Two Kinds of People

Third Annual Two Kinds of People Essay Contest

2012-01-26T08:51:00.001-06:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who do things once or twice, and those who create an annual event. The 2KoP guest post essay contest is now officially an annual event.

Top Five Reasons You Should Submit

Your own personal Two Kinds of People idea has not been written about here on 2KoP. We all know two kinds of people. If yours has been glaringly absent from these pages, now is your chance to correct the situation.
Writing is Fun — you know it is. Every time you read something on the Interwebs, you know you can do it better. So do it.
There are prizes. Yep, real, honest to goodness prizes, including (but not limited to) the publication of the winning essay right here on 2KoP for all the world to read.
Because I'm a mother and I said so.
Fame, glory, the envy of your peers. No cash. Absolutely none. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Need some inspiration? Check out the winning posts from the First Annual (Murray Abromovitch) and Second Annual (Deborah Carroll) contests. For writing tips, you can read mine and other good ones at Write It Sideways.

The Rules

Because writers (at least this writer) works better under a deadline, please submit your guest post via email by midnight Central Time on February 16, 2012 (that's three weeks; plenty of time, but not too much.)
All entries will be read blind by a panel of judges, including me, and the winner will be the essay with the most votes.
Winning essay will be announced by February 23, 2012 (unless I get a million, which I hope I do, and then it may take a little longer).

That's it. Get busy. Get writing. Good luck. I can't wait to read your submissions. (Insider tip: it's the dead of winter around here, so a little humor couldn't hurt, if you know what I mean.)

The Prizes

Don't forget the prizes, which will include (at least):

an official 2KoP logowear item, possibly the tote bag shown above. (Very sturdy and attractive, if I do say so myself.)
a copy of the original The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
your very own published guest post here on 2KoP
a gift card to The Animal Store (The pet shop my husband owns in Lincolnwood, IL; I haven't actually asked him for this yet, but I'm pretty sure I can convince him.)

Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

2011-12-31T12:32:00.002-06:00

There are two kinds of people in the world, and I continue to have a blast writing about them. Looking back, I find that 2011 has been like most years — filled with strains and disappointments, hard work and constant struggle, dotted here and there with the occasional bit of good news and a delicious belly laugh or two. It was a year that both crawled and flew by, and I find my sense of time has morphed into a sense of vertigo.

After years of waiting for life to "get better", I think I've finally figured out that it just gets different. Changes come, some welcome, some un.

Catherine Wallace, a frequent speaker at OCWW, my writers' workshop, once explained that the best way to provide feedback to a writer is to ignore less than perfect writing and concentrate on the parts that shimmer. Her idea is that by pointing out what works best, the writer will return to the mental place that produced the good writing and use that to revise and improve the rest.

I don't know that I believe this is always the best method of critiquing a piece of writing, but do I think it is an excellent way to review the outgoing year. By leaving the negative in the past (where it belongs), and dwelling on the parts of 2011 that shimmered, I hope to be able to bring those sparkly bits forward with me into the New Year to make it a better one.

For me, writing is almost always the best part of my year. I learned a lot in 2011 and have many (too many!) projects in the works. Each effort inspired me to become more creative, more open to making connections. As the year progressed, my sense of what is possible seemed to explode. Thanks to people like literary agent April Eberhardt, I began to believe that the changes in publishing were not death throes, but growing pains. Changes and more changes, some wanted, some un. But with change comes opportunity, if you choose to see it that way.

So here are a few of the writing treasures from 2011 that I plan to carry with me to improve my efforts in 2012:

January — Helped launch my client's website for her new business, Where Are We Going. It has been thrilling to work with Karen Gray-Keeler as she has transformed her passion and avocation into a business. Her energy and creativity are infectious.

February 18 — 14,239 people stopped by to read about Isaac and Molly on the Mike&Ollie blog. I started this blog during National Novel Writing Month 2010 to jump start my memoir about raising 24-weeker premature twins. The blog was picked as Freshly Pressed by WordPress and got more than 40,000 hits in five days. The feedback I got was amazing. Now all I need to do is finish the memoir.

June — Designed and wrote the content for a WordPress-based website for a client, micro mosaic jewelry designer Wendy Gray Raven. Trained her and her daughter how to manage the site and developed a strategy for the blog, connecting her website to her Etsy shop. Becoming more expert in the tools available on WordPress.

March 15 — My first post went up on the Garanimals Blog. Now, once a week, I get to write about pets and animals for an audience of moms, working with an incredible group of bloggers and the amazing Amy Zimmerman. Who knew that being a Reluctant Pet Store Owner would lead to such a great opportunity.

May — Proved that relationships built on the Internet can transform into real-life friendships deeper and more important than most people think possible. It's a reinvention of old-fashioned pen pals with the added advantage of instant gratification. Here's a shout out to my girls: Victoria Flynn, Christi Craig, Julie Jeffs and Rebecca Rasmussen. Great writers, fantastic women.

May 12 — Presented at the annual meeting of Fraternity Communications Association on how to improve print communications for membership-based organizations, and critiqued back issues of many of the group's magazines.

June — Taught a creative writing camp with eight young writers aged 7-11 through the Evanston Arts Camp, thanks to Angela Allyn. Their enthusiasm and curiosity inspired my own writing in unexpected ways and I'm looking forward to the sequel in 2012. (Registration is open now for the Writers' Workshop, pg. 5, camp #922213C2)

June 2 — Ran the first of several social networking workshops, this one on Facebook for beginners. Email me for information on upcoming workshops or to set up a private session.

September 19 — migrated The Animal Store Blog over to WordPress in preparation for the launch of the new website (coming very soon). Found a new voice for the blog, Ernie the Giant Gourami, who has lived at the store since before Kenn bought it 20 years ago. I am understanding more and more that writing is all about voice.

November — "won" NaNoWriMo for the second year in a row (see my winner's badge to the right) by pushing out 50,000 words in a first draft of a new novel. I continue to learn the lesson that you cannot, should not, must not write and edit at the same time.

December — Named as a regular contributor to the Write It Sideways blog. Starting in January through June, I'll be posting twice a month about my favorite subject — writing. Along the way to this assignment, I contributed three guest posts to this great writing website: Hearing Voices? Maybe You're a Writer, How to Bring Your Characters into Focus, Writers Write — Creativity Is a State of Mind. Thanks to Suzannah for this exciting opportunity to expand the writing conversation.

These are just a few of the high points for me. I have more projects in the pipeline that promise to make 2012 a year that truly shimmers. I look forward to sharing it with you, and hope your new year shimmers as well. Look for the third annual Two Kinds of People Guest Post Contest to be announced soon. Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment about one or two of the glittering moments from 2011 that you plan to carry with you into 2012.

Books-A-Plenty (I Hope)

2011-11-08T23:31:00.001-06:00

12/31/11 Update — In case you hadn't already guessed, we did not win again this year. I still think this is a great contest and will probably participate again next year. Congratulations to winner Jennifer Miller of Where the Best Books Are. I'm green with envy, but happy to have found this great blog about children's books. You should check it out.

There are two kinds of people in the world — those who write blog posts that could win big prizes, and those who comment on blog posts and could also win big prizes.

This holiday season, I'm teaming up again with Chronicle Books for their 2nd Annual Happy Haul-idays Giveaway. I could win, you could win, and a charity of my choice could win.

That's win-win-win.

Win #1
First I get to make a wish list of Chronicle Books up to $500 dollars in value. I've sorted my list (sort of):

Animal and/or Picture Books
Amazing Animals: Parrots $5.99

Creepy Creatures: Scorpions $4.99
Creature — by Andrew Zuckerman $60.00

Creature ABC — by Andrew Zuckerman $19.99
Dog is a Dog — by Stephan Shaskan $14.99

Duck! Rabbit! – by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld $16.99

Happy Hamster — by Mathijs van der Paauw $9.95

The Lonesome Puppy — by Yoshitomo Nara $17.99

Press Here — by Hervè Tullet $14.99

Walk the Dog — A Parade of Pooches from A-Z by Bob Barner $9.99
What Puppies Do Best — by Laura Numeroff $14.99

Word and/or Writing Books
Creative, Inc. — The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business by Meg Mateo Ilasco and Joy Deangdeelert Cho $16.95
L is for Lollygag — Quirky Words for the Clever Tongue $12.99
No Plot? No Problem! A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days — by Chris Baty $14.95
Show and Tell — Exploring the Fine Art of Children's Book Illustration by Dilys Evans $24.99
You're a Genius All the Time — Belief and Technique for Modern Prose by Jack Kerouac $12.95
You Know You're a Writer When … — by Adair Lara $9.95
The Writer's Toolbox — Creative Games and Exercises for Inspiring the "Write" Side of Your Brain by Jamie Cat Callan $24.95
Writer's Workshop in a Book — The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction — edited by Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez $14.95
A Zeal of Zebras — An Alphabet of Collective Nouns by Woop $17.99

Fiction and One Nonfiction
The Doorbells of Florence: Fictional Stories and Photographs — by Andrew Losowsky $18.95
How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend — by Gary Ghislain $16.99
Milk & Cookies — 89 Heirloom Recipes from Milk & Cookies Bakery $24.95
Murder al Fresco — A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery by Nadia Gordon $12.95
This is My Best —Great Writers Share Their Favorite Works edited by Kathy Kiernan and Retha Powers $16.95

Not Books
Creature Floor Puzzles — by Andrew Zuckerman $24.95
Eric Carle Decorative Prints — by Eric Carle $24.95
See the World With Chronicle Books Tote Bag $2.99
Typewriter Eco-Journal $10.95

Win #2
Like my list? Leave a comment, because if I win, you could win all these books too. (Make it a good one, because I get to pick the winning commenter.)

Win #3
If my blog post is chosen the winner, the Chronicle Books will also donate $500 worth of books to the charity of my choice. I choose The Mighty Twig, which was founded during city budget cuts by the volunteers of the Evanston (Illinois) Public Library Friends. Here's what they do:

"What is The Mighty Twig? Smaller than a branch, (but mighty) the Twig provides children and adults with books, internet, computers, storytime and a community space. A small but wonderful library collection circulates in a new way, on the honor system: No cards, no fines, no fees, no fooling! Where else does The Twig take books? We provide donated books to community centers, coffee shops, and schools throughout Evanston. "

If you don't like my list, write your own blog post with your own list or check out other bloggers' lists (find out how here.) The contest ends 12/2/11. Be sure to leave info in your comment on how I can contact you when and if we win. Good luck.

Look in Thy Heart, and Write

2011-11-07T11:53:00.000-06:00

"Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:

'Fool!' said my muse to me, 'look in thy heart, and write.'"

— Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

There are two kinds of people: those who celebrate literature and those who take it for granted.

November abounds with opportunities to celebrate the craft of writing and the joy of literature. My 2KoP readers may think I haven't been doing much writing, but that's not the case. I simply haven't been writing here. It's all good, and I'll be sharing more soon.

Last November, I participated in my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I had no idea what I was doing and, in fact, decided to work on a memoir instead of a novel (making me a NaNo Rebel — not bad for my first time out). And I won. What did I win? Well, nothing. Oh, I got that nifty little badge in my sidebar that says I'm a 2010 NaNoWriMo winner. I made some cool, supportive writing friends. And I have an excellent start to my memoir. Just a start.

I've signed up for NaNo 2012 and am well on my way with a new project — a mystery. Why am I starting something new instead of working on last year's project? Well, that's a complicated question, but thanks for asking. The short answer is, that's not the NaNo deal. NaNo participants agree to start a brand new project on November 1 and commit to writing at least 50,000 words in 30 days. Is there a NaNo enforcement department that will hold you to that commitment? No. But here's what I think.

Writer-types like me tend to do better when under deadline. Given gobs of time, we fret and agonize over word choice and characterization and plot twists and … nothing gets done except the fretting. Committing to NaNo is an opportunity to turn off that inner editor (or agonizer) and just get the words out. You see, there are many, many steps to the writing process, and each one requires a different set of skills:

generating ideas
getting down the bones
rewriting
revising
starting over
rewriting
revising
revising
agonizing
polishing
getting critiques
crying
putting it in a drawer for a while
looking at it again with fresh eyes

And that's just the first step. NaNo is the perfect time to execute bullet point #2 (getting down the bones). Just getting your ideas out on the page fast, without trying to make it perfect, can be a huge creative rush. There is plenty of time to agonize about how terrible it is when you reread and rewrite in December.

For picture book writers, November is also PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month), where you commit to generating one picture book idea every day, for a total of 30. Some people believe that discovering the idea is the hardest part of writing, but think about having 30 ideas to work from at the end of the month. Nobody said they all have to be good.

For those writers who feel too constrained by the "rules" of NaNoWriMo or PiBoIdMo, SheWrites.com founder Kamy Wicoff has issued a much broader challenges called SheWriMo, where the big idea is to make a daily writing commitment (your choice) and sticking to it. That's a little too squishy for me, but I appreciate the concept.

My friend Mary Beth recently commented on my Facebook post about my NaNo progress: "I know that your numbers stand for words. And just 'cause I'm feeling kind of left out because I do not have a novel in me, whenever I see your number count, I'm going to write a number."

I haven't figured out what her numbers mean yet, but I have figured out that maybe November is just a great month for goal setting. Even if you're not a writer, I hope you're a reader. Maybe you could take this month to set a daily reading goal.

Here's one more opportunity to celebrate: November is also Picture Book Month. I'm a big believer in the importance of picture books and read alouds, both for children and adults. If you're with me, you can become a picture book ambassador. Check out the website for daily posts from different authors about why picture books are important to them. Whatever you do this month, I hope it includes a celebration of words.

Photo credit: WASTEBASKET © Lksstock | Dreamstime.com

Do Something Subversive: Read

2011-09-25T14:01:00.000-05:00

"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there."

— Clare Booth Luce (1903 - 1987)

editor, playwright, politician, journalist, and diplomat

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who ban books and those who fight censorship.

It's shocking to me (although perhaps it shouldn't be, given the current conservative political climate) that we are observing Banned Books Week, not as a look back at past folly, but as a raging contemporary debate. Who decides what books we are allowed to read and who should decide are ongoing questions. Spearheaded by the the American Library Association (ALA), "Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment."

Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2011

Between Gutenberg's big improvement to the printing press in 1452 and the arrival of the Internet, the basic process of producing and storing the written word remained relatively unchanged. But that world is changing fast now, almost daily.

There are those who believe the Internet will be the savior of written history, preserving great (and not so great) words in the electronic cloud forever. I'm not so sure. When I think about how vulnerable I feel when the power goes out for even just a few hours, I don't trust that virtual books are the answer. Anyone remember when Kindle deleted e-books from customers' devices? Book banning seems like it could become a pretty simple process in the hands of those who control parts of the Internet.

But whether we e-read or hold actual books in our hot little hands, being able to choose our own reading material is essential to the free and open exchange of ideas in a democracy.

I'm always bemused by the jumble of titles that make the list of banned and challenged books. The American Library Association's Top 100 most banned/challenged list of the last decade includes some fascinating juxtapositions, like Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey (#13) and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (#5). That same list includes at least seven of my own Top 100 books (at least so far):

Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling (#1)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (#14)
To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (#21)
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold (#74)
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving (#76)
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle (#90)
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume (#99)

(I also really liked 11 Points list of 11 Most Ironically Banned Books of All Time.)

What can you do to protest book banning?

Read.
Participate in the Virtual Read-out by taking a video of a banned book being read aloud and uploading it to this YouTube channel.
Read to your kids.
Support your local indie bookstore and public library.
Donate a book.
Check out this list of BBW events.
Take a look at the BBW blog hop co-hosted by I Read Banned Books and I'm a Reader, Not a Writer. Many of the bloggers listed are sponsoring giveaways.
Follow #bannedbookweek on Twitter to see what others are doing.
Read my post on SheWrites about banned books and children.

My Junk is Better than Your Junk

2011-08-29T19:28:00.001-05:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who garage sale and those who don't. And, of course, the subset of those who do—buyers and sellers.

I've been to a few garage sales in my day, mostly with my mom, who loves them. I know I've bought things at garage sales, but I couldn't tell you what. I've also hosted a handful of sales.

As I've mentioned, I'm a keeper, but every once in a while things reach critical mass and I feel the urge to purge. Last summer, my sister-in-law and I cleaned out my mother-in-law's home of more than 40 years. Forty years represents a lot of stuff, and for much of that time she lived alone. We have six people here—six times as much stuff. And we've only lived here 13 years. I can't imagine what it will be like 27 years from now. Yikes.

So, I planned a garage sale, mostly to get rid of outgrown toys and games. This proved much harder than I expected, since it turns out that my middle boy is a keeper, too, and even more sentimental than I am. Getting him to part with anything was next to impossible.

Me: "You haven't played with any of this in years."

Boy #2: "I just like to look at it. I like knowing it's here."

I see a horder in the making. On the other hand, he started high school this week and he has never been good at transitions. Perhaps my timing was off.

In any case, I sorted and tagged and set out our used stuff for three days. I ran an ad. I Facebooked and Twittered. I posted on Craig's list. We put out signs. And the weather was good — maybe too good; we had very few customers.

I netted about $200.

Given the amount of time I spent getting ready, plus three days managing the sale, plus the cleanup and donation of leftovers, plus the loss-time due to the inevitable sinus infection (I'm allergic to dust, so digging through basements and closets is not a healthy plan), I figure I made about 3¢ an hour.

But it's not about the money (good thing). I hate that we don't fix things anymore, we just throw them out. I have always marveled at my mom's stories of her WWII childhood, where they reused everything—even tinfoil and rubber bands (I still can't bring myself to toss out a rubber band, but I have no particular affinity for used foil). In this disposable world, there is something really satisfying about watching an old item find a new home, maybe even a better one with someone who will love and use it more than I ever did. A garage sale is recycling in the best sense.

Here are a few things I learned:

next time, I'm holding my sale on Friday from 9-5 and Saturday from 9-noon. That's it.
the stuff you think will sell never does; the stuff you think won't, will.
once it goes into the garage sale, never let it back in the house. Arrange for a charity to pick up the dregs.
grandmothers are the best customers for toys. They love to treat their grandchildren, but don't always know what they want. Garage sale games and toys make them look like a hero for pennies on the dollar.
kids love a bargain, and I loved watching them plow through my bargain box (25¢ each, or 7 for a $1), choosing which treasures they couldn't live without. That's a lot of joy for a buck.
price to sell. If your junk is worth so much, then why are you getting rid of it?
garage sales are boring without a steady flow of customers, but I did get to meet our new neighbors, so that's a plus.

I'm sure I'll have another garage sale some day (after Boy #2 moves out of the house and takes his stuff with him, every last lego piece and stuffed animal). In the meantime, check out Batman's garage sale. Guess even superheroes need a little fast cash.

Batman Garage Sale with Adam West from Adam West

Beyond Borders

2011-07-19T15:21:00.003-05:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who will remember Borders as the book giant that failed, and those who will remember the flagship store in Ann Arbor as the coolest indie bookstore ever.

Tom and Louis Borders opened their used bookshop on State Street in Ann Arbor in 1971. My parents moved us to Ann Arbor from a big Detroit suburb in 1974. I was not-quite-14 years old, full of teen angst exacerbated by the move, and completely miserable in my new home town.

I was lonely (14 is a sucky time for girls to have to move; don't do it to your child) and bitter. My old school was 6th-8th grade and I had made all my friends there. My new school was 7th-9th grade (due to an overcrowded high school) and I couldn't beg or bribe my way into the cliques. All my friends were going to high school and I was stuck in a fourth year of junior high, a fate worse than death. I may, with a little more therapy, find a way to forgive my parents.

To me, the only decent thing about Ann Arbor back then (I think of them as the Wonderless Years) was free bus transportation for students. I started exploring a bit and discovered three great things on State Street:

The State Theater — a grand old dowager that had seen better days, but let students in for a buck and showed late-night movies. I'll never forget getting the beejeezus scared out of me when I went to see Sissy Spacek in Carrie at midnight with my uncle, who was just a few years older than I.

Wazoo Records — may still be one of the coolest record stores in the world (Stylus Magazine thought so in 2007), though I haven't been there in years. Those were vinyl days, and Wazoo was where I bought my copy of Janis Joplin's Pearl and my very first Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills and Nash records. Everything about Wazoo was cool in the hippie counterculture kind of way that I had missed by being born 10 years too late. I started my record collection there, which recently brought $300 into the family coffers, despite being used and abused to the point of being barely audible.

The original Borders — hunched right next to the State Theater and across from Wazoo, and was cool in a whole different kind of way. It felt more Nor Cal than midwest, all laid back and intellectual, just this side of pretentious. Since before I could read, stories had transported me beyond the mundane limits of late century midwest suburbia. Borders was an oasis, a calm, reader-centric environment with benches everywhere and a few comfy chairs that invited to you sit and read. Don't yawn. Back then, that was truly innovative. Other bookstores were crammed with shelves and snarky staff who looked down their noses and dared you to crack one of their new spines without paying for it first. Our Borders hired smart college students and book lovers of all ages who knew a thing or two, and were happy to share their recommendations or help you find the perfect gift. And Borders even had refreshments. You could (and I did) practically live there.

Though I continued to prefer the grownup Borders to Barnes & Noble, and feel plenty guilty about my Amazon binges, the Borders I will mourn hasn't really existed since it moved down the block to what they came to call "Store No. 1" on Liberty. Maybe that's what ultimately led to Borders' downfall— rewriting history and kind of forgetting what the real Store Number 1 was all about.

Do you remember the real Borders? If not, what do you think this failure means, if anything, to book lovers everywhere? Click here to comment.

Teach a Man to Fish

2011-07-12T17:34:00.012-05:00

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

— Chinese Proverb

There are two kinds of people in the world, facilitators and enablers.

The verbs facilitate and enable are synonyms, both generally meaning to make it easier for someone to do something. The noun forms, however, have taken on opposite connotations. A facilitator is a someone who helps a person or organization find a solution to a problem, while an enabler has come to mean a person who makes it possible for someone to continue with bad or destructive behavior.

A good boss knows how to be a facilitator — to help employees learn, grow and move forward. Most of us have experienced supervisors who are more concerned with their own success than that of their subordinates, a short-sighted vision at best. Effective leaders learn to delegate, support and encourage all team members.

I'm good at the supporting and encouraging part of this equation, but I think I fail as a delegator. I don't know if it's a lack of trust or my own control issues that get in the way of delegating, but I have never really learned to let go.

Good teachers also know the difference between facilitating and enabling. A teacher can talk and talk and talk, but most students need, in one way or another, to figure things out themselves. In this NY Times post, students were asked who were their best teachers and why. Over and over, responses included teachers who had high expectations and who encouraged independent thinking and learning.

But perhaps the arena where the difference between facilitation and enabling is seen most clearly is parenting. If you are a parent, you know that it is usually easier to do something yourself than to let your children to do it. Just think back to the last time your young child "helped" you fold the laundry or cook dinner or shovel the walk. If you're like me, your fingers itched and you had to swallow your offer of: "Here, let me do it." But that kind of restraint is essential for effective parenting, because we all know children who have been "over-enabled"; they're called brats.

Each child has different expectations of what constitutes parental help. My daughter has always been an "I'll-do-it-myself" kind of kid. I can't count the hours wasted when I butted in trying to help her, only to have her rip off her tights (for example) and begin again. "I do it myself" was practically her theme song. Despite sticking my nose in many times where it didn't belong, her innate independence has turned her into a highly motivated, successful young adult. She can be snappish, but she gets things done, and I think the art of delegation is going to take her a long time to master.

Her twin brother, on the other hand, has always welcomed any and all help. These babies were born at 24 weeks, and the boy's size and development lagged far behind his sister's for many years. There were things he could do and things he couldn't, but he was, and is an easy-going, lovely human being, graciously accepting any favor, large or small. I have never once heard him say "Let me do it myself."

When the twins were four, I learned about something called "assumed disability", which often goes hand in hand with an actual disability. With assumed disability, we assume that because someone cannot do one thing, they cannot do something else. From the beginning, my son had two loving, willing females to take care of him, and it took me a long time to figure out we weren't doing him any favors. One day, I heard myself ask the girl to go get her shoes and put them on; then I asked her to get his shoes so I could help him put them on. The bell finally rung and that poor boy's life has never been the same.

But the line between facilitating and enabling a child (especially one with disabilities) is a tricky one, serpentining across the sands of childhood, moving and changing while you're not looking. What is facilitating one day is enabling the next, and staying on top of that moving line takes constant vigilance.

I wish I had been better. I wish I had devoted more time, been stricter and demanded more. I wish I had worried less about his happiness and more about his independence. (Notice that I say this with perfect 20-20 hindsight.) Now the line between facilitating and enabling is a dotted one, and I'm not at all sure how to help him make the right connections. I feel lost, hamstrung by his age, the law and my own expectations.

Don't get me wrong. I've taught him many of the skills necessary for independent living: he does his own laundry, is a pretty decent cook and can get around on public transportation. But his ability to think things through from start to finish or to anticipate are impaired. Is it possible to teach common sense?

I know (hope, believe) that if he could find his passion, the independence would follow. But can you facilitate passion? Can you even enable it? I don't think so. This is just one of those things he's going to have to do himself. And I'm going to have to learn to let him.

How have you been facilitated, or how have you been a facilitator? Or tell us your tale about enabling instead. Just click here.

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

2011-06-26T20:23:00.002-05:00

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

2011-06-11T23:03:00.001-05:00

"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

2011-06-05T16:35:00.002-05:00

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:

Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
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.

A Death in the (Soap) Family

2011-04-22T00:07:00.007-05:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who know Tad and Erica, and those who, when they figure out that you are talking about characters from the ABC soap opera All My Children, roll their eyes and walk away.

I first saw All My Children (AMC) was when I was 10 years old and went to my friend Chrissy's house in Grosse Pointe for lunch. Chrissy was the youngest of three children. I think her dad was a big shot for J.L. Hudson's department store. I never met her older siblings, who were already grown (or at least away at college). I don't remember ever meeting her parents. But I do remember that she had a live-in maid who wore a uniform, took care of Chrissy and made fried chicken for lunch, which was the only thing Chrissy would eat. While we ate, this lovely caretaker ironed in the kitchen. "Hush, now, I'm watching my story," she would say. "Erica's coming on."

That was in 1970 and All My Children was a brand new show, still just a half-hour long. I was entranced by the adult content and have been watching ever since, sometimes every day, sometimes once a month. Every time my mother visits, she says: "Is that Erica woman still on?" My mom never watched the soaps.

Soap operas were around long before AMC debuted, and had their start on radio in 1930. The very first serialized drama, called Painted Dreams, was produced here in Chicago by WGN. They were called "soap operas" because many were sponsored by household cleaning products.

Over the years, I've been loyal to ABC soaps and an on-again-off-again fan of One Life to Live, Ryan's Hope (for it's entire 1975-1989 run) and General Hospital, especially during the whole Luke and Laura hoopla, which happened while I was in college. At the time, I lived in a group house on Church Street in Ann Arbor with seven other students, girls and guys, all of whom were GH fans. We would race home at 3:00 and crowd into someone's bedroom to watch.

But my heart belongs to All My Children, including all 12 (to date) of Erica Kane's marriages; Tad the Cad's many affairs (one with Liza and her mother); characters dying and coming back to life (repeatedly); casting changes (just how many Colbys have there been?); character name changes (anybody remember when Jake was Joey?); not to mention ghosts, prison breaks and epic backstabbing. The show broke a lot of television taboos: the first legal same-sex wedding, AIDS, abortion, rape, and a transgender character, to name a few. But the reason I watched AMC was because it was fun. That's all. Just plain fun.

The cast and I have been through a lot together: my lonely teenage years, months of bed rest during two of my pregnancies, piles of laundry, and time on the treadmill. I have never really "watched" my soaps so much as had them on to keep me company while I did other things. Along the way, I would get frustrated by the soap-opera mantra of constant turmoil. After their third marriage and finally getting pregnant together, couldn't Tad and Dixie have settled down into happily ever after? Not in soap world. And maybe not in real life, either.

After 40 years on the air, in a soap-opera-worthy plot twist, All My Children has been cancelled, as has One Life to Live. I'm crushed. I just can't imagine life without Pine Valley. And I'm not alone. Many people have suggested that Oprah should pick up the show on her OWN network. Brilliant idea. I know she's a fan and even had a guest spot on the show in the '80s. (Just FYI, I refuse to link to the ABC press release about the cancellations because I will not watch or support their replacement "reality" shows. I have enough reality in my life. Give me back my melodrama.)

Things I've learned from All My Children:

Even in the dead of winter, you should wear sleeveless dresses to look chic.
Happily ever after does not make good drama.
I wish, just once, I could deliver a full-face soap-opera slap.
In the world of soaps, death is a relative condition.
Every time I fret about how fast my children are growing up, I see a soap kid age 12 years in three months and I feel much better.

When my husband mocks me about AMC, I remind him that he was a devoted Dallas fan. Hey, just because it aired at night, doesn't mean it wasn't a soap. When things get crazy and my own life resembles a soap opera, there has been something very comforting about turning on the TV and finding familiar characters whose problems are always worse than mine.

Feel free to confess your contempt on the topic or your own soap-opera guilty pleasures here in a comment.

The Long and Short of It

2011-04-09T02:32:00.003-05:00

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.

Say Cheese

2011-03-29T01:57:00.001-05:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are photogenic and those who are camera shy.

Did you know that there are at least three definitions of photogenic (all adjectives)?

forming an attractive subject for photography or having features that look well* in a photograph: a photogenic face.
(Biology) producing or emitting light, as certain bacteria; luminiferous; phosphorescent.
(Medical) produced or caused by light, as a skin condition.

This is my mom and dad on one of their
first dates. Don't you love that dress?
(Red and white, of course.)

My father argues that people who are dubbed photogenic are really just happy to have their picture taken. They look at the camera and smile, so the pictures come out great. You may have already guessed that my dad has always been considered photogenic.

My mom, on the other hand, has hardly ever taken a photo that does her justice. She's a lovely woman — petite and well-dressed with perfectly fine features, including blue eyes and dimples. Why, then, does she have such difficulty getting a good picture? Part of it may be that she wears glasses. No matter how trendy and cool your glasses are today, by the time you look at your picture five years from now, they will look dated (and probably ridiculous).

My children are all beautiful (of course), but one of them (I won't say which one — OK, the middle boy, but don't tell anyone) has not taken a bad or even slightly not great picture since he was a very chubby baby. It doesn't matter if he's smiling or not, or looking at the photographer or not, or even if he's happy about getting his picture taken or not. The boy is simply photogenic.

When I was in grade school, I knew a perfect girl named Mary Davies. Her name was perfect. Her freckles were perfect. Her knee socks never fell down. There were only two things about Mary Davies that were not perfect. The first one I tried not to take personally, but for some reason, every year Mary Davies got the flu and threw up on my desk. The second imperfection was that for the six years we were in class together, Mary Davies never took a good school picture. One year her eyes were closed. One year her always perfect hair was sticking straight up. One year her nose was bright red. I hope her parents didn't rely on harried school photographers and occasionally took her to get a decent professional photo taken.

I used to be pretty photogenic, by my dad's original definition. I smiled, I looked at the camera, and usually my pictures turned out all right. Even my driver's license picture taken by the notoriously unforgiving cameras at the DMV usually were pretty good. In fact, one was so good that I worked really hard at not getting a single moving violation so I could renew my license by mail — twice — which meant I got to keep that great photo for 12 years.

Suddenly, however, I find that whatever photogenic quality I may once have possessed has completely evaporated. I look even more overweight than I feel, my smile isn't what it used to be and I always seem to be at an awkward angle. Maybe I'm just getting old. Damn, I wish I still had that driver's license. I could use it for my avatar. Or maybe I'm still photogenic, but only as it pertains to definitions #2 and #3. On the other hand, a speaker at my writers group advised us to get our author photos taken even if we weren't quite ready to be published: "You'll never look younger than you do right now."

What about you? Click here to tell us whether the camera loves you or hates you.

*A point of grammar — do you look "well" in a photo, or do you look "good"? I always thought if someone told you that you look well, it meant healthy. What say you?

Rubbing Virtual Shoulders via the Internet

2011-03-08T21:46:00.001-06:00

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.

The Winner is All Tied Up

2011-02-28T17:32:00.010-06:00

I'm very excited to announce the winner of the Second Annual Two Kinds of People Writing Challenge: Deborah Carroll for her essay Women Who Scarf, which is posted below. You can find more of Debby's writing at her Raising Amazing Daughters Blog. Thanks to all who entered and a special thanks to my panel of guest judges, Ed Padala, Judi Silverman and Molly Bearman for helping me make this difficult decision. Enjoy Debby's essay and start thinking about your entry for the Third Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge, January 2012.

In addition to this guest post, Debby has chosen as her prize the 2KoP logo baseball cap. A special thanks to Laura Munson, who generously promoted this contest and who will also be sending Debby a signed copy of her best-selling memoir, This is Not the Story You Think It Is.

Women Who Scarf

by Deborah Carroll

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can accessorize with a scarf, and those who are woefully unable to do so. Sadly, I am the latter.

You see them on the streets of any town or city, and you imagine that in their minds, they’re walking a runway or catwalk. They’re strutting their stuff, while my stuff … well, it’s moving down the sidewalk, but something is amok.

They may be wearing jeans, a sweater, boots, a jacket, and a scarf, but when you look at them, you see the total package, a well-put-together woman.

When I put on a scarf, it appears to be something I added to my outfit haphazardly. It rarely (read: never) pulls me together and makes me look as if I gave careful thought to my outfit. The women who “scarf” well (yes, they do it so well, it becomes a verb) look like a complete and detailed image. Somehow the scarf ties it all together and their stuff is ready to strut.

It lifts them from frumpy to fabulous.

I can’t get there. If I’m wearing jeans, a sweater, boots, jacket, and scarf, that’s what you see when you look at me– jeans, sweater, boots, jacket, scarf. Clearly, I lack the fashionista gene. I also don’t own any fashionista jeans, but I don’t think that’s the problem.

A study of these women reveals that the cost of what they wear isn’t the determining factor in how good they look. These excellent “scarfers” come from all walks of life, and all socio-economic levels. It’s not what they’re wearing; it’s how they combine the accessories with flair and flow.

Now, this fashion distinction may not be important in the larger scheme of things. We all know it’s what’s inside that matters. But, what if our exterior reflects our interior? What if my inability to look “put-together” bespeaks an internal scattered mess?

For that reason, I decided to tackle my fashion failings head on and from head to toe. I sought help online. Here’s what I found, “Remember accessories are tiny pointing arrows that draw the attention to the spot you wear them on.”

Tiny pointing arrows? Could that be my problem? Did I shun the spotlight of those tiny pointing arrows for some reason? Was I afraid to have people look at me? Nah, I once aspired to a career in theater, so that couldn’t be it.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s not about the clothes at all. Maybe it’s about the people wearing the clothes. Is there something in their posture or their demeanor that is lacking in mine?

I visited a physiatrist, a doctor who specializes in treating the whole person to restore full functionality. If I were lacking something physical, I needed to know. Plus, I had tendonitis, so I figured he could fix that too, while he was treating my “whole person.”

He did treat my tendonitis, and, amazingly, he did find something amok in my fashionista profile. Well, he didn’t put it that way, but he did say that I walk with my head jutting forward. While he didn’t venture an opinion about whether this would render me fashion faulty, he did say it’d likely cause me to have neck and back pain, as well as repeated bouts of tendonitis. He gave me exercises to do in order to check and correct my posture.

I left there thinking that if I just hold my head higher and straighter, maybe I could finally be one of those people. You know, the other kind.

I went home and put on jeans, sweater and, yes, a scarf. I held my head high and checked in with my body. Head directly over shoulders. Shoulders back, tummy in, hips over feet, all in a straight line. I looked in the mirror …

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can accessorize with a scarf, and those who are woefully unable to do so. Sadly, I am the latter. But I have really good posture.

Do you scarf? Let us know by leaving your comment here.
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Thank you to the other entrants for their submissions. Check out their links. If they have posted their submissions, I have linked to them, as well:

Alicia — Widows and Those Who Don't Know What to Say
Melissa Adams — Traveling the World with No GPS
Christi Craig — A Chiropractor's Dream
Robin Dake — A.M. People and P.M. People
Nikki Di Virgilio — What Two Kinds of People am I Talking About?
Jenny — Romper Room
Linda Gartz — Family History: Bold or Boring?
Julie Ellinger Hunt — Poem: A Demonstrative Tempest
Dana Leipold — Idol Worshipping at the Foot of the Pop Star Machine Generator
Mary Ryan Sigmond — Before and After
Robert Sloan — Humans and Cats
Candace George Thompson — A Squirrel Was My Psychiatrist

Photo credit: tipjunkie.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Fan vs. Fanatic

2011-02-11T20:39:00.006-06:00

Ed. note: Results are in for the Second Annual Two Kinds of People Writing Challenge.

fan (noun) — an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime, celebrity, etc. (origin: 1885-90, Americanism; short for fanatic or, some say, fancy)

fanatic (noun) — a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics. (origin: 1515-25, "insane person" from L. fanaticus, "mad, enthusiastic, inspired by god", originally pertaining to a temple, from L. fanum.

_________________

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who listen to commercial radio and those who listen to public radio.

When I was a kid in the Detroit area, my parents listened to WJR, an AM radio station devoted to news, talk and sports. I hated it. I begged them to listen to music — any kind of music — rather than the blah, blah, blah of broadcasters like J.P. McCarthy. Now it isn't just because of the commercials that I tune out to commercial radio.

I first learned about public radio in college, via my friend Betsy Rippner, but I didn't become a fan until I moved to Chicago and found WBEZ; and I didn't become a fanatic until I became a mininvan mom and the information, news and intelligent conversation provided a potent antacid to a steady diet of Barney and other syrupy-sweet children's programming.

I started slowly, with the lovely works of Selected Shorts (where I finally came to appreciate the short story) and the unexpected FreshAir interviews by the always-curious Terry Gross (who still sounds like a very smart, young undergrad, even though she is now 60ish). My flirtation turned quickly to addiction and obsession, and I lapped it all up: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation; as well as great locally produced programs like Worldview and Eight-Forty-Eight. I love the silliness of Car Talk, the aural truffles of Re:Sound, and the digestible nature of Science Friday.

And the names. I love the names of public radio: Cokie Roberts, Ira Flatow, Marion McPartland, David Folkenflik, John Ydstie, Nina Totenberg, Heidi Goldfein (who always pronounces every syllable of the letter W), Ira Glass, and Garrison Keillor (whose real name is Gary Edward Keillor, which isn't nearly as good). I revel in sonorous tones of "This is Bob Edwards"; and the distinctive inflections of "I'm Neal Conan", just two of the great voices of this old, yet still relevant medium.

I love the quirky traditions, like Jerome McDonnell's professed love of pledge drives; or the way you know the daily economic outlook by which theme song MarketPlace plays while "doing the numbers" — "We're in the Money" or "Stormy Weather" tell us almost all we need to know. I even tried Susan Stamberg's mother-in-law's Pepto Bismol pink cranberry relish recipe this past Thanksgiving (pretty good, if you like horseradish).

One way you know you have crossed the line from fan to fanatic is when your 12-year-old son downloads 15 podcasts of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me for a family road trip. It turns out, though, that family inculcation is not that unusual for NPR listeners. In a great new volume chronicling public radio history called This is NPR: The First Forty Years, Cokie Roberts writes about why she keeps getting up at five a.m. every Monday for Morning Edition:

"Because of the listeners. If you want to be heard by young people, farmers, the chief executives of the Fortune 500, members of Congress, players in the media, and especially moms, NPR's the place for you. Those of us who have been around for a long time constantly have the experience of some young—or not so young—person coming up to us and saying, "I grew up listening to you." And we always joke: 'Your mother made you listen in the car, didn't she?' Somewhat to their embarrassment, they admit it's true."

It is true. My kids have grown up listening to NPR. It has sparked great discussions about everything from the history of mustard (heard on a Wisconsin public radio station in the middle of the night) to the second Iraq war, which started when my middle son was 6 (he is now 14). His question then: "How can we go to war with Iraq?" At least that's what I heard. I tried to explain, but failed miserably. "Mom, what are you talking about? How can we be at war? 'A rock' just sits there unless you throw it at someone." Which pretty much sums up my feelings about our invasion of that country.

Some people like their weather and traffic on the ones. Others prefer to tune in to polarizing pundits on the left or the right. Still others (my husband) go for Howard Stern or one of the other shock jocks. If my kids want music, they can always plug in their earbuds, but even when they complain, I know they really want me to win Carl Kassell's voice on our home answering machine.

Me, I'm an NPR fanatic. I learn something new every day. I laugh, I cry, I get mad at the people with whom I disagree, because NPR presents many sides of a story. My thirst for knowledge is both fed and stimulated—often simultaneously. I'm guilty of putting extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as I sit in my running car listening to the end of a story. And I'm embarrassed to say I haven't pledged as much as I should. But I swear, the minute my first book is published, I'm going to become a dollar-a-day member.

Do you have a favorite NPR program or personality? Or do you hang out more in the middle of the dial. Please feel free to comment here.

Second Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge

2011-01-16T17:00:00.004-06:00

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.

Play On, Said Shakespeare

2010-12-16T19:36:00.003-06:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who play a musical instrument and those who wish they did. I have always wanted to be one of those people who could sit down at the piano and play any song by ear, so people could sing along to their favorite tunes. I took piano lessons for years, but don't practice now and am not very good. I keep saying I'll take it up again, but I already have too many (way too many) projects.

I also played clarinet during middle school. I was always second chair. First chair was held by a boy named Mike, who I believe went on to study at Juilliard. I retained second chair status not because of my clarinet skills, but because I was a good sight reader (thanks to those piano lessons). I never wanted to play clarinet. I wanted to play oboe, but our conductor said I didn't have the right embrasure and that we already had an oboe player. Never mind that we had 13 clarinet players.

As any parent of neophyte musicians knows, those early years can be painful. Squeaks and squawks, missed beats, wrong notes and rhythmic challenges are all part of the territory. Among our children, we have ~~suffered through~~ enjoyed two trumpet players, two violinists, a saxophonist, two pianists and a drummer. This does not count their Rock Band sessions.

We beg them to practice. We rent instruments and pay for lessons. We attend school events euphemistically called "concerts". We provide "black bottoms, white tops and black dress shoes" for said concerts. We smile and clap and pretend to recognize the songs they are playing. We endure 73,248 performances of "Hot Cross Buns". We buy band and orchestra fund-raising ~~crap~~ products. We schlep them to rehearsals at 7:15 in the morning twice a week. We secretly wonder why.

But then one day, usually sometime during middle school, the squeaks and squawks turn into sounds that vaguely resemble … music. At first, you're not quite sure you actually heard what you think you heard. But, then, sure enough, you identify a melody. Your ears stop bleeding. You recognize that though your child may not be a prodigy, there is a certain level of proficiency that has been attained. You pat yourself on the back for providing this cultural immersion, knowing that they will carry their love of music with them for the rest of their lives.

It's usually about this time that they decide to quit.

Last week, we attended the winter concert of our two youngest children. It was the school's "Winter Concert", as our public school no longer gives holiday concerts. The short video (I promise, it's just just 33 seconds) showcases the one holiday medley they played and features our curly blonde mop-topped saxophonist (in about the middle of your screen) and our shaggy brunette trumpet player behind him to the left.

If you still think this does not sound like music, then you either never took up an instrument yourself or your children have not yet started. If you thoroughly enjoyed it, then your children are still at the squeaky, squawky stage. I feel your pain. Either way, I hope it brought a smile. Donations may be sent to the Bearman Musical Scholarship Fund. Any level of contribution welcome. Comments are also welcome here.

Happy, happy, merry, merry to one and all.

Happy Haul-idays! 2KoP First-ever Giveaway

2010-12-07T13:56:00.003-06:00

There are two kinds of people in the world — those lamenting the decline of publishing as we know it and those who believe that books are just too important to fade away. I love books. I love the Internet, too, but it's not the same as reading a book. I think e-Readers play an increasing and interesting role in the world of writing and reading, but they aren't books.

This holiday season (like every holiday season in my past) — I will be celebrating with books — giving some and, if I'm lucky, receiving some as gifts. Imagine my joy when I learned that Chronicle Books is offering bloggers the opportunity to win $500 worth of books. Even better, if you comment on this post, we could both win. Simple as that. This is my first-ever giveaway post here on Two Kinds of People. I hope it makes you as happy as it has made me. Here's my Chronicle Books wish list, in order of discovery:

Lotta Jansdotter Seedlings Journal $9.95
L is for Lollygag — Quirky Words for the Clever Tongue $12.99
Show and Tell — Exploring the Fine Art of Children's Book Illustration by Dilys Evans $24.99
This is NPR — by Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, Noah Adams, John Ydstie, Renee Montagne, Ari Shapiro, and David Folkenflik $29.95
You're a Genius All the Time: Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, by Jack Kerouac $12.95
Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights — by Robert Schnakenberg $16.95
You Know You're a Writer When … — by Adair Lara $9.95
Writer's Workshop in a Book — The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction — edited by Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez $14.95
No Plot? No Problem! A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days — by Chris Baty $14.95
Art of McSweeney's — by the Editors of McSweeney $45.00
Creature ABC — by Andrew Zuckerman $19.99
Creature Floor Puzzles — by Andrew Zuckerman $24.95
Duck! Rabbit! – by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld $16.99
Eric Carle Decorative Prints — by Eric Carle $24.95
The Lonesome Puppy — by Yoshitomo Nara $17.99
Creature — by Andrew Zuckerman $60.00
Eric Carle Animal Lacing Cards — by Eric Carle $14.95
Eric Carle Animal Flash Card s — by Eric Carle $14.95
The Doorbells of Florence: Fictional Stories and Photographs — by Andrew Losowsky $18.95
This is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Works — edited by Kathy Kiernan and Retha Powers $16.95
Walk the Dog: A Parade of Pooches from A-Z — by Bob Barner $9.99
Amazing Animals: Snakes $5.99
Amazing Animals: Parrots $5.99
Animals Nobody Loves — by Seymour Simon $7.99
Simms Taback's City Animals — by Simms Taback $12.99
Happy Hamster — by Mathijs van der Paauw $9.95
Hope Valley Mix & Match Stationery — by Denyse Schmidt $8.95
Animal Greetings Mix & Match Stationery — by $8.95

That's a whole lot of book love (with a few peripherals thrown in for fun). Some I'd like for me, some I'd like for gifts, some I want for other, secret reasons. I know the list is a bit … eclectic … but, hey, I'm hard to pin down when it comes to books. If you would like the chance to win these books, comment here. If you think you might like someone else's list better (to each his or her own), you can check out other bloggers participating in this contest or write your own post with your own list. Be sure to leave a comment here and let me know if you do, but be quick about it: last day for entries is 12/10 and winners will be announced on 12/13. Good luck to us all.

Update 12/13/10: Sad to say we did not win. Congratulations to cakespy.com (sort of. I guess. I'm really happy for them. Really.) Happy Holidays, all. I guess we'll have to go to the book store.

Happy Prematurity Awareness Day

2010-11-17T00:01:00.040-06:00

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?

2010-11-09T17:02:00.002-06:00

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:

Primary schools, in which are taught reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to every infant of the State, male and female.
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.
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."

NaNoWriMo Here We Go

2010-10-31T23:00:00.003-05:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who do NaNoWriMo and those who do not.

What is NaNoWriMo? I'm glad you asked. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's a voluntary act of craziness whereby participants pledge to write 50,000 original words during the month of November.

What do you get if you "win". The right to say you did it. And you get to change your website badge from "participant" to "winner". That's it. No writing contract. No money. No fame. Just the satisfaction of showing yourself and the rest of the world that you can do it.

In other words, it is the literary equivalent to running a marathon.

Why am I doing it? Oh, well that's a whole other question. First, this is absolutely the closest I will ever get to running a marathon. I don't actually run IRL, but I am happy to take the metaphor and run with it.

Next, I have a project that I've been wanting to get on paper (or on disk, as the case may be). It's a story that I know well and have been meaning to write for a long time. This seems like the perfect opportunity to splatter my shitty first draft all over my screen.

NaNoWriMo is about quantity, not quality. As their website explains, "The Kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly." For me, personally, it's a chance to tell my extremely vocal inner editor to shove it for 30 days. My goal is to let the writing take me where it may.

Last week, Mary Scruggs, a writing teacher from the famed Second City, talked to us at Off Campus Writers' Workshop (OCWW) about an improvisation game called "Yes, and …." One of the golden "rules" of improv is that you are to take what others say, acknowledge it and build on it. In other words, be supportive of your fellow cast mates and what they want to say. Mary pointed out that writers tend to hear our inner voices and respond with "No, no, no, no, no." What if, instead, we listened to our inner voices — our characters — and responded with "yes, and …"? Where could that take our writing? Would we go places we've never gone before? In other words, be supportive of your characters and what they want to say.

I'm looking at NaNoWriMo as one big experiment in saying "yes, and …" to my inner voice.

A writer friend who I have only met online, the fabulous Lisa Romeo, suggested that we partner up for this year's NaNoWriMo. When she asked, I jumped. First, I respect her as a writer and teacher, and if she thinks it's worth doing, then I believe it is. Second, it's always better to be accountable to someone. Who else would care whether I do this or not (except you, of course, Dear Reader)?

BTW, I won't be posting this month of writing here on Two Kinds of People, or even on my shitty first draft blog — SFD @ 2KoP. The whole point is to create a first draft, for me and me alone, a starting point. Then comes revision, revision, revision, editing, polishing and then … who knows. But first comes the shitty first draft.

So, tomorrow is day one. I've installed a little counter there on my side bar. That way you can all help keep me honest. Scroll back up to the top of this post to see one of the web badges designed for this year's NaNoWriMo. I'm not quite sure how that particular image relates to writing in quantity, but I hope this whole project doesn't make a monkey out of me. Here we go. Wish me luck, or tell me I'm crazy in a comment here.

Ed. note, 11/2/10: Last night, my youngest (12-year-old) son read this post and decided to join in the fun, signing up for NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program. He has pledged 50K words, too. Here's my post about it on SheWrites. Seth does not have his own blog (yet!), so feel free to leave your words of encouragement for him here and I'll be sure to pass them along.

You Just Never Know

2010-10-19T13:23:00.002-05:00

Laura Munson at a reading sponsored by the wonderful Book Stall of Winnetka.

You never know when or where or how you are going to meet someone who will touch your life in a meaningful way. I "met" the lovely and talented Laura Munson through an online writing forum called SheWrites. We struck up an e-mail conversation, which resulted in a phone conversation and then a real life meetup last month when she traveled from her home in Montana to visit family in Illinois and promote her touching, best-selling memoir, This is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness.

While she was in town, Laura spoke at a benefit and shared the podium with Dr. Gary Hammer, director of the adrenal cancer program at The University of Michigan (go blue!). Laura posted about her personal experience with adrenal cancer on her blog These Here Hills. The post, "Rare Cancer, Rare Doctor" also ran in the Huffington Post on 10/18/10.

Because this is such an important message, and because Dr. Hammer's hypothetical letter to a hypothetical patient is a powerful treatise on the doctor-patient partnership, and because the post includes a beautiful Two Kinds of People reference, I am honored to include it here today as a guest post. Please read and share.

Rare Cancer. Rare Doctor.

by Laura Munson

Amazing people have come into my life lately, and I can’t help but feel a deep knowing that it is nothing close to coincidence. Doctor Gary Hammer is one of them.

Dr. Gary Hammer

I met Gary because my sister-in-law was dying of a rare cancer that was supposed to kill her within months of diagnosis. Adrenal Cortical Cancer, or ACC for short. Doctors looked at her gravely. Mayo threw up their hands. There are only 300-600 cases in the US annually. That’s 1 to 2 per million. There was no cure. There was very little research being done. It looked hopeless. This is a cancer that often times lays dormant, wreaking silent havoc in the stomach, often caught too late. It goes where it wants. There’s little to radiate or chemotherapize. She was going to die, and fast. Five kids under 16. A woman who never drank alcohol, did drugs, smoked. An athlete, a practitioner of positive thinking and positive being, the definition of community leader, Sandra was that “one.” The one who defined the difference between the “two kinds of people: the ones who think about things, and the ones who do things.” Sandra was a doer.

So when she was stripped of her future, she caught her breath, and then she did the impossible. She lived for another nine years. She lived on will and positive affirmation and love. And then eventually, the cancer came back, and the only hope fell in the hands of a man who has devoted his life’s work to finding a cure for ACC. Gary Hammer, who is the University of Michican’s director of their adrenal cancer program. He is one of the only doctors in the US doing research on her kind of rare cancer. One of the only people in the world. When she barely had the energy to walk down the stairs of her home, Sandra participated in his clinical trial, travelling week after week with a family shepherd from her home in Ft. Collins to Denver to Chicago and back in the same day, processing the side-effects of the treatment, which is essentially a pesticide banned in the 1950s for use on crops. Because who wants to put money into such a quick killer of so very few. If you ask her children this question, they’ll try to find grace, because that’s what they learned from their mother. But inside they feel mad, ripped off, and beyond shocked that they live in a country that even still has expendable populations. How are they supposed to find trust again? How are they supposed to find faith after this tragic loss?

Gary Hammer is their link to making sense of loss, tragedy. It’s doctors like him around the globe who are blazing new trail, despite the odds, and in-so-doing, become the gatekeepers to new terrain. I am so inspired by Gary and his work, and also by his spirit. He has not detached from the heartbreak of his chosen field. He has moved deeper into it. He learns from his patients and has much to teach us about finding freedom even, and especially in the most challenging times. He is the sort of person who reminds us to have faith in the things that matter right now, wherever we are in our lives. My nieces and nephews can’t regain their mother, but they can rediscover faith.

My book is about rediscovering faith. Faith in yourself, against the odds. Mine were different odds. But finding faith in yourself is fundamental, whether it’s in death or love or both. For we all face both. In my book, there is a section that has to do with clear vision in the midst of crisis. The crisis, as you may know, had to do with my marriage, but on a deeper level, it had to do with my husband’s relationship with himself. Like me, he had rigged it that his personal worth was only as good as his career success, and though he worked so very hard, he wasn’t seeing financial results. He went into a crisis of self in which he questioned his love for me and our marriage. I felt that this was a crisis of his own self, and felt in my gut that the best thing I could do was to get out of his way. To not engage the drama. To focus on what I could control, and let go of the rest.

There began a time of soul searching for my husband that came together with crystal clarity when he went to be the family shepherd, assisting his sister on the long trek from her home in Colorado to the clinical trial here in Chicago and back again. He called me from the waiting room with a tone in his voice I hadn’t heard in a long time. He was flattened by the weight of cancer all around him. Whatever fears he had about our finances and his job were washed upon the shores of his own good physical health, and his relationships. “It’s who you love and how you love,” he said, as humble as I’d ever heard him. That was his sister’s gift to him. To us. She passed away a few months later. And in her dying, she taught those of us who loved her how to live.

Her message was to find the freedom of the present moment. To affirm life in all its abundance right where you are, whether you’ve been given months to live, or if your husband has announced that he no longer loves you. Her message was and is one of empowerment.

Gary has written something that is ground breaking. He debuted it last week in Chicago at a hospital fundraiser where we were the keynote speakers. You could have heard a pin drop, but for the tears. I would like to share it here. I have never known a doctor to show this sort of vulnerability. Here is his hypothetical letter to a doctor from a patient diagnosed with cancer, and his hypothetical repsonse. This is the very definition of empathy. I am honored to have him in my life and to call him friend. Please pass this along to everyone you can think of who would benefit from it. It gives us hope.

To that end, here is what appeared the night my sister-in-law died. Over her house, for all of us to see. I’m going to believe that it is possible to make rainbows if we want to deeply enough.

Dr. Hammer, then, is making rainbows in acts like [this open letter to cancer patients] (get out your tissue).

-------------
Thank you Laura. Thank you Dr. Hammer.

Comments welcome comments here.

Split Personality

2010-10-14T00:36:00.006-05:00

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.