Finding my Inner Performer at the Poetry Center

I'm spending the next two mornings in Poetry Out Loud training at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Yea!

Today we spent time sharing teaching ideas, and Sarah Kortemeier led us through several simple and useful exercises to promote proper use of breath, physical relaxation and comfort, and a sense of community where we can all get over ourselves a little bit in order to serve the poem.

We spent time familiarizing ourselves with our poems (mine is "Ecology" by Jack Collom) and working on memorization.  We also had a bit of time to think about the lesson idea we will share tomorrow.

Tomorrow, after (I'm really hoping!!) some hard-core performance work and feedback, we will recite our poems on video, which will be shared online.  Yikes.  If I would have known that it might have motivated me to eat a little more carefully this summer.  I am not at the height of my physical confidence. However, if you'd like to witness our performance, it is at 12:30 at the Poetry Center.

I've got some studying to do tonight... I know about half the poem.  I wonder if the ellipticizer at the gym is conducive to poetry memorization.  I'll let you know.

Here's some further reading for me by Collom, in Exquisite Corpse: http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_9/critiques/collom.htm

Here's the poem... I am completely swallowed by the poem when I read it.  I love its rolling, lengthy sentences, his use of sound, and how the interconnectedness of the words themselves creates its own ecology of language, which underscores the idea of our unavoidable place in the natural ecologies of the planet.  I also like the spiritual overtones of the ending.  I'm sure I don't have this poem "all figured out," whatever that means.  Anyway...

Ecology

By Jack Collom

Surrounded by bone, surrounded by cells,

by rings, by rings of hell, by hair, surrounded by

air-is-a-thing, surrounded by silhouette, by honey-wet bees, yet

by skeletons of trees, surrounded by actual, yes, for practical

purposes, people, surrounded by surreal

popcorn, surrounded by the reborn: Surrender in the center

to surroundings. O surrender forever, never

end her, let her blend around, surrender to the surroundings that

surround the tender endo-surrender, that

tumble through the tumbling to that blue that

curls around the crumbling, to that, the blue that

rumbles under the sun bounding the pearl that

we walk on, talk on; we can chalk that

up to experience, sensing the brown here that’s

blue now, a drop of water surrounding a cow that’s

black & white, the warbling Blackburnian twitter that’s

machining midnight orange in the light that’s

glittering in the light green visible wind. That’s

the ticket to the tunnel through the thicket that’s

a cricket’s funnel of music to correct & pick it out

from under the wing that whirls up over & out.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Testing out Grooveshark.

I've been frustrated recently because Playlist.com has become completely lame.  I don't listen to a lot of online music besides Pandora, but Playlist was a great tool because students could use it to create a soundtrack for a work of literature or for personal writing, and then embed it within our wiki sites to publish for each other.

Well, Playlist got rid of the embedding feature.  But my mom (of all people) showed me Grooveshark, and so far it looks COMPLETELY superior to playlist.  For one thing, I see a lot more song variety, and, so far, the sound quality is much higher.  I'm not an expert on how these sites are built, but I suspect that Grooveshark must have a lot more backing by the music industry and have a much more profitable model based on the use of mobile devices, etc.  The user interface is also much more pleasing and professional-feeling than Playlist

At any rate, it appears that on the free account available with Grooveshark I can create and EMBED playlists... so let's see here...



Somewhat of a random playlist for starters... what do you think?

I'm always looking for more webtools, especially those that are free and useful in the classroom.

What I've Learned This Week(ish)

1.  The definition of "neoliberalism" which I came across multiple times in this article, in the Utne Reader, an excerpt from a book about the historical context of organized labor and its relationship to today's working class and labor movements.  I find it fascinating how relatively meaningless the terms "liberal" and "conservative" really are in terms of any kind of coherent system of thought, making their social and political connotations really important to understand.  Neoliberalism, in terms of its emphasis on free markets and privatization, seems like it would be desirable to "conservatives," and yet I suppose it is the loss of jobs in the U.S. that makes conservatives and their (typical) strong sense of nationalism object to it policy-wise.  Hm.  Anyway, it's a good article and gave me a little hope.

Teachers are somewhat stuck between "labor" and white-collar professionals.  Because public school teachers are under-recognized, under-respected and under-compensated as a group (although the public is supportive of individual teachers), we really can't abandon whatever organized labor groups we can still get moving, and yet we want to be trusted, respected and compensated as professionals, and if we were truly considered a profession our issues would be more distanced from "labor" issues.  One thing (I think) that keeps teachers (and firefighters, police, etc.) in this in-between group is the idea that we are public servants. We are expected to have a certain degree of altruism about what we do (which makes me wonder-- do public defenders and prosecutors feel the same way?  I suppose, but lawyers have such a long-standing status as professionals...)  What gives firefighters and police a little more cache than teachers is that their lives are on the line each day, lending a sense of urgency and public obligation to their causes; also, sadly, I think that the fact that those careers are still more male-dominated and that teaching has been more and more feminized keeps teacher-groups from finding more political and professional footing.

2.  I took my kids and my mom kayaking when we were camping at Patagonia Lake with my sister and her family.  Mom was (as she put it) being a stick in the mud and almost wimped out, but we didn't take no for an answer.  Benchy told her that if she couldn't get out of the boat, they had a little crane lift down on the dock.  :)  It was a calm morning, sunny, with the puffing clouds we get during the day around monsoon season.  None of us had done it before, but I used to absolutely love canoeing in Girl Scouts, so I figured we'd be okay.  It was much easier that canoeing.  I now covet a kayak.

Mom

Mom and G

The Kiddos

3.  I visited our neighborhood carniceria for the first time.  For our 4th of July barbecue, we made carne asada and guacamole along with the typical (and fantastic) family potato salad (NO PICKLES), corn on the cob roasted on the grill and watermelon.  The carniceria was great.  My dad got hooked on it last summer, but I had never gone.  The man behind the counter helped me pick out which meat to use and how much to buy, and marinated it for me.  The meat counter was large and full.  The fresh chorizo looked very tempting.  The rest of the store was a wide selection of Mexican products and American snacks and drinks.  I will definitely go back.

4.  After a break of a couple of years, I took the kids and their cousin to BICAS to fix four flat tires, fix G's shifter which seemed broken, fix my basket and adjust my brakes.  I love that place, and I learned last week that they are truly kid-friendly.  The little girls were worried about getting their bikes down the steep ramp into the basement, and a volunteer came right out and helped them down (since I was holding my own bike).  My helper Isaiah patiently explained to me the basics of how the shifting systems on our bikes worked and how to adjust the shifting, and he scavenged for a new combined shifter/brake handle for G's bike and installed it himself (probably because he saw I was distracted by the kids.)  When the two little girls became bored, Colin gave them a spray bottle full of water and they found about 90 minutes of fun in that.  We were all very damp by the end of things.  The basement was cool, well-equipped and an artistic space.  We did all of the above plus installed two kickstands for $18 total, and when I tried to pay for neato artsy BICAS stickers for our bikes, they wouldn't take our money.  They said that since the kids were with me, the stickers were going to a good cause.  SWEET.  Love that place.

OK.  There's more to say, as always, but that is plenty enough for you to digest for one blog entry. 

Thrift Shop Sculpey

I found two huge bricks of terra cotta colored Sculpey at Goodwill yesterday. O for some reason wanted to make a life sized hot dog (middleground). G is making a dollhouse Wii, television and entertainment center, and my Chicago Dog pen holder is in the foreground. I'll make it into a refrigerator magnet. Sculpey can be painted, so that's what I'll do for mine. Cheap thrills for summer.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Rich's New Footing. (Ha! Pun. Groan.)

Well, it's high time I let the world (or at least my six oh-so-important readers) what is going on with my husband Rich. 

I've been guilty recently of a little whining on Facebook about how much I miss him when he's away, and he's been getting a little bit of flack from his friends about it.  But he is not mistreating me or the children.  In fact, he is continuing on a big adventure that started over two years ago. 

He has gone back to work full time for Ability Dynamics in Tempe, Arizona.  For the last two years, he has been working closely with the other founders of the company to develop their new Rush foot, a prosthetic foot that is made of a brand-new material and is designed mostly for active users.  The demonstration videos on their site are pretty amazing, especially this one by Lance Blair:


Lance Blair - Rush Foot Testimonial from Ability Dynamics on Vimeo.


Rich and I have shared many, many adventures together, some more challenging than others.  Separating our family into two different cities (for the time being) has been a difficult decision, lonely for both of us at times, and with challenges on both ends.  My challenges have been balancing home and parenting responsibilities, work responsibities, and doing the things that I would like to do such as summer professional development, getting to the gym, hiking, reading... it's been a lot harder to find time for myself because every time I do, I need a babysitter.  Rich will be doing a lot of travelling as the National Clinical Manager, and so I know one challenge for him is having the energy to put his heart into his job all week, travel for work and then have energy to drive back home to Tucson for the weekends.  He misses the kids, too, and hopefully me.  :)

However, I have not seen him this enthusiastic and invested in work in a long time.  He is an excellent REALTOR, but that has been a difficult road recently.  This position plays to his greatest strengths:  a sincere desire to help people have a better quality of life (which is why he became a prosthetist); a firsthand knowledge of life as an amputee and the qualities of a product that makes it both practical and pleasant to use; a thorough knowledge of prosthetics and the prosthetics business (which he has had a chance to learn even better through this process); a great personality and ability to listen and give and take feedback; a drive for success in business. 

He has actually worn and tested the various versions of the foot as the company has gone through the process of developing and refining it, and has worked closely with the CEO, the distributors and the engineers to secure investment funding, work within medicare coding guidelines and create a product that he can stand behind.  I have never seen a product built from the ground up, and it has been fascinating to see the complexity of the entire process.  Now they are working on marketing, and getting into clinics to teach practitioners and patients about the product, and to continue to get feedback on it. 

Despite my little pouts and bouts of whining, I am so proud of my guy.  He is an amazing man, and this job is perfect for him.  I have never seen him so happy at work.  I hope that if you are a prosthetist or an amputee, and you get a chance to meet him, you will also recognize how committed Rich Sainz is and has been to this foot and getting it onto folks who could benefit.

Happy walking!

Also, P.S., he wore the foot to Big Surf with the family last weekend, and it stood up fine!