill and Aunt Sophie's 65th wedding anniversary with cake, barbeque, and two cannon blasts that rocked the iced tea right out of my cup.

Scottie (3) learned to ride waves, Steph (6) learned to body surf, Ben (7) learned it takes patience to fish on the pier, Thomas (2) couldn't get enough of the waves running headfirst, getting blasted in the face and popping up with a smile, wanting more. Danny (3) sat in his chair or played putt putt on the par 2 course his mother Kelly made for him. Frank (15) built Frankopolis, the deep sea fishing expedition brought in 200 lbs of fish now in freezers in OH and VA to be retrieved like a warm memory on cold winter nights. Sara Kelly (7 months) just bided her time till next year when the water will come to tickle her newly walking toes. And the grown-ups?

We rode waves of gratitude.

NYC

Everything in NYC is bigger, faster, brighter. After a day's work in Brooklyn, Louisa, Kelly and I supped at a little Italian (yummy) place and went to see Spring Awakening, which would later sweep the Tony Awards. Here's the truth -- I didn't love it. I liked it. But I wanted to LOVE it. One thing for sure, it made me want to return to the city immediately and see 4 more shows.

This picture is of Kelly and Louisa singing at a Karaoke place on Times Square -- what you can't see is that their performance was plastered on one of those mile high neon signs. They did Kelly Clarkson very proud -- and me too.

A Long Way Gone

Just back from a Janet Allen Institute in Florida. The skies were blanketed heavily with what looked to be rain clouds but turned out to be clouds of smoke. Florida is on fire, and you can smell it everywhere, even in the hotel room. Made me add a line to a poem about the environment about Florida catching fire.

I don't know if it was the smoke, the book I am reading (great book about boy soldiers in Sierra Leon, A Long Way Gone, see link above) with its vivid imagery of eyes dripping blood and children lost to bullets and cruelty, my general state of tiredness or staying too much up on the news, but I read too many dark poems in my set. That's twice I've done that this spring, here and in IL. I couldn't sleep last night worrying about it. The set and my state of mind that put me up to it.

At 4AM I was up walking Suzi through the quiet breaking dawn, listening to birds and trying to find my happy place. At this point I think I need a map and a guide to find it. One place I'm certain NOT to find it is on CNN or in a newspaper.

I need to move away from machines and take a shower of sun.

IRA Toronto

Once a year reading teachers from all over gather at the International Reading Association meeting -- this year in an attempt to fulfill its name, the conference was moved across the border to Toronto -- a town with great theater, efficient public transportation and terrific restaurants that just happens to be in Canada. I wish more people would have come, the number of attendees was way down. Was it the passport requirement? The fact that it was later in the year? The fear of the unknown?

Who knows. But I do know that those 200 or so who attended the 11th annual, newly revamped, IRA Poetry Olio were treated to a funny and poignant reading by two leading children's poets, Jane Yolen and Lee Bennett Hopkins. Only two people who have known one another for years could have pulled off the perfectly timed but totally unrehearsed, thoroughly delightful show. Surrounding them were other poets, but it was Jane's and Lee's performances that stole the show.

And I don't think that either one of them would classify themselves as performance poets, thereby confirming what we all know -- or should know -- anytime a poet gets in front of an audience with a poem in hand or in heart and recites it aloud, it is indeed a performance. No news to these two pros who have done more to entice kids into reading than anyone can measure with some 500 books between them.

Allan Wolf and I hosted the event while Micheal stage managed and Ginger West lent muscle and a calming influence. Joining us was Jim Blasingame in cowboy persona, always good for a hoot 'n holler. Them cowboy poets always know how to stir-rup the emotions and then rein them in at just the right time.

Lots of free books and door prizes. It was a grand night for all. See y'all next year in Atlanta where the featured poets will be (hopefully and if the creek don't rise) Ashley Bryant and Naomi Shihab Nye.