Let's get right to it:
Would you be amenable to a Toga Taco Party?
It would depend on who was attending. But most likely not.
What is your favorite piece of classical music of all time?
Maybe not the most original answer, but I suspect it’d be Pachelbel’s Canon.
What are the 5 coolest nicknames you’ve ever invented?
Wow. Of all the nicknames over the years, that’s difficult. Two that stick out in my head are Walbert and Joefus. One of my favorites would have been a nickname a kid gave himself: Stinky Gary. The best part? His name was Kyle.
If chipmunks suddenly ruled the world, what would you do?
Invest in heavy books and tennis racquets, then join the resistance.
What’s your favorite soup?
My mother’s chicken and dumpling soup.
What is your favorite thing to do?
This was tough, but I think my best answer is anything that pushes me into a flow state. I don’t know how many people are familiar with this; I tend to assume things I experience are fairly universal, but I had to change that assumption a year ago when I learned not everyone has their brain automatically begin narrating their thoughts and actions after they’ve been reading for a long time, while mine does. I first heard flow described as a state of being when what you are doing comes so naturally you don’t have to even think about it and somehow things just fall exactly into place. It happens for me sometimes when a lesson goes really well. It happens when I have a writing idea that takes off and I have to struggle to catch up. In my experience, it’s related heavily to creativity, but I’d have to think other people would experience a similar state in different ways. So the answer today: My favorite thing to do is to be in the flow state. That's when I feel like the best version of myself.
If you had to choose a career all over again not knowing the outcome, what would you choose?
This question did not preclude my choosing education again, or pursuing writing. Just in case I’m not supposed to get those choices, I think I would probably go after something to do with sociology. I find almost everything about that fascinating.
What is the best nickname you have given a student?
Best is impossible to choose after I have worked with well over one thousand students and don’t even remember all of them anymore. If I’m being honest, I suspect the best nickname would have been one that I’d never dare say to that student’s face.
If you decided to grow facial hair, what type would it be?
First: I’ve had facial hair for going on ten years, but I see where you’re going with this so I’ll play along.
Follow up: With that new facial hair, what would your nickname be?
Eduardo.
Why do you write?
Because I can’t not. Sooner or later I need the outlet. I need the purge. I need a way around and out of the introspective mind.
What’s your favorite scene from the entire Star Wars saga?
The last moment of The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke and Leia are watching Lando and Chewbacca fly the Millennium Falcon away from the Rebel ship. It was a great teaser of things to come, the pause of recovery and regrouping. Having said that, I was in ninth grade when Return of the Jedi came out, so I can’t deny that Princess Leia’s costume as Jabba the Hutt’s prisoner didn’t make an impression on me.
Why are there people starving when there is enough food produced in the world to sustain us all?
The stock answer about geopolitical greed would cover it too easily, but this question reminded me of a quote from the book “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman. I remember it because I’ve always thought it perfectly captures why people try to maintain some distance when confronted with the problems of other people: "If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies...we draw our lines around these moments of pain and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us.” I think people are invested in protecting themselves and their immediate loved ones, and the idea of such massive starvation is too abstract of a concept for most to appreciate. Otherwise I’d suspect more would be done.
Why hasn’t 45 been impeached yet?
Because McConnell and Ryan are partisan hacks, and, as of today, he's not hurting their agenda. Yet.
Where do the missing socks go when you lose them in the dryer?
They either never make it into the wash or they end up getting mixed in with a different load. The biggest cover-up about the Missing Sock Theory is how those socks are always eventually found.
What do you think is the greatest humanitarian crisis issue at this time?
I would think any population not having access to clean water would count as a crisis.
What was your first reaction to hearing “Two Broke Girls” has been cancelled?
“Please God, let 'The Big Bang Theory' be next.”
Explain why you don’t start a music/concert review website and put your writing and music passions together.
(1) My favorite music is well outside of the mainstream. (2) Most of the posts I write about music here on Summer Vacation are largely ignored, which doesn’t provide a lot of motivation to take the idea further. (3) However, I’ve been inspired by conversations with one of my colleagues this year to begin an Album of the Week feature on this blog, starting in just a couple days. So there’s that.
What day are you getting your dog?
I’m still not sure I am. If I rolled out the good old Fifth Grade Probability Meter today, I’d put the chances on unlikely right now.
Why do the congressional republicans have their heads up their…….?
Like I said yesterday, I have to steer around certain language usage here in case a student, or one of their wonderful parents, would ever discover the blog. But to answer: Because they’ve been so singularly focused on political gamesmanship for the past eight years, instead of doing their jobs as lawmakers and leaders, they’ve lost whatever perspective they may have had in the first place regarding their responsibilities to their constituencies and the country overall.
What is your favorite TV series finale and why?
The one that sticks with me the most is probably The Office. It wasn’t overdone and either wrapped up all the character arcs or left space for them to continue beyond the series just right. The idea that even a person as pathetic as Michael Scott could find someone and have a happy ending was beautiful and hopeful.
Are you a “method” writer?
No. I’ll put on music to try and find a tone, but beyond that I just sit down and do the work.
What is the most interesting place you have ever traveled to, and why?
2608 Oakes Avenue.
Taboo in our culture today?
This could have been a bigger answer, almost a complete post, a year ago. But with the way society has fractured off into such radically different and clearly defined ideological divisions since the presidential election, I’m not sure if there are many universal taboos left. There are too many divergent opinions accepted by too many splinter groups for any real consensus anymore.
Please explain your eternal disdain for the Beatles in 180 characters or less, preferably in haiku or 10-word review format.
No hatred. Just don’t think the universal worship is deserved.
Trends in instruction and parenting styles by the decade you felt was the best time to be a teacher.
I disagree with the idea of data-driven instruction. Whenever the science in anything is overemphasized, the art is negated. Data informed? Absolutely. Data guided? Sure. Data driven? No. Too far. I think the best period of my career to teach would have been that sweet spot of years when teachers were allowed more professional judgement and flexibility and creativity than they usually are now, and had some minimal formative and/or summative testing data to help them understand the needs of their students better. And don’t even get my started on parenting styles. So I guess I'm saying that for me, as far as teaching goes, my best days are probably behind me. There's a happy thought.
I did skip one question: Someone suggested I provide a list of answers, and let anyone reading the blog come up with matching possible questions. This idea intrigued me enough that I’ll be expanding it into its own post sometime soon. I hope people will come back again when you see that one go up.
I think that covers the whole list. Thanks for playing, everyone!
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
500 Summer Vacations
I said at the beginning of the month there would be two milestones reached on the blog during May. A couple weeks ago it saw the 20,000th view. Today, right now in fact, we reach the second one as I write this, the 500th post of What I Did on My Summer Vacation.
If you aren’t versed in blog history — as I assume most people reading this are not — I began writing this back in May of 2009 as a way to keep the writing brain exercised. For perspective, this blog has been around longer than the earliest draft of “Following Infinity,” which first came to life as a NaNoWriMo project back in November of 2009. In fact, if you scroll through the archived posts to the side and read through the ones from November and December of that year, you probably would see a few references to when I was working on it.
Writing a blog wasn’t exactly new for me when I started. I’d kept journals in high school and college, much for the same reasons I started writing Summer Vacation — to process my thinking, practice my writing, and remember what was happening in my life with greater clarity. To that end, I feel keeping this blog for the past several years has worked out pretty well. I’m not saying that every post here is a diamond, or even a diamond in the rough, but out of the now five hundred written here, there are a few I’m pretty proud of.
Of course the biggest difference between keeping a journal and keeping a blog is that the blog is technically available for anyone with an internet connection to read, so there has to be selective editing when it comes to deciding what to include, what kind of language to use here in case any students (or their parents) ever discover it, and what topics to steer away from. It makes me wonder how my relationships with some people have changed because of this, especially with people who have been reading it for a long time. I’m not saying I’m a completely open book on here, but I’ve probably revealed more about my introverted self than I’d care to contemplate. Undoubtedly there are people who either feel like they know me better, or actually do know me better, because of what I’ve written or how I’ve written it here.
I don’t know how long I’ll keep the blog going, but I have a pretty good idea about when I’ll stop. Truth be told, there was a moment a few years ago when I almost did bring it all to an end. I was looking at my fading hit count and wondering if it was worth the time to keep publishing content when only a handful of people would ever read the posts. When I reached a level of thinking of myself as an oh-so-serious Author with a Capital A, I thought it might be time to start my own author website instead, if I was ever going to establish any kind of an online platform. I ran this idea past my agent Carrie in one of our first conversations. She convinced me there would be a better time for that kind of thing later, and for the time being having a blog that I updated regularly would give anyone looking to check up on my writing something to review. So, I guess if you’re a follower, you should probably credit her as a big reason why all of this didn't disappear. With the renewed life and activity it's found in the past few years, I'm very glad it didn't.
Hopefully that author website will become necessary someday. I suspect when that happens, Summer Vacation might finally come to an end, and the blog will take on a different form if it migrates over there. For now though, after eight years and five hundred posts, keeping this still feels like enough of me that I can’t see letting it drift away anytime soon.
Lastly, a special thanks to any number of people out there who read this regularly. If I didn’t see the likes and comments and hits that show me I’m not just blathering into an electronic void, I don’t know how long I would have kept it going in the first place.
If you aren’t versed in blog history — as I assume most people reading this are not — I began writing this back in May of 2009 as a way to keep the writing brain exercised. For perspective, this blog has been around longer than the earliest draft of “Following Infinity,” which first came to life as a NaNoWriMo project back in November of 2009. In fact, if you scroll through the archived posts to the side and read through the ones from November and December of that year, you probably would see a few references to when I was working on it.
Writing a blog wasn’t exactly new for me when I started. I’d kept journals in high school and college, much for the same reasons I started writing Summer Vacation — to process my thinking, practice my writing, and remember what was happening in my life with greater clarity. To that end, I feel keeping this blog for the past several years has worked out pretty well. I’m not saying that every post here is a diamond, or even a diamond in the rough, but out of the now five hundred written here, there are a few I’m pretty proud of.
Of course the biggest difference between keeping a journal and keeping a blog is that the blog is technically available for anyone with an internet connection to read, so there has to be selective editing when it comes to deciding what to include, what kind of language to use here in case any students (or their parents) ever discover it, and what topics to steer away from. It makes me wonder how my relationships with some people have changed because of this, especially with people who have been reading it for a long time. I’m not saying I’m a completely open book on here, but I’ve probably revealed more about my introverted self than I’d care to contemplate. Undoubtedly there are people who either feel like they know me better, or actually do know me better, because of what I’ve written or how I’ve written it here.
I don’t know how long I’ll keep the blog going, but I have a pretty good idea about when I’ll stop. Truth be told, there was a moment a few years ago when I almost did bring it all to an end. I was looking at my fading hit count and wondering if it was worth the time to keep publishing content when only a handful of people would ever read the posts. When I reached a level of thinking of myself as an oh-so-serious Author with a Capital A, I thought it might be time to start my own author website instead, if I was ever going to establish any kind of an online platform. I ran this idea past my agent Carrie in one of our first conversations. She convinced me there would be a better time for that kind of thing later, and for the time being having a blog that I updated regularly would give anyone looking to check up on my writing something to review. So, I guess if you’re a follower, you should probably credit her as a big reason why all of this didn't disappear. With the renewed life and activity it's found in the past few years, I'm very glad it didn't.
Hopefully that author website will become necessary someday. I suspect when that happens, Summer Vacation might finally come to an end, and the blog will take on a different form if it migrates over there. For now though, after eight years and five hundred posts, keeping this still feels like enough of me that I can’t see letting it drift away anytime soon.
Lastly, a special thanks to any number of people out there who read this regularly. If I didn’t see the likes and comments and hits that show me I’m not just blathering into an electronic void, I don’t know how long I would have kept it going in the first place.
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
The Amazing (?) Five
One of the podcasts I listen to is “How to Be Amazing” with Michael Ian Black. If you aren’t familiar with him, he’s an actor and comedian you’d like recognize. The podcast is a series of long-form interviews, each usually about an hour, with people from all walks of life who have distinguished themselves in some way: scientists, athletes, actors, musicians, authors, philosophers, philanthropists, and so on. The one thing they all have in common is that they’ve reached a high enough level of distinction in their field to be considered “amazing.”
At the end of the conversation, the guests are asked to offer some recommendations, called “The Amazing Five.” Every guest is asked the same five questions. For today’s post, I’ll be answering those questions myself. It’s up to you to decide whether or not there is anything amazing about my answers.
************
Name a film or television show you’d recommend.
I’m going with the TV show “Ed,” which was on NBC back in the early 00s, and ironically, had Michael Ian Black as a cast member, playing the ridiculous small-town bowling alley employee Phil Stubbs. The leads of the show are Tom Cavanaugh, who I guess is on “The Flash” now, and Julie Bowen, who plays the mom on “Modern Family.” Ed is a normal guy who was an attorney in a high-powered New York firm. When he lost his job and found his wife cheating on him the same afternoon, he abandoned city life and went back to his hometown of Stuckeyville, Ohio, to start over. He winds up buying the town bowling alley, opens his own law practice in the pro shop, and begins pursuing his high school crush. The best comparison I can make for this show is to call it an alternative universe “Gilmore Girls,” if the girls were replaced with a group of friends and a parallel group of high school counterparts. It’s set in a small town populated with quirky characters. The leads in the show talk fast and throw rapid-fire pop culture references around. It’s a warm and comfortable place to visit for an hour at a time. It’s on whatever channel UP TV is in the middle of the afternoon. They just started replaying season 1 last week, and hopefully they’ll keep it going in a consistent time slot long enough for my DVR to get all of the episodes recorded.
Name some music you would recommend.
I’m going to go with my favorite album so far of 2017: “Near to the Wild Heart of Life,” by Japandroids. They’re a Canadian duo on their 3rd or 4th album. Their earlier work was all fast and loud guitar work, which was great, but this album came out a bit more polished with a different level of focus on the songwriting that really paid off. It's been in heavy rotation for me since it came out back in January.
What book would you recommend?
One book that has stuck with me since I read it last summer was “The Serpent King,” a YA debut novel by Jeff Zentner. I had read all kinds of buzz about it on Twitter before caving in an buying it. I don’t usually read young adult; mostly I stick with middle grade (since that’s what I write) or just any other variety of fiction or non-fiction titles with adult characters. This one completely owned me, though. I don’t even want to say much of what it’s about so anyone who might take this recommendation seriously can just discover it all on their own. I will say that it had some of the best writing I’ve encountered in a long time, and, outside of one plot point that I think could have been handled differently, everything about it was beautifully perfect. It's been winning all kinds of awards in the past few months, and deservedly so. I can’t recommend it enough.
What food would you recommend?
Smoked salmon from Seattle, Washington is incredible. It falls apart in your mouth instead of being the kind of fish jerky we find here in the middle of the country, and has a flavor that’s so amazing you have to take another bite to believe the one you just took actually tasted that way.
Anything else at all you would recommend?
I guess to circle back to where this post started, I would recommend that anyone who hasn’t looked into podcasts yet do a little exploring and find one or two to try. My favorite would be a good place to start — “Stuff You Should Know.” It features two writers/researchers, Josh and Chuck, who begin with a topic, learn what they can about it, then have a conversation about what they learned. I’m sure I’ve written about it on the blog before, and with good reason. They discuss everything from pop culture to historical mysteries, politics, Legos, sociology, and quantum mechanics. Half the fun is learning so many different things from each episode. The guys also have great chemistry and frequently wander off the subject to follow any number of amusing tangents. If you’re thinking of checking out a podcast, I’d start with this one.
And there’s my Five!
At the end of the conversation, the guests are asked to offer some recommendations, called “The Amazing Five.” Every guest is asked the same five questions. For today’s post, I’ll be answering those questions myself. It’s up to you to decide whether or not there is anything amazing about my answers.
************
Name a film or television show you’d recommend.
I’m going with the TV show “Ed,” which was on NBC back in the early 00s, and ironically, had Michael Ian Black as a cast member, playing the ridiculous small-town bowling alley employee Phil Stubbs. The leads of the show are Tom Cavanaugh, who I guess is on “The Flash” now, and Julie Bowen, who plays the mom on “Modern Family.” Ed is a normal guy who was an attorney in a high-powered New York firm. When he lost his job and found his wife cheating on him the same afternoon, he abandoned city life and went back to his hometown of Stuckeyville, Ohio, to start over. He winds up buying the town bowling alley, opens his own law practice in the pro shop, and begins pursuing his high school crush. The best comparison I can make for this show is to call it an alternative universe “Gilmore Girls,” if the girls were replaced with a group of friends and a parallel group of high school counterparts. It’s set in a small town populated with quirky characters. The leads in the show talk fast and throw rapid-fire pop culture references around. It’s a warm and comfortable place to visit for an hour at a time. It’s on whatever channel UP TV is in the middle of the afternoon. They just started replaying season 1 last week, and hopefully they’ll keep it going in a consistent time slot long enough for my DVR to get all of the episodes recorded.
Name some music you would recommend.
I’m going to go with my favorite album so far of 2017: “Near to the Wild Heart of Life,” by Japandroids. They’re a Canadian duo on their 3rd or 4th album. Their earlier work was all fast and loud guitar work, which was great, but this album came out a bit more polished with a different level of focus on the songwriting that really paid off. It's been in heavy rotation for me since it came out back in January.
What book would you recommend?
One book that has stuck with me since I read it last summer was “The Serpent King,” a YA debut novel by Jeff Zentner. I had read all kinds of buzz about it on Twitter before caving in an buying it. I don’t usually read young adult; mostly I stick with middle grade (since that’s what I write) or just any other variety of fiction or non-fiction titles with adult characters. This one completely owned me, though. I don’t even want to say much of what it’s about so anyone who might take this recommendation seriously can just discover it all on their own. I will say that it had some of the best writing I’ve encountered in a long time, and, outside of one plot point that I think could have been handled differently, everything about it was beautifully perfect. It's been winning all kinds of awards in the past few months, and deservedly so. I can’t recommend it enough.
What food would you recommend?
Smoked salmon from Seattle, Washington is incredible. It falls apart in your mouth instead of being the kind of fish jerky we find here in the middle of the country, and has a flavor that’s so amazing you have to take another bite to believe the one you just took actually tasted that way.
Anything else at all you would recommend?
I guess to circle back to where this post started, I would recommend that anyone who hasn’t looked into podcasts yet do a little exploring and find one or two to try. My favorite would be a good place to start — “Stuff You Should Know.” It features two writers/researchers, Josh and Chuck, who begin with a topic, learn what they can about it, then have a conversation about what they learned. I’m sure I’ve written about it on the blog before, and with good reason. They discuss everything from pop culture to historical mysteries, politics, Legos, sociology, and quantum mechanics. Half the fun is learning so many different things from each episode. The guys also have great chemistry and frequently wander off the subject to follow any number of amusing tangents. If you’re thinking of checking out a podcast, I’d start with this one.
And there’s my Five!
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