Week in a Sentence Release, with love.

I’m finally home from Philadelphia.  What a great week – from sessions at the NWP meeting, to Independence Hall, a fun Writing marathon and Philly Cheese Steaks, it was really edifying and so much fun.  The trip home was grueling, but we arrived with  vouchers for round trip tickets to anywhere in the continental U.S., and my own bed was waiting at the end of it all, so I have no complaints!  Here are the sentences for last week, with all the love they carry, along with links to their blogs.  This is a good chance to curl up and read some really interesting blogs!  The sentences don’t need any commentary from me as they all speak from the heart:

Ken Allan:

If by this muse love’s music rings untrue
Let this then be the last I ring for you.

newmiddle-earth.blogspot.com/

Tracy Rosen:

I love my students and who I can be when I am with them.

leadingfromtheheart.org

Connie Weber:

I simply LOVE being immersed in discussions about the latest research on neuroscience; here in Cambridge at the Learning and the Brain Conference, I am trying to upload the memory boards in my own personal brain, and got a list of what to increase: reflective time (!), exercise, and, of course, some F2F personal time with friends.
firesidelearning.ning.com

Shaun:

I love sunny Saturday afternoons in my hammock.

shaunwoodictblog.blogspot.com

Mathew:

Two weeks until graduate school is over and done with and I can begin blogging again.

needleworkspictures.com/ocr/blog

sarah p-c:

knowing that no matter how crazy life gets, it’ll all get done – i love that.

sarap-c.blogspot.com

Kevin, as always has set a new bar with his sentence! (The bar is high for me, indeed, as I hope I can figure out how to embed this long code!)  He says: (In the vein of loving exploration, I created a Prezi of my sentence. I just learned how to use it yesterday. — Kevin)

It is called Day in a Sentence: Love.  It is lovely.  After attempting it in at least six different ways, however, I seem to be completely inept at embedding this prezi, so here is the link to it:

http://prezi.com/ec1vvoas7dnc/

dogtrax.edublogs.org

Alicia, at stuckinmypedals:

I found love in the sky yesterday as my plane flew out in a pink Redding sunrise and arrived in the red of a Philadelphia sunset.

blogs.norcalwp.org/alicia/

Sara:

Tonight, I love listening to my daughters (ages 7 and 5) fight with each other about who is going to read to mama (me) first.

Jim:

I love the unseasonably warm weather this week here in Michgian.

theskinny.edublogs.org

Gail P:

I will LOVE seeing November finally come to a close so the report cards and long term sub plans are finished at last!

poulingail.edublogs.org

Bonnie Kaplan (of blkdrama) and I worked on our NaNoWriMo novels together in Philly:

I LOVE spending time in the city of LOVE writing with YOU!

digitalbonnie.com

Elona Hartjes: Congratlations to you!

Yesterday was our 42nd wedding anniversary-that’s a lot of love.

teachersatrisk.com

Anne Mirtschin:

I love meeting my online friends and have met many of them including Clay Burell ex Korea, whilst attending the two day Learning Technologies conference in Queensland.

murcha.wordpress.com

Mary in Missouri:

I love the photo opportunity the three inches of feather-like snowflakes provided this week.

missouriwestern.edu/plwp

Cheryl Oakes:

I love when my students say, “Mrs. Oakes, we love our NING site!”

cheryloakes.com

Paul Bogush:

I love starting class off with a story.

blogush.edublogs.org

Delaine (dkzody):

While continuing to teach my classes, I am packing boxes for our San Francisco apartment.

dkzody@wordpress.com

Nancy:

Even though I LOVE my daughter, I do not LOVE the early advent of the Terrible Twos. *sigh*

sehacecamino.com

Janice Robertson:

Although I love giving children deep, rich questions to solve in math class, I do NOT love the amount of time one question consumes nor how far behind I get week after week.

web.me.com/janicerobertson

And I’ll end with my own sentence:

I’m loving being here in Philadelphia, sharing friendship, ideas and laughter with so many good friends from all over the United States.  And I’m also loving being back home again, getting ready for Thanksgiving with my family.

Thanks everyone for participating!

Week in a Sentence from Philadelphia

Hello Everyone,

It’s my turn to host the Week in a Sentence extravaganza, and I’m excited to be doing so from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.  I’m attending the National Writing Project’s Annual Meeting here, attending some great presentations and meeting up with so many special friends from all over the country.  Given all this, I’d like to suggest that you include the word “Love” in your sentence somehow this week.  Just add your sentence as a comment to my blog and I’ll collect them until Sunday afternoon, when I will release them.  I look forward to reading your sentences this week!

Here is mine:

I’m loving being here in Philadelphia, sharing friendship, ideas and laughter with so many good friends from all over the United States.

It’s November: NaNoWriMo!

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m absent from this blog at the moment. Once again it is NaNoWriMo time and I am working sort of feverishly on my novel yet again. Doing this project makes writing in my blog look oh, so attractive. Short concise posts, adorned with a photo. No dialogue, no longterm commitment to any uncontrollable characters. Writing in my blog in November is an expensive (timewise) distraction to my mounting wordcount. I mean, I’ve already written 60 words in this post that could’ve gone toward my goal of 50,000 this month. So I’ve gotta go. We’ll see if I post any snippets of the novel here. I might be onto something today, but don’t hold your breath. You’d do just as well to wait for December.

I’ll just post a little self portrait I took out at the river yesterday. And then I’ll be back after I hit 50K! Have a good month!!

My Favorite Apps

Oh yes, I have an iPhone and I looove it.  Really, this is the most useful piece of technology I can think of.  It’s in close competition with my new MacBook Pro.  Sometimes I forget how useful it is, and I just play solitaire on it a lot, but then I need something and I remember to go look to see if “there’s an app for that.”  And usually there is.   So today I thought I’d share some of my faves here.  I do like to share them, and writing about them will allow me to further postpone the flurry of housecleaning that was underway until I took this break.  (Hence, if you think this is the most boring topic you can imagine, just come back in a few days and it’ll be something else.)

So without further adieu, here is my short list of some apps I especially like, sort of arranged in categories:

Photography: Camera Genius (zoom lens, the whole screen is the shoot button.) Color Splash (you take a color photo, make it black and white, then recolor only certain parts.) Photogene (Broad range of photo editing devices.) PhotoShare (This one beams a photo to another iPhone.) Klick (direct access to Flickr.) and of course, Flickr.

Budgeting: iXpenseit (This is so cool for watching how you spend money.  It’s my current best one.)

Productivity: Like I’m productive?  If I was productive I wouldn’t be doing this right now.  But, I do have one called Things.  It’s sort of a simple way of keeping track of projects and to-dos.  I always forget to use it – go figure – but it looked so good when I got it.  I think I am just challenged in this department.  I”ll probably start really using it any day now.

Weight Maintenance: Lose It!  This enables you to keep track of what you eat, and set a calories budget for the day as well as weight loss goals.  It also lets you look up the calories in the food you eat.  I’m better at inputting my money than my food, but this one has super potential.  (If you’re not me.)  Gym ABC is one that helps you set up a training program, right on your phone.  I will definitely be using both of these a lot.  Pretty soon.

Books and Music:  Shazam (Identifies music playing so you can find and buy it if you want.  It’s a little temperamental, but works well if you aren’t too far from the music.) Pandora (This one is sooo cool.  You just input an artist and it goes and finds a radio station that plays that music or other music like it.  And then your phone acts like a radio.)

Other:  Sunrise (this one tells at what time the sun will rise and set wherever you are.  Or you can input another location I think.  I like this cause I like to get to the river on time for the sunset, or a little early.  This helps me plan.)  App Gems (This one lists MacWorld’s current favorite apps.)  Solebon Solitaire. (A whole bunch of solitaire games.  Addicting.) Koi Pond (Novelty, it is what it says.  You touch the screen and water splashes quietly, the koi swim away.  I know, over the top.  I didn’t buy it but I do like it!)

Which brings me to the cost part.  They weren’t all free, and a couple actually cost $5.00.  But I’ve only done that twice.  The rest were $2.00 or less and most were free.  So, what are your favorite apps?

That ole’ man river, he just keeps movin’ along.

For the past several weeks, on Saturday and Sunday in the late afternoon I’ve had to go to the river to see the end of the day.  Something just pulls me out there.  And of course, my photographer self doesn’t think I’ve seen something unless I can look at it again later, which has produced a prodigous collection of sky shots.  Today I stood on the bank, watching the sky and the river moving by and I remembered that song, “Old Man River.”

I suddenly remembered, in a different way from before, about  the magic of a river.  The sameness of its movement; whether summer low or winter high, crashing rapids or placid meandering, it just keeps on moving.  Sun up, sun down, moon or no, it does the same thing all the time.  Sometimes in summer it seems to be benign, just a shallow current, its holes and snags hidden from sight.  Then sometimes in winter it rises up and takes over, breaking levees and taking homes, trees, animals and sometimes people with it.  Its power is undeniable in flood season.  And so captivating.  No matter its threat, one is drawn to see it, to see how high it is, whether it has taken over the road yet, whether this year it’ll be even higher than last.

In past years, I’ve spent a quite a bit of time on this and other rivers, but it’s been a long time on dry land for me now.  I always counted on my partner to put the canoe on the truck, to generate the motivation to get to the river.  I just packed a lunch and went.  Today as I watched that water determinedly, placidly moving along I wanted to go along with it. I felt landlocked, stranded on the shore.  I wanted to just gut up and follow the current.  That feeling is a parallel to other things in my life that I feel unable to do.  Maybe it’s time to shift that stuckness, just a little, just to see what could happen.

Art and Music

(Clancy Callahan and Tom Barrett playing music at the opening of Clancy’s mom, Cathy Eide’s exhibition  of paintings.)

The other night I went to see Cathy Eide’s art opening at Cafe Flo.  I was interested to see what she paints, and was really excited to hear Clancy sing.  I’ve known her since she was very young and never knew until this week that she sings.  Tom played and sang with her, and it was a fun night.  Clancy’s voice is rich and rollicking and her songs are fun.  For me they were evocative of a time many years go when I was married to a jug band musician, and used to sing along with him sometimes.  She and Tom sang the same songs he did, and did it ever take me back.  Back to a time when I thought the music could carry us along, through rocky and slow times.  As long as we could sing through it we’d be okay.  The music was a leveler of sorts.  He didn’t seem to feel the same way about it, because he walked away without a backward glance a couple of years into the deal.  After the child was born.  Twenty years later music carried me through some hard times.  As long as I could sing I didn’t cry because the singing touched the same place inside.  Although I’ll admit there were some times I cried and sang at the same time.  Not satisfying to sing while crying, but it couldn’t be helped.  Sometimes the singing won out over the crying, however and I felt great comfort when that happened.  Somewhere along the line, in the past fifteen or so, I forgot about the music.  How did I do that?  How could I forget the music?

Today I went to an Open Studios tour, to three different yards and art shows.  There were quilts, paintings, ceramics, glass, beads, gourds, fountains and metal gates.  Wonderful back yards and studios.  I used to quilt.  I poured my passion there, combining strong vibrant colors with deep black and then hand quilting them with black and shiny gold thread.  The touch of the fabric, the colors and the sculpting of it with my needle and thread filled my heart.  I was disappointed every time I finished one.  But there was always one more to begin.  For a while I had a studio upstairs where I could work in peace, yet could still see and hear my children below in the yard.  I worked then, but my job didn’t satisfy my need for creativity so I did that outside of my work.  Once I became a teacher I used so much creativity in my work that I faded out of quiltmaking.  I haven’t finished one since I became a teacher.  For a long time that was okay with me.  I was doing other things, writing and making little mandalas on black paper.  I still kept it going, often with my students.  I believe that to write well you need to activate both sides of the brain, and that meant doing an art project before writing a essay.  It seemed to work well for my students and me.

Times have changed again.  For the past three or so years my job has not been especially creative for a variety of reasons.  I seem to have quit doing any art and I barely even listen to music any more.  Only recently have I begun to sing again.  I take pictures now and have begun to regain my vision.  Today’s tour of studios and backyards has inspired me to step it up a notch.  Not sure yet what that means.  We’ll see.  In the meantime, you’ll have to excuse me.  I need to go put some music on and clean my house.

Time for a shift

After posting it on iPhoto, I looked and looked at this photo, trying to figure out what it was.  I recognized the white circles as part of my blouse.  Oh, and above them my hair.  I have not a clue how or why this shot happened, but it seems to be fitting for the way I’m thinking tonight.  Over the past couple of days or so it’s become obvious to me that it’s time for a shift.  Long ago I learned from a wise person that if you want to make a change, you don’t have to make a big one all at once.  You just have to make a small shift somewhere to give your energy room to move and change will follow.  The weather has changed and it’s time for that little nudge.  I’ve been so mired in past sludge, and pulled down by ongoing drudgery that I seem to have lost my glow lately.  Everything hs been hot and dry and kind of gritty around my house.  At work, oh I don’t even want to talk about work. When someone asks me what I like to do when I go home I don’t know what to say.  Read?  Only just before bed.  I seem to just sit around and wait for it to be time to start tomorrow.

But this week the weather changed.  The hot tub is once again an attractive option.  Taking walks in the evening sounds pleasant, as does cooking something simple to eat.  Reclaiming my house as my own safe haven by cleaning it all and fixing a few things feels like a necessity all of a sudden.  I had no problem ignoring it all summer, but now I want it cozy.  The list of changeable things is long, but for now, just a little shift is all I need.  More to come…