On a whim, I submitted this short story (if you can call it that) to the local newspaper’s annual Fiction Contest (which pulls in hundreds of stories from our valley, which is home to many writers and artists). I didn’t expect my piece to get very far. It is nontraditional in the sense that the story is buried inside of it, as the format it a series of biographical blurbs from the end of a book collection. I first shared it here on my blog and worked through some versions over at our iAnthology writing site. I liked the way it came out and figured I would give the contest a shot.  At the least, it would break up the reading of the reviewers, right? (Another story from two years ago got honorable mention, too, so I have a positive experience with the contest).

Yesterday, I opened up the newspaper to find that this story — Connecting the Dots: A Story of Contributors — received an Honorable Mention in the fiction contest. I am quite proud of this strange little story. You can give it a read, if you want.
Connect the Dots a Story of Contributors

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

In a few weeks, I am going to be leading a workshop around digital storytelling at a school in our district, and they want to learn how to use their Macs and iMovie to create digital stories. I’m mostly a PC man, but I do have a Mac for my classroom and I have done some video editing with iMovie. But never a digital story, with still shots and narration and music. In the past, I have mostly used Photostory3, which works fine for the stories I have created. Yesterday, I worked through this short piece as a sample in iMovie and as a way to navigate the steps.

I do like iMovie, but I don’t like that you have to move photos into iPhoto first and move music into iTunes first (or am I missing something?). It seems to me that adds extra steps to the process, although there is something to be said for an integrated system of software.

Anyway, here is my digital story about a snowman that seemed to last forever in our back yard this winter.

Peace (in the stories),
Kevin

I have shared this out for the past few years around the holidays. It’s a story about our family tradition of writing scrolled notes to our future selves and then putting them in our glass ornaments. Sometimes (often), they fall, break and we read letters from our past.

Listen to Breaking Glass

Peace to all of you and your families,

Kevin

In honor of today’s celebration as the 2010 National Day on Writing, I decided to compose a poem.

Go Ahead: Write
(listen to the podcast)

Go ahead:
write,
on this Day of Writing;
Find a scrap of paper
and let your ideas take flight,
compose your life
or just jot down some simple thoughts
so that letters become words become sentences
become stories,
let your tales be heard admist the noise
of the world.
The pounding of the keyboard
or the scribbling of the pen, again and again,
is what keeps it alive for those behind you.
Hide your cache beneath a rock,
your flock will find you;
To whisper it, is to lose it;
To write it, is to use it,
so plant your flag into the ground,
gather ’round and go ahead:
Write.

What will you do today to celebrate writing?

Peace (in the words that flow),
Kevin

In the 1990s, I was a newspaper reporter in Western Massachusetts and for about five years, I covered the small city of Northampton. While my main “beat” was education, I also became the secondary city reporter for some events. It was during my time there that I kept running into the Rev. Peter Ives, of the First Churches. When there were issues of domestic violence, he was there to talk through and push for changes. When there were racial issues, he was one of the voices calling for restraint, even in the midst of protest. He opened up the church sanctuary for all kinds of community events, although many were of the social justice nature. I came to respect and admire Rev.  Ives, and his wife, over the years for their outspoken nature balanced with true compassion.

Flash forward a few years, and my wife and I are having our second son. My wife, who grew up in a church-going household, was seeking a religious home, and she chose the First Churches for our family. I was reconnected with Peter Ives and his wife, Jenny, on another level, and again, I was amazed at how open and supportive they were/are to everyone, no matter their religious, race, sexuality, whatever. Although I am not religious, I attend church periodically, and I am always blown away by Peter’s sermons — they are poetic, touching and full of meaning. He takes gospel, weaves it in with world events and makes the issues personal. Peter has always connected with my children, too, on a personal and spiritual level, and they respect him. It helps that he organizes three fun family football games a year, too.

Well, Peter is retiring from the ministry, and yesterday, the church service centered on Peter’s years as a teaching minister, and how he has helped guide 30 people over 30 years into religious leadership. As part of that celebration, I was honored to be asked to join our little church jazz band and choir for a jazzy rendition of “What a Wonderful World,” which seems appropriate for Peter and Jenny, as they seek to make the world a better place.

Peace (in the world),
Kevin

I saw a contest in my RSS called Six Sounds in Search of an Author and followed the link to the ISTE site and was intrigued.

The task: take the six sound clips and create a podcast story of some sort. The whole thing can’t be more than a minute long. Interesting, for sure. I began by looking at what the sounds were, and then listening, and then trying to make connections between them.

The story came to me quickly — a person trapped in a cave — and composed this story. I then recorded it in Audacity– mixing in the sound clips –  and sent it in. I like it.

Here is my audio story. I’m not asking you to vote, but if you do — thanks.

You should give the Six Sound story a try, too. Go to: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ProfessionalDevelopment/Six_Sounds_Contest_1.htm and check it out.

I imagine you could easily bring this kind of contest into the classroom, given enough time.  The art of constructing a sound story is amazingly complex thinking — from planning, to writing, to production. And of course, this is the whole idea of the contest — trying out something yourself and thinking in terms of classroom practice.

Peace (in the cave),
Kevin

My family and I are taking a vacation next week … to Japan. Not a virtual one, but a real one. We have family on a naval base outside of Tokyo (my brother-in-law commands a battleship), so the opportunity was too great to pass up. I showed my students the basic path we will be taking with Google Earth yesterday (which gave me a chance to talk about the features of the new version of Google Earth — we did some exploring of Mars yesterday before zooming through the galaxies).

In case you are wondering, the trip from here to there is about 6500 miles and it takes about 14 hours. And we have three kids with us. Now is the time I could use some new-fangled technology that beams you from one side of the planet to the next in less then a few seconds.

Has any of my readers been to Tokyo? Any suggestions?

Here is a map of our journey:

View Larger Map

Peace (in travel),
Kevin

One of the workshops I attended at the National Writing Project’s annual meeting in San Antonio was about a new venture called the National Conversation on Writing. A group of mostly college professors is trying to change perceptions of writing in the public mind and one of their ideas to collect vignettes from people about what writing means to them. In particular, they would like to have a collection of short videos, in which teachers and students and others talk about writing.
I decided to give it a go, sort of as a rough draft approach, and recorded some of my own thoughts.

What about you? What does writing mean to you?
Peace (in reflection),
Kevin

As much as possible, I try to write with my students, and share out what I am doing — talking through my writing process and asking them for feedback. This week, we brainstormed a long list of possible short story titles that we will draw upon in the weeks ahead for writing prompts. It was quite a creative adventure and the list has already provided some nice inspiration for students.

Here are a few:

• The Day Cows Drove Cars
• My Homework Ate My Dog
• Personalities
• Never Put 200 Pounds of Salt in Your Locker
• A Demon Named MCAS
• The Greatest Robot Ever
• Magic Window
• CRASH: A Journey into the TV
• Alien Friend, Where Are You?
• I Wish I Could …
• Holy Monkey Muffins
• Lord of the Springs

(The MCAS one is funny. The MCAS is our state test.)

Meanwhile, I took one of their titles and wrote this story over four periods of writing classes during one day (I teach four sessions). The title was one of my student’s ideas and it just intrigued me.

The Eye in the Hourglass

Who knew the genie would be so cruel? And would bring such bad luck? Surely, three wishes would change my life for the better. But, it turned out that I found a bad genie, a wicked genie, and he twisted my words around like a tornado until the meaning of what I really wanted disappeared into a storm of unfortunate events. My first two wishes should have given me some clues. First, I asked for a bag of gold. What he gave me was bag of stones, with one flint of gold at the bottom.
“It has gold, does it not?” the genie sneered.
My second wish was for a new house. I was thinking of the shack where my father and sisters lived. A new home would be a perfect for my family — a chance to start anew. So what did the genie provide? What was the answer to my wish? A house that fit in the palm of hand. No bigger than a pencil, really.
“Very nice structure,” the genie laughed as I gasped in astonishment.
I should have quit there, but I didn’t.
Instead, I wished for the one thing I always wished I could control: time. I wanted to be able to stop the hands of time and hold off the disease that was raging through my father’s bones. I wanted to hold back time so that I could find a cure for him.
“Done,” said the genie, and before I knew it, he had blinked his eyes, muttered a few words and — boom — I found myself trapped inside some glass compartment. It was curved, with the top being wide and the lower end being narrow. A hole was right in the middle of the floor and there was sand all around me, pouring past me, down the hole into a chamber below me. I realized with a gasp that I was inside an hourglass. I looked up at the genie, who was done with my wishes now. His huge eyeball was pressed near the hourglass, making me feel tiny and powerless.
“So, boy, stop time,” he thundered.
“What?” I asked, confused. “Get me out of here!”
“Oh no. I can’t do that. This is your wish, come true, boy. Stop time. Put your foot in that hole and hold back the Sands of Time. All of time will come to a halt if the sand stops. Your wish has been granted.”
The genie started to laugh again. I stared down at the hold, watching the sand drop. This was my wish? Stuck in an hourglass? I bent down and glanced through the hole to the chamber below. Something else was down there, I realized. Something buried in the sand. It moved and I jumped back. But I could not resist. I bent over again. The movement continued, as if something were shaking off the dust of time. I gasped. There, beneath me, was an eye. An enormous eyeball. And it was staring up at me. I was not alone.
In a panic, I looked for the genie. Surely, he would get me out of here. But he had left the room, apparently, so I scooted a little closer to the hole to get a better look at the eye below me. The sand kept on pouring past me. It formed a powerful current, like a the undertow the ocean, and I must have stepped too close because I suddenly felt myself being caught up in the motion. I started to slip and before I knew it, my foot had become lodged right in the opening itself. I felt another wave of panic and then noticed that the sand was rising up at my foot. I knew I was in serious trouble.
“Genie! Genie!” I yelled. “Get me out of here!”

Either he couldn’t hear me, or he was ignoring me. In either case, the genie was not going to help. That much was clear. I struggled again, trying to free my foot. I turned and twisted, with no luck. That’s when I felt it. At first, it was just a nudge. Almost gentle. And I sense some movement of the hourglass. A ripple, almost. Then, there was a sudden and powerful thud against the bottom of my foot. Then, another. Something was pushing up into me. Something strong. I realized what it was: the eye.
I was frantic now and feeling every more helpless. The eye kept pushing upward. Amazingly, I felt my foot starting to get free of the hole. There was now a bit space, just enough for me take advantage and wrench my body backwards, falling into a pile of sand. My foot was free. And then sand now continued its journey downward. I could now hear the grains of sand hitting something with a thwacking noise.
It must be the eye, I thought. It was getting pummeled by the falling sand. By helping me get free, the eye had put itself into danger. I ran to the hole and looked down. The eye was looking up, sort of sad and mournful, if that was possible. I realized that it had saved my life. And now I was watching it die.
“Hold on,” I screamed. “I’ll try to save you!”
I began digging fiercely to keep the sand from heading into the hole. It was fruitless. Time was running out.
That’s when I noticed the genie. He bent down his head until his eye was just outside the glass window.
“Having fun?” he asked, in a cruel voice.
I was just about to yell at him and demand he free me and the eye from this prison when he reached out, grabbed the hourglass and turned it upside down. My entire world spun around and I bounced from side to side, banging my head and getting sand all in my mouth. Suddenly, the hourglass was reversed. Sand was now pouring down on top of my head. And I could just make out the eye from above, looking down at me just as I had been looking down at it minutes before.
I opened my mouth to scream but sand came in and choked me. Yes, I realized with the cruelest of ironies: Time was most certainly coming to a stop.

As I was writing this, it occurred to me that this would make a great graphic novel story and maybe it is something I will try (someday). Short, sweet but creepy.

Peace (in short fiction),
Kevin

We put our family dog, Bella, down to sleep yesterday and so it was a very sad time for all of us here, as our three young boys have known her as a friend and protector, and she was the first dog that I ever owned.

We also had a snowstorm here in New England during her final days and the pure whiteness of the snow, and its temporary nature, reminded me of her white coat of fur and those thoughts and the sadness of making the decision to end her life to spare her suffering sparked this poem in her memory.

All One of the Same (for Bella)
Listen to the Poem

I covet the unblemished snow –
the blanket of white replenished in this candlelight’s flickering glow –
knowing all the while how temporary this is
and how this earth will surely rise up to reclaim it
for another time;
another place.
It is all one of the same.
This flurry of contemplation brings on such a sudden sadness of loss,
so I reach out my fingers to gather up every flake falling
in order to watch the world disappear.
I hold tight to the memory of the moment
so that it
– all of it: the snow, the whiteness, the love –
may live on inside of me forever.

Peace (in dog heaven),
Kevin