As we went around the room introducing ourselves, I got that warm and fuzzy feeling that I’ve come to associate with the Writing Project. Over these past three weeks, our energy and our community have leapt onto the walls, now adorned with artifacts from our journey together. Noun Makeovers, concrete imagery, ADAW graffiti, Inquiry questions, and poetry hang from those usually sterile Haley Center concrete-block walls like banners in a parade. The room smells of coffee and learning. As I listened to my friends and colleagues share their experiences of Sun Belt, I was stung with pride. This room and these people feel like home. And all of a sudden, I felt that wave of sadness that comes over me every year in the last days of Institute. The faces around our circle––Donna, Melinda, Alyson, John, Dionne, Shay, Sara, Lilian, Kaitlin, Deana, Ambra, and Ash––glow with a passion for teaching, for learning, for students, for this great thing that we are all doing here together. I suppose our radiance might have had something to do with the status of the AC this morning, but there is no denying the passion beneath our sweaty visage. If I’d had a guitar (and knew how to play one) I’d have jumped into the middle of the circle singing “Kumbaya” or something!

After our morning fellowship, we turned to our fearless leader for direction. As always, John came prepared with a nice handout to get us in the spirit of the Writing Marathon. The main “rules”: (1) If anyone asks what you’re doing, you say, “I am a writer.” (2) If you go somewhere that serves food, buy some (3) Write for 15 minutes at each stop, and then share. (4) Don’t give feedback after each person shares; just say “thank you.” (5) You only get one pass to share.

Before we set out, John shared a poem that he got from Dr. Ley’s Poetry Pals listserv. The poem proved to be inspiring even on a Wednesday in June!

A MONDAY IN MAY
By Ted Kooser

It rained all weekend,
but today the peaked roofs
are as dusty and warm
as the backs of old donkeys
tied to the sun.
So much alike are our houses,
our lives. Under every eave—
leaf, cobweb, and feather;
and for each front yard
one sentimental maple,
who after a shower has passed,
weeps into her shadow
for hours.

After a short potty break, we were off! We divided into three groups and set out to write for the next two and a half hours. After lunch, we swapped adventure stories, which I will share with you now. (Obviously, I know the most about my own group, so I look forward to hearing the writing generated by the others!)

John, Dionne, and Kaitlin went to the Biggin art gallery, where there was an exhibit featuring prisoners’ artwork. This was described by John as “troubling, but amazing!” Then their group headed to Big Blue, where Dionne apparently captured every gruesome detail of the patronage there.

Melinda, Sara, Donna, and myself decided to begin with food and work our way back. We made a beeline for Big Blue and ordered some serious breakfast food to feed our hungry writing minds. Donna wrote a lovely piece about a recliner on sale in the restaurant for $35. She was particularly interested in whether or not it rocked. From there, we went to Toomer’s Corner for some lemonade. We headed toward Biggin in search of some AC, but found instead a picnic table situated on a breezy section of campus between Biggin and the Davis Building, which used to be the aero-space engineering building. This led us on a quest to find the infamous sub-sonic wind tunnels. Thanks to a generous engineering student, we took a tour of the engineering buildings on campus and learned all kinds of wonderful facts about Auburn faculty. My favorite fact: there is a professor on campus who patented some kind of apparatus that freezes milk instantly from a cow’s teat. While I had to leave my group to take a Journalism test, they continued without me and made quite an impression on the Engineering faculty and staff from what I understand.

Ash, Deana, and Lilian get props for traveling the farthest on our Writing Marathon. After a quick stop at Katherine Cooper Cater Hall, they got on the Tiger Transit, where they also wrote and shared. Apparently, the driver was happy to oblige all kinds of useful information about working the Tiger Transit system. I’ve no doubt their fellow passengers were intrigued by this writing cohort riding alongside them. From there, they went to the library where they wrote some more.

After our long and hot marathon, we were greeted by more heat in Room 2474. Sweet and wonderful Art joined us for a very useful and informative Brown Bag Lunch about technology and the classroom. Thank you, Art for sweating it out with us!

In the afternoon, Kaitlin led us in her TIW about the painful process of poetry revision, which she beautifully rendered painless! We split into three groups and each had a revisionary task to accomplish with a published poem. One group had to fill in the blanks of a poem. Another group had to add lines to a poem. A third group had to break up a poem into lines and stanzas (she had the poem written as a block paragraph). And finally, my group had to take a poem that had been cut up and assemble the lines and stanzas. We had to justify every decision we made, which made these tasks especially challenging, and especially meaningful. Kaitlin did a great job of breaking down these key aspects of poetry revision: word choice, line breaks, stanzas, arrangement, and form. My favorite advice: You should never be married to anything in a poem except for the poem. Thank you, Kaitlin, for such a brilliant, fun, and useful TIW!! Now if I could only get around to revising my own poems!

We ended the day with Richard Goodman’s The Soul of Creative Writing during Reading Workshop, followed by the NWP survey.

Tomorrow will be our last day together in 2474. It will be bittersweet, I know. Thank you all for such a rich, fun, belly-laughing day!

Our morning writing is brought to us by the letter “D.” Deana reads the picture book Dinorella: A Prehistoric Fairy Tale by Pamela Duncan Edwards, which is a great example of alliteration. Whether it’s because we’re fueled by sugar and caffeine, or due to the long list of deadlines on the board, we seem to be more productive this morning than others. All you can hear is the gentle swell of music and the continuous clicking of keyboard keys. I, a procrastinator to the end, finally decide on and type up my TIW. I’m so focused on my writing I don’t even notice that our bombastic buddy from next door is auspiciously absent (there’s my attempt at alliteration).

When we return from our break, Melinda gives us her TIW on how to create effective writing practices that will help standardized test scores. She begins by quoting some scary graduation statistics, and reminding us that even though “standardized tests” are dirty words for most teachers, they’re a reality that we’re going to have to deal with for the foreseeable future. We did a “graffiti wall” exercise to illustrate the research about effective writing programs. My group didn’t really understand the concept of “wall,” and created a complicated 3-D model of a toolbox and a table that really didn’t hang so well from the wall. Whitney’s group offered us two good illustrations of how the standardized testing takes a very narrow view of writing, especially the “th (ink) ing” graphic. All in all, the discussion gave us some important things to think about when designing writing instruction.

We had a brown bag lunch with Edna Brabham, who talked to us about teaching vocabulary and literacy in general. I loved her idea of getting rid of vocabulary lists and wordbanks and introducing a “language gestault.”

In the afternoon we had Shay’s TIW, “How do we teach students to incorporate events into a narrative writing piece?” Even though she is a self-proclaimed formulaic writing teacher, she walked us through a lesson that asks students to be creative in writing a re-telling of a fairy tale. She read us two great examples of re-imaginations and continuations of fairy tales, Falling for Rapunzel and The Frog Prince, Continued, and then (very) quickly walked us through how she approaches the narrative assignment in her classroom. Our assignment was to re-imagine or continue a fairy tale, and we may have exceeded expectations. When asked to share, we had everything from Lilian’s beautiful original fairy tale to Donna’s depressing, real-world end to Jack and the Beanstalk. Someone should publish Ash’s hilarious continuation of Snow White in the economic depression that has the seven dwarves moving into the garage above the Prince’s house, Snow White working in a button factory to make ends meet, and a tawdry affair between Snow White and Bashful, who, it turns out, is not so bashful.

We ended the day with some quiet reading and study time, which again had most of us frantically working to meet deadlines. We closed with Alyson sharing a connection between images and ideas, and Sara reading us her own ruminations on the idea of “home.” Great thoughts to have running through my head as I make the hour-long drive to a place that I still can’t bring myself to call home, even after living there for over a year.

The group from the Open Enrollment Institute (“Writing to Learn;
Learning to Write”) has joined us, along with Brennan Thomas from the
Southwest Georgia Writing Project, packing the classroom with at least
16 more people. The sign on the door reads: “Capacity: 32.” I don’t
think we have broken the law yet, but we’re pushing it. We are such
unintentional rebels.

Lilian provided breakfast this morning: an excellent traditional
Nigerian dish called Moi-Moi! The Moi Moi is made with black-eyed peas,
which, in my opinion, is the best kind of pea on the market today. There
is also bananas cut into halves! And cake! Word on the street is that
the cake is from Starbucks. I’m not sure where the bananas are from.
Possibly Starbucks also…

John welcomes everyone and immediately fuses the two groups with merely
a few corny jokes. He also announces that there is a social today at
2:30 at Chili’s. Special guests expected to be in attendance: Donna’s
husband and mother, John’s wife and daughter, and Ruthie (Whitney’s
daughter, for those that are out of the loop). Fun times await. Also,
Susan Piper (no relation to “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) will be with us while
Dr. Whyte is away. For the one or two people who actually get the Piper
joke, I commend you. (FYI, he was a professional wrestler and star of
/They Live/, an awesome 80’s movie that features one of the greatest
fight scenes of all time.)

/Morning Writing Invitational/

After reading an excerpt from /The Triggering Town/ by Richard Hugo,
Kaitlin gives the invitation to write a poem. Hugo, by the way, is also
a poet and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Montana.
I’m pretty sure the excerpt Kaitlin is reading is about poetry.

Favorite line: “You owe reality nothing and the truth about your
feelings everything.”

Good advice to follow: “Never write a poem about anything that ought to
have a poem written about it.”

Through the click of a button, a piano begins playing. Thoughts come and
go. People come in and go out. And as the music gains intensity, over
two-dozen (but less than 32) ideas seem to dance around the room. Then
the ideas double, triple, until they are finally captured on paper.

And the piano plays on.

/Introductions/

When writing time comes to an end, we go around the room introducing
ourselves. We are forced to tell what our name means / the story behind
it. Here are a few interesting observations:

- Whitney means “ruler of the white-haired people of the island of
Lesbos.” This sounds promising for when she gets ready to retire from
teaching.

- Brennan means “raven.” So, in other words, Brennan = awesome.

- Sara Brown means Sara Brown.

- Janis (sounds like Janice) was named after a cheerleader…

- Wendy either means “wonderer” or “wanderer.” Either way, she was
somehow named after Haley Mills.

- There is a Puddin’ amongst us.

- Bud King hates his first name and doesn’t share it with us.

- Kaitlin was named after Dylan Thomas’ wife.

- Say hello to Cathy Deerstop and Art Belvedere.

/Dionne’s TIW – Figurative Language/

Dionne begins her TIW by reading a poem by James Berry, “It Seems I Test
People,” and we pick out the figurative language in it. (This poem is
much different than the one by my former professor who was extremely
confident in his exam-making abilities: “It Seems I Test People
/Well/.”) Dionne then goes over the use of (when to use, how to use, the
importance of using) metaphors, similes, and personification. How do we
use figurative language in imagery in order to better describe something
to the reader?

On the board are three “big sticky notes” with titles (listed below). On
our “regular sticky notes” we wrote an example of each. Similes are,
generally, the easiest to come up with. The other two always pose a
challenge.

Taking Metaphors to School

Here we simply write down metaphors and stick our “regular sticky notes”
onto the big one.

_Examples_:__

- She was a rat in a maze as her thoughts jumbled through her mind.

- His blue eyes are a deep pool to my soul.

- My journal is a bottomless river.

- With time, the bare walls became a painted canvas.

- My thoughts are a jigsaw puzzle.

Simile Picnic

Here we each tell something that we could bring on a picnic…using a simile.

_Examples_:

- Red Velvet cake as rich as a king.

- Bug spray as deadly as the A-Bomb.

- Wine as dry as Pennisi’s humor.

- Beer as cold as Whitney’s heart.

- Mustard that is as yellow as the eyes of an alien with yellow eyes.

Personification Nation

This is the trickiest one. We choose one inanimate object in the room
and write a sentence that personifies it. Due to popular demand, our
object is the projector screen. The exact definition of
“personification” is really tested here, and I feel everyone will leave
with a better understanding of this term.

_Examples_:

- The screen sneaks toward the board like a secret.

- A screen that is descending like an angel from Heaven.

- The screen will speak to me about subjects of the unknown.

- The screen stares blankly at the group.

This is a new activity for Dionne, and she does a terrific job of
presenting this difficult information. At the end of the lesson, Dionne
reads her reflection questions and we provide feedback:

- Shay suggests maybe discussing similes before metaphors, since
similes are a little easier to understand.

- Brennan discusses how this would assist in teaching her students how
to build ethos in their writing.

- John notes that this would simply be useful in teaching writing.

- Deana has a fascinating revelation: What about also using
manipulatives to aid in teaching figurative language?

Side note: Textbook definitions often suck.

/Lunch/

It’s time to break for lunch!

/Writing Group/

Ok, now we’re back. The Open Enrollment group left when we broke for
lunch. They will be back tomorrow, though. For our Writing Group, we
vote for either staying all together or breaking up into our small
groups. With an almost-unanimous decision, staying in the classroom for
whole group discussion is the victor. Not everyone has to read
something, just whoever has something and wants to read.

_Highlights_:

- Donna reads a memoir she is considering putting in the /Sun Source/
about her dad and the lessons he taught her.

- Sara Brown reads a piece she wrote about young adult fiction and the
advantages of reading it. This topic raises many issues, including the
infamous list of banned books. One question to consider: Do some kids
/need/ to be protected?

- A Whitney quote: “The human condition is gross.”

- Donna also makes a wonderful analogy that compares cussing to a crayon
box. Although no one may ever use purple, “sometimes you just NEED purple.”

- Deana reads a story she wrote about/for her daughter.

- Lilian shares a short piece about her grandmother.

- Brennan vividly describes her feelings towards Chicago, which left a
very bad Ketchup-less taste in her mouth after only one visit.

After a great day at Sun Belt, now it’s time to leave. Who all is going
to Chili’s? And how does that song go? I think it starts with “I want my
baby back, baby back, baby back…”

As I sat there wondering what to post, my attention shifted to my TIW.
“How to Motivate Students to use Complex Sentences in Writing” I
pondered on the word “motivate.” How do I motivate students? Going back to what Sara mentioned yesterday, the word motivate is difficult to
analyzed. There is no single way to motivate students. Motivation is
affected by various factors. This ranges from the interest in the
subject matter, the usefulness of the topic to building self-confidence.
Besides, not all students are motivated by the same valves. It is a
question that researcher should continue to work on. Anyway, I still
intend to go ahead with my TIW and so I continued to work on it.
Individuals work on different assignments until lunch.

Back in the classroom after lunch, we had an exciting discussion which
sprang from John’s narration of his experiences as a teacher researcher.
Donna believed that any good teacher should constantly research ways to
improve his or her students’ writing. Whitney pointed out that the
biggest problem with teachers researching is that there is not enough
time but encourages us as teachers to keep a teaching journal. Dionne
advised that we should get involved with peer observation with other
teachers. Having read the article on page 180, “Independent Reading:
Just Do It!” By Julia Lindquist, Sara is contemplating on getting
parents involved in the choice of literature books in her classroom, and
also engaging in individual literature circle unlike that of a group.
Dionne agreed with her stating that it will be nice if the students will
have the choice to choose their own reading books. Melinda suggested
that she should let the students’ browse through the books before making a choice. The discussion shifted to the accelerated readers program (AR). Overall, we had an interesting and benefiting discussion.

Lastly, we were presented with posters created by the teacher
consultants of 2008 as a model in creating ours. John once more
explained his, followed by Brittany. What a great way to end the day
than to create an image that represents the Sunbelt Summer Institute
2009.

Delivering our morning writing invitation, Dionne reads from My Secret Place: Poems and Stories (The Writing Our Stories Project), which is a collection of writing from teens in the juvenile justice system. She invites us to think about our motivations for writing as well as how we motivate our students to write.

After our invitation, Whitney cranks up her music to the maximum level without distraction since we must have something to drown out the booming professor in the adjacent room. Despite Whitney’s best efforts, it does not work, and interestingly enough, the lecture is actually on motivation—how to motivate your employees. For the next hour, I try to write coherently as I listen to this booming voice discuss internal vs. external motivation. I couldn’t help but chuckle that he used “Ringing the bell in a bar when you tip well” as a present-day example of Pavlov’s salivating dog. For those of you who have not darkened the doors of The War Eagle Supper Club, if you tip the bartender well, he/she rings a bell, sirens go off, intoxicated patrons hoop and holler in excitement, and everyone in the bar knows that you didn’t stiff the bartender. In this professor’s mind, the next time you go to a bar, you will tip well because of the recognition from that bell experience. I’m not so convinced. Somehow within that hour he also discussed TGI Friday’s hostesses, humans being caged in basements, and Maslow. I must meet this man before the end of the institute.

After morning writing, Sara facilitates her TIW titled Developing a Treasured Journal: Exploring the Reading/Writing Connection Using Student’s Journals. We start with a quickwrite about our immediate thoughts about journals. After discussing our quickwrites, we each receive our own blank folder to personalize journals like our students. Sara believes that if a student can take ownership in a folder/journal and make it their own, they are more likely to use and appreciate it. We spend 20 minutes flipping through magazines, cutting, and gluing in our attempts at personalization.

My neighbor Deana completely outperforms us all. Her purple folder is exquisitely arranged following a nature theme with greenery in all four corners and an over-sized water drop (compliments of a PUR advertisement) in the middle. Every piece proportionately placed; leaves evenly shapened; no glue residue or torn corners. I reluctantly hover over my haphazard creation as I glue on my final phrase “No Fuss”—except I ripped the N so it really says “o Fuss.”

Regardless of our artistic abilities, we willingly share our creations and have the opportunity to see Dionne’s representation of a hoodie, since that is what she is wearing when she is most comfortable, Lilian’s flower as a representation of constant growth, and Shay’s bearded man to represent the days she dated a rockstar with a really long beard.

Sara explains to us that she sees journaling as “practice writing” for that big paper, essay, composition, etc. She reads us the short picture story The Quiltmaker’s Gift, and we are invited to use a format to respond to the text in our journals. She tells us that she does this with her students to scaffold the proper format and responses for independent reading and journaling. Great TIW! Kudos to Sara.

Dr. Kevin Roozen joins us for a brown-bag lunch to discuss the types of literacies people are involved in and how they start to interact and work together. Our conversation ranges from the Twilight series—Why do we disparage it so much from The Scarlet Letter?—to text messages, are they really the downfall of our language? Ultimately, Kevin asks us to think about one thing: When students leave our classes, what do we want our students to be able to do? This will drive our instruction and pedagogy about literacy. What kind of literate persons do we want to produce? There are a dozen different answers, but how you as an individual answer that question will start to unpack tons of things. Kevin helps us realize that if you want to produce good test takers, our curriculum will look a particular way, but if we want students to write effectively, we need to question our curriculum, our instruction, our assignments, etc. What kind of reading and writing is going on in our homes? How does this work into our academic lives? How do we make multiple literacies compliment each other? Utilize the relationship? Make them relevant in our students’ lives? Unfortunately, we only had an hour, so we only touched the tip of the iceberg, but I could tell that Kevin got us all thinking.

I had to leave after lunch, so Whitney generously agreed to record the afternoon minutes, so she will add her notes on Deana’s TIW and closing.

Today there are new faces in our midst – Brennan from Americus, Georgia is here – she is visiting from us from the Southwestern Georgia Writing Project in Americus. She’s a co-director. They’re doing a site visit to SBWP just to see how we do things. I think they’re particularly interested in continuity and how to turn a teacher demonstration into a TIW. She’ll be back on Thursday, perhaps with the other co-director. I have also seen Susan Piper peek in and Art is back as well. It makes me wonder about this thing called Sunbelt – more than just a professional learning opportunity? Maybe a community instead?

Writing continues… our space grows and changes as we get comfortable – it is a single file line at the food table now! By the way, thank you to Sara for today’s breakfast!
Break time brings coffee, conversation and a whiff of fresh, clean air. Quickly over, we jump right back in with Alyson Whyte presenting her TIW. Her essential question was “What do we mean when we talk about Literacy? What are fissures and gaps in our definitions of literacy?” At first this appeared to be quite the daunting task but with group discussion and collaboration lovely posters were displayed at the end of our ninety minutes. An unusual outcome was that all three groups basically identified the same gap with slightly different wording and artistic presentation. Good conversation and deep thinking in this one… but Boy, my brain is tired.
After lunch everyone jumps into their personal work time. Whereas last week we were looking at each other with questioning eyebrows, mentally trying to figure out exactly what we were supposed to be doing with this work time, today fingers fly across keyboards and there is intent and purpose. We are all using this time wisely today, for we know soon the published work must be ready. We will head into writers workshop next.

During writers workshop it was revealed that two of our members aspire to be great quilters – both Kaitlyn and Shay have interests in sewn block art forms. This may be a first for SII. My writing group learned quilt guilds are actually social groups – they meet once a week and share the quilts they have made and have “challenges.” According to our quilt guild expert, shay, joining a quilt guild is “the next logical step after getting married.” Art shared two cool poems for kids- except they were cool for adults as well – and also told us about his challenge from this past April – to write a poem every day for the entire month. That might be an interesting challenge for those who write better with a little pressure. I think my favorite part of SII is the writer’s response. To share fledgling writing is to bare one’s soul but it is a necessary path to becoming a better writer.

Closing the day. Our guest, Brennan, shared her writing from the early morning writing invitation. She wrote a lovely piece describing all the voices she uses in different ways, places and times, a voice that is strong when it needs to be, but also desperate , humble, compassionate and a myriad of other changes as necessary. Her piece reminds me it is crucial to be true to my voice when writing, for that is when we truly speak from our heart. It brought our day around full circle.

Writing groups…
After lunch, John introduced the writing response groups. Establishing safety and comfort is an essential component of every writing group. His discussion made me feel much better about being in my first writing group and also more confident about using them in the classroom. These are a few of the key points I found the most helpful:
• All pieces are pieces in process
• the key question is- what does the writer need?
• Address, bless, press or shred
• Anxiety…..yes!
• Respond not as a writer but as a reader!
• Always bring writing otherwise you are wearing clothes at a nude beach! Don’t apologize
• Be aware of time
• Consider the protocol in which the author is silent while writing is critiqued

Alyson reminded the group how important member sensitivity and protocol is in writing groups. She shared a poem in a writing group in 1970 and after a bad experience did not write another poem until 1990s. She recommended Craft Lessons- by Fletcher and Poraupi for even more information.

I find myself holding tightly to today’s experience. I want to thank each of you who were part of today, part of this experience I am still processing. While I do not yet have the words to express what I feel; I would like to share a poem by W.S. Merwin.
Thank you for teaching me.

TEACHERS
W.S. Merwin (from The Carrier of Ladders)

Pain is in this dark room like many speakers
of a costly set though mute
as here the needle and the turning

the night lengthens it is winter
a new year

what I live for I can seldom believe in
who I love I cannot go to
what I hope is always divided

but I say to myself you are not a child now
if the night is long remember your unimportance
sleep

then toward morning I dream of the first words
of books of voyages
sure tellings that did not start by justifying

yet at one time it seems
had taught me

Those of us who parked in the deck this morning can attest to the truly epic journey that we must make each morning in order to be here in this sanctuary of room 2474. After following the signs like little ants in a line, signs that led us into walls and blockades, we all trickled through the door, which is no longer squeaky thanks to John and his WD-40. Alyson brought us a fresh breakfast of pineapples, blueberries, cinnamon rolls, and, my personal favorite, pigs in a blanket. John actually broke his diet of flax seed and hay to try my mom’s banana bread, which I brought along for breakfast as well.

PART THE SECOND: In which we see the world from a squirrel’s point of view and a one-inch picture frame

For our morning writing, Sara read to us from a Sun Belt favorite: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Her invitation was to quell the rising panic evoked by a blank computer screen and the whelming desire to write about your entire childhood, and simply “write down as much as you can see through a one-inch picture frame.” At the end of the day, we were treated with Sara’s interpretation of the one-inch picture frame, as she read us her poem about Jerry. (Yes, Cathy, Jerry is here and raring to go; he hasn’t found himself a mate yet, though.) She cleverly juxtaposed our group, who “moves one arm at a time,” with the loud, angry man next door through the eyes of Jerry, looking in on us from his tree.

PART THE THIRD: In which we get crafty with imagery

We had our first TIW this morning. It was mine and it was about using concrete imagery in poetry. After listening to “Glamorous” for concrete images of what “glamour” means to Fergie, we read “The Toothfairy” and talked about concrete imagery, showing rather than telling. Finally, we wrote our own concrete images for abstractions and posted them on the walls. Here are some of the images that we came up with:

LOVE IS: a blanket draped over a sleeping child; a bedtime story; hands holding; lighting the unity candle.
IGNORANCE IS: salami and cream cheese on ritz crackers; a dog chasing its tail; brick walls.
DISAPPOINTMENT IS: 7 cents short of the 85 needed for a Sonic Happy Hour slushie; waking up alone; found boxes wrapped in reindeer paper tucked behind dad’s drycleaned button-downs; a phone that never rings.
FRUSTRATION IS: dusk in the garden without any bug spray; listening to the hamster run on his squeaking wheel at 2:30 in the morning; long division; the second hour of staring at a computer screen, hands paralyzed, hovering over the keyboard, waiting for something to say.
PEACE IS: the warmth of wadded bed sheets from the dryer; the surface of a pond, purple-silver, at dawn; cable TV and Internet are both down; the perfect harmony of a large, acapella choir.
HAPPINESS IS: drawing the “Get Out of Jail Free” card, tingling of skin the first time you kiss someone; my grandma’s closed eyes listening to the blaring voice of Lawrence Welk.

(I want give a shout out to EMMA BOLDEN, as this lesson and the TIW as a whole came from her gracious partnership with me, and she is really more to credit for its invention than I am. She taught me everything I know about poetry and teaching poetry, and I will always be indebted to her for her patience and willingness to collaborate with me.)

PART THE FOURTH: In which I address John’s disclaimer that I smell like poo

Now, here I must address John’s refrain of my smelling like poo in yesterday’s minutes/moments. For lunch, John treated himself to a Lean Cuisine. Sweet and Sour Chicken, I believe. This new diet of his has got him all gassy, what with the high fiber, gluten-free grass, Lean Cuisine, and almond milk that he’s been devouring. And so, John, I say unto you: He who smelt it, dealt it.

PART THE FIFTH: In which we tap, tap, tap on our keyboards and share our writing

The afternoon was filled with the sounds of fingers tapping on keyboards and pencils scraping across paper, as we all hunkered down to work through our TIW’s for the first hour and a half. We spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out and contributing to the book group blogs, which you can now find links to under the blog roll on this summer’s blog (http://sunbelt2009.wordpress.com). Please feel free to drop in and see what we’re all reading and learning about this summer!

The day ended as it began, with writing. Sara shared her poem, which I shared with you earlier. And then Donna shared her incisive prose about the raging gentleman next door who referred to the males he has taught as “men,” and the women he’s taught as “girls.” Inspired by the musical talents of Ani Difranco, Donna wrote about how the problem is really not with the language itself, but with the beliefs that inform that language and the social, cultural, gendered boundaries that the language carries. Hopefully, she’ll put this in Sun Source, where we can all read it, because it really was a very insightful and clever piece. As John enthusiastically praised her at the end of her reading, “You go, GIRL!”

PART THE SIXTH: In which we look to tomorrow

Tomorrow, Michael Sinnott will be enchanting us with his TIW on narrative and the loss of innocence, so we’re all looking forward to that! In the meantime, don’t forget that writing groups meet tomorrow afternoon, so we all need to get something together to share during that time.

When we arrived this morning, Haley Center 2474 already had a become a more welcoming place.  The empty tables from yesterday were now peppered with notebooks and pen holders and flowers and coffee mugs.  The walls were adorned with two unbelievably colorful posters that Whitney made yesterday afternoon while the rest of us were on our way home.  The smell of Whitney’s homemade chicken and biscuits (giggle, giggle) wafted its way throughout the corridors of the 2400 quadrant, and the freshly brewed coffee would have offered an appropriate complement if John had remembered to turn on the coffee pot. Silly, John!  That’s okay, though, because Whitney smells like poo.

(Note that I didn’t even mention the fiasco of trying to get to Haley Center this morning.  I think they’re finally done screwing with the streets.  Now they’re blocking all the sidewalks!)

John’s morning introduction came from Tom Romano’s Zig Zag.  It concerned the curmudgeonly old Ms. Comstock, who kept all scandalous reading materials locked away and safely out of the reach of the students in her school library (unless they have signed  notes from their parents).  Based on the ever-present sounds of the keys being tapped and the pens scribbling across the page, it seems that Romano inspired a plethora of writing.  Whitney’s musical choice today was the same music from the United Airlines commercials; that’s about the extent of my musical knowledge.  I’m sure she’ll have something new tomorrow because she has a plethora of tunes on her old and dilapidated Mac.

We were greeted by a beautiful sound from the room next door: Silence.  The curmudgeonly lecturer that we endured yesterday was noticeably absent.  So, now the betting pool begins.  Is it a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class? Monday/Wednesday class?  Monday only??  Could we be that lucky?

We were pleased to be joined by Mr. McDade, a school administrator from Macon County.  He was a Sun Belt visitor and friend last year, but this summer he’s joining us as a full TC (as much as his work schedule will permit).  He’s actually using a week of vacation time so he can be with us the entire third week.

Anyway, the morning continued with lots of strong coffee (Whitney taught me how to make it) and some more talk about the TIWs.  Yesterday, everyone seemed scared.  Today, I’d say we’re looking at a confidence level of about 85%.  That’s quite an improvement in 24 hours.  We had plenty of time today for personal work time, so I think most of us were able to do a lot of work on our TIWs.

For lunch, most of the TCs chose to dine out.  Where are you guys going to eat?  I’m curious.  I chose to stay in the room and enjoy the leftover (homemade!) baked chicken “fingers” that my wife made for dinner last night. For a Weight Watchers recipe, it was actually quite tasty.  Whitney came dancing in with her bag of Chik-Fil-A.  All I can say is: A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips….

After lunch,  Alyson brought a copy of last year’s Sun Source for us to look over.  Remember, I need your suggestions for things to include in this year’s edition to make it reflect the personality of the group.  I’ll have my camera tomorrow to start taking pictures, so I apologize in advance for acting like the paparazzi for the next two-and-a-half weeks.

Next, Whitney taught us how to use blogs for our reading response groups. Some of us are new to blogging, so we appreciated her help.  Just a reminder: Set up your account at wordpress.com and send Whitney (whitreed@mac.com) your account name.  She’ll create the blogs and make us administrators. Remember that our Summer Invitational Institute blog is at www.sunbelt2009.wordpress.com.  Post away!  To post comments to the listserve, send an email to sunbelt@yahoogroups.com.

Tomorrow: Alyson has breakfast and Whitney’s doing her TIW.  It’s a plethora of good times!  And I’ll bring some WD-40 to fix that freakin’ door!

John

P.S.  Whitney smells like poo.

P.P.S.  I’m not even sure if I’m using “curmudgeonly” correctly.  Anyone got a dictionary?