This is the week I am supposed to return to Louisville, Kentucky - my home from 1994 - 2007. Go Cards!

This week, I am heading back to Louisville for a wedding. I haven't been back in several years and  I'm nervous about returning to the territory that once was so central to my entire existence. This was the view from the Clarksville side and it's been seven years since I returned.

The northeast has cooled its temperatures and I am looking forward to a vacation of sorts to my old stomping ground. I am writing with apprehension, however, because it was at the epicenter to all I once was, but so much time has passed and so many amazing things have occurred: a doctorate, new friends, a new job, much scholarship, new writing, a new position, and new experiences.

It's sort of surreal to think about what would have been if I stayed, and what has become because I left in 2007. It's 2014 and I imagine much has changed, as it should have.

It's also complicated to think that 7 years of graduating seniors have occurred, the curriculum has changed, the national fabric has altered, and what I knew as normal is no longer the reality of the city. Still, I consider Louisville to be at the heart of my well being and look forward to soaking up all it has to offer.

Jon Walker, class of 2007, is getting married and I'm proud to celebrate his occasion with him. Still, I'm unsure if I can emotionally and spiritually endure the karma that is to come.

Bottom line, I can't wait to see Sue, Alice and Charlie. Their influence on my life is immeasurable and that is why this trip will be that much more special.

By Wednesday of this week I will be there. I hope to embrace it for all the creativity it has to offer.

Asking the Bigger Questions About Suffering...a Few Initial Thoughts. Ah, but it's Saturday Morning

I, along with some of my more interesting colleagues, was asked to be in a small learning community at Fairfield to address the question, "Why suffering" and "What are our responsibilities to communities who suffer?"

We met yesterday, a Friday afternoon, and I thought to myself, "Why are such busy people gathering at the end of the work week to ask ourselves such complicated questions?"

A nurse. A business woman. An engineer. An economist. An accountant. A historian. A teacher.

We were united because of our interests in working with populations locally and globally who have lived with trauma and immense obstacles.

This is premature in my thinking, but I was most drawn to the ways our diverse disciplines responded to the question, especially in terms of economics, opportunity, inequities, and global realities. We couldn't help but discuss happiness, too, as the opposite of suffering and how relative the terms we use actually are. I think we all struggled with our initial thoughts, especially as we make sense of how to best guide our students to thinking about such difficult questions.

I was thinking about junior curriculum at the Brown School where I inherited that larger question and the books we taught. We felt that 17 year olds should begin thinking about the question of suffering as they were on the verge of adulthood. The notion of pain (psychological and physical) is relevant to how we create a philosophy of life.

Pain makes us beautiful. Or does it?

So, I will be spending every other Friday talking this way with others who think very different than I do and I have to admit the conversation was thrilling, if not scary. We all recognize that being in a place of higher education is a privileged space to intellectually meander around such questions, but I believe wrestling with them brought all of us to a better understanding of their importance. The opposite of addressing the questions is not addressing them.

And we began to address them. I have many pages of notes that I left on my desk (and am angry about this because I wanted to process them this morning). But, I am good rifting from memory, knowing that the questions were so influential that I actually talked about them with the lady cutting my hair after work and with friends over dinner.

Perhaps at the core of who all of us are is our willingness to face such a question head on and/or the total avoidance of thinking about it. Our behaviors, I suppose, indicate our relationship to our responses.

These conversations should prove to be more interesting. I loved that I was in the company of so many experts with different angles of the world. It was a dialogue that was very rare.

The Ten Books (Responding to Facebook Tags and Challenges) - These Are My Influences For Today, Anyway

The trend across the universe is tag people to list ten books that have been influential to them as readers and writers. This is my response on this date in history, but I know that my ten will likely shift, depending on my mood. Even so, here it goes:

As a kid, I loved visiting my grandmother so I could read Miss Twiggley's Tree by Dorothea Warren Fox. The story is of an eccentric loner who lives in a tree with a dog, some bears and her cats. She hates people and they make fun of her. She's the village eccentric until a hurricane comes to town and suddenly she's casted into a savior role. I didn't realize the impact this book would have on me until I, too, learned of my aversion of people and my preference for doing things my own way. Now, I love reading this book, as it is a reminder of my core.

When I was in high school, I was first introduced to Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I read it with complete awe and continued to revisit its text as an undergraduate and again as a teacher. I love the lifelong journey of the Siddhartha allegory and the idea of finding the right path. It may sound corny, but it centers me.

The summer before I left for college I discovered Alice Walker's The Color Purple.  I read it over a couple of nights and was mesmerized by Celie's life story and the power of Walker's writing. I see the book as central to who I am as a person and I am very thankful it was written. I taught the text in Kentucky and found it offered me a lot of depth to talk with students about history, life, Africa, and what we want in the one chance to be better on earth.

Another text that has helped center my ideologies of the world is Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country. I read it right before Oprah made it her book club read and the price skyrocketed at the bookstores. I often taught the book, but it didn't have the same heart with students as I felt with it in my own reading. I often think of the character, Arthur Jarvis, and the work he did as a mentor: it parallels the work try to do in my classroom. It's not a book for everyone, but I love it.

I couldn't post a history of influential texts without referring to Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I read this book in 1999 and quickly passed it on to a student. He passed it on to another. It was passed to every student in his grade until they all read it. I then bought a class set and every copy was stolen. I bought another class set and they were stolen. Parents challenged the book and shied from teaching it (but I now see it is often on the curriculum in high schools - students will read it despite the paranoia of their parents).

Another controversial book that I love is Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It might be one of the most thought-provoking books of all time, only because it appears to be an adolescent text, but in context of the U.S. and its history, especially in relation to colonialism and the necessity of a Western education, I find the story to be at the heart of a lot of great conversations educators need to have with youth - especially those who doubt what doing well in school has to do with their worlds.

In the classroom, I've also had a lot of success and a passion for rereading W;t by Margaret Edson. It is a script, and one of the deepest pieces of staged literature I've ever read. Each time I pick it up I think about my world as an academic and all the controversies it creates - especially in relation to a non-caring, heartless, and cerebral world. Everyone who is in higher education should have to read this play and think about it.

I read Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland right out of college and have been on a rampage of his writing every since. I think Life After God is my favorite, but Shampoo Planet was the first novel, post college, that hooked me into an obsession of wanting more from a writer. I've read all of his work and although some appeal to me more than others, I'm always a fan of the way his mind works.

My grandmother also taught me to love non-fiction, and because of the work I do, I'm a huge fan of Warren St. John's Outcasts United. I've read the book twenty times and continue to revisit it to understand the inspiration of Luma Mufleh and the story of her soccer players in Clarkston, Georgia. It's one of the more educational texts I've ever read, probably because it has helped me to make sense of the world I've found myself living.

Last, and not least, I continue to be a tremendous fan of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior. The second chapter, Fa Mu Lan, helped me to think about global realities more than I previous had, and about the ways women are conditioned into particular societal positions by virtue of their sex and heritage. Like The Color Purple, it is beautifully written. I love the questions it allows me to ask of young minds.

Interestingly, there's a parallel, sans Coupland, for the books that have been influential in my life and those I teach in the classroom. I read so many (love even more), but continue to come back to these as a core to the man and thinker I am. We are what we read, no?

So, what's your ten.

Fudge. Stitches by Daved Small. That needs to be here, too.

Three Cheers for the Farmer's Market - Good in Stratford Until October! So Glad I Discovered Their Mondays (but it's Wednesday)

I miss my garden.

I miss my father's garden.

I miss the grilling tray at 5388 Amalfi Drive with the fresh vegetables cooked with Buck's seasoning, but I'm trying my best to recreate in Stratford.

Earlier this summer, I discovered the Stratford, Monday farmer's market, and - lo and behold - reasonable prices for fresh vegetables. It really makes a difference when the vegetables are locally grown and without the grandiose macro-production of commercialized veggies. Simply put, they are delicious. I love that the farmer lady who sells to me each week wears her hair in pig tails. She also wears overalls. Love it.

And I've established a new hobby of stocking my fridge every Monday with vegetables. Last night I cooked many on the grill (although I still need to get a BBQ veggie tray) (Ha! I had Buck season).

The result? Perfection. I also cooked yellow beans on the stove and roasted them a little in garlic and basil - so good (would have been better in dad's buttermilk). The hot Italian sausage was a bonus, too.

I think after Tuesday night's mishap of not preparing anything to eat during back-to-back teaching did a number on me. I needed substance. Last night, Wednesday, I had to eat, and I cooked the vegetables. It was worth every second.

Now, I want to plant a garden again. I want to harvest my own plants and cater to all that is delicious, natural, and smart. I'm not looking forward to returning to the grocery store for vegetables. I've been spoiled. Summer eating is so much better than eating the rest of the year.

It never fails...bring kids back to school and a heat wave arrives. It's horrendous in some schools.

I'm having a flashback - somewhat of a hot flash - to the days I spent in a Syracuse High School working with English teachers. It was spring and the temperatures were in the 90s. The school had no ventilation and the English wing was on the 3rd floor. Even with windows open, no air moved. Teachers brought industrial fans to their rooms to stir the air, but it didn't work.

Why?

Because every May the school heaters kicked on and the heat cranked out. Freeze in the winter, but they work in the spring. Kids used to strip down to what they could get away with and if a teacher picked up chalk, it melted in their hands. Thermometers read over 100 degrees on the top floor. And teaching was supposed to occur?

This was the working conditions of some schools. Actually, these ARE the working conditions of some schools. What amazes me is that everyone act like it's normal - like the steam is supposed to be there and walking through a fog of moisture is healthy for young people in school.

Fast forward. New city. Same thing. Urban classrooms don't have air conditioners. The heat rises fast in old buildings and no air stirs. Today, the hottest day of summer, was a sauna in Bridgeport. After I ran in the morning, it took two hours to quit sweating. Then, in the air conditioned rooms at the University, the heat crept in and the cooling didn't take effect. It was hot.

But, in classrooms of poor school districts, the hot gets outrageous. It's criminal. There's nothing enjoyable about it at all. I imagine most parents from wealthier backgrounds would pull their kids out of such an environment.

And that is why I'm ready to say, "Go away, heat. I love you, but you didn't visit us much this summer, so don't come sticking your icky fingers on us now. Kids are back to school. Leave the extra misery away from their buildings. They are already enduring enough. They deserve to have a cooler experience. The testing culture is bad enough"

Now bring me a pool. I want to jump in. 

Obligatory Post: I Am Back To School Starting Today. Truth: I Have Never Left School. It Simply Continues.

It's a Tuesday. This is my first day of a new semester and Tuesday's are my long days. Office during the day and back-to-back courses in the evening...and I get out late.

Still, I have to laugh. Once upon a time my days were filled with 150 kids for six hours every day. There was rarely a moment to think, to plan, to gather ideas, to reflect, or to build. It was survival of the fittest and it began on day one.

Yes, my life is still as hectic, but it's a different kind of hectic. The stress comes from different angles and I have to say, "It's a much more selfish lifestyle." Before, my every moment awake was spent worrying about the lives of kids, my classroom, the future of my school, and my ability to keep up the pace.

Now, my every moment is spent worrying about the ways schools hinder learning and keep teachers from doing what is best for student writers. I am constantly admiring how classroom teachers keep the pace, given the ways our country has turned against them.

But I need to be optimistic and hopeful. I need to keep my mind on doing the work that will make the world a better place.

Today, it begins with in-service and pre-service graduate students at Fairfield University. Sadly, I forgot to buy apples to celebrate another year. Ah, but September is here and apple season is upon us once again. 

Good Ol' Rosie, A Day of Celebrating the Fact That We Can Labor For What We Love

It's another Monday. I began laboring when I was sixteen years old by making hotdogs at Spera's meat market. I strapped the pig intestines onto a pipe to stuff the pork, until KayBee Toy and Hobby hired me at the mall. I did that until Sibley's hired me to work retail and eventually I could sell women's shoes. I labored there - paid for college - until I worked frying chicken wings at a student union and learned to puree lasagna in a blender at a nursing home. I went to graduate school and labored at a bank and then a home for mentally disabled adult men. I worked at a nature preserve for the Beargrass Task Force and for the University of Louisville stuffing material into files. I then worked at a high school for ten years before working at Syracuse University. I worked for Upward Bound, LeMoyne College, Liberty Partnerships Program and the Reading and Language Arts Center so I could earn a doctorate. Now I labor at Fairfield University for the Connecticut Writing Project.

This is a celebration that I've had the luxury to work and to earn a salary. That is not the case for a large portion of global populations.

I've been able to labor so that I could earn more education to advance myself. Work, I've found, brings me to the next steps in my life and I'm thankful that I've been afforded opportunities to provide my might and mind to serve others. For a short time I lived in Clarksville, Indiana - home of Rosie the Riveter - and not a day goes by when I don't nod my head in the direction of all who worked before me so I can work today.

It takes might. It takes ingenuity. And it takes dedication. Work, as exhausting as it is, gives a man or a woman opportunity.

And there's much, much more work to be done.

Happy Labor Day. Appreciate all who dedicate themselves to providing more chances to have a shot for others in this world. Not everyone is so lucky.