Alabama Tar Heel

No one watches

Wheel of Fortune

on the flat-screen television

in the corner of the waiting room.

They pretend to read

until the doors open.

Then all eyes turn

in sync.

Just outside the arched windows
a veil of white haze hangs,
a show curtain heavy
with promise.

An audience of one
sips coffee
and waits
as an orchestra
of mourning doves
tunes up.

This month, I’m participating in River of Stones, a January challenge to write small observational poems.  For January 1, 2011, I will start with an observation of my not-too-exciting New Year celebration.

Staring at the clock
as it turns from
11:59 to 12:00
from yesterday to today
from 2010 to 2011,
I hear your soft snore
even before I hear
fireworks, and I whisper,
“Happy New Year.”

Teachers as WritersAs I promised earlier, I am posting the handout Jane and I shared on the NCTE Community, as well as here on the blog.

Thank you for your interest in the session in which we shared our ideas about nurturing our own writing lives. We will upload a copy of our handout, as well as additional information about writing opportunities or avenues. Check out Poetic Asides for weekly poetry prompts (daily in April for National Poetry Month and November for the annual Chapbook Challenge.)

Please share your own writing ideas and avenues here.

Nancy Posey nposey@cccti.edu
Jane Shlensky jvshlensky@earthlink.net

I started this particular blog as part of an assignment for a technology bootcamp online class this summer.  Since I’m usually blogging about my reading, I haven’t been active here since the summer. I decided to use this spot to post some of my poems I write in response to some online sites.  Here’s on in response to the Big Tent poetry prompt for this week (taking a line from a poem and running with it.)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, *
let them keep knocking all night if they choose.
Come here beside me, move closer for old time’s
sake, throw out the paper, turn off the news.

Carpe diem, you’ve always advised now I’ll seize
every day, every moment, each second with you.
Let them whisper or try to peek in through our windows.
We’re taking no calls; love is long overdue.

So much time past, our time left must grow shorter.
Cancel our outings, let’s stay home alone.
Friends will be fine out to dinner without us.
I’ll bet you they won’t even notice we’re gone.

* W. H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues”

I announced in my Facebook status today that I’m taking a week break.  Already my phone is beeping with messages from people asking where I am going. I am going nowhere. I am staying home and trying to do more productive activities with the short time that remains before I start back to school.  Carol Jago, NCTE president, recommended the book The Shallows: This Is Your Brain Online by Nicholas Carr. Click the link there if you want to hear about it from an NPR segment.  I once shared an office with a gentleman who pointed out that both of us showed signs of Adult ADD.  He realized it when he was working and turned to his computer in the middle of a task to Google “Adult ADD.”

That’s enough about why I’m taking a break, but I also want to explain to those  who still don’t “get” Facebook why I am attracted to it.  First, I am a social creature.  I still keep up with people I haven’t seen in decades.  I still write letters. The kind with stamps that end up the someone’s mailbox.  I still love receiving them too, but I realized long ago that if I wanted to keep up with friends that way, it would never be a fifty-fifty proposition.  Some people have stayed friends because I kept writing, even when I didn’t hear back.

I have also found how useful Facebook is when organizing an event.  Last weekend I participated in a reunion of the former Northwood Hills Church of Christ in Florence, Alabama, a church where my father preached in the late sixties and early seventies, a pivotal time in my life (junior high/high school) when my friends, as well as the adults in our lives, had such a profound effect on me.  We started plans for the reunion–you guessed it–on Facebook. The group grew and last weekend we had over 200 assembled and so many more out of town or state who couldn’t make it but kept in touch.  As soon as the weekend was over, pictures were posted–on Facebook.

Since I’ve taught for about 20 years now, many of my Facebook friends are former students.  I don’t have to seek them out usually. They send the requests.  The greatest thing about teaching high school seniors for so many years is that I could see them quickly turning into adults, interesting people.  Selfishly, what I have valued so much is the feedback they give.  In the past two weeks, I’ve received one  email from a former student finishing her PhD and thanking me for teaching her a process for writing research papers that she still uses.  Another sent a link to a blog she read and thought, “Mrs. Posey would love this.”  Another, now a teacher, posted a message, telling me he had visited the Globe Theatre in London with a student group and had thought of me.  He recalled the role he played when I had the class get out of their seats to perform Hamlet in a sort of readers’ theatre.  His message brought a follow-up from another student who said she has started a novel she intends to finish.

I’ll admit that all the interactions with former students don’t go that well.  I encountered a student in the drug store recently whom I had worked hard to help obtain scholarships so she could go on to a four-year college, the first in her family to do so.  She said, “I can’t remember your name, but you were my teacher.” I reminded her who I was, and she said, “Oh yeah, you’re the one who took my cell phone.”  Ouch!

For now, I’ll take my break, but I’ll be right back, keeping in touch with my family, friends, students, my writing group (the Baker’s Dozen Poets) and more because the one place I never want to be is out of touch.

Last night we rolled into my parents’ driveway in Florence, Alabama, with our two grandchildren awake in the back seat–after an eight-hour drive.  Usually when we arrive, the house is full of kinfolks.  Since I have four younger sisters, three here in town and one just over an hour away, it’s not unusual for Mama and Dad to have at least some of them here.  Sure enough there were several cars in the driveway, but no one was here but Daddy.

We’re here for a reunion of friends who attended the church where Daddy preached in the late sixties and early seventies.  On Sunday, we are meeting at the campus of Heritage University for worship then “dinner on the grounds.”  We’ve been posting pictures on Facebook for months now.  Someone shared an OLD church directory from about 1968, and I have also  found all my old boxes of clippings.  (I’ve always cut out newspaper articles and pictures).  I’ve kept the scanner hot.

If I ever wonder about the positive effects of the internet and the technology it makes available, I can certainly see how much easier it has been to reconnect with friends and to share great memories.  Now I’m ready to start posting our new pictures for those who couldn’t make there way here for the weekend.

This summer, I’m participating in Technology Bootcamp, an online course to help educators–particularly community college educators–become more comfortable with all the technology options available and examine ways to use them in our courses.

I’m definitely in the age group identified as Digital Immigrants, but I have certainly found my place in the world. Sure, I depend on my adult children to help me learn to use the gadgets, devices, and programs.  I also really like to read words on paper (so I can make notes).  During this course, several of the readings have been PDF files–portrait pages I am having to read on a landscape screen.  I have seriously considered printing them off so I could underline what strikes me in order to respond on discussion boards later.

My biggest frustration for now is that I really want to spend lots of time reading, responding to my colleagues, playing around with my own blog, experimenting with a Ning.  I also want to read, to make it to the gym for workouts, to visit with my neighbors, to cook for the extended family that has crowded into the house, and I want to practice my mandolin.

Maybe that’s another marker of my generation:  we want it all.

While I’ve been blogging for awhile now at my book site, http://discriminatingreader.com, while I’m taking a technology bootcamp class online, I have been assigned to build a new blog.  I plan to use this site in a variety of ways.  First, I’d like to write about writing.  I’ve been participating actively on Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides site since April 2008 (I think) and with my Baker’s Dozen Poets group since April 2009, so this will be a good forum for that writing

I’d also like to use this as a forum for some of my classroom assignments and my involvement in professional organizations related to the teaching of English.

Just for the record, though, this will be a good place to sound off about all of the things that interest me.  Be prepared: it’s a long list.