Sara Zarr recently wrote about “listening to whole CDs at a time again, not as background music but as a discrete activity that involves full engagement.” She’s not the only one re-discovering the joy of the artistic whole represented by a well-crafted album of songs. In the last eight days I’ve seen Guster play in …
Category Archives: Arts and Creativity
Fall Break Images
This past weekend I celebrated Fall Break by asking Ted to join me on a quick brewery/disc golf tour of southwest Michigan. We visited New Holland Brewing Company in Holland, MI as well as Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids. In between, we shot up to Silver Lake, a place I hadn’t been since high school. …
Toledo Zoo
In late August, on a visit to Tiffin University’s Toledo Academic Center, I swung by the Toledo Zoo to exercise my membership card. I was there for just an hour, but had lots of fun with the seals and taking pictures.
Read it again!
Little kids love to hear the same story over and over again. Even when they know the words by heart, they cry out for some beloved adult to read some treasured narrative over and over, and woe be unto anyone who forgets a word or tries out a new version. Growing up in church, we …
2009 Glen Workshop: Day 7
Day 7 dawned bright and early and with a few butterflies in the tummy as I headed off to have my poems critiqued. We ended up working on the ghost story and the robin–both works that were in need of revising. It appears that my more imagist tendencies were less successful than my narrative inclinations. …
2009 Glen Workshop: Day 6
After a restful (very late) day, it’s back to action. The morning workshop was back to its by-now expected energy and support. In the afternoon, Bob and I headed out to Arroyo Chamisos DGC for a round of disc golf. After a rough start, I pulled it together and shot a -4. The key: put …
2009 Glen Workshop: Free Day
Without a car, I had no plans for free day. However, as often happens at the Glen, a wave of communal energy swept me up into a group headed to the International Folk Art Museum on Museum Hill. Since the museum doesn’t allow pics inside the galleries, there’s no images to share. I can say …
2009 Glen Workshop: Day 4
Today was definitely overload day. After another energetic and fulfilling morning of workshopping, I ended lunch by having a long conversation with the workshop leader, Marilyn Nelson. In the afternoon, I imbibed the bracing words of Barry Moser who, among other things, challenged us to give up the label “artist” and refer to ourselves by …
2009 Glen Workshop: Day 3
Into the groove. More workshopping. (this is a clapping group. rather odd.) More reading. Heard Valerie Sayers read a fantastic story about baseball. Ate more food. Pondered the reasons why God sends people to talk to me whom He knows annoy me. Continued work on combover poem. It’s very late, and my brain is now …
2009 Glen Workshop: Day 2
“Poets make the best killers.” At least, that’s what Marilyn Nelson reported Tom Clancy saying in a workshop she had with him. Not sure what he meant by that, but it was an interesting comment on the first day of work on poems. We spent some good time on William Meredith’s “Jain Bird Hospital in …
