Vergil's Coffee Table

One of the things I think we as writers (or those who write) can struggle with is that empty, blank screen (or sheet of paper). Sometimes it’s just coming up with the idea and just sitting out the silence until the conversation with the screen or paper can begin.

I recently found through a friend on Twitter (trillian1117 aka Cindy) a nifty little program that forces us to write. It’s called “Write or Die” and can be found at the same name on the web: www.writeordie.com.

The gist: you plug in how many words within how many minutes you want to type and then the screen comes up and you are taunted (or reminded if you sit there too long without any activity). Cool website and desktop version (if you like to pay for a few extras).

Now, I just finished this piece in just under four minutes.

I’ve been concerned with getting to the stop early, when the real trick as a commuter is to be on time. Early is wasting time and acting like a driver who is trying to ride public transportation; a commuter is stepping on the platform or to the stop as the train or bus is arriving.

Because the world needs more blogs, I started 500SheetsOfPaper.com as a way to reflect on ways we are sometimes forced to make little changes in our lives that might just be worthwhile.

As we’re thinking of how to get Colin to become more comfortable with writing, we turned to a natural choice: have him write about things he likes, the things he researches just for him. And how should he do the writing? Well, it seems like blogging would be a reasonable choice.

So, I’ll be setting up a blog for him on my webserver space and probably be using a WordPress backend. Right now I’m trying out an free blogging tool Qumana (as noted at the end of this post) and seeing how it translates over to the actual site.

Beyond that, we’ll be encouraging him to write something each day (much like a daily journal) and hopefully I’ll post the url when I get things set up on this end so you can follow his progress.

Powered by Qumana

Using the ReadWriteWeb article to test out a live blogging:

A nice run on a nice day…here’s the numbers:
CHRIS JUDSON 55 M4044 M GOSHEN 46:48 1:42:04 2:41:26 3:37:54 8:19

Yes, that’s right: you should watch as much television as you want. And, I would suggest that you watch some good television with your family. And, I’d like to mention: television is one of the best ways to grow your mind and strengthen your relationships. Sure, television has gotten a bad rap, but you have to admit: there’s some really good television programming out there and to not watch all of that creative impulse would be a shame.

Oh, and don’t believe all the garbage folk say about the glory of reading books; sometimes television is just better.

Some of my fondest memories growing up have more to do with something I watched on television rather than from reading a book. For us, it was home from school, then 2 hours of television, dinner, and another 2 or so hours of prime-time programming. On Fridays, lots of television and Saturdays were a day specifically made for kid television from 7 in the morning all the way to American Bandstand and, if you really were daring, you might watch Soul Train (if you understood it, which I did not). Outside for some riding around on bikes in the afternoon and then incredible television Saturday night and then there was Sunday…kind of boring stuff until Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and then, most grandly, the Wonderful World of Disney.

Growing up with television in the 70′s and 80′s was a very satisfying activity and I am no more less stupid because I didn’t read many books. I loved television and started to like reading during these years. Book reading is an individual luxury; television watching, a social imperative.

I think at this point I hear the voice of one of my student’s from English 10b: “You’re being hyprocritical,” she says in response to something I said or did. Oh, I read some children’s books yesterday and I just got finished telling the class that I was going to treat them like they were juniors (I said this in response to somebody writing “I’m gay” next to somebody’s picture on the seating chart on the back board).

“You’re being hypocritical,” she says and I’m taken aback. For some reason, I suppose, she was experiencing some disconnect with how I started class Monday and what I was saying Tuesday. I also think that my response was supposed to be “No I’m not.” Instead, I went with the teacher question of “why?” and she explains about the children’s book thing Monday and my junior comment Tuesday. And I respond “So, that’s being hypocritical?” and she caves and says something about it not being a big deal.

Back to those kid Saturday mornings and the 4 or 5 hours of television watching: those were really cool times for cartoons. I was usually the first person awake in our house and I would begin the watching around 7 a.m. But the really good stuff came on at 8 and aside for breaks to get more cereal, I camped out in front of our color television, soaking in wonderful shows such as Hong Kung Phooey, Land of the Lost, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and the many educational learning opportunities from School House Rock. Honestly, nothing really compares to Saturday morning television in the 70s.

And then, the quality programming didn’t end in the morning: Saturday evenings provided one of the best back-to-back drama/fun combinations ever: The Love Boat followed by Fantasy Island. Two hours of special guests (lots of Charo for some reason) and great theme songs and time to watch good, solid, and incredibly predictable plots and subplots on the small screen. (A close second to the back-to-back combo might be Happy Days and then Laverne and Shirley, but I found Fonzi to be an annoying character and Laverne’s sewed-on “L” a bit distracting. Again, though, great theme songs…”We’re gonna do it!”)

We put limits on the boys’ television watching and honestly, they really don’t watch much television (though there was the 2 month stretch when they desperately wanted to watch SpongeBob Square Pants and we put an end to that quickly or, perhaps, they grew out of it). The boys really watch videos more than anything else: all the Pixar stuff and a lot of the DreamWorks features and all of the Star Wars films. They both read books and we read to them and we talk to the boys about their books. We did breakdown and bought a PlayStation 2 a year and a half ago and we also have limits on game playing time (about 30 minutes a day).

But they don’t watch much TV, ever. We did, though, have the television on when the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded over Texas and we made sure that they were watching when the US troups helped tear out the statue of Sadam Hussein and we had them watch Barack Obama become the 44th President of the United States. On our New Years Eve family celebration, we watch Dick Clark (uncomfortable as that is) count down the dropping of the ball. And, about the only shows we watch together are Star Wars: Clone Wars and America’s Funniest Videos. We all sit on the couch and watch the Clone Wars because we like the stories and the characters and there’s just something timeless about what is happening in that 30 minute frame of time. It’s not so much because we’re Star Wars freaks (though, I did see the original movie 12 times in the theater…a fact that I think sometimes frightens Evan a bit). No, I think it’s because the show is about the things we all want from ourselves and each other: hope and honesty and humor. And it’s when we are all there, all four of us, watching this show that makes me smile…knowing that in 5 or 10 or 15 years from now we’ll talk about the show we used to all watch and enjoy together in the house in Goshen.

As for the AFV thing, I don’t know. Maybe one never tires of seeing a cat fall off a table, a kid on a skateboard on a trampoline break a window, or a guy getting hit in the crotch a million different ways. It never gets old and you could never recreate any of those moments as effectively in a book.

You simply have to watch it on television.

I live in a house with seven times zones and my ribs still hurt. Also, I did a bad thing in college and snuck out and saw a movie after curfew and I lied. And, I was the Resident Assistant responsible for enforcing the rules of the college with the guys in the house on Giddings Avenue. And, I don’t wear a watch anymore, but when I did, the watch was much like the one in the back of my classroom: a backwards clock. The hour numbers and the hands all run counterclockwise. I’ve had students tell me that they hate my clock because it represents time in the opposite direction. I hate being injured, though.

Fifteen  days ago, I was playing in one of those intramural basketball games and toward the end of the game I took a shot by somebody’s head or body part into my ribs. And I didn’t think much of it: I’ve played basketball for awhile and I’m used to be banged around (I think I even exaggerated my fall a bit to pick up the foul…I know: a bit pathetic). So got the foul and got back on my feet and the game was over fairly soon anyway. Then the pain and then the worst part: I couldn’t run. I’m into my spring training for spring marathons and it is really annoying that I can’t be training now and I think it’s something I truly hate: not doing something I’m used to doing for me.

It’s not as bad as the time Michael almost shot my eye out with a b-b gun nor the time Brad Frost and I challenged Geometry and Physics on a foggy Saturday morning. The garbage men were coming down our street and most of the houses on Washoe Court were still sleepy. I was the early riser in my family and fortunately my neighbor, Brad Frost was awake and we were trying out a jump that we fashioned from a long piece of plywood and a few two-by-fours that were left over from the shed that my brother made for our rats. So Brad went as fast as he could (I think starting beyond the Ramsey house) and hit the jump and woosh! I marked how far he cleared with some chalk. Then my turn and then his again. And I was thinking that I wanted to fly farther and told Brad to put another piece of wood under the board making a steeper angle. I figured the higher the jump and faster the speed would allow me a farther landing.

Not so. I cranked down hard with my right foot and hit the jump and my bike stop stopped in the wedge of the ramps angle and my body continued its motion forward over the hand bars and my chin met the pavement of Washoe Court.

I’m crying and cupping my chin with blood spilling over and burst into my mom’s room to wake her with my crying, my call for her, my blood on my hand and now on the floor of her room. She takes me to our doctor friend and he cleans things up and puts 10 stitches in my chin.

It took me awhile before I rode that bike again and what’s worse: a Saturday ruined.

I would get stitches again, in high school when I slid into a sprinkler head playing hot vox in Winnamucca, Nevada and having a doctor from Great Britain try to explain how he got stuck in Winnamucca, Nevada. A year later, during a game against Piner High School, I got undercut while going for a high pass and landed horizontal on the basketball court after connecting with the floor with side of my head. More stitches, but nothing broken (which I suppose was a good thing).

A year later, I would get undercut while practicing at the small college I went to in Grand Rapids, Michigan. No stitches this time, but something wacky happened to my back and I got introduced to the world of chiropractors. What a cool experience: fall asleep while they leave put that hot towel on your back whiles your face is in that doughnut-shapped thing. And then, to have someone create a wonderfully satisfying crack sound from your back. I got better and returned to practice two days later. And it’s the next year when my friend Kenton Kober thought it would be a good idea to see a movie (against the college rules), after curfew (against the college rules), with two friends of ours: Rhonda and Debbie (need I say more). But Kenton was insistent about the quality of the film and that it would be worth the several lies and broken rules. The film: Back to the Future and though I might have had some reservation walking into the theater (yes, probably glancing around to make sure that we didn’t get caught). Kenton was correct: a great film with a great soundtrack and we would spend many trips that year in his Ford Pinto listening to Huey Lewis and the News. I think he even got the thing airborne like Streets of San Francisco and Dukes of Hazard after he started all the way back by Franklin Ave and hit the sharp incline into the student parking lot.

The landing wasn’t beautiful, but I don’t think we injured anything.

Not like my ribs and I’m growing a bit impatient. I got the doctor-ordered CT scan and x-rays yesterday and I’m thinking that the results will have the treatment being: just rest a bit more. The treatment is as unsatisfying as the occasion of the injury: nothing huge happened. And yet, I’m am kept away from something I enjoy doing because of a fairly insignificant event. Perhaps injuries are supposed to be insignificant, but I’m refusing the cliche “Maybe it’ll help you slow down and get a new perspective on life.” I say that’s lousy advice and I think I’ll just retain my angry old man persona who scoffs at anyone who he sees running down his street, I don’t wish them ill or malice; I just mutter: “Stupid runner.” Sometimes I find that I’m also muttering about taxes and I wouldn’t be surprised if you see my in a beige leisure suit yelling “You kids…slow down you sons of bitches!” shaking my right hand for emphasis but then holding my right side with my left hand because my ribs still are sore. I’ll probably cough a few times and go inside for a nap.

I think the thing I’ll be most upset about is realizing that when there is that time when my ribs are no longer hurting and I am able to run again, I will have forgotten the pain and will have realized that I wasted a lot time thinking about not running because the pain served as a reminder of my temporary limitations. For to be unable to do what we once did so easily sometimes becomes self-made crisis. And with this little realization, I sometimes will focus on the many representations of time in our house.

For instance, before we left for piano lessons today, I checked all seven time zones: It’s 4:31 pm in our bedroom, 4:07 in the bathroom, 4:02 on the Palm Pilot that serves as our alarm clock, 3:54 in Colin’s room, 3:53 in Evan’s, 3:55 in the kitchen and 3:52 on the Oregon Scientific Atom Clock in the living room. I tried to pin the setting of clocks on Lori but she’s denying all of it. “Well, ” she says, she’ll be responsible for the bedroom clock. Evan chimes in to express his dissatisfaction with the time situation in our house of many time zones but she cuts him off” “It’s not your problem anyway,” she says.

And she’s probably right–about the time and the clocks. It’s all relative, isn’t it: time and pain?

And then I notice she’s wearing my orange watch that I occasionally wear on long runs. “Oh,” she says, “I still can’t find my watch…the thing didn’t keep good time anyway.”

40 Plays in 40 Days

Project Summary: I plan to accomplish the ultimate renewal and experience for anyone who enjoys words: to see performances of all of William Shakespeare’s plays in one summer by actors who are amateurs in the park to professionals on an air-conditioned stage.

I’ll begin with the end to save you from reading the rest of this blog entry: My proposal for the 2009 Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity grant was accepted Saturday. This was my seventh proposal in as many years and I’m a bit happy (and, perhaps, relieved). The grant is all about “teacher renewal”: the idea that wouldn’t it be nice to give teachers in the state of Indiana the chance to do something really cool in the summer so when those same teachers get back into the classroom that fall, the students would be getting back a re-energized teacher?

We are renewed by what gives us happiness and even joy and every once in awhile–perhaps in once in a lifetime–we create an experience that is our ultimate “fantasy.” For the baseball fan, it is a tour of all the Major League stadiums in one summer; for the avid hiker it is to walk the Appalachian Trail; for the marathoner, it is to qualify for the Boston Marathon. And for me, an English teacher and one who spends his days in the classroom talking and reading and discussing the English language, it is to spend a summer with Shakespeare’s plays. The ultimate “rush” is to see all of his plays in one summer. It may mean little to the baseball fan or the hiker or the marathoner, but the concept is the same: to break from normal life and schedule and to over indulge in what pleases me the most: language in its finest form.

That’s the gist of the grant and I was feeling a bit like the Susan Lucci of Teacher Creativity grant writing. Seven years.

Shakespeare’s plays are the backbone to an education in the English speaking world and those plays are also a strong thread to what we teach in schools. Besides the King James Bible, Shakespeare’s plays are, in a sense, a major foundation for how we communicate as thinkers, writers and speakers in the United States. And the cool thing is that Shakespeare borrowed from other traditions and reframed older stories to fit into this language of his. And today we borrow from Shakespeare’s plays in our spoken and written phrases and in our entertainment in its many forms. To go and view and to participate as an audience member in his plays for a summer would return me again to the roots of that language which I use every day in my classroom.

I really liked all of my proposals and I took to heart the idea of what would really jazz me up. I felt as though the first two were good ideas but they were probably not well-thought through (what I mean: the details and the writing probably not that strong). I almost think the judges of these proposals thought “Okay. Nice idea, but really doesn’t sound exciting to me.” When I first heard about the grant, I thought it would be a great experience to train for and participate in the US Chess Open Championships in Pennsylvania. I really liked chess and I thought I would get a lot from the experience, but apparently I didn’t convey that very well. The next year, I proposed getting my private pilot’s license ( a wholly impractical accomplishment, because I had no intent or means to fly planes in the future. I just thought that the challenge of doing something out of my regular routine would be really cool). Apparently, I didn’t convey my desires very well on this proposal either.

But this is not a mere “totally cool trip” for an English major teacher. If you talk with the baseball fan, it’s not merely the stunt of going to every baseball stadium for the sake of just merely watching a baseball. For the hiker, it isn’t merely to say that one has merely walked the AT in a summer or two and “Here’s the pictures” to prove it. For the marathoner, it isn’t merely to run another 26.2 miles in a specified time so that one can merely run in Boston. For the amateur (literally, “the lovers”) of each of these pursuit, it is about awe and mystery and deep revival of one’s spirit.

It had been awhile since I’ve been home at this point in 2003, so the next proposal, I tried to think of a way of getting back to Northern California and do something that would rejuvenate my teacher batteries. Obvious answer: study and research Jack London in the Valley of the Moon area by Glen Ellen, California (just a valley over from where I grew up). I loved the quote from London: “All I wanted to do is to find a place to write” and that’s what I wrote I would do for that summer.

For me, to attend all of Shakespeare’s plays in one summer is in a sense a stunt: can I do it? It will force me out of my normal summer activity and into a movement around the Midwest for the occasion of play. But like the baseball fan, the hiker, the marathoner, this experience has a totally other layer of meaning to it, and that meaning lies within the awe and mystery of language on a stage. It is the thing I do each day in my classroom, where my classroom is the stage and language is the “thing.”

My next three follow a common theme: the inuksuk of the Inuit people in Nunavut, Canada. I’ve been drawn to theses structures for some time and thought it would be cool to go to Bafflin Island and #4: take pictures, run in a marathon in Arctic Canada, and write about the experience; #5: take pictures and build an inuksuk garden in our backyard; and, #6: take pictures and notes, travel around Northern Indiana to take pictures and notes, and then write a longer non-fiction article about the beauty of both landscapes. I felt really good about the last one and had a really kind letter of recommendation from the author Kristen Laine (a wonderful writer and a person whom I was looking forward to working with on the project). Apparently I couldn’t rouse the imagination of the judges, because I got another 3 rejection letters.

Each day as a teacher I engage in a play and in play; each person has their role and the stage is where, as essayist David Sedaris suggests, two or more people pause and look. I’m not suggesting that the roles and the script are stale; in fact, the roles and script are dynamic because we are human and when humans are put in a certain situation and certain conflicts arise, characters move the story line along and often we relearn lessons that have been repeated time and again. I am energized by being in the classroom; it is the reason I get up in the morning and get a giddy grin on my face because I realize that even though I have been teaching for about 15 years, the script will play out with my students and colleagues, allowing us to hit common themes that never seem to get old.

I kept the growing pile of rejection letters pinned to a cork board next to my teacher computer as a reminder of, well, sometimes I suck at stuff. What I mean is, it seems that one has to fail a lot to learn a lot. And I don’t say this to make a cute point of “keep on keeping on” pile of bullshit. I didn’t look at those letters and put my hand on my heart and swear “I know I can do better next time because I’m good enough, smart enough, and doggone, people like me.” Nope. The letters were a reality check: “you’re not that good, you know?”

So that is why I am requesting the Lilly Foundation to grant me the opportunity to do something that is truly one in a lifetime: to see all of William Shakespeare’s plays in a summer. Like most other people, I was introduced to Shakespeare through a class reading of Romeo and Julietas we trudged through the language and got occasional updates from Mr. Gier and the textbook on what was really happening. But, as I soon found out, Shakespeare ought to be heard, not just read, and so Mike Robert and Jeff Graves and Wendy Hanson would volunteer to assume Romeo, Mercutio, and Juliet, and I think I started to understand that the words make sense. Mr. Gier then showed us the film version and like most English teachers stepped in front of the “naked scene” which only perked our interest as adolescent boys. The next year we got Julius Caesar, then Macbeth.

So, I’m at Evan’s chess tournament Saturday and texting Lori every once in awhile to let her know how the day is going and around 1 p.m. we have the following text-exchange:

• Lori: What r u wearing
• Me: Nothing. How about you?
• Lori: Im in the parking lot come see what im wearing
• Me: Are you really here?
• Lori: Yes
• Me: Wow
• Lori: No get out here fathead
• Me: Okay

As an English major we were required to buy the Riverside Shakespeare, a tome that is the approximate size and weight as my 4^th Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (the big one). We were required to read and discuss a majority of the plays and I simply could not get enough of the history plays and the Henry series. Still to this day, one of my fondest academic memories was a paper I wrote titled “Parent/Child Relationships in Henry IV (parts 1 and 2).” I loved reading the text and exploring the genius of Shakespeare as he sets up the strained father-son relationship and seeing how these real characters had a dynamic quality to them. I well up now when I read how Hal, turned Henry V, implores God: “much more would I do” in seeking forgiveness for his sins and the sins of his father.

And I go outside in the snow and I don’t see her and she calls and I ask where she is and she says that she’s “by the doors” and that’s she’s getting “a bit” impatient, that the moment is turning into something that doesn’t make her happy. And it’s then I realize that she’s at Goshen High School (where these chess tournaments usually are played) and I tell her that we’re just down the street at Chandler Elementary and she sighs and says that there’s a train and she’ll be there in a moment. She gets there and I walk the block or so to see what’s she’s wearing.

For the past 14 years, I have chaperoned a departmental trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario and each fall I see this as a “recharging” of my emotional and spiritual batteries until Christmas. Each year we see mostly terrific versions of Shakespeare’s plays, and I never tire of being caught up in the language and action of words on stage.

And then it hits me as I’m walking to the car that I must have received my envelope from the Lilly Endowment Foundation. Mind you, I’m used to receiving this letter on the Saturday of the last weekend of February. I was wondering, though, why Lori would have driven the thing to me at the school on this snowy Saturday. Then again, perhaps, maybe it really did have something to do with what she was wearing.

My proposal is not without some logistical issues. In a 300-mile radius of my house, there are at least 22 Shakespearean Festivals or theaters that “specialize” in putting on at least one or two Shakespearean plays a season. Not all of these festivals or some of the smaller “in-the-park” summer repertory troupes have published or announced their plays for the 2009 season. To judge the feasibility of seeing all of Shakespeare’s plays, I looked at the 2008 playbills and found that even the more obscure of Shakespeare’s plays were performed. So, with well over half of his plays mapped out (it seems like the history plays provide the greatest challenge right now), I will set aside a separate trip to either San Francisco or New York City just in case the other theaters do not have the few plays that I need to fulfill my goal.

I opened the door and she said: “So, you want to see what I’m wearing?” And I said “Okay.” And she said, well, open my coat.

I want to qualify what has been said up until this point. I want to say that we’re “not those type of people” or some other blushing confession of our marital relationship, but I’ll skip that for now. All I can say is that Lori said that I should open her coat and I did and there was a beautifully shaped envelope: The Big Envelope. And it’s just like the college thing: small envelope: thanks, but no thanks; Big Envelope: You’re in.

Throughout the entire project, I will be recording my adventures through a blogwith my FlipVideo camera and my little eeePC computer. Last summer, I did something similar where I recorded a daily vlog (video blog) called “No Sock Summer” and I plan on continuing that idea with this project. I plan on posting short videos of where I am and of some of the people I run into at the plays (whether in an air-conditioned theater or on a lawn chair in the park). Also, I will blog about my responses to the play itself—about the characters and themes I experience during the play.

When I got back to the holding area for chess parents back in the school, I told Evan to which he asked “So, does that mean we can get a new iMac?” (Thanks Evan…though I probably would have asked the same question if I were in his shoes). I twittered the newsand read through my contract and written responsibilities of grant recipients. I also skimmed though the other recipients and under ELKHART saw my name and proposal and then Andrew Cowells from the junior high. Pretty cool. Before I put the whole thing away, I reread the most meaningful part of the Big Envelope: “Congratulations! It gives me great pleasure to inform you that your proposal…”

Seeing 40 plays in 40 days will be one of those once in a lifetime experiences, and it’s connection to my classroom has something to do with the plays themselves (as I teach both Hamlet and Julius Caesar in my classes). But more than the plays is the text we create when we talk about what we have seen or read and I think this is a more profound idea that will impact me as an educator. I ask my students to read and respond, and the learning seems to happen in that discussion or the essay or the project that is to show me they have learned or are learning. I will use the material I have written during this project as springboards to further discussion with my students about their “readings” of what we view and read in class. I think the more my students see me as a reader/writer/thinker/speaker, the more I am a part of the community I try to build within my classroom. I suppose then I become a part of the script that is being played out in the stage of my classroom.