Slice of Life: National Puppy Day

March 23, 2016March 23, 2016 Catherine Flynn8 Comments

Did you know today is National Puppy Day? Puppies, like most baby animals are hard to resist.

I spent the weekend in Virginia with my son, his wife and their new puppy, Louie. Louie is a rescue puppy and his exact origins are unknown. But it doesn’t really matter what kind of dog he is, because as soon as you look at his sweet face, you fall in love.

Even when I’m away from home, I’m an early riser. I like the peace of the hours while the rest of the house is asleep to read and write and think. Once Louie woke up Sunday morning, there wasn’t much quiet. I took him outside, then we curled up on the couch so he’d go back to sleep.

This brought back so many memories of my babies not wanting to go to sleep. Memories of rocking and singing to them for what seemed like hours, and the feeling of relief when their head finally started to nod. Then the inevitable resistance, their head snapping back to attention, their eyes widening in surprise, only to droop again. Finally the heaviness of their body in my arms as they relaxed into sleep and melted into my embrace. Their breathing softens. They are asleep. And then, there’s a noise. The eyes fly open and you start over again. But this time it doesn’t take as long for them to be lulled back to dreamland.

I’m glad my boys are grown, and that I don’t have a puppy to care for every day. But I loved visiting Brian and Jackie, meeting Louie, and remembering those long-ago nights and our bedtime rituals.

Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday throughout the year and every day during the month of March. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Lists

March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 Catherine Flynn8 Comments

I spent some time this morning making lists of everything I have to do at work this week, appointments to make for spring break and more. So I thought I’d just keep making lists. I pulled out Lisa Nola’s Listography: Your Life in Lists (Chronicle Books, 2007). Skimming through the pages, I began to wonder if I’d even be able to settle on a list. Then I saw Nathaniel Russell’s illustration of the brew kettles at the “Legendary Pabst Beer Factory” on the list for “Places You’d Like to Visit.” As it happens, I’ve been to the Pabst Beer Factory in Milwaukee.

As for other places I’d like to visit, here are my dream vacation destinations:

Florence, Italy. I’ve wanted to visit Florence ever since reading Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King.
Alaska
Montana & Glacier National Park
London
Scotland
Ireland
anywhere in Europe, really

What’s your dream vacation destination?

Slice of Life: Prospecting for Poetry

March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 Catherine Flynn14 Comments

I’m still in Virginia visiting my son, so writing time has been limited. But I did have time to go out for a walk this morning.

Taking walks is like going on a treasure hunt. I never know what I’ll find or what I’ll see that will spark an idea or a line of what might turn out to be a poem. I have my phone with me so I can take pictures so images will be fresh in my mind. My phone is new and I’m not completely used to it yet, so I ended up taking short videos as well as photos. This is a happy accident because now I have sounds to go along with my images.

Objects I found on my walk this morning.

It’s quite breezy here this morning, and any left over leaves from last fall were skittering across the road as I began my walk. Forsythia is in bloom, crab apple, pear, and weeping cherry trees are blossoming, grass is turning green, and magnolias are loaded with fat buds. Birds are busy doing what birds do: singing, soaring, feathering, flocking.

When I get home to Connecticut, I’ll sift through these ideas and images, like a miner panning for gold. I’m pretty sure there’s a nugget of something bigger in here.

This is a perfect activity for students of all ages. Every season is unique, but what better time than spring to go out and see nature in all its glory, when, in the words of Mary Oliver, “the world offers itself to [the] imagination” of poets young and old.

Slice of Life: Read-Alouds I Love

March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 Catherine Flynn26 Comments

I think it’s fair to say that I am a teacher today because of a read-aloud. I have written before about the impact of my fourth grade teacher reading Charlotte’s Web to us.

When I was a classroom teacher, reading aloud was non-negotiable. We did it every day. No. Matter. What. Now that I’m not a classroom teacher, sharing wonderful books with kids is still the best part of my day.

Because I love read-aloud so much, and because I love Dr. Mary Howard’s Thursday night #G2great Twitter chats, I was especially sad to miss last Thursday’s chat with Steven Layne about read-alouds. Scrolling through the archive of the chat, it’s easy to see that an incredible amount of wisdom was shared in one hour. Here are some tweets from the chat that I love:

You can (and should!) read the Storify version of this chat here.

This was the last question of the chat:

Linda Baie answered this question over at her blog, TeacherDance, this morning. I’m stealing Linda’s idea and answering Mary’s question from Thursday’s chat since I’m visiting my son this weekend and haven’t had time to write.

Chapter books my 3rd graders loved:

Charlotte’s Web
The BFG
The Prince of the Pond
The Birchbark House
The Tale of Despereaux
The Search for Delicious
Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher
Stone Fox
How Whales Walked into the Sea

Recent chapter books I know kids love:

Home of the Brave
The Fourteenth Goldfish
The One and Only Ivan
Because of Mr. Terupt
Mercy Watson

Favorite picture books:

Knuffle Bunny
Boy + Bot
Brave Irene
Rugby & Rosie
The Old Woman Who Named Things
Farfallina & Marcel
Mrs. Katz & Tush
The Other Dog
The Gruffalo
Goodnight, Gorilla

I could go on all day. What are your favorite read-alouds?

Slice of Life: Pink Tulle and Ping Pong

March 19, 2016March 19, 2016 Catherine Flynn10 Comments

Yesterday on her blog, Paula Bourque, aka LitCoachLady, recalled a conversation she’d had with Lynda Mullaly Hunt about “ideas being everywhere.” Paula went on to say, “I think Shakespeare had something there…

‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays
many parts.’

What scenes can we script from the players we observe?”

This sparked a memory of waiting for a friend in Bryant Park one gorgeous afternoon last fall. I was doing exactly what Paula and Lynda were talking about. My journal reads:

“As I sit here in Bryant Park, the whole world is walking by.”

I was on the northwest side of the park, close to where two ping-pong tables are set up. Intense games were in progress and I enjoyed watching the players’ faces and body language as they scored points or lost games. The balls were neon orange and yellow, I guess so they’d be easier to find as they bounced off the table and into the crowd.

One ball kept getting away and finally settled in the groove between the paving stones. Just at that moment, a little girl, who was probably three or four, came along with her mother. The mother was hurrying somewhere, maybe trying to get her daughter to a birthday party. The girl appeared to be dressed for a party, looking like a ballerina in her a pink tulle skirt and black Mary Janes. She was captivated by the ball in her path. At first, her shiny black shoe gave the ball a gentle nudge. Emboldened by the fact that no one was trying to take the ball from her, she rested her foot on it. Suddenly, the ball shattered. The crack was swallowed up by the noise of midtown, but she was clearly startled and hurried to catch up to her mother.

This whole scene probably played out in a less than a minute. But I wondered about her intentions. Did she mean to crush the ball under her diminutive foot? Granted, I haven’t been around four year olds in a long time, but such an intentional act of destruction seemed completely at odds with her appearance. Or did she just press down harder than she meant to, wanting only to stop the ball and claim it as her own? I will never know. But remembering her and reading the details I captured in my journal have given me at least two ideas for a story I’ve been working on, and maybe one poem.

Thank you, Paula, for reminding me of this. You and Lynda are right: Ideas are everywhere.

Slice of Life: “Breakfast of the Birds”

March 18, 2016March 18, 2016 Catherine Flynn17 Comments

Earlier this week, Tricia Stohr-Hunt posted this painting, by Gabriele Münter, on her blog, The Miss Rumphius Effect:

Gabriele Münter, Breakfast of the Birds, 1934; © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn - See more at: http://nmwa.org/works/breakfast-birds#sthash.eKbv2uZn.dpuf — Gabriele Münter, Breakfast of the Birds, 1934; © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn – See more at: http://nmwa.org/works/breakfast-birds#sthash.eKbv2uZn.dpuf

Tricia invited her readers to write an ekphrastic poem to go along with this painting. I was intrigued by the contrast between the birds socializing outside and the woman sitting down by herself inside. Here is my response:

This morning our old
chestnut tree,
the one you planted
all those years ago,
is wrapped in a cloak
of fine white snow.

Goldfinches and robins,
like confetti scattered in
celebration of the coming spring,
brighten its branches
as they serenade me:
“cheer-up, cheer-up, cheer-up.”

How do they know
that some days are worse than others,
and that this morning,
I miss you more than ever?

Slice of Life: Time to Read

March 17, 2016March 17, 2016 Catherine Flynn12 Comments

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write;
a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
~ Samuel Johnson ~

I thought of this quote when I read “Unbalanced Literacy: Reflections on the Common Core” by Thomas Newkirk in the March issue of Language Arts yesterday. If you have access to this journal, I highly recommend reading this piece. Newkirk includes this quote from Michel de Montaigne, which I love:

“Bees ransack flowers here and flowers there: but then they make their own honey, which is entirely theirs and no longer thyme or marjoram. Similarly the boy will transform his borrowings; he will confound their forms so that the end-product is entirely his.”

Newkirk included this quote to support his view of reading as a “transaction between reader and text,” but it applies to writing also.

Halfway through this month-long challenge, I feel desperate for time to just sit and read, for time to “ransack” a book, to borrow words and transform them into something entirely mine. My morning waiting for the furnace repairman yesterday made me crave this even more. When you have a taste of something delicious, you want more! (Furnace is working again, by the way.) The slices I’ve been reading are amazing and full of inspiration, but I miss having time to read a book. What to do? Write a quick slice about what I’m reading, then go read.

I usually have three or four books going at the same time. Here’s what’s on my nightstand today:

Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal, by Margarita Engle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)

Echo, Echo: Reverso Poems about Greek Myths, by Marilyn Singer (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2016)

The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, by Ted Kooser (University of Nebraska Press, 2007)

What book(s) is/are on your nightstand? Happy ransacking (reading), everyone!

Slice of Life: Finding the Silver Lining

March 16, 2016 Catherine Flynn5 Comments

When we woke up this morning, there was a distinct chill in the air. For the past few days it’s been cold and rainy, last week’s spring preview long gone. Still, it shouldn’t have been this cold.

The dog and I headed downstairs for our morning routine. First stop: the thermostat. Sixty-six degrees. Not so bad, I thought. I pressed the button to fire up the furnace and take the chill out of the house. No response. I pushed it up another notch. Still no rumbling from the basement. Thinking that maybe the thermostat was just confused, (it was still pretty early!) I lowered the setting, then started raising it again. Silence.

I went back upstairs to tell my husband. He went to the basement to see what was going on. When he came back the furnace was still silent. “For some reason, the burner isn’t getting any oil. It’s not something I can fix.” We agree that I’ll go to work for the 7:45 meeting I can’t miss, then call the oil company.

So now I’m home, sitting in my sunny but chilly kitchen waiting for the repairman. Hopefully he’ll be here soon and the repair won’t be a major one. In the meantime, I’ve made some phone calls, paid a few bills, and had a second cup of coffee. Now I have some unexpected time to read and write. This cloud does have a silver lining!

Slice of Life: A Found Poem

March 15, 2016 Catherine Flynn6 Comments

I was really stuck for an idea of what to write about today, so I visited the “Writing Prompts” page on the Poets & Writers website. There are prompts for creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. This poetry prompt appealed to me:

Begin at the End
posted 2.23.16

“If you’re having trouble starting a poem, begin at the end. Take a single collection of poems and make a list of the last two words from each poem. Then write your own poem using only these words. Be vigilant at first utilizing just the vocabulary from the list. After a couple of drafts, stray from the limited words to help bring the poem to its full realization.”

Inspired by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s challenge to write a poem about small object, I’ve been rereading and studying Valerie Worth’s All the Small Poems and Fourteen More, so I turned to the first set of small poems for my list of words. Here they are:

among friends
she stops
like zinnias
to rest
and purr
worth something
and stay
is managed
set stone
brown grasshopper
of mice
loose skin
to us
slithering gold
poor clock
to keep
passing here
is cooked
of gold
find it
the beehive
for sleep
fences forever
whispers alone

Here is my first draft. The words and letters in bold were not on the original list.

She stops
among friends,
like zinnias
of gold,
fences set in stone,
and brown grasshoppers,
to sleep
and purr
and dream
of cooked mice…

To us, it is
worth something
not to be managed
by the clock;
to keep
passing here alone
and,
hearing whispers,
find it,
the beehive,
slithering gold,
and stay
for rest.

This was a fun exercise, despite the fact I have three unused words: poor, loose, and skin. Maybe I can work those into my next draft. The second stanza makes me happy because it reminds me of “The Lake Isle of Inisfree,” by William Butler Yeats, one of my all-time favorite poems.

I’d like to try this with students. It would be a great way to build vocabulary and would also help reinforce grammar skills like subject-verb agreement, tense, and more. Maybe I’ll save it for National Poetry Month.

Slice of Life: A Poem for Pi Day

March 14, 2016March 14, 2016 Catherine Flynn17 Comments

This pie bird is another small object from my kitchen. (I wrote more about these objects here.) He’s been baked into more apple pies than I could ever count. He seemed like a worthy subject of a poem this Pi day.

The Pie Bird

No squawks or caws
from this blackbird,
nestled in a puddle
of fruit and spice.
But the swirls of steam
escaping the “o”
of his yellow mouth
send out the signal
loud and clear:

Pie is ready!
Deliciousness awaits!

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Author: Catherine Flynn