Shaman You!

Well Hello Bali

Coming out of the Lenin Closet

NCTE Philly
“The security guard said these were the best cheese steaks in the city.”   This is what I overheard as I jostled and bobbed in the sea of humanity ebb and flowing in Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market  – just across from the convention center where the National Council of Teachers of English were holding their annual convention.  Lucky for me as the first cheese steak joint I had

The hardest working stiff in showbiz
Those of you who read this blog with any regularity know that one of my favorite artists to listen to while I run is Rob Zombie. His work is a bit hard to categorize, not quite heavy metal – not quite techno, he came into prominence with his band White Zombie back in the mid ‘80s along with the likes of Sonic Youth and the B.H. Surfers. White Zombie is the title of a 1932 Bela Lugosi movie

Hog Butcher to the World
Just back from a whirlwind of a visit to the Windy City forty hours which included three gigs in a span of twenty hours.   I was invited by the Chicago Humanities Festival to speak on my new book Well Defined: Vocabulary in Rhyme.  The theme of the festival this year was humor and festival director Mary Kate Barley-Jenkins found my book amusing after someone at the Chicago Poetry Center sent

Poetry in Motion
There are times   when a teaching artist walks into a school introduces themselves to the secretary at the front desk and receives a blank stare similar to that of a caged bird. They are looking at you but you know they have no idea why you are there. This was not the case during the two days I just spent in Mason Ohio - just north of Cincinnati in the shadows of the roller coasters of Kings

But that’s not all!
Spent two days at Pierce Middle School in Milton Massachusetts working with the eighth graders in Christine Charbenneau’s class on vocabulary acquisition and helping Sara out with a couple school assemblies and a family literacy night. I led the kids in writing some infomercials for vocabulary words ala Billy Mays (one of the exercises forthcoming in our new vocabulary book)  the first day