Friday, April 29, 2005
Morning tanka
Light pools in clean wood.
Nothing tumbles many-legged
across the broomed floor.
The air in these rooms lies down
like a hound in the sun, dazed.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Thank you, thank you
It doesn't take much to make a teacher's day.
This afternoon I was preparing for my fiction writing class when a man paused at the door, came in, and then went back out. This happened a couple of times, and I thought perhaps he was looking for someone. On his third venture inside, I asked if I could help him.
No, he said. It was just that he'd heard this was a really good class and he wanted to sit in.
I was floored.
Sure, I said, but today's class isn't one of my bigger lectures. We're going to talk about journaling - I had planned a pretty low-key approach to how new writers can keep writing in the absence of a class or workshop.
He said he'd come back in the fall - and I urged him to stay. Please. I heard the echo of my father's voice when he first started a business, an entrepreneur after a lifetime as an employee in manufacturing. He would follow people to the door, talking, trying to make that connection that might turn into a sale.
The visitor left. Too much attention, maybe.
I'd like to tell him, if I could, that I wish he had stayed. I felt insufficient for his interest, my extemporaneous teaching methods suddenly under a spotlight.
I'd like to tell him that that moment of self-doubt passed, and all that remained was the warm glow. Someone liked the class enough to tell him about it, and he cared enough to visit.
Thank you, thank you.
This afternoon I was preparing for my fiction writing class when a man paused at the door, came in, and then went back out. This happened a couple of times, and I thought perhaps he was looking for someone. On his third venture inside, I asked if I could help him.
No, he said. It was just that he'd heard this was a really good class and he wanted to sit in.
I was floored.
Sure, I said, but today's class isn't one of my bigger lectures. We're going to talk about journaling - I had planned a pretty low-key approach to how new writers can keep writing in the absence of a class or workshop.
He said he'd come back in the fall - and I urged him to stay. Please. I heard the echo of my father's voice when he first started a business, an entrepreneur after a lifetime as an employee in manufacturing. He would follow people to the door, talking, trying to make that connection that might turn into a sale.
The visitor left. Too much attention, maybe.
I'd like to tell him, if I could, that I wish he had stayed. I felt insufficient for his interest, my extemporaneous teaching methods suddenly under a spotlight.
I'd like to tell him that that moment of self-doubt passed, and all that remained was the warm glow. Someone liked the class enough to tell him about it, and he cared enough to visit.
Thank you, thank you.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Pollen
Full spring.
Pollen drifts over cars and homes and lawn furniture, a thin yellow-green coating that pools when there is dew into yellow polka dots.
Last night it rained. At the edge of the pavement the pollen was swept into a high-tide mark, an irregular yellow band where stormwater crested against the concrete lip and receded.
Plant life is not so exuberant everywhere, thowing its wealth like Mardi Gras krewes casting beads.
I remember, though, that the pine forests in Maine spread such a golden coating across the lakes. At Lily Bay I waded out and parted a curtain onto cold, dark water.
Pollen drifts over cars and homes and lawn furniture, a thin yellow-green coating that pools when there is dew into yellow polka dots.
Last night it rained. At the edge of the pavement the pollen was swept into a high-tide mark, an irregular yellow band where stormwater crested against the concrete lip and receded.
Plant life is not so exuberant everywhere, thowing its wealth like Mardi Gras krewes casting beads.
I remember, though, that the pine forests in Maine spread such a golden coating across the lakes. At Lily Bay I waded out and parted a curtain onto cold, dark water.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Cold Crown
I'm going blonde - blonder. Even my mother finally asked, tentatively, "Are you using a rinse?"
It's a strange artifact of long stress followed by later happiness. I started to go white fairly early on, and swore never to dye, tint, color or rinse. I had reasons - a beloved elementary school librarian with snow-white hair in her 30s, my grandmother also gone white very young. And a distant female relative who ran a publishing house she founded and built up herself, not one inherited or shared. She was tall and imperious and single and white-haired, and sent boxes at Christmas filled with books, paper and other oddments from her business. So, I watched the snows gather, occasionally reminded of the poem I cannot seem to find this morning that writes of a woman coming out in public with her hair magnificently un-tinted, "wearing her first cold crown."
But after years of white, the many good changes of recent years have made some kind of unexpected reversal. The white hair has darkened or disappeared in favor of blonde, and I'm almost at the color my hair was as a teenager, when I'd brush it out to dry in the sun. There remains a small swatch of white at the front, a reminder - memento mori? - that this, too, shall pass.
It's a strange artifact of long stress followed by later happiness. I started to go white fairly early on, and swore never to dye, tint, color or rinse. I had reasons - a beloved elementary school librarian with snow-white hair in her 30s, my grandmother also gone white very young. And a distant female relative who ran a publishing house she founded and built up herself, not one inherited or shared. She was tall and imperious and single and white-haired, and sent boxes at Christmas filled with books, paper and other oddments from her business. So, I watched the snows gather, occasionally reminded of the poem I cannot seem to find this morning that writes of a woman coming out in public with her hair magnificently un-tinted, "wearing her first cold crown."
But after years of white, the many good changes of recent years have made some kind of unexpected reversal. The white hair has darkened or disappeared in favor of blonde, and I'm almost at the color my hair was as a teenager, when I'd brush it out to dry in the sun. There remains a small swatch of white at the front, a reminder - memento mori? - that this, too, shall pass.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
It's always something ....
I was reading one of the assorted writing newsletters I get online and came across the latest in outsourcing: according to a post on http://main.travelwriters.com, writers bidding for assignments on a freelance site (apparently a la Priceline) may be driving down the pay rate - and "A lot of the bidders are in India and will work for much less pay. Granted, it's up to the client to decide who will do the work, but sometimes there are very qualified people who can afford to charge a lot less. "
Travel writing is an incredibly competitive field already, with many part-timers like myself along with the dedicated pros. While most of the industry is based in North America and Europe, many of the articles concern places elsewhere. So international competition is the name of the game here as in other businesses.
Travel writing is an incredibly competitive field already, with many part-timers like myself along with the dedicated pros. While most of the industry is based in North America and Europe, many of the articles concern places elsewhere. So international competition is the name of the game here as in other businesses.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Entering the blogosphere
As a former journalist and now professor of English and journalism, I've watched the development of the blogosphere with some of the reticence of a traditionally trained newsperson - personal identity subsumed, beliefs and allegiances kept hidden behind that curtain (at least most of the time.) Journalists hold to objectivity, or at least neutrality, while bloggers explore the new communication paradigm of transparency - pulling back the curtain on our biases and histories and revealing as well as the methods of information-gathering.
It's funny how enough material gathers, straw by straw, to create that tipping weight. I've watched the development of Greensboro 101 - http://www.greensboro101.com/- and followed Google links to such esoteric locations as Blog da Loba - http://blogdaloba.zip.net/arch2005-01-23_2005-01-29.html - a Brazilian site where I puzzled out a reference to my long-ago SF novel published there as "Mundo Perdido. "
This blog will have a little of this and a little of that - some creative work, some thoughts as a teacher, some shared travel experiences. I'm looking forward to sharing this journey.
It's funny how enough material gathers, straw by straw, to create that tipping weight. I've watched the development of Greensboro 101 - http://www.greensboro101.com/- and followed Google links to such esoteric locations as Blog da Loba - http://blogdaloba.zip.net/arch2005-01-23_2005-01-29.html - a Brazilian site where I puzzled out a reference to my long-ago SF novel published there as "Mundo Perdido. "
This blog will have a little of this and a little of that - some creative work, some thoughts as a teacher, some shared travel experiences. I'm looking forward to sharing this journey.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Some excerpts from an article on a 2004 visit to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Bavarian Alps. The full article will appear soon in Goworldtravel.com
... Our favorite spot was an outdoor table at a cafe just off the Zugspitzstrasse, from which we watched the daily parade – including one day, a parade. A procession of tractors and farm wagons moved heavily down the street from the countryside not far beyond - the aroma of spring barn-cleaning sometimes whiffed through the town - each bearing a yellow placard to protest a tunnel project.
If you can tear yourself away from the town, a required destination should be the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. It’s an emperor among crowned heads, dominating a skyscape of snow-covered peaks, wrapped in weathers of snow, ice and fog. Hotels offer summit forecasts each day so that you can choose a clear view across the icy rooftops of four nations.
A pass purchased at the Zugspitzbahn may be used on the train and the cogwheel train and/or the cable cars that serve the summit. The engine bearing the sky blue and white diamonds of Bavaria pulled cars crowded with skiers through the valley’s flat fields - with tiny barns and long-horned brown cows – past Reisersee and Hammersbach with onion-domed churches.
The landscape shifted from fields to pine forests, with small patches of flowers making an early appearance at the melting edge of snowdrifts. As the train crept and I focused close to the tracks, my seatmate gave me a nudge. Below, the intense blue waters of the Eibsee glowed like an opal in its setting of dark pine....
Click the link for a photo of me taken on the Zugspitze. I hate the cold, but the view (and a Williams schnapps) made the the experience unforgettable!
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/3/5222/640/DSC00066.jpg
... Our favorite spot was an outdoor table at a cafe just off the Zugspitzstrasse, from which we watched the daily parade – including one day, a parade. A procession of tractors and farm wagons moved heavily down the street from the countryside not far beyond - the aroma of spring barn-cleaning sometimes whiffed through the town - each bearing a yellow placard to protest a tunnel project.
If you can tear yourself away from the town, a required destination should be the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. It’s an emperor among crowned heads, dominating a skyscape of snow-covered peaks, wrapped in weathers of snow, ice and fog. Hotels offer summit forecasts each day so that you can choose a clear view across the icy rooftops of four nations.
A pass purchased at the Zugspitzbahn may be used on the train and the cogwheel train and/or the cable cars that serve the summit. The engine bearing the sky blue and white diamonds of Bavaria pulled cars crowded with skiers through the valley’s flat fields - with tiny barns and long-horned brown cows – past Reisersee and Hammersbach with onion-domed churches.
The landscape shifted from fields to pine forests, with small patches of flowers making an early appearance at the melting edge of snowdrifts. As the train crept and I focused close to the tracks, my seatmate gave me a nudge. Below, the intense blue waters of the Eibsee glowed like an opal in its setting of dark pine....
Click the link for a photo of me taken on the Zugspitze. I hate the cold, but the view (and a Williams schnapps) made the the experience unforgettable!
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/3/5222/640/DSC00066.jpg
Monaco
The Japanese gardens created in memory of Princess Grace, Monte Carlo. The recent death of Prince Rainier brought back memories of this tranquil place, with its koi brightening the pools and a small red bridge of happiness.
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