Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who go to summer camp and those who don't.

In a camp experience that keeps on giving, my husband and his brother frequently talk about the summer they went away to sleepover camp. They say they hated it. Their mother claims they loved it. They argue about it regularly at family holiday meals.

My own children went to over-night camp sponsored by our local Y. The camp is in Michigan and they all loved it, starting the summer after third grade until we ran out of money and could no longer afford to send them. (Once again, the youngest child gets ripped off, with only two years of camp under his belt. Sadly, we won't be able to afford his therapy bills, either.)

One year when I was a kid, I decided that I wanted to go away for two weeks to Camp Metamora in Michigan with my Girl Scout troop. Unfortunately, I announced this to my parents the day before the final payment was due in full. I don't remember how much it was, but from the look on my mom's face, it must have been astronomical.

Ever-practical, my mother said that, while she appreciated my desire to go away to summer camp, it was a big expense that we had not planned for. If they allowed me to go to sleep-away camp, the rest of the family would have to give up any form of summer vacation and that wouldn't be fair. I pouted. "But," she said, "If you really want to go, you can start saving up your money now for next summer and if you can save up half, Daddy and I will pay the other half." I wish I had that kind of parental discipline with my kids.

Camp Metamora never happened, but not because I couldn't save up the money. All my friends who went that year hated it. It rained, it was cold, the food was bad, there were bugs. They hated it.

While my more well-to-do friends suffered through overnight camp, I went to a Girl Scout day camp that involved a 40-minute bus ride each way. I don't remember where it was, but I do remember that we rode past a big cemetery and all lifted our feet off the floor of the bus when we passed so the dead souls couldn't get us. The girls were from in and around the greater Detroit-metropolitan area and all were new to me.

I loved that camp. I remember one girl in particular, Judy Martin, was very nice, and her mom was one of the leaders. We made s'mores and god's eyes and lanyards. We played Red Rover and sang camp songs. We hiked and played on the playground. But the best part of day camp for me was the bus ride.

A tiny African American girl sat on the seat across from me the first day. I later found out that her name was Selena McGee, but for the first three days she just stared at me. I had very blond hair at the time, and when she finally got up the courage to talk, she asked if my hair was made of real gold and if she could touch it. From that day on, Selena spent all our time on the bus playing with my hair — brushing it, styling it and, long before Bo Derek, putting it in corn rows. It was like have my own personal stylist aboard a mobile beauty parlor.

This year, for the first time, I'm teaching a creative writing camp for 7-11 year olds through our city's Cultural Arts Program. It's an afternoon-only day camp and I have eight campers, all girls. In the grown up writing world, this would be called a writing retreat and it would cost a fortune.

Just like my childhood day camp, we play games, sing songs, and make crafts. Only the games we play are improv or story-based games; and the crafts we do include making our own journals, decorating book bags, and writing letters with feather quills. We also write poems, pick a word of the day, and take weekly walking field trips to the library and beach. My brother calls it Geek Camp. I call it a blast. The camp combines all my favorite things — writing, teaching, books and kids (who go home at the end of the day).

I remind my writers, as we head to the library or beach or playground, to use all their five senses. When we get back, we try to write down five sensory details that we noticed along the way. We talk about what it means to be a writer:

• writers write
• writers support each other
• writers ask questions
• writers pay attention to details
• writers read

Each time I remind my campers of these writerly attributes, I remind myself, too. We work on our long stories in a "Stinky First Draft" spiral binder (with a tip of the hat to Anne Lamott), because writers write. When one of us shares her writing, we give three Likes and a Wish:

"I like the main character's name."

"I like the detail of the fluffy pillow right in the middle of her bed."

"I like that I could almost smell her birthday cake baking."

"I wish I knew more about her two best friends."

We use this method of critiquing because writers support each other. We choose a word of the day that is new to most of us, because writers ask questions. We note our delicious details in our journals, because writers pay attention. 

And each day, I read aloud to them, because writers read. On Friday, we finished our first read aloud, called A Beginning, a Muddle and an End by Avi, a book full of plays on words and serious ideas about the writing process. I hadn't read this book in a long time, and was delighted to rediscover one of my favorite bits of writerly advice. Edward the Ant tells his would-be author friend that if he wants to attract readers, then he shouldn't write writing, he should write reading. Brilliant. I wish I had written it.

Below is a silly Dr. Demento animation of Allan Sherman's camp classic, Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah. After you watch it, click here and leave a comment about your own camp experiences.

Photo credit: roasting marshmallows by jenny.nash712 via a Creative Commons license.

Strength in Numbers

"You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world." 

— Sheila Graham, writer/performer (1904-1988)

There are two kinds of people in the world: the isolationists and the joiners. This comes pretty close to the crux of my whole Two Kinds of People philosophy. I spent close to 25 years as an isolationist, waiting for the world to discover the greatness of me. Never happened.

In my late twenties, I dibbled and dabbled, taking a class here and there, but still not really becoming part of a community. It wasn't until my twins were born and a neighbor dragged me to a Mothers of Multiples (MOMs) meeting that I finally understood the idea of strength in numbers, in shared experiences and common ground. 

My own mom was never much of a joiner, and I believe my early aversion came from a sense that groups that you had to join were all about exclusion, not inclusion. That can certainly be true. Even in my little MOMs group, if you didn't have more than one baby at a time, you couldn't be part of the group, which is too bad, because I learned most of the good things I know about how to be a parent from that group. 

But joining doesn't have to be about exclusion — it can be about creating and belonging to a community. In thinking about how I changed my joining tune, I turned (as I usually do) to the dictionary and found my perfect definition of community in the online version of the MacMillan Dictionary (definition #4): "the feeling that you belong to a group and that this is a good thing."

It is a good thing to belong. Since I figured that out, I have started a book club, been PTA president, and become a member of the board of a long-running writers' workshop, just to name a few groups. And now … now there is the Internet. Geography is no longer the delimiter in defining community. We can create virtual communities.

There are those (my Dad) who think we've come to far. There are those who doubt the veracity of an online community — isolationists who see the Interwebs as nothing more than a playground for perverts and procrastinators. Not true.

The online writing community, in particular, is one of the most vital. Just spend 15 minutes lurking at #yalitchat on Twitter and you'll discover a worldwide group of adults passionate about the creation of literature for young adults. Or follow #amwriting or #kidlitchat or #author.

Now I'm going to tell you my little story about how virtual became reality. About two years ago, I stumbled upon something called SheWrites.com. I was fairly new to Facebook and brand new to Twitter and trying to figure out the whole social networking scene, which seemed vast and uninviting, harder to crack than even the tightest PTA cliques (you know who you are).

I signed up for SheWrites. I joined a group called Chicago Area Writers. Nothing. Then I joined, on a whim, a group called Mother Writers. The group's "owner", E. Victoria Flynn, reached out to me in welcome. We swapped some info and she became one of my first Twitter followers. On my first "Follow Friday", she sent a shout out to her Twitter pals inviting them to follow me and suddenly I was in.

I've "met" hundreds (probably thousands) of people on Twitter and now have more than 900 followers of my own, but there's a kind of core group that has developed and we've become friends on SheWrites and Facebook, as well as on Twitter. If you're confused by all this tech talk, don't worry; I'm getting the the real part. Over time, my crew has been very supportive of each other's writing efforts and one of us, the beautiful and talented Rebecca Rasmussen has seen her first novel, The Bird Sisters, through to publication. We were all so excited. Really.

Then we heard that she was going on a book tour, just like a real author. And then we heard that she was coming to The Book Stall, a fabulous, still independent, still open book store in Winnetka, IL. And we hatched a plot. Our group would meet at for cocktails and dinner or whatever and go together to hear Rebecca read from her new novel. We would travel from around the midwest: Victoria (of Penny Jar) from Madison; Christi (of Writing Under Pressure) from Milwaukee; Julie (of Beginning a Life at 50) from Nashville; and our celebrity author (of The Bird Sisters Blog) from St. Louis.

Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans and good intentions and all that. It usually doesn't work out. Except when it does. Like this time. Maybe it was because we didn't have to do it, that everyone would have understood if the thing fell apart. But I think it's because we stopped lurking and joined in. We created a real community. It started out virtually and transformed each of us quite literally. I can't wait for our next book launch. Wonder which of us it will be?

At The Bookstall, from left — Rebecca Rasmussen, Julie Jeffs,
E. Victoria Flynn and Christi Craig. (Where am I? Taking the
picture, of course.)

I'd been planning this post for some time, but the writing of it was prompted by the She Writer Blogger Ball Re-Re-Redux, another opportunity to meet and greet and join. Click on the little bookshelf image at the top of this post and join in the fun of a blog hop. No membership dues required, although your comments are always appreciated (here and on the other blogs you visit). 

Mogul Diamond Readers

There are two kinds of people in the world: fast readers and slow readers.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was more specific (and more critical) in his assessment of readership:

"Readers may be divided into four classes:

1. Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also."

I tend to agree less with Coleridge and more with one of the speakers in my writers' workshop who said that writers do only half the work; readers complete it. Each time a book is read by someone new, or even when it is reread, it is rewritten.

I don't remember not knowing how to read. In fact, once I broke the code, it seemed impossible not to read or try to decode a series of letters organized in the shape of a word. I do remember the enormous pleasure I got from reading as child. I devoured books (not quickly, I'm one of the s-l-o-w readers), but in great gulps. I remember reading straight through the Little House books in third grade, then moving on to other, more treacly series like the Bobbsey Twins and Sue Barton Student Nurse, just because there were so many of them. I read every biography of every famous female I could find. I lived and breathed the lives of the March sisters, furious when I finished the last Louisa May Alcott book in our school library.

By middle school, I had moved on to adult literature (there was little by way of Young Adult [YA] material back then, though I vividly remember A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Mr. and Mrs. BoJo Jones (later, a truly awful movie of the week starring Desi Arnaz, Jr.) and Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (a "true diary" as fraught with controversy as James Frey's Million Little Pieces). Back then, the thing I loved most about books is that I could scan them for every little mention of the topic most on my mind — sex — without having to ask any adults. I remember sneaking into the stacks of the public library and reading the Angelique books by Sergeanne Golon, a tawdry historical series set in 17th Century France.

In high school, I was steeped in Chaucer and Fitzgerald, and began a life-long love affair with John Irving. My family was big in car trips and reading took me all over the world while our station wagon traversed practically every square inch of the state of Michigan and most of US east of the Mississippi.

But by college, I ran out of time for fiction. I had so much school-related reading to do, and read it all so slowly, that I just couldn't squeeze in much extracurricular fiction (except for a brief tour through Harlequin romances my sophomore year, which I still regret, but those bubblegum books took even a pokey reader like me less time time to read than it took for my gum ball to lose its flavor). Rediscovering the joys of fiction after graduation was a gift.

I have one son who reads as fast as an Evelyn Wood speed-reading graduate. He literally reads whole pages in a glance — it's remarkable. My middle son claims to hate reading. Last year, he told me he was a "bad" reader. When I asked what he meant, he said he's a bad reader because he reads one word a time. I assured him that I've always read one word at a time and consider myself a very good reader. He wasn't convinced. When his English teacher told me at the beginning of the year that my son had the highest reading score in his grade, I told the boy to get over his reading phobia and embrace his word-for-word technique.

Like my son, though, I always assumed my slow reading was a liability, until I read Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them. In addition to having perhaps the best name ever for a writer, Prose is also a critic and teacher, and advocates what she calls "close reading" — reading at the word level, the sentence level and the paragraph level. Suddenly, I discovered that I had been a brilliant reader all along. (For a nice 2KoP review by Wilson Knut of Reading Like a Writer, click here.)

As life has gotten busier, as I have buried myself in all the reading I must to do for parenting and work, I find that I don't indulge in fiction the way I should. I read all the time, but mostly on line these days. Like golf, fiction just takes too long, or so I tell myself. The other day I began to prepare to teach a four-week creative writing camp by making a poster board about writing. "Writers write" said rule #1. "Writers read" said rule #2. "Hypocrite" was what I wanted to write in my little teacher bio.

To avoid having to condemn myself in my summer camp bio, I started and finished the book I've been wanting to read for months. The leisurely pace and beautiful language of the writing encouraged me to read the way I read best — word-for-word, one word at a time. I read for long stretches every day until I was just about 25 pages short of the end, when I did what I always do with books I love … I set it aside, not wanting the story to end, not wanting to lose my connection with the characters. I hate the end of a good book, which may be the real reason I read as slowly as a do.

I hope you will let me give you the gift of recommending this book for your summer reading list: The Bird Sisters, by Rebecca Rasmussen. Be one of Coleridge's rare and valuable mogul diamond readers. Savor the words. Rasmussen has imbued The Bird Sisters with everything that makes for good storytelling: love and betrayal, longing and despair, devotion and sacrifice. And tornadoes, both real and metaphorical:

"After her father returned, wild-eyed and windblown, Twiss ran to him, but not as quickly as she could have. It was as if he had inadvertently told her something essential about himself, a secret she would have to keep forever: You can't count on me."

— Chapter 4, The Bird Sisters

In my next post, I'll tell you about getting to know author Rebecca Rasmussen. In the meantime, let me know if and when you read The Bird Sisters. Or take a minute now and tell us how you read, fast or slow or somewhere in between. And please share your best recommendation of what should be on our summer reading lists. Just click here.

The Long and Short of It

There are two kinds of people: Those who practice brevity as the soul of wit* and those who are windbags.

The title of this post (542 words – the post, not the title) is an English idiom that dates back to cir. 1500, and was originally written as "the schorte and the longe of it." According to page 1129 of my unabridged copy of the The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (2,386 pages requiring a magnifying glass to read), the phrase means: "the sum total, substance, upshot; also, to make a long story short."

Making a long story short is the credo of the Internet. Sometimes I think that's good, yet I struggle with the notion that we can reduce the complexities of the world to a soundbite. I am a storyteller. Those who read this blog regularly know I am not a victim of brevity. The joy of these essays for me is taking an idea, examining it from all sides (or at least two sides), discovering tangents and relationships, then weaving them together into a cohesive whole.

Don't get me wrong; I like the short form, too; I'm practically addicted to the 140 character pith of Twitter.

But are we bowing down to the notion that 21st Century Americans are incapable of following a sustained argument? Must we cater to ever-shortening attention spans, or does that just exacerbate the problem? It breaks my heart to hear my 14 year old say he doesn't like to read novels because they are too long. Too long for what?

On the other hand, as an editor I appreciate the beauty of a succinct sentence honed to its essence. It's a search and destroy mission where my crosshairs settle on extraneous "thats" and pointless "in order tos". Perhaps the best advice ever given to writers comes from Elmore Leonard: "When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip."

Ironically, it was at the hands of storyteller Janice Del Negro that I learned an important lesson about keeping things short and sweet. In a workshop exercise, she asked us to retell a well-known story in a Haiku (a three line poem, with 17 syllables — 5-7-5). I loved the prompt (see my example here), and learned even epic tales can be distilled to just a few words.

But should they be? Is luxurious language passé? Or is there still time for the long, slow road of War and Peace (587,287 words), the grand scale of Gone With the Wind (423,575 words), or the symphony of multiple viewpoints in The Poisonwood Bible (177,679 words)?

I think — I hope — there is room for both. But then I remember the catastrophe that was the mullet (business in the front, party in the back), and I have my doubts.



FYI, that whole brevity being the soul of wit thing is actually part of a much longer sentence:

*Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?

— from Hamlet (32,241 words), by William Shakespeare


Your comments (short, long or somewhere in the middle) are always welcome.

Rubbing Virtual Shoulders via the Internet

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are bestselling authors and those who get to interview them. Through the powers of the Internet, I have happily become friends with bestselling author Laura Munson. Along the way, I got the opportunity to speak to her on the phone and even got to meet her IRL (that's In Real Life for those who don't read tech speak). She graciously granted me the following interview about her memoir, how it became a bestseller and where she goes from here. Enjoy.

I Don't Buy It
Article first published as I Don't Buy It — An Interview with Author Laura Munson on Technorati.

We've all dreamed of the perfect comeback — a witty response that displays both intelligence and humanity, at the same time putting our antagonist in his or her place. But what is the perfect comeback when your husband says: "I don't love you anymore."

For writer Laura Munson, four little words — "I don't buy it" — set the stage for bringing her marriage back to life and launched a New York Times bestselling memoir called This Is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness (now in paperback).

Laura is neither a doormat nor a masochist. She's a strong, educated woman living in the Montana wilds with her husband and two children. She rides horses, wields an axe, and had written 14 unpublished novels before her marriage hit a wall.

It was her own professional crisis that gave her the resources to react calmly to her husband's pronouncement and give him the space he needed to find his way. "This was not a knee-jerk reaction," said Munson. "I had had years of rejection from the publishing industry. After my dad died and I lost a big publishing deal, I was miserable. I had been working on my response to pain, learning to move through it and use it, when I recognized that my husband was suffering his own crisis of self."

That doesn't mean it was easy. "This was the most powerful pain I have ever felt and I knew it would take me down if I let it," said Munson. "But there was no fear in that moment. My husband had shown himself to be very loving and responsible, so this was a huge departure. Years of failure after years of career success were dragging him down."

In her mind, Laura gave her husband six months to figure things out. Along the way, he was distant, sometimes absent and often angry. Laura chose not to buy into the drama, exorcising her demons with fast horseback rides and long walks screaming at trees.

In July 2009, Munson wrote a shortened version of her story for the popular New York Times "Modern Love" column. The reaction crashed the media giant's website. "Most responses were full of recognition, gratitude and hope," said Munson. But not everyone was positive. Some accused Munson of letting her husband walk all over her or of simply being in denial.

Munson disagrees: "It wasn't really a risk because I couldn't control the outcome either way. It wasn't a strategy to stay married, either. It was a choice to let him find his way without sacrificing our family. You can learn not to take on someone else's issues."

Being a writer helped. "Writers are by nature empathic; we know how to climb into someone else's skin and ask what's really going on," she said. "I wrote my way through my crisis." Munson, who grew up on Chicago's affluent north shore, says the physical realities of living in Montana balance the cerebral life of a writer. "Montana was a big surprise gift to me. There is a tremendous invitation to face your fears. I trust the person I am here."

Seeking publication of her memoir could also have been risky, exposing her family's personal issues so publicly. "I always write to provide relief to myself and others," she said. "I felt a strong call to write the book that I needed at the time, but couldn't find. I wanted to read the story of someone who wasn't going to be buried by crisis, of someone who chose to take the high road."

"The book really isn't about marriage," said Munson. "It's about two people who encountered personal crisis, learned how to be responsible for our own happiness, and came back together as equal loving partners. It's really about two people's relationships with themselves."

Much like her marriage, Munson is ready to move on from being the main character in her own story. "I'm back to writing fiction," she said. "Having people read my work has been incredibly gratifying, but my job is to live in the present, own what is mine, create what I can, and let go of the rest."
___________________

Thanks to Laura for the interview and thanks for reading. We would both love to hear your thoughts, so click here if to leave a comment.

Second Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge

Check out the winning post here.

[Update 1/19/11 — The ante has been upped! NY Times best-selling author Laura Munson has taken the 2KoP Writing Challenge, posting her version on her fab blog, These Here Hills. She has also added incentive to this contest by kicking in a signed copy of her best-selling memoir, This is Not the Story You Think It Is … . How cool is that?]

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are entirely self-motivated and those who need a nudge — a poke, a prod or even, if you will, a prompt.

Last year, I posted my first ever Two Kinds of People New Year's Writing Challenge. Firsts are great. They're exciting. They're new. But you never know whether they are something you can count on or just a flash in the pan. Breathe easy, my readers. I am happy to announce the Second Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge. Once something becomes an "annual", you know you can trust that it will always be there for you.

Last year's challenge was thrilling for me, but a little intimidating. There were so many wonderful entries and I got a whole new perspective on what it must be like to be an agent or editor flooded with submissions. With the help of my judges, however, we picked a real winner in Murray Abramovitch's wonderful 2KoP essay on mushrooms entitled: Important Distinction or Just a Truffle?

What I really liked about Murray's essay was his passion for his subject, the information he shared, his excellent writing and, perhaps most important, his sense of humor.

I've been thinking a lot about Two Kinds of People in light of the recent tragedies in Arizona and the Red State/Blue State mentality that has taken over our public discourse. I started this blog in part to show the folly of arbitrary divisions. No matter your political beliefs, I'll bet if you read through all three years of my posts (please, do so now) and picked a side on every issue, your choices would be different than everyone else's. People are too complex to put into a single box. It's the combination of our choices that define us.

Writer and teacher Lisa Romeo occasionally offers writing prompts to readers of her blog, Lisa Romeo Writes. While I'm rarely without a writing idea, every once in a while I like to stretch my creative muscles and do a little free writing based on her prompts at my alternate blog, SFD @ 2KoP. A good writing prompt can take you to places in your own imagination that you've never explored before.

So, join me in a little fun. Pick your own favorite Two Kinds of People topic and write about it. The rules are that simple: write an original Two Kinds of People essay and email it to me by February 16, 2011. The publisher of this blog (c'est moi) and a group of judges of her choice will determine the winning entry.

Prizes: that's right, there will be prizes, as I strongly believe that bribery is an excellent motivational tool. The winning essay will be published right here on this blog and advertised throughout the world via Facebook and Twitter (at least to the people who follow me). You will be read, by actual readers. Wait, there's more. This year, you will have a choice of prizes, either the traditional 2KoP baseball cap or the brand spanking new 2KoP tote bag, both pictured above. One owner of the tote bag (my mom) recently gushed: "Hey, this is a really nice tote bag." You know you want one, so enter now. One entry per person. Feel free to spread the word.

Now, before you start typing away, I have two confessions to make. 1) Though I had been planning to run the Second Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge after the first of the New Year, I kind of forgot, until an alert reader accidentally stumbled upon last year's contest. Somehow misreading the date, she submitted her entry, prompting me to get on the stick and post this year's contest. So you see, I already have one entry (unread, I want to be fair).

Confession #2 (and this one is really embarrassing): in preparing for this post, I found a large envelope addressed to one Murray Abramovitch. I realized immediately that it was the 2KoP baseball cap that I had never actually mailed to him. This is bad. I am sorry. Murray, it's on its way. I promise this will not happen again. Let's just call it a first-year glitch. If you feel the need to berate me for my oversight or, better yet, to tell me how excited you are about this year's contest, leave a comment here.

Happy Prematurity Awareness Day

There are two kinds of people in the world: those born full-term (at or about 40 weeks gestation) and those born prematurely (before 37 weeks). Today, November 17, is National Prematurity Awareness Day. It is also the birthday of my two favorite preemies in the world, Isaac and Molly. (Happy birthday!)

Those preemies are 19 years old today. I know, I can't believe it either. Part of the reason that's so hard to believe is that the struggles they faced for the first five months of their lives are vividly etched in my brain. I remember more about those five months than I do about the last five months. That's what crisis does to us. It makes us hyperaware.

We've lived through it and those tiny little babies, born at just about a pound and a half each, are now young adults, off on new adventures. For years, people have encouraged me to write their story, but I wasn't ready. I needed to get them safely here, to this place, before I could gain the kind of perspective needed to write a compelling, meaningful memoir. The time has come for me to write my part of this story, because from here on out, Ike and Molly's stories are theirs to tell.

Many of you know that I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I'm here confessing that I'm a NaNo Rebel, writing a memoir, not a novel. Along the way, I reread and transcribed the journals I kept during those long days in the hospital. I took me right back to their bedsides (I should say, isolette-sides). I've been bawling my eyes out, but they have been good tears — cathartic tears, finally letting me shed the fear of that desperate time.

As part of this project, I have decided to launch a new website today, chronicling that time on the neonatal care unit of Evanston Hospital by posting the actual journal entries, day-for-day, 19 years after the fact. I hope you join me on their journey at Mike&Ollie: 24-Weekers Who Beat the Odds. You're in for quite a ride.

We have been so lucky at every step along this journey. We have had wonderful doctors, nurses, therapists, technicians, teachers, helpers, family and friends who have helped and supported us. You know who you are. If I haven't said it recently, thank you. I am mindful even as I write our story, that many families with similar stories have not been as lucky as we have been. My heart is with you. My hope is that this project will help those who are at an earlier point along their path.

I welcome your comments here, as always, but I hope you'll visit the new site and leave your comments there, as well. Don't miss the video page, which has the commercial they made for Evanston Hospital and a short video they made as a gift to the parent support group of the Infant Special Care Unit. Bring tissues.

A special thanks to the lovely Rebecca Rasmussen for granting me a guest post today on her blog, The Bird Sisters.

FYI, you can now find me posting occasionally on Technorati. Here's the post that went up today about the Empire State Building lighting up for Prematurity Awareness Day.

Dear Erica, Or Is Public Education Dead?

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in the value of public education and those who feel it is a failed experiment.

I stand firmly with Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and author of the Declaration of Independence, who believed that public education for all was essential for sustaining democracy. Are there problems with the American educational system? Certainly, but that should inspire us to action, not abandonment. 

There is a valedictorian address by a 2010 high school graduate, Erica Goldson, that has gone viral. If you haven't seen or read it, you should. Goldson makes a passionate argument against the current state of education, going so far as to liken it to enslavement, brainwashing and insanity.

Many of her points are well taken. The goal-driven, standards-based, business model of contemporary education plagues me, as well. People are not interchangeable parts; we are not standard issue and cannot be evaluated nor educated as if we were. Here is part of Goldson's eloquent argument:

"We are all very special, every human being on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still."

The irony, of course, is that Goldson uses her very education to speak against those who taught her to think for herself, to write a coherent speech, and to stand boldly in public to deliver her treatise. She states that were it not "… for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed." Well, brava for Ms. Bryan. Many of us can recall a special teacher, sometimes even the exact moment, when our minds were opened. We should bless those teachers, thank them, and encourage our best, brightest and most enthusiastic minds to become educators.

What I know that young Ms. Goldson does not, is that educational philosophy operates like a slow pendulum across a wide arc. This year, Ms. Goldson is the product of an increasingly competitive, narrowly-focused, goal-oriented pedagogy that we will, for the sake of argument, say is at or near the far right of that arc. In 1978, when I graduated from high school, the pendulum was at or near the far left of the arc, poised to begin a swing back that has taken more than 30 years.

Back then, we weren't so goal oriented as process minded. Our classrooms were filled with bean bag chairs and progressive educators and choices. I took photography as a science, and the only requirement for changing that course from an art credit to a science credit was that I had to learn the names of the chemical formulas we used in developing photos. That's it, just the names. I could have gone further, questioned the theory behind using light and photo sensitive materials to capture images on film in a negative format and then transforming it again into a positive image on paper. I could have, but I didn't. It wasn't a requirement, and while I was fascinated to see an image emerge in the red light and chemical brew of the dark room, it never occurred to me to ask how or why.

My point here, and it harkens back to Ms. Goldson's earlier statement, is that we are indeed all individuals with our own learning curves and drives and levels of ambition. I think Ms. Goldson is lucky to begin questioning her education as early as she has, because her questions and curiosity will take her far. I believe that the goal of education should be to learn how to learn — not what to think, but how to think.

Ms. Goldson lamented in her speech that education — and work afterward — is a form of slavery. She claims to be "a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker."

I part ways with Ms. Goldson on her assertion that education equals enslavement. Baron Henry Peter Brougham (1778-1868) argued that education actually precludes slavery: "Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."

Her naivety is forgivable (she's just a teen, after all), but it shows itself most clearly in her definition and understanding of work. So, Ms. Goldson is an adventurer, not a worker. I wish her good luck with that and would like to talk to her when her first rent payment comes due or when she breaks her leg on one of her adventures and doesn't have health insurance. Despite it's bad rap, work doesn't have to be a four-letter word. The trick is to find value and worth in doing your work, even if it's only that it allows you to live as comfortably as you want to live and enjoy your time away from work. If you're lucky, you can pay your bills and feed your family. If you're really lucky, work is more than that, but that can be enough.

Picasso once said: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." I doubt that doodling in class has led anyone to become a great artist by the time of high school graduation. It may start you down a path and develop some rudimentary skills, but so does taking good notes and learning to take tests successfully. I agree that test scores should not be the goal of education, but learning to take meaningful notes, construct a coherent argument, and write an organized paper are fundamental skills for the student, just as learning the play of light against dark and understanding perspective are fundamental skills for the artist.

I could never have been valedictorian of my class. I got very good grades in high school, but I didn't work hard enough to be number one. I don't even know if we had a valedictorian. I did do well enough both in school and on standardized tests to get into an excellent college, where I struggled because I had not learned any study habits during high school. It wasn't until my junior year in college that I figured out how to study. And it wasn't until many years later, when I found myself sitting in the driveway to hear the end of a story on NPR that I really figured out that learning isn't something you do for 12 or 16 years of school. It's a life-long process.

It took me a long time to find my passion. Now, each day, I learn something new about writing and it spurs me to learn even more. I wish I had found this kind of inspiration when I was 18, but I wasn't ready. Inspiration may have shown up earlier, but I wasn't working at it. Sometimes I worry that it's too late, but I push those thoughts aside. They won't do me any good.

I also accept Ms. Goldson's challenge to her graduating classmates: "… do not forget what  went on these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you … We will break down the walls of corruption and let the garden of knowledge grow throughout America." I add only that we are all responsible for tending that garden. What say you? Leave your questions and comments here.

Thomas Jefferson on public education to A. Coray, 1823. ME 15:487

Thomas Jefferson,
public domain image

"The public education … we divide into three grades:

1. Primary schools, in which are taught reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to every infant of the State, male and female.
2. Intermediate schools, in which an education is given proper for artificers and the middle vocations of life; in grammar, for example, general history, logarithms, arithmetic, plane geometry, mensuration, the use of the globes, navigation, the mechanical principles, the elements of natural  philosophy, and as a preparation for the University, the Greek and Latin languages.
3. An University, in which these and all other useful sciences shall be taught in their highest degree; the expenses of these institutions are defrayed party by the public, and partly by the individuals profiting of them." 

Split Personality

There are two kinds of people in the world: regular people and superheroes.

I was never a huge superhero fan. Sure, I watched hours of Superman reruns (the black and white one with George Reeves) and Batman (Pow! Bam!), but that was only when there was nothing better on (like reruns of Petticoat Junction and Gillgan's Island).

Maybe it's because there weren't many great female superhero role models. I hated Wonder Woman's outfit. Bat Girl and Super Girl were lame wannabes. Then there was Catwoman, but she was kind of an antihero whose only superpower appeared to be sex appeal. Besides, I could never have pulled off that skin-tight black thing she wore.

The guys had the real super powers — faster than a speeding bullet and all that. But if I could reinvent myself as a superhero and choose my own super power … hmm, what would it be? Time travel? Invisibility? Teleporting? Flying? So many choices.

I first started thinking about this after hearing the Superpowers episode on This American Life, way back in 2001. (Subliminal message: it's pledge week — support NPR if you can.) But the question resurfaced today when I was tagged by E. Victoria Flynn of the fabulous blog Penny Jar. The first question:

If you could have any superpower, what would you have? 

It has finally become clear to me that the only superpower I really need is the ability to be two places at one time. It all started when I married a man who had two children, and the two places at one time thing would have come in very handy. It would have been handier still when I had twins. And then two more boys, just 16 months apart. It would be really handy tomorrow at "Take-your-parent-to-school Day", because those two boys are both at the same school. At the same time. In different classrooms. You see where I'm going with this. 

2. Who is your style icon? 

It's my daughter, who was recently voted the style icon of her freshman (college) class. The girl has the "it" factor and, man, can she accessorize.

3. What is your favorite quote? 

Oh, there are so many. I love the Fitzgerald quote in this post; and Robert Benchley's Law of Distinction — the ultimate Two Kinds of People quote. But today I think I'll go with a little ditty by Ogden Nash:

"Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."

4. What is the best compliment you've ever received? 

When I was in college, I wore this fabulous black trench coat and a real Stetson fedora. I was sitting in a cafe when a waiter came up to me with a martini. He said that a gentleman  had bought it for me because I looked like Greta Garbo. When I asked who the gentleman was, the waiter told me that he had ordered the drink on his way out because he thought that I wanted to be alone.

5. What's on your iPod/CD player right now?
Mercy by Duffy. Also liking OK Go's new tune, White Knuckles. 

6. Are you a night owl or a morning person?

Please. Have you seen what time I usually post? Night. Owl.

7. Do you prefer cats or dogs?

As the co-owner of a pet store, it would be unethical (and unwise) to express a preference. But it may be a future 2KoP post, so stay tuned.

8. What is the meaning behind your blog name?

Duh.

And now, I offer you these three exceptional blogs: 

Artichokes and Aristotle
Darryle Pollack — I never signed up for this …
Christine Wolf's Blog

Those of you who are blogless or who have yet to be tagged, feel free to leave your answers to any or all of these questions by leaving a comment here. And while you're in the the neighborhood, stop by and see my latest post on The Chicago Moms, which also went up today.

At Two With Nature

"I am at two with nature." — Woody Allen

There are two kinds of people in the world. I'm not the only one who thinks so, either. Robert Benchley wrote it into law. Ian Gibbs writes a comic called Two Kinds of People and this guy stole my first choice for my blogspot URL, even though he has never written a single post.

Lately, everywhere I turn I see two kinds of people. In comedy, "There are two kinds of people" ranks right up there with "A priest, a minister and a rabbi" as the start of a groaner joke. I recently even ran across the Two Kinds of People List (good fodder, if I ever run out of my own ideas).

But now it seems Two Kinds of People has gone highbrow. Most colleges and universities ask applicants to submit a personal essay (or two) as part of the admissions process. This year, applicants to the University of Chicago are offered five options, and Essay Option 2 sounds mighty familiar:

"Dog and Cat. Coffee and Tea. Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye. Everyone knows there are two types of people in the world. What are they?" They claim this was "Inspired by an alumna of the Class of 2006."

I'm telling you here and now that while I have yet to post my coffee essay (I call it "Regular or Decaf"), I wrote it long before I read U of Chicago's prompts and have only been waiting for the right time to post it. You can find one variation on the dog and cat theme on last year's post called "Pet People and Proud of It". And if you have to ask whether I'm Team Gatsby or Team Catcher, then clearly you never read "Sensory Perceptions".

I hear the University of Chicago calling to me, but I can't quite decipher the message. Is it saying: "Carpe diem (which it would definitely say in Latin, because it is The University of Chicago, after all). Apply to our Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) Writing Option." Or is it saying: "For God's sake, you just had a significant birthday. These essay prompts are designed for 17- and 18-year olds. It's time for you to let go of this whole Two Kinds of People obsession." (I don't know how to say any of that in Latin, but I think carpe diem may still be appropriate. And just FYI, Google Translate says that "Two Kinds of People" in Latin is People duplex; maybe I should change the name of the blog.)

On further reflection, I'm thinking the University of Chicago MAPH program may not be right for me. It's more of a creative writing option for people who are studying another discipline within the humanities. Perhaps I should explore other MFA programs more in keeping with my writing goals ('cause that's going to happen with two kids already in college and two more coming down the pike).

But I'd like to think there's still plenty of room to explore the rich world of Two Kinds of People, even for an old fogey seasoned writer like me. In the meantime, perhaps I need to start my own graduate program. We'll call it 2KoP-U. Click here to ask a question, leave a comment or request a course catalogue.

And now for a little Two Kinds of People trivia. In what movie will you hear the following quote and who said it?

"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."

Bonus question: There's another Two Kinds of People line in the same movie. What is it? Answers here, but don't cheat.

Graphic credit: (love this title) Two of Arts — 2000 visual mashups by Q Thomas Bower via a Creative Commons License.

Me Oh My

There are two kinds of people in the world: cake people and pie people. Guess which one I am.

I'm a little surprised that I haven't tackled this particular 2KoP dichotomy before, but I'm grateful to Lisa Romeo's Summer Writing Prompt project for reminding me of it. A bit of research shows that both cakes and pies have long, venerable histories dating back to the ancient Egyptians, who are believed to be the world's first bakers.

Cake is fine. It has it's place. Much as I love it, a traditional wedding pie would be a hard to pull off, so my husband and I chose carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. (A mutual disdain for butter cream is one of the things that attracted us to each other.)

But pies (I'm talking fruit pies here) are a different sensation all together. Diet wise, cakes and pies weigh in about the same — both running at a not-exactly-healthy 250-300 calories a slice — but fruit pies somehow feel more virtuous. There's a complexity to homemade fruit pies — sweet and a salty, wet and dry, creamy and flaky, all at the same time — that makes each pie a singular experience.

Pies were originally called coffyns, then pyes and finally pies, and the delicious flaky pastry of our modern tarty desserts does not much resemble the typically inedible crusts of their early ancestors. Back then, the baked shells primarily served as cooking and storage vessels for savory meat dishes. I've had a few meat pies in my day, and a fair share of other crusted dishes, like quiche, but my true love is fruit pies.

Though the romance developed over time, it probably stems back to warm memories I have of baking pies as a child with my grandmother and cousin. My mother's mother was a less-than-stellar chef, coming from the school of cooking where you began making dinner first thing in the morning and boiled or baked the hell out of everything until it was served as barely distinguishable portions of mush and gristle.

That may be a bit harsh, but I will say the woman knew her way around a rolling pin. She made delicious pierogi (Polish dumplings), as well as all kinds of pies. When my cousin Cindy and I, who were the only girls on that side of the family, visited for a day or two, Grandma always made a little extra dough and would give us the trimmings to make tiny tarts. Wrapped in hand-embroidered aprons, we pretended to be grown-up women by pummeling and playing with that dough until it was more like rubbery silly putty than delicate pastry. My Grandma's pies, made from the more tender, earlier version of that self-same dough, were wonderful — delicately lattice woven and flaky on top, moist but not mushy on the bottom.

The first time I attempted to make a pie on my own, it was a complete disaster. Though most pastry dough is made from just a few ingredients (flour, some kind of fat, a little bit of liquid, and sometimes salt and/or sugar), it is a deceptively simple recipe, sensitive to atmospheric conditions and insensitive hands. As the Joy of Cooking explains: "No one recipe can precisely convey a sense for the way the dough should look and feel at all stages nor confer the fabled 'touch'. This comes only with practice."

By the time I was old enough and wise enough to try to codify my grandmother's recipes, it was a little too late. She had never written them down and though she tried to convey that "fabled touch", I just didn't get it. Years later, I let Joy of Cooking take me step-by-step to a decent, if not great pie crust, but it was a lonely learning experience and made me wish I had paid more attention to my grandmother while I had the chance.

About 15 years ago, I decided to forego even birthday cakes in favor of pie. Every year since, I have asked for a homemade peach or sour cherry birthday pie. This is a tricky request, since my late September birthday falls just beyond Midwest cherry and peach seasons.

One year, we planned a neighborhood progressive dinner that just happened to fall on my birthday. In a case of pure serendipity, our neighbor Al, who was in charge of dessert, had baked a peach and blueberry pie. I was sure my husband had tipped him off, but he assured me he had not (and he's not one to miss such a ripe opportunity for praise).

Then, one day in 2008, my friend Cindy Fey posted some juicy pictures of pies she had baked. She was a new friend at the time, and when I left a comment about my unabashed love of pie and dropped a few not-so-subtle hints, she commented back that she would bake me a birthday pie. Sure enough, in September of '09, she produced my first-ever baked-just-for-me homemade birthday peach pie. Never has a birthday cake tasted so wonderful as did this pie, dripping with the full goodness of summer and sweetness of friendship baked right in.

I tried to include a clip here of Andie MacDowell singing "The Pie Song" from the 1996 movie Michael, but no luck, so you'll have to settle for the transcribed lyrics, written by Roy Blount, Jr. Maybe this is the theme song for which I've been searching.

Pie, Pie
Me oh my
Nothing tastes sweet, wet, salty and dry
all at once, oh well, it's pie
Apple!
Pumpkin!
Minced an' Wet Bottom!
Come to your place everyday if you've got 'em
Pie
Me oh my
I love pie!

So what say you? Is it cake or pie that tickles your dessert fancy? Just click here to let us know.

P.S. Don't forget to check out the launch of The Chicago Moms. It's official as of today.

Photo credit: Peach & Blackberry pie by Tamara Manning via a Creative Commons license.

Farewell and Thanks, SVMoms

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth,

the egg of the phoenix." — Christina Baldwin

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who were lucky enough to be part of the Silicon Valley Moms Group and those who never had the opportunity. Even if you never contributed to the blogs, I hope you read and enjoyed many of our posts. For me, the SV Moms Group really meant the Chicago Moms Blog, but there were 13 other regional sites that, along with the Chicago Moms Blog, comprised the SV Moms Group.

My first post, Lousy Lice, went up on September 12, 2008, and in the intervening 22 months, I had 50 more posts. That's fifty one personal essays on topics ranging from bickering to O'Bama's Nobel Peace Prize; from exciting technical innovations for children with special needs to personal milestones. Fifty one opportunities the hone my writing skills. Fifty one spaces to share my opinions, joys, fears and experiences with a wide-ranging audience of local, national and international readers. Fifty one chances to get feedback on my words (comments people; I love comments). 

I also got to meet some really cool women (these are links to just a few of them; there are too many to count). Some I met in real life (IRL), some only online through this vibrant community. And it was and is a community. About 450 writers currently contribute to the SV Moms blogs, and there have been nearly 800 writers in all, not to mention the thousands of readers who have clicked on our posts. Until I joined the SV Moms, I didn't really understand the concept of an online community or how powerful it could be. 

Through SV Moms, I "met" Heather Spohr and learned about her amazing daughter, Maddie. I watched the online community's heart break over Maddie's loss and witnessed an unprecedented outpouring of love and support for the Spohr family. I marveled at what an incredible tool the Internet is and how it would have been so helpful to us during our own difficult days and months on the NICU. 

I also learned a lot about technology, as this group helped me through the growing pains of learning to blog, navigate Facebook and participate on Twitter. At every turn of a technological corner, they had my back and pushed me forward.

I belonged to the Chicago Moms Blog for just under two years, but the SV Moms community began a little more than four years ago — a blink of an eye IRL, but practically a lifetime online. It seems that lifetime has run its course, though, as a few weeks ago the powers that be decided to end this journey. It was a sudden decision, abrupt, at least to me. I was shaken by the news and surprised at how upset I felt. Perhaps it's all the other major changes going on in my life (kids graduating, going to college, getting married) that has me clinging to the familiar.

But life goes on. It should and it must, and I am learning (really slowly, but learning) that change brings opportunity. Not surprisingly, a group of women from the Chicago Moms Blog has stepped up to fill the void and will be launching The Chicago Moms, a regional online community, and many of us from the Chicago Moms Blog will be contributors. So stay tuned, there's more to come. 

In the meantime, while I have been told that the Chicago Moms Blog posts will stay up indefinitely, today is the last day of new posts. Over the next few days, I will be reposting my CMB entries here on Two Kinds of People (you'll forgive me if they don't all fit the two kinds of people profile). They'll be backdated to reflect their original posting date to keep them in context.

Thank you to all who made my experience on the Chicago Moms Blog one of growth and friendship. Thank you to those who are pushing us forward and creating a new community. Thank you to my readers, here and on CMB. You make it all worthwhile. If you have a thought to share about the CMB or have experienced an abrupt ending in your life, click here to leave a comment. (Comments people; I love comments.)