For many years, those of us living in the Towson area have wondered why we don’t have a decent used book dealer to frequent. Heck, we haven’t even had an indecent one to shun. It’s a void that has existed for a long, long time.

Until now.

Just a few weeks ago, Ukazoo, a one-of-a-kind used and new bookstore, opened just a mile or so down the road (but not over the train tracks) in a warehouse-size building that can’t seem to keep a long-term tenant. Many years ago it was the home of Baltimore Coffee and Tea, and most recently it was a Storehouse Furniture shop. Now it’s a Ukazoo, and I hope it sticks around for at least as long as the coffee and furniture shops were there combined.

This is a full-sized bookstore, folks, that rivals the book quantities and inventories of Borders or Barnes and Noble. Here’s the difference: all children’s books are $2.98, all paperbacks are $2.98, and all hardcovers are $6.98. (Read the original review that ran in The Examiner here.)
These books are in great condition, and many of the hardcovers have dustjackets with minimal wear and tear. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars shopping for older books on eBay, never really sure of what I would receive in the mail. At Ukazoo, you’re going to pay much less for the book and avoid shipping charges. You’re in control of what you decide to buy, and if it’s not on the shelf, the more-than-friendly staff members will be more than happy to search for the book that’s eluding you.

Ukazoo is located in the Dulaney Valley Shopping Center, right next to Record and Tape Traders (a great place to pick up new and used CDs, all in one trip). They’re in the back strip of stores, just behind the Starbucks and Smoothie King (talk about your one-stop artfest celebration….).

For non-locals, I’m afraid Ukazoo’s a unique book store. But if you’re ever in the area, be sure to stop by for an hour or so to get great copies of the books you want to read, at a fraction of the cost anywhere else!

Thanks to JANET for doing this! Be sure to check out her site today!

1. Yesterday I was feeling deep about a lot of different things.
2. Today I am feeling so relaxed about everything! It’s a great, calm feeling!
3. Tomorrow I will play (and maybe win) poker with some school friends of mine.
4. Someday I’m going to finish hiking the Appalachian Trail.
5. I will never have enough nerve to jump out of an airplane or do anything that takes my feet far from the ground.
6. I might someday get the nerve to climb one of the bigger mountains in the western US.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to watching a Harry Potter movie, tomorrow my plans include spending time with my kids, and Sunday, I want to begin some serious writing on a new nature essay!Don’t forget…have fun!

mens sana in corpore sano. . . .

It hasn’t even been a week since my summer teaching stint ended, and already I’m thinking about the upcoming school year.

Last Friday, I was exhausted, feeling burned out, desperately needing a break. Is it possible that one week’s time is all that I needed to recuperate?

Ugh. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing. I’ve been working out every day and sticking to a lean, vegetarian diet since the end of the summer semester, so maybe I’m just thinking a little more clearly about things.

A healthy mind in a healthy body. . . .

Maybe that’s what it is. I’ve been thinking so clearly about things lately, and I’m only beginning to establish a solid workout routine. I’ve still got a month to go before school begins. All I can imagine is how I might feel then.

I know I’ll feel pretty awesome if I can fit back into some of these clothes that have been hanging around in my closet for a few years….

So, it’s off to the gym this morning, then some more writing, then family time, then who knows in the evening. Maybe by the end of this weekend I will have devised my year’s curriculum for English 11 Honors.

Oh, puh-lease. maybe I’ll start practicing meditation and just hold off for another week, at least. I’ve been reading Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan, which is such a good read simply because it majors in the basics of good storytelling: plot, characters, conflict. Maybe I’ll just focus on finishing that book this weekend and push aside the curriculum design for at least a few more days.

Eventually, though, I’m going to have to give in. And when I do, I’ll be glad that I had the discipline to take the extra few days for myself. I’m getting so much out of this little self-pampering party I’m throwing right now.

r.

Oh–the new look? It’s because this design supports widgets, and that’s what I’m used to in my very limited knowledge of blog design. I’ll keep playing around with it in the coming weeks to get it to a place where I’m happy how it looks for the “busy season” ahead. . . .

It was a year ago today that I learned of the life and death of Jenn See. I was reading some new blogs, and I came across Carl V’s site, Stainless Steel Droppings. While reading some of his earlier posts, I came across a memorial post to Jenn See (click here to read that original post).

I really cannot explain it, but I was struck by Jenn See’s death. I did not know her at all, nor had I ever visited her blogs (see I am following my fish and tourist of everything here). Yet, there was this inexplicable feeling, this pain I felt in reading of her sudden and horrible passing. I mourned for her loss, and I mourned for her mother, for OldBen, and for MysFit. I mourned for all those who did know her. I decided to write my own tribute to Jenn See, which you can read here. It put me in touch with Jenn See’s mother and a few others in her circle of friends, and knowing them, even virtually through blog posts and emails, has deepened my sadness for her loss and my resolve to bring greater meaning to my own life through her passing.

I’m not the only one who has remembered Jenn See. Carl V posted a wonderful tribute to her last month (See Carl V’s one-year tribute to Jenn See here). Her memory and her legacy lives on through the hearts and the words of so many people, and I am humbled by this opportunity to contribute my little part to remembering her.

I’ve lost my own share of loved ones since Jenn See died, including my mother and my mother-in-law within weeks of each other. Three of my students have also died tragically, and I find that the older I get, the more time I spend at funeral parlors, graveyards, and memorials, contemplating the value that each moment holds in our lives as we are here on Earth. Since I learned of Jenn See’s death, I have had 365 opportunities to embrace life more fully, hug my kids a little longer, tell the ones I love that I love them, offer smiles to those who need them, and listen a little longer to those who just need to talk through a problem.

It’s hard to remember all that, all the time, though, isn’t it? I mean, right now, I am in the heart of my summer vacation. I teach 11 months out of the year, but I get the last ten days of July and the first 20 of August to call my own. During this time, I slow down, get to the gym every day, take walks, spend more time with my kids, write daily, and embrace and appreciate the natural sounds and sights that surround me. I cannot even begin to tell you of how blessed I feel, in so many ways, simply because I am alive, and I have the opportunity to experience all that is around me.

This is the way I believe life was meant to be lived. If you read through some of Jenn See’s posts, you will see that she got that. She understood. She lived a life filled with joy, with passion for her art and photography as well as for those who surrounded her.

Why is that so hard for so many of us to do? The 80’s and 90’s demanded so much of us to multi-task, thinking that was what the secret to life was all about. And in the earliest days of this new century, we seem to think that we are now masters at multi-tasking: talking on the phone, driving, selecting a new playlist on our iPod, and eating a Value Meal as we head to our next meeting, our next whatever that was written digitally into our PDAs months ago.

I know a wonderful person named becky who gets it. When I can, I visit her page on Facebook (or Myspace…I can’t remember which), and it is filled with love of friends, love of good times. Just yesterday I received a message from her to join her in celebrating some new pictures she posted of friends playing various stringed instruments around a fire. In each of the photos, there was genuine life, love, enjoyment in all that they did. I know none of these people but Becky, and for all I know, these folks might have day jobs that put them behind a desk for eight hours answering phones and attending meetings. Whether they do is immaterial to the fact that they haven’t forgotten how to get out, enjoy life, enjoy the celebration of friendship, to embrace the moments shared between each other, and hold on to love as if it’s the greatest thing that could ever happen to them.

On Carl V’s one-year memorial to Jenn See, somebody posted a comment that I fell in love with. This person wrote that “Jenn See Is. . .” Simple, yet powerful.

She is. Jenn See lives a little in all of us. Whereas her friends will always reflect fondly on her memories, She will always be in the present to all of us who understand that these days given to us come with no guarantees. Putting off another day to tell somebody you love them may be a day too late. Taking time for yourself and unplugging the phone, the computer, the everything and just slowing down for the sake of appreciating the moment–either alone or with the ones you love–is more important than any meeting you might feel you need to attend.

So, given this day, I say to all of you: I love you, and I wish you many moments of complete joy today as you take a moment to look over your cubicle and smile at a friend, take an extra five minutes at lunch and listen to the hum of the cicadas in their summer song, or call a friend and let them know you are thinking of them. It doesn’t take much, but it means more to them, and to ourselves, then we can ever realize.

Jenn See’s family has set up a wonderful scholarship program for artists and writers. The information is below. I encourage you strongly to make a donation and help Jenn See’s family continue to celebrate her life through helping others. Donations can be sent directly to: “Jan-Ai Scholarship Fund” c/o Bob Walker P.O Box 8068 Atlantic City, N.J. 08404. This fund is set up in jenn see’s memory to help struggling artists, photographers and writers. in this way, we are carrying on jenn’s energy and love of life. please help.memorial fish

Blueberries for Sal….Do you remember reading this book when you were younger?

I have wonderful memories of my mother reading this book to me before I had learned to read. I remember asking her to read it over and over again so I could memorize the text that went along with the pictures. I wish I still had my copy of this book. I am sure that it was nothing more than a book-of-the-month knock off (it was originally published in 1948), but that wouldn’t matter to me. Just having that copy that my mother and I shared every night would be one of those silly priceless things I’d keep on my bookshelf.

We decided to take a ride up to Shaw Orchard just over the Maryland/Pennsylvania border. It’s nearing the end of blueberry picking season, and we wanted to get in our annual harvest before it was too late.

The weather could not have been better. It had just rained, and the temperature was a cool 71 degrees. The wind waved across the endless fields of corn and soy beans as we picked nearly 9 pounds of blueberries.

As we were in the fields, though, there was plenty of time to reflect about the stories my mom used to read to me, the times we would spend picking all kinds of fruits and vegetables at similar farms throughout the state, and the quiet times we would share at our cabin in River Hills, PA.

Tonight, we ate fresh corn and string beans (marinated in olive oil, garlic, and a pinch of salt), jasmine rice with a fresh homemade roasted tomato spread, and of course, blueberries. We finished the meal with a homemade peach cobbler pie. Everything but the rice came from Shaw Orchard…we could not have had a better fresh meal on a cool summer’s night.

But still, the memories linger of time spent with Mom. I miss her greatly.

Note: The following entry–and all entries on my blog, for that matter, will not contain spoilers regarding the final book in the Harry Potter series, so please feel free to read on!

Note deux: This is part III of a three-part series; please scroll down and read the first two installments if you have not already done so!

Inside the magical world of reading books. . . .

As a teacher, I find that how I read is not how I encourage other teachers to “hook” their students to read books, especially the reluctant readers. I’m sure you all know the drill: Look, study, and discuss the cover. Make predictions. Read the table of contents carefully. Study any artwork that might exist in the book, etc.

All that prereading stuff I throw right out the window, especially when it comes to good ol’ HP.

Actually, Rita turned me on to this way of reading back when Phoenix was released. I was too much in teacher mode when I saw her reading it, and I threw out the autopilot questions: What do you think will happen? Did you get any clues from the Table of Contents? What does the cover mean exactly?

Ugh. How embarrassing as I look back.

She closed the book (she was reading under the sunlight as she stretched out in her summer chair) and held a grin longer than I thought normal. She seemed to be searching for the right way to put it.

“I don’t read like that at all,” she offered, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Why would I want to ruin the experience?”

It made total sense to me. Why do I want to predict? Why do I want to think I know what’s going on at all? Let the words lift their meaning from the pages, one letter at a time, just as they were originally placed there.

From that day on, I’ve read like Rita.

So, when Tonks and I got home, clinked our books in victory and cracked the spine ever so delicately, I bypassed the Table of Contents quickly, having no desires at all to read a single word of it.

I turned to the dedication, and read it. Turned to the two opening quotes, read them twice, then turned to Chapter 1. Read the title at least three times. Took two deep, deep breaths. . . .

And began reading.

I was careful not to look ahead to the next chapter; I refused to have any knowledge of where this chapter might take me. In fact, I resented some of the titles that seemed a little cryptic, wondering when I would get to the heart of the chapter (when I knew all along that, in this book, the heart was in every page, every word, every stroke of every letter).

I read with Goblet, Phoenix, and Half-Blood right next to me, constantly referring back to critical and relevant passages that mattered to what I was reading right now.

I avoided human contact as well. I could not trust my wife or my daughter, either. My wife was on the computer all day, working. But in the process, she was informing me of all the HP spoiler pages and spams she was being bombarded with. My daughter, at one point, was nearly 100 pages ahead of me (I caught up eventually and finished a few hours earlier than she), and I feared that she would blurt out a shriek, a gasp, or even a single tear, and it would rip at me to not know what was happening.

So, I was nice to both of them. Paid attention to them about all things Non-HP, and was a good boy, if you will. My greatest fear was in our few excursions out of the house.

Now I know what a panic attack must feel like.

Like an undercover agent, I was constantly stalking relatively empty aisles, practicing self-occlumency to blur out any discussions or comments that I might overhear, without any warning whatsoever. I would dash in and out of grocery stores, order carry out, have food delivered. Anything at all to keep the outcome of the book a genuine surprise for me.

It worked. When we were finally done for the day, I sat at the dining room table, pushed away any and all appetite, and recommenced reading.

I suppressed my own gasps and exclamations, but I cannot hide the way I feel right exactly now, just as I had felt when I had finished the book: Sorrow for the end. Sorrow for the parting of the ways. Sorrow for the deaths and the destruction. Sorrow for it all.

When I finished the book, I closed the cover with, again, great reverence, and smiled. I did it. I actually did it. I had worried for so many months–was it really years?–that this moment would be stolen from me. Some fool in the grocery store, at the gas pump, even on the television would certainly blurt out some terribly important news about the book, and I would be forced to read through to an ending that I already knew much about.

I hope, in the coming weeks, to talk about some of the lessons I learned from Deathly Hallows. Until then, though, I leave you, Constant Readers, to your books to enjoy and savor. There will be plenty of time to share words of what-ifs and why nots. Until then, I shall do my best to inform, entertain, and persuade about the things that matter to me the most outside of the Harry Potter World. . . .

as always…………………………………….rvw

(Note: The following entry–and all entries on my blog, for that matter, will not contain spoilers regarding the final book in the Harry Potter series, so please feel free to read on!)

(Note deux: This is part II of a three-part series; please scroll down and read the first installment if you have not already done so!)

Thursday evening, after picking up Mad-Eye’s jacket for a mere $37.50, we went directly to Party City in search of an eyeball.

I didn’t know exactly what I would find. I knew I needed something that was big, but not bulky so that it would protrude too far from my face (after all, I wasn’t going for the avulsed-eye look). Once again, just as had been the case with the jacket, the eye found me.

Or, rather, it found my wife.

When we entered the store, my wife and I split up; I took Tonks and she took the younger two. Within 10 minutes, my younger daughter–a convincing Hermione in her own right–found me, clutching a bloody eyeball in her hand.

“We found it! We found your eyeball!”

Sure enough, she held the eye in her hand, a glow-in-the-dark superball that was easily the size (and the worth at this moment) of a golden snitch.

We paid the buck for the (eye)ball and left the store. On the way home, I realized that, even after I cut it down to size so that it bulged from my eye socket just like Mad-Eye’s, I had to somehow attach it to something that would hold it in place. When we got home, I dug through some of my old things I keep carrying with me every time we move, and I found the perfect leather strap from an old, old camera that used to be my mother’s.

But how to attach it?

Friday, the next morning and the day of the launch, I took the severed eye and leather strap to the final day of the class I had been teaching all summer. The same wonderful person who gave me the 50% coupon for Goodwill was also an art teacher, and she did her own magic to make the leather strap stick on to the severed rubber eyeball. A few pieces of duct tape and three thumb tacks later, and I had a Mad Eye.

Finally, the flask. After class ended, Tonks and I went to Michael’s Arts and Crafts, and, just as it had happened all along, we found the perfect flask among the scattered Halloween merchandise they were frantically putting on the shelves, as if they had only hours left before the big holiday. Tonks found it, actually. It was a potions bottle, amber-orange, with silly stickers on it and a cork plug. We bought the flask, along with a bottle of Goo Gone, and headed home.

At 10:11 p.m., Friday night, I got dressed. My two younger children were scared of me, so I guess I was pretty convincing. For good measure, I filled my flask with Coke Zero and grabbed my walking stick. With Tonks by my side, we headed to Borders Books in Timonium.

When we arrived, there were already hundreds of Harry Potter fans walking in and out of the bookstore. Some were in costume, but most were there to just get their books and be a part of the hype. My greatest fear had always been that, just as had been the case during the Half-Blood launch party, some idiot or idiots would shout out the ending of the book. Tonks and I considered seriously whether we should arm ourselves with iPods, but we decided we’d take our chances.

We both left the car and approached the madness in full character. It was unbelievable. Everybody was staring at us as we walked up the stairs, and immediately I found myself in complete character. I reached the top step, asked a kid what he was looking at, and pulled the flask from my jacket and took a sip. We walked into the store and stood in line to get our wristbands, where we waited for maybe 20 minutes.

During that time, we spotted our old neighbors, who had dressed up as well. The mom dressed as a very convincing and beautiful Rita Skeeter, and her daughter was a lovely Hogwarts student. I screamed “Hey, Rita!” over the heads of muggles and wizards and witches, and she turned immediately, in perfect character, and lowered her black glasses.

At first, I don’t think she recognized us at all. She walked a little closer, and then it dawned on her that it was us. Immediately, we talked as if we were really Mad-Eye and Rita, me with my eye all crazy, and her with her green quill, scribbling away like crazy.

I finally reached the table where we were to get our wrist bands, and as soon as put them on, I looked at the poster by the table. It showed the order in which the books would be distributed. Rita had a blue bracelet; Tonks and I had bright pink. Out of the six colors, Rita and her her daughter were in the third group, and she had heard that blue-bands would get their books around 1:30 or so. Tonks and I were in the fifth round with our pink bracelets, like most everybody else around us. If Rita wasn’t getting her book until 1:30 a.m., I was sure we’d be there until at least 3 a.m., if not later.

Tonks was a little disappointed that we had already missed some of the games, but we had fun nonetheless walking around in character. As we zig-zagged around the store, people kept stopping us, asking for our picture. We stayed in character, posed with confidence (not to mention an attitude), and then finally made our way to the front of the store where they were holding the costume contest.

Rita, her daughter, Tonks, and I all were looking forward to this part of the launch. We dressed up for fun, but being able to participate in the contest was a nice way to pass the time as we waited for midnight (and 1, and 2, and eventually 3 a.m.!) to roll around. The prizes weren’t bad, either. The “kind and queen” received $10 Borders gift cards and the right to receive their books precisely at 12:01 a.m.
The younger kids went in the first round. By far, they comprised the greatest number of witches, warlocks, death eaters, and aurors. Rita’s daughter did well but did not advance to the final round.

The second group of Potterians then went, ages 11 to 15. Tonks was in this group, and she too did well but was beaten out by a very convincing Hermione.

Then the final group went: ages 16 and over. They were doing elimination rounds of five characters at a time, so Rita and I decided the best strategy would be to go in different rounds, so as not to compete directly with each other. The strategy paid off. I went first and won my round; then Rita went, and she won her round as well.

In the semi-final round, Rita and I stood next to each other, as the voting began. We both stayed in character as people cheered for us, I thought that it came down to three of us: Mad-Eye, Rita, and a woman dressed perfectly as Bellatrix. Unfortunately, the Emcee didn’t agree. Rita and two other contestants were dismissed, and it was down to just Bellatrix and me.

We turned and faced each other. She flaunted her accomplishments as a Death Eater, and I told her that her evil days were numbered.

In the final round of voting, the audience applauded strongly for both of us. In the end, though, the judges deemed me to be the winner. I turned to Tonks, who was just absolutely beaming.

“I knew you were going to win! I just knew it!”

We hugged as cameras continued to snap pictures of all of the contestants, and before we knew it, we were being escorted to the front of the line.

At 11:59 p.m., as Tonks and I waited desperately to receive our copies, a tall, not-in-costume woman resembling Olympe Maxime grabbed my leather jacket and shouted to the Manager: “I’ve been waiting an hour-and-a-half in this very spot. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this guy cut in front of me.”

I looked to Tonks, still in character, and asked for her wand. I pondered what spell to cast on her, but I never got the chance. The Manager intervened immediately and informed the towering woman that we had, indeed, won the costume contest and that we would be receiving our books first.

Olympe was not very happy. She stomped back in line, and I told Tonks to put her wand away.

At 12:00:50, we counted down the last 10 seconds. at 12:01 a.m., the boxes were slashed open, and we were given our books–the very first copies to be pulled from the boxes marked DO NOT OPEN UNTIL JULY 21, 2007. We gave hugs and kisses to our friends who were there, and immediately we stole away into the night, passing by the thousands of Potterians with colored wristbands, all standing in their respective lines weaving in and out of the store.

We did it. We sat inside the car, turned the ignition and checked to make sure the radio was turned off. For the next 48 hours, we would continue to be in our media blackout (this we started Thursday morning, upon learning that our own Baltimore Sun was the first of only two papers in the United States–the other being the New York Times on Friday–to review the book before its release). We had escaped the danger of drive-by idiots shouting spoilers as we waited vulnerably in line. All we had to do now was avoid all contact with the outside world until we finished reading page 759.

By 12:13 a.m. we were home. We sat down, clinked our books as if they were glasses filled with champagne, and opened the cover.

It was time to read.

Part III of this series will be posted at 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday, 7:24!

(Note: The following entry–and all entries on my blog, for that matter, will not contain spoilers regarding the final book in the Harry Potter series, so please feel free to read on!)

THAT, my friends, was probably the fastest I’ve ever read a book. If you want to discuss any aspect of Deathly Hallows or the Potter series in general, please please please email me off-blog (theoldmanse at gmail dot com), and I’ll be happy to dive deeply with you….

To begin with, you need to understand this: I’ve been waiting for the launch of this book since–well, since the launch of Half-Blood. Nothing could have prepared me, though, for what has happened over the last forty-eight hours.

Leading up to the midnight launch on Friday night/Saturday morning, my daughter, Holland, and I had been planning our costumes with great detail. There was never a question of whether we were going to dress up for the occasion; the question was, who would we be?

One look at my daughter, an 11-year-old, and immediately a younger Tonks came to mind. She’s got the look, the attitude, the fun-ness about her–everything. So Tonks it was. She was all punked out with the black knee-length lace tights, the mini-skirt, and the multi-colored hair that changed depending on how it hit the light just right. She looked awesome.

There was no question in anybody’s mind that I was made to be Mad-Eye. Designing my costume, however, took a great deal of effort. I knew I had to find some key pieces of clothing (and accessories) to be a genuine Mad-Eye: the leather jacket, the flask, the cane, and the roving eye.

The leather jacket found me the Wednesday before the launch. All I needed to do was show up at the right place. I didn’t own anything that resembled Mad-Eye’s black jacket, so I decided to hit our local Goodwill store. Within three minutes, it had found me. Mixed in with all of the other miscellaneous jackets was this long, black, leather coat, adorned with many zippers and silver snaps, AND it was my size–not an easy find, to say the least. I tried it on, turned to Tonks and my wife, and they both agreed: that jacket was convincingly Mad-Eye.

The price tag was the only drawback: $75. I wasn’t prepared to pay that much for something I’d probably wear for the Deathly Hallows launch and for Halloween. I put it back on the rack and pouted. When I told my wife how much it was, she thought that it was too much money to spend on such a costume, despite how Mad-Eye-ish it was.

I went to the counter and pleaded my case; with a hint of sympathy, the manager smiled and said that all prices were final. She picked up a little card and waved it in the air. “The only way I can discount your jacket,” she said, “is if you have a discount scratch-off card.”

“May I have one?” I asked, instinctively.

“Certainly. They’re free with every purchase.”

I looked around the store. There really wasn’t a single thing I wanted here, except for that jacket.

I thanked her and we left.

I was a bit defeated walking out of there without the jacket I knew I was meant to wear. Just like Harry knew which wand was his in his First Year when he went to Ollivander’s (”the wand chooses the wizard…“), so I knew that this jacket was meant to be Mad-Eye’s. Driving away from the Goodwill store, I plotted how I might justify spending the $75.

In my real life, I was just finishing teaching a four-week, six-credit graduate course on the teaching of writing, and I had just been paid 50% of my salary. The money was there in the bank. I had not treated myself to anything during the past four weeks, and I decided the next day that, whether it was sensible or not, I was just going to buy the damned thing.

That night, and early the next morning, I plotted possible ways to knock $30 off the price. I dreamed of intricate stories of helping neighbors in need who just lost spouses, jobs, the whole lot. All they needed was this one jacket….can we work something out, here?

I talked about it with my grad students on Thursday, and they all agreed: that jacket was meant to be mine. I swallowed hard, thinking of the cost, when suddenly one of my grad students shouted “Wait!” and dove into her purse, scrambling frantically.

“Maybe. . . Just maybe. . .” she kept saying as she dug deeper and deeper into her bag. Finally, as many of us stood around holding our breath for reasons we didn’t really understand (I’m telling you, this was a very dramatic moment!), she pulled a card from her bag and shouted, “YES!”

I walked over to her and she placed the card in my hand. It was a little creased, and the edges had worn off a bit. I turned it over and looked at the front, where she had already scratched off the hidden discount.

“FIFTY PERCENT OFF!!!”

I screamed, too. I couldn’t believe that she had just saved me nearly $40! I gave her a big hug, tucked the card securely in my pocket, and quickly moved on to the next quest: building a Mad Eye. . . .

Part II will be posted at 5 p.m. today (Monday, 7/23)!. . . . .

today is 17 July 2007, 0543

It is a good morning.

I may be able to abandon the uncuts soon, as I feel the veil lifting a bit. In the past, when I’ve gone this long without tending to my writing, it’s taken me a good week to get back into the groove and get beyond all of this clutter that’s been building up since I last wrote.

The question for me now is this: where do I want to go?

If I were my own student, I would probably advise me to take it slow, work on a small piece that has a high probability of being published. A real morale booster (this is exactly what blogging is doing for me now, though–getting me out of the mud and back into my writing chair). It might be as simple as writing an opinion essay, or digging a little deeper for a nature essay that I want to submit to the Little Patuxent Review (my essay titled “In the Living Years” was published by LPR and can be found here).

Not bad advice, Prof. Just a small piece a month until the end of the year, perhaps. By October, anyway, I’ll be in the melancholic writing zone, certainly working on a bigger, more substantial piece, as is always the case. Autumn has always been my most productive writing season, and nearly all of my better works have started as strong seeds written in September, October, or November.

No education writing, though. Nothing too didactic, over-the-head listen-to-me kind of pieces. I just need to write something genuine that matters. Fiction or nonfiction–it doesn’t matter a bit.

So the challenge is put on the table. It’s July 17 (hey–30 years ago today I went to my first Doobie Brothers concert at Merriweather Post…), and I need to write and submit a short piece by July 31.

Thanks, Uncuts. You did your job. You threw the rope in the hole and pulled me out. Now it’s time to wash off all this mud and detritus and get back to work.

A blessed day to you all…..

It is now 2207.

Now, THAT was a good ride. I put in the first set of the 4/30/77 show at the Palladium, and up they go just like that with a more-than-memorable performance of Music Never Stopped. Beautiful stuff. Then it is on to Bertha, then It’s All Over Now, and I ended my brief ride with the windows down with a good Deal.

It dawned on me while I was riding that I might have come across a little smug in uncut no. 3, when I was talking about my students, and how they’re going to need me to send them constant reminders to stay the straight and narrow to avoid the other straight and narrow (if you get me). I already revised it, but the point is this: they need to be armed, and they need to be ready to fight the good, hard battle.

We’ve all heard the story, haven’t we? When the victim, or the prey, begins to get a little wise to the ways, the predator gets desperate, nervous, offensive. We who have gone through this four-week experience know how desperate others may become, as such strength is often perceived as a threat to the status quo.

So, please, Gentle Reader, accept my apologies for that shortcoming in my previous post. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

Nearing 2216. The music never stops, but my energy slows a bit, and I will say goodnight for now. May the evening bring all of you cool comfort and happy mornings. . .

as always…………………………………rvw