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Monday, July 9, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
Seriously Talented Youth
The students accepted into the CTY summer program rank in the top 2% of their age groups, but sometimes they say things that make you wonder. Take, for example, the young fellow that Sammi encountered the other day in her role as Assistant Academic Dean at CTY's Princeton site.
He proudly proclaimed that CTY stood for Seriously Talented Youth. Though I suppose he would have spelled it Ceriously.
**
Here in Chestertown, one of my students told me that he could not imagine a boy his age being named Bob. I pointed out that when I was in sixth grade, there were myself and five other Bobs in the class.
This remark startled one of the girls, who stared incredulously and said, "You were in sixth grade?"
Which prompted me to quote Casey Stengel, who responded to a young rookie who was amazed at how much "The Old Perfessor" knew about baseball, "Did you think I was born this age?"
**
Speaking of age, this year's crop of students were born in 2000 and 2001. They refer to the George W. Bush presidency as "the olden days." Everything before that -- George Washington's presidency, the Civil War, the Great Depression -- is mushed together into "classic times." That's also when all "those old books" by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Dr Seuss were written.
In adding a bit of history to her work, one student thought the War of 1812 was still being fought in 1888.
When I suggested that they were, perhaps, a bit historically challenged and that these were things we used to learn in school, one of them pointed out, "Mr. R, you're from a different millennium than we are!"
**
Classroom discussions have been quite lively. During a lesson on denotation and connotation, we talked about the difference between "old" and "antique." This prompted one student to proclaim, "Just because your grandmother is old doesn't mean she's valuable!"
An exercise about sensory detail asks them to come up with a word or phrase for each of the five senses as relates to various things. One student was baffled about coming up with a sound related to spaghetti. When she asked, "What does spaghetti sound like?" one of her classmates told her that if she held it to her ear, she could hear the sound of wheat fields swaying in the wind.
Finally, when we were talking about audience, we got into a discussion about how books aimed at one age group might be changed to appeal to a different one. For example, one student suggested, that Curious George could be expanded into a series of books for a YA readership, beginning with "Curious George Gets a Tattoo."
I suggested that we could also add an adult novel line, beginning -- and ending -- with "Curious George Meets the Taxidermist."
He proudly proclaimed that CTY stood for Seriously Talented Youth. Though I suppose he would have spelled it Ceriously.
**
Here in Chestertown, one of my students told me that he could not imagine a boy his age being named Bob. I pointed out that when I was in sixth grade, there were myself and five other Bobs in the class.
This remark startled one of the girls, who stared incredulously and said, "You were in sixth grade?"
Which prompted me to quote Casey Stengel, who responded to a young rookie who was amazed at how much "The Old Perfessor" knew about baseball, "Did you think I was born this age?"
**
Speaking of age, this year's crop of students were born in 2000 and 2001. They refer to the George W. Bush presidency as "the olden days." Everything before that -- George Washington's presidency, the Civil War, the Great Depression -- is mushed together into "classic times." That's also when all "those old books" by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Dr Seuss were written.
In adding a bit of history to her work, one student thought the War of 1812 was still being fought in 1888.
When I suggested that they were, perhaps, a bit historically challenged and that these were things we used to learn in school, one of them pointed out, "Mr. R, you're from a different millennium than we are!"
**
Classroom discussions have been quite lively. During a lesson on denotation and connotation, we talked about the difference between "old" and "antique." This prompted one student to proclaim, "Just because your grandmother is old doesn't mean she's valuable!"
An exercise about sensory detail asks them to come up with a word or phrase for each of the five senses as relates to various things. One student was baffled about coming up with a sound related to spaghetti. When she asked, "What does spaghetti sound like?" one of her classmates told her that if she held it to her ear, she could hear the sound of wheat fields swaying in the wind.
Finally, when we were talking about audience, we got into a discussion about how books aimed at one age group might be changed to appeal to a different one. For example, one student suggested, that Curious George could be expanded into a series of books for a YA readership, beginning with "Curious George Gets a Tattoo."
I suggested that we could also add an adult novel line, beginning -- and ending -- with "Curious George Meets the Taxidermist."
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Secret Identities
Just for the record, there's no way the Clark Kent-eyeglasses disguise could have worked in real life. Sure, I wrote dozens of stories about Clark and Superman, including a few that dealt with him keeping his secret identity a secret.
I've worn glasses for almost fifty years. Other than sleeping or swimming, there has not been a time when I didn't have them on, so only a very few people have ever seen me without them.
So, when I showed up at CTY last week, sans glasses... well, if glasses were enough of a disguise, you would have expected that at least a few people would be puzzled as to who I was. None of them were. In fact, most of them, including people I have worked with for many summers, didn't seem to notice that I wasn't wearing glasses any more.
One fellow instructor did finally ask, "Hey, what happened to your glasses?" Another told me I'd had my hair cut shorter this year. Considering how little hair this is on my head, I don't think that was the change in my appearance.
**
Yesterday, Dr. Wolfgang made his appearance. Unlike "Mr. R," Wolfy now sports a pair of reading glasses (along with his very official-looking lab coat) and, while my own class is well aware that we are one and the same, the students in the Bay Ecology classes have only met Wolfgang. When they see me around campus, sans the glasses, will they believe that Mr. R just happens to resemble Dr. Wolfgang?
Or will they also see right through the glasses disguise?
I've worn glasses for almost fifty years. Other than sleeping or swimming, there has not been a time when I didn't have them on, so only a very few people have ever seen me without them.
  |
| No one seems to have been fooled by the clever disguise. |
So, when I showed up at CTY last week, sans glasses... well, if glasses were enough of a disguise, you would have expected that at least a few people would be puzzled as to who I was. None of them were. In fact, most of them, including people I have worked with for many summers, didn't seem to notice that I wasn't wearing glasses any more.
One fellow instructor did finally ask, "Hey, what happened to your glasses?" Another told me I'd had my hair cut shorter this year. Considering how little hair this is on my head, I don't think that was the change in my appearance.
**
Yesterday, Dr. Wolfgang made his appearance. Unlike "Mr. R," Wolfy now sports a pair of reading glasses (along with his very official-looking lab coat) and, while my own class is well aware that we are one and the same, the students in the Bay Ecology classes have only met Wolfgang. When they see me around campus, sans the glasses, will they believe that Mr. R just happens to resemble Dr. Wolfgang?
Or will they also see right through the glasses disguise?
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
bRAdburY
I was a fan of Ray Bradbury's writing long before I learned about his connection to Julie Schwartz, the comics editor for whom I did much of my writing.
Before joining the comic book business in 1944, Julie had been an agent for such science fiction greats as Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Manly Wade Wellman, Alfred Bester, and Otto Binder. In 1939, Julie met a very young Ray Bradbury and agreed to take him on as a client. Bradbury's first sale, a short story titled "The Pendulum" appeared in Super Science Stories in 1941. I don't know how many more of Bradbury's stories Julie sold, but I do know that they became lifelong friends.
I suspect that my own first encounter with Bradbury's writing was Fahrenheit 451, which we read in a junior high English class. That led me to the library and collections of his short stories, including The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles and Golden Apples of the Sun. In a spinner rack of paperback books in the mom-and-pop candy store where I bought my comic books during my high school years, I found Tomorrow Midnight, which was a collection of Bradbury's tales that had been adapted to comic book form for the early-1950s EC comics. By the time I finished high school, I had tracked down and read every Bradbury book and story I could find. And I've continued to do so through the years, with his We'll Always Have Paris currently sitting on my to-be-read shelf.
**
I don't recall the specifics of the first time I met Bradbury, but it was while DC had its offices in 75 Rockefeller Plaza. He had come to town and was visiting with Julie. I'm sure I said the same things every other staff fanboy did, about being a great fan of his work and having read every one of his books. And I'm sure he nodded and smiled and thanked me. I wonder now what Julie must have been thinking at the time; here was a world-famous author he had discovered four decades earlier talking with an up-and-coming comic book writer whose first scripts Julie had bought in the past couple of years.
I can much better remember a later meeting with Bradbury, one that took place in the mid-1990s. Once again, he had come to town and was visiting Julie, though now we were in the DC offices at 1700 Broadway. I had started teaching the CTY Writing & Imagination course by then and one of the writing assignments I used was to have the students pick an event -- personal or historical -- that they would like to change and then write a story about what would happen. As a prompt, I would read them Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," in which a time-traveling dinosaur-hunter accidentally steps on a butterfly and sends ripples down through history.
When I told him of my use of the story in my class, Bradbury said, "You don't make copies of it, do you?" I quickly assured him that I read the story aloud from a copy of the book that I had bought and that I was not in any way infringing on his copyrights. In retrospect, I think he was probably having a little fun with me. This was, after all, the man who, when he found out that Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein had "adapted" a couple of his stories without credit in an EC comic, decided not to threaten a lawsuit and instead wrote saying that the royalty payment for the adaptation had apparently been lost in the mail. (Gaines sent a check and struck a deal whereby EC adapted many more of Bradbury's stories, all credited and paid for.)
**
Bradbury told people that, from the moment he decided to be a writer, he wrote every single day. Like the pianist who constantly practices and the shortstop who fields endless ground balls, he became a master of his art. There is something lyrical about his style, the way the words just flow, that I and many other writers wish we could emulate. Just reading a couple of his stories is enough to make me want to sit down and write.
Though he has left us, his work remains for future generations to enjoy. In that way, to paraphrase the title of the book that awaits me, we'll always have Bradbury.
Before joining the comic book business in 1944, Julie had been an agent for such science fiction greats as Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Manly Wade Wellman, Alfred Bester, and Otto Binder. In 1939, Julie met a very young Ray Bradbury and agreed to take him on as a client. Bradbury's first sale, a short story titled "The Pendulum" appeared in Super Science Stories in 1941. I don't know how many more of Bradbury's stories Julie sold, but I do know that they became lifelong friends.
I suspect that my own first encounter with Bradbury's writing was Fahrenheit 451, which we read in a junior high English class. That led me to the library and collections of his short stories, including The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles and Golden Apples of the Sun. In a spinner rack of paperback books in the mom-and-pop candy store where I bought my comic books during my high school years, I found Tomorrow Midnight, which was a collection of Bradbury's tales that had been adapted to comic book form for the early-1950s EC comics. By the time I finished high school, I had tracked down and read every Bradbury book and story I could find. And I've continued to do so through the years, with his We'll Always Have Paris currently sitting on my to-be-read shelf.
**
I don't recall the specifics of the first time I met Bradbury, but it was while DC had its offices in 75 Rockefeller Plaza. He had come to town and was visiting with Julie. I'm sure I said the same things every other staff fanboy did, about being a great fan of his work and having read every one of his books. And I'm sure he nodded and smiled and thanked me. I wonder now what Julie must have been thinking at the time; here was a world-famous author he had discovered four decades earlier talking with an up-and-coming comic book writer whose first scripts Julie had bought in the past couple of years.
I can much better remember a later meeting with Bradbury, one that took place in the mid-1990s. Once again, he had come to town and was visiting Julie, though now we were in the DC offices at 1700 Broadway. I had started teaching the CTY Writing & Imagination course by then and one of the writing assignments I used was to have the students pick an event -- personal or historical -- that they would like to change and then write a story about what would happen. As a prompt, I would read them Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," in which a time-traveling dinosaur-hunter accidentally steps on a butterfly and sends ripples down through history.
When I told him of my use of the story in my class, Bradbury said, "You don't make copies of it, do you?" I quickly assured him that I read the story aloud from a copy of the book that I had bought and that I was not in any way infringing on his copyrights. In retrospect, I think he was probably having a little fun with me. This was, after all, the man who, when he found out that Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein had "adapted" a couple of his stories without credit in an EC comic, decided not to threaten a lawsuit and instead wrote saying that the royalty payment for the adaptation had apparently been lost in the mail. (Gaines sent a check and struck a deal whereby EC adapted many more of Bradbury's stories, all credited and paid for.)
**
Bradbury told people that, from the moment he decided to be a writer, he wrote every single day. Like the pianist who constantly practices and the shortstop who fields endless ground balls, he became a master of his art. There is something lyrical about his style, the way the words just flow, that I and many other writers wish we could emulate. Just reading a couple of his stories is enough to make me want to sit down and write.
Though he has left us, his work remains for future generations to enjoy. In that way, to paraphrase the title of the book that awaits me, we'll always have Bradbury.
Out in the Blogosphere
A regular reader recently asked me who all those people are whose blogs are listed to the right under "You Might Also Enjoy..."
First, of course, there's the family: Laurie, Chuck and Sammi. Sammi is by far the most prolific, providing tales and pictures of her travels and adventures, as well as amusing anecdotes about her students. Laurie's writings, though infrequent, are most often slices of life. Chuck, despite the fact that the "updater" does not seem to recognize or record his new entries, actually writes regularly, mostly about gaming and books.
The "folks from the comics biz" group, recently expanded with the additions of Todd Klein and Paul Kupperberg, also includes Bob Greenberger, Tony Isabella, Adam Philips and Marty Pasko. Bob Buethe, though he never worked in the business, is a comics fan who I've known since he was a customer when I drove the DC Comicmobile way back in 1973! These gents focus on comics, though they do discuss other topics as well. Adam's blog, though, is devoted specifically to the work of Alfred Hitchcock.
Barbara Rogan, a longtime friend, is an author, editor, writing teacher, and former literary agent. Her blog, just recently started, should be of particular interest to anyone who wants to be a writer.
Scott Dodd and Lisa Hayes are educators I've worked with at CTY. Scott hails from North Carolina and Lisa is from Alabama. While neither blogs on any kind of a regular schedule, when they do commit pen to paper (or, more correctly, fingers to keyboard), what they have to say is interesting.
All of these blogs are just a click away. Give them a look.
First, of course, there's the family: Laurie, Chuck and Sammi. Sammi is by far the most prolific, providing tales and pictures of her travels and adventures, as well as amusing anecdotes about her students. Laurie's writings, though infrequent, are most often slices of life. Chuck, despite the fact that the "updater" does not seem to recognize or record his new entries, actually writes regularly, mostly about gaming and books.
The "folks from the comics biz" group, recently expanded with the additions of Todd Klein and Paul Kupperberg, also includes Bob Greenberger, Tony Isabella, Adam Philips and Marty Pasko. Bob Buethe, though he never worked in the business, is a comics fan who I've known since he was a customer when I drove the DC Comicmobile way back in 1973! These gents focus on comics, though they do discuss other topics as well. Adam's blog, though, is devoted specifically to the work of Alfred Hitchcock.
Barbara Rogan, a longtime friend, is an author, editor, writing teacher, and former literary agent. Her blog, just recently started, should be of particular interest to anyone who wants to be a writer.
Scott Dodd and Lisa Hayes are educators I've worked with at CTY. Scott hails from North Carolina and Lisa is from Alabama. While neither blogs on any kind of a regular schedule, when they do commit pen to paper (or, more correctly, fingers to keyboard), what they have to say is interesting.
All of these blogs are just a click away. Give them a look.
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