Go.

It’s just about 5 a.m. My time stamp is off by an hour. Is it really worth changing if we’re going to be hit with an early Daylight Savings Time switch anyway?
I haven’t read anything about the changing of DST dates or the reasons behind it, but I can only assume that it will save the world, right? I mean, can’t I trust that there is a genuine reason for the micro-Y2K, the sequel scare that is running rampant through IT teams around the country (world? I have no idea).

We had a snow day yesterday. Three inches of snow shut down the school systems around the state. I understand. I get it. I mean, the roads were pretty bad, and there were enough accidents (one was fatal) that drove home the point that we have to be careful out there.

Not that it is any kind of trade-off for safety, but having four snow days in our school system means having four extra days of school at the end of the year, pushing final exams into the third week of June. Once again, I would never trade safety for convenience. It just means that the end of this school year and the beginning of the summer courses I teach at our local university are now only days (hours?) apart.

I know, I know. Get over it. I’m gettin’ there.

The snow day was productive. I worked pretty steadily on getting Cold Rock for publication. I finished the book’s fourth edit, and now I need to put it through one more read-thru to make sure my last round of edits don’t contradict with any other aspect of the story. I’ll wrap up that read-thru before the end of the month, which means I’ll be able to spend my spring break focusing entirely on the layout/design of the book. It’s a changing of creative hats that is very exciting for me. I love–LOVE–the fact that I am managing all aspects of this project, and I am grateful for gaining the experiences over the years to allow me to do this.

As wonderful as my day might have been yesterday, my oldest daughter wishes she could say the same. She became the latest victim to this nasty 24-hour vomiting virus that’s working its way around her gym, and she spent the entire day being sick nearly every hour from 6 in the morning until 6 at night. By the time it had worked its way out of her system, she looked as if she had been through absolute hell. No surprise there, though, because that’s exactly what her day was. My wife and I tag-teamed in caring for her, and at one point I had a flashback to when I was 22, and very sick from being drunk, and how my friends saw me through the entire ordeal. With the whole theme of letting go in my head this week, it’s not a surprise that these reminders of when people stuck with me through tough times are emerging.

What’s even greater is that these people (well, some of them at least), are still there for me today. I’ve put them through hell these past 20 years, and they deserve to hear how grateful I am for their loyalty.

And they will hear it today.

To wrap up this ramble, let me just say this: Kick-Ass Episode of Lost Last Night.

Yes?

Without a doubt.

Enjoy your days, Friends. I’ll be around your side of the world soon enough to say Hi….

5:03 p.m.

Wow. I haven’t done a 15/Five in a long time…I miss these short missives, but I’ve not written them simply b/c I haven’t been on the computer at these times on a routine basis…Perhaps I should change the name to 15 On the Hour…

What’s new?

~~Started The Phoenix Society at school today. It’s a club exclusively designed for Harry Potter readers who have read books 1-6 at least once. We’ll discuss our own theories of how book 7 will turn out as we re-read the books in order every 2-4 weeks after winter break concludes. The students are *extremely* excited, as am I. After finishing Half-Blood, I felt such a great need to pal up with any person who would discuss the books thus far…There’s a lot of 6-book readers out there, but there are too many that have not read all six books, and so it gets very frustrating having to be careful with what I do and do not share about the books…Hey, I understand. As of last week, I was in their place as well. I still can’t believe all that happened in the last 200 pages of HBP…

~~I talked with my sister Cindy today in Florida. She’s in the hospital for another day or two as they wait for her “numbers” to stabilize enough after this last round of nasty, nasty chemo. This ride on the other side of her surgery was supposed to be an easy one, and already she’s found herself teetering on the edge of life and death three times. She’s come to know the crash cart outside her room as “the happy cart” instead…Her spirit is of heroic proportions….

~~I’m looking forward to a great family weekend. With no papers to grade and the house looking clean, it should be a pretty relaxing time to sit back, drink our Guinness and Wassail, and look at all the frantic fools blowin’ their horns outside our house along the busy, busy roads….

~~I also get time this weekend to see if I can get images to load on my blog again. Flickr expired, for some reason (I didn’t know it was a trial thing), and I still cannot find a way to get my cool buttons on my sidebar. I’m telling you, I am not very bright when it comes to web stuff…

~~Oh! We had our first flurry of snow last night! It was just enough to kiss the green grass white, but it was a whirlwind of fun nonetheless. I had the good fortune of waiting outside my daughter’s gym when the snows came, and I was thrilled to see the delight in each child’s face as she came out the front door to find Mom or Dad waiting in the parking lot. Each one squealed with wander and then ran back inside screaming for her bestest friend (in the whole wide world) to come out and see the snow. of course, the natural question that followed was, Do you think we’ll have school tomorrow? Honestly…a flurry or two really sends this state into an emergency crisis. It’s embarrassing how the news media provide “team coverage” for such “winter weather events” whenever the temperature drops below freezing.

~~One final thing: we’ll be taking the Family VanWestervelt portrait this weekend for holiday greetings to one and all…if I am fortunate enough to be graced with the goodness and power to put a picture or two on my blog, I’ll share with all of you just how beautiful my three lovely children are!

5:19 p.m….Time to call this post a Wrap. :)

to James Taylor’s Live CD, disc 1

Go.

rvw: I can’t get my groove on this summer. Here’s hoping jumping back on the 15 on the Fives wagon might help. Countless reasons why this is so, and they all seem out of my control, for the most part.

muse: They are out of your control. I think it’s time to let them go (you can’t control them anyway) and get back into the groove here.

rvw: You mean with writing?

muse: Of course I mean with writing. When have I ever failed you? Think back on those times when all of life seemed so extreme; who was there for you?

rvw: Well, you of course.

muse: That’s right. And you and I–we did great things every single time you fought off the, the–what do you call him again? The Censor?

rvw: That’s one name for him. The Censor’s a good name. I like Watcher at the Gates a little more, though. Seems like there’s fewer connotations with that title.

watcher: Both names suck.

rvw: See? It doesn’t really matter what I call him. He hates everything.

muse: Tell me about it. Do you realize how much you could achieve if you just shut him up just a little more each day?

watcher: I heard that, you little drama queen. “Oh, I’m the muse. Don’t hurt me.” Puh-lease. You both are pathetic.”

muse: I really hate that guy.

rvw: Me too. But he keeps coming back. Every time I go to pick up the pen, he stirs in my head and begins his little campaign of personal attacks.

muse: Hey, it’s an election year. You might want to put that into a creative piece about writing and the way in which we’re all faced with the inevitable presence of negativity in our writing lives…

watcher: Brilliant as such a piece may be because it is about me, it’ll never work. Your audiences are all screwed up and twisted. But nice try. Your rooms are filthy, by the way. You need to clean them.

rvw: I love the idea, muse. So, if I were to run with this, I could focus on other relevant topics, like waging a war against the terrors within. . .

watcher: …And those dishes. Can they be piled any higher? Ugh. You disgust me.

muse: Exactly! Go ahead and do a free write on it and see where it takes you. What can it hurt?

watcher: HEY. THAT’S ENOUGH, YOU TWO.

rvw. You’re right, muse. It can’t hurt anything or anybody to do a free write except, well, you-know-who.

watcher: As much as I like the comparison, I think you have to go now. The kids are waking and the cats are puking and the phone’s ringing and. . . .

rvw: Thanks, muse. I’m off to do that free write. Suddenly I feel like I got my groove on again. . . .

muse: You are welcome. Just don’t stray so far again. Stay with me, and keep your groove.

rvw: Right. It’s you and me.

muse: You and me.

(long pause)

watcher: Hello? Anybody there? Aren’t you going to do something about this filthy desk? And you call yourself a writer…..Hello?

Stop.

A note to my readers: 15 on the Fives is written twice-daily at 5:16 a.m. and 5:16 p.m. At times, I write these entries online. These entries are what I call “vomit” or discovery drafts, where I write uninhibited for 15 minutes. There are no rules about topics, content, form, grammar, or spelling. The only rule is that I don’t stop writing. By following this one rule, I almost always discover something new in my writing, and more often than not, I find a seed or two for future pieces I feel I can take to publication. Give it a whirl; there’s nothing to lose (but 15 minutes, of course!).

Go.

William Ackerman has been playing nonstop on my cd player since school ended nearly 10 days ago. The cd is called Imaginary Roads, and it is one that I is loaded with many, many moments of serenity and peace when I lived in a cabin on the western shores of Chesapeake Bay. It is there that I learned how life and love transcend all that swirls around us in what Kesey calls The Machine…Every day, I do what I can to hold on to that feeling. It reminds me greatly of the opening to The Four Agreements by don miguel ruiz. In it, he writes about the smoke and the mirror, where he was given a glimpse into the transcending beauty of the world and how he fit so beautifully in it. Living on the Chesapeake was very much my querencia, my home, and I miss it greatly.

KC wrote me today and shared such similar feelings about life and love. I think we do this so much more often than we realize, and when it bubbles to the surface, we are left with this feeling of desperation, where we know it is out there, we know it is attainable because we have experienced it already in our lives. And yet, we can’t meet this feeling with desperation. When it comes to the surface, we must treasure it fully and see the beauty in all of the feelings, even those that bring sadness in that these elements are not a part of our lives right now (or so it seems…they are always a part of our lives, I believe). And when it goes, we must let it go and treasure all the experience had to share with us at this time in our lives.

It is such a hard thing to do, to let things come and go. But resistance and desperation only breeds resistance in others, and the more we are relaxed and flexible, the gentler and more fulfilling will such experiences be.

That which offers no resistance,

overcomes the hardest substances.

That which offers no resistance

can enter where there is no space.

~~tao te ching, 43

The living are soft and yielding;

the dead are rigid and stiff.

Living plants are flexible and tender;

the dead are brittle and dry.

The soft and yielding will overcome.

~~tao te ching, 76.

Let us all go a little more softly into the day…and may the discoveries be many.

Stop.

A note to my readers: 15 on the Fives is written twice-daily at 5:16 a.m. and 5:16 p.m. At times, I write these entries online. These entries are what I call “vomit” or discovery drafts, where I write uninhibited for 15 minutes. There are no rules about topics, content, form, grammar, or spelling. The only rule is that I don’t stop writing. By following this one rule, I almost always discover something new in my writing, and more often than not, I find a seed or two for future pieces I feel I can take to publication. Give it a whirl; there’s nothing to lose (but 15 minutes, of course!).

go.

Just woke up. Last day of school, and still much paperwork to do. Two sets of finals administered yesterday went very extremely well, and I am reading through them now.

Much to ponder this morning. As always, C-Loo is on my mind. I’ll call her husband tonight to see how she is fairing with this first round of treatment. I have not heard any news from Mom, so that is a good thing, i believe…

I’m already lining up my writing schedule for tomorrow, our first day of summer vacation. I plan on revising that query for the coffee shop piece, run it by SK for some insight, and then send it off to the Urbanite. I will also fire off a quick letter to the editor of the Towson Times about a piece they ran yesterday in their weekly tabloid about renovations suggested for the Towson town center (not to be confused with the Towson Town Center, which is our overpriced, too Taj-Mahal-looking mall in the center of town). That will be a quick write, and I can send that via e-mail, just as I can send the query to the Urbanite.

Times have changed regarding the swiftness with which we can send our writing for consideration. It’s opened up so many doors for me, though, in publishing, and I don’t take advantage of it enough.

In the last year or so, everything I’ve sent out has either been published or has received some type of award or honorable mention. I know that the law of averages will certainly catch up with me this summer when I send out many more pieces, but it strengthens my confidence to think that I am hitting a good stride now with identifying with my audience writing succinctly enough to be considered for publication in various journals and magazines.

More important, this gives me greater reason to get Cold Rock out there as early as possible this summer to see what nibbles I might get for it. It really needs to be out there before the end of June.

Stop.

A note to my readers: 15 on the Fives is posted twice-daily at 5:16 a.m. and 5:16 p.m. These entries are what I call “vomit” or discovery drafts, where I write uninhibited for 15 minutes. There are no rules about topics, content, form, grammar, or spelling. The only rule is that I don’t stop writing. By following this one rule, I almost always discover something new in my writing, and more often than not, I find a seed or two for future pieces I feel I can take to publication. Give it a whirl; there’s nothing to lose (but 15 minutes, of course!).

go.

C-Loo begins her chemo treatments today. This has been a fast and furious change of events for her and for the entire family, as this cancer is much more aggressive than the lymphoma she had in 1990. She lives in Orlando, and here I am in Baltimore.

When she battled cancer the first time, I was able to move in with her and help her handle the boys (they were so young, then) and just be there for support and for love. I can’t do that now. I’ve got my own family now, and the distance is too great to just drive down route 29 and be at her doorstep an hour later.

Still, it makes no sense to not be with her in every other capacity. And, I plan on making a trip down to see her before the end of July. I just want to be with her.

My colleague C and I will be planning curriculum all morning. We’re both teaching English 12 Honors next year, and we are de-and then re-constructing our existing curriculum to better prepare students for the AP exam.

Now, anybody who knows me is fully aware that I am not a teach-to-the-test kind of guy. But this reading apprenticeship program that C has turned me on to is so valuable, and it is the perfect setup for the AP exams. So….why not? I’ve always said that the goal of my teaching is to lead the students to a path of autonomous, lifelong learning, and they should be able to apply these skills to tests like the AP, SAT, and others without too much thought.

I think that’s the real goal in preparing students for college and beyond. If they are aware of their learning styles and know how to apply them in any given situation, then there really isn’t an evaluation that they can’t face without a certain degree of confidence.

After that, it’s home to celebrate HG’s 10th birthday. Double digits. I can’t believe it. She’s acted this age for so, so long, though, so it seems more of a ceremonial rite of passage than anything else. Happy Birthday, HG…I love you!

An interesting thing about HG’s birthday. A friend of hers tried to have a party, but another, more popular student scheduled a party on the same day. No surprise: everybody wanted to go to the more popular girl’s party, and the other girl was left with nobody attending her party (some even cancelled to go to the other party). Well, the girl rescheduled her party, but it’s tonight, on Holland’s birthday.

HG felt so bad about this girl’s situation that she chose to attend this party in lieu of celebrating her own birthday at home this evening. So, we’ll be celebrating from 2 to 7 at home, and then driving her over to her friend’s house till about 10.

Pretty mature decision for a pre-teen (her term, by the way), in my opinion.

Like I said, HG: WE LOVE YOU. :)

stop.

A note to my readers: 15 on the Fives is posted twice-daily at 5:16 a.m. and 5:16 p.m. These entries are what I call “vomit” or discovery drafts, where I write uninhibited for 15 minutes. There are no rules about topics, content, form, grammar, or spelling. The only rule is that I don’t stop writing. By following this one rule, I almost always discover something new in my writing, and more often than not, I find a seed or two for future pieces I feel I can take to publication. Give it a whirl; there’s nothing to lose (but 15 minutes, of course!).

Go.

I worked out last night for the first time, seriously, in maybe two years. The workout itself was not that impressive: 21 minutes on that anaerobic machine that’s like walking on air. I think they call it an elliptic trainer, but I’m not sure. Burned about 267 calories, which I’m happy with. Kept my target heart rate between the acceptable and maximum ranges throughout the entire 21 mins, so I felt good about that as well. When I finished, I did several sets of lifting for my biceps and for my chest and shoulders.

A good workout for me, and all under 35 minutes. Must work out today as well, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday, too, to kick in that momentum…

It’s the last week of school, so there’s a lot of paper stuff that needs to be done. No big deal, really. I just have to put my head down and, well, do it. I give my finals to my students on Wednesday and Thursday, so these two days will be nice for some additional planning time. The only drawback is having less time to grade them; thank good they are all for yearbook classes and not English sections. I have so much respect for my colleagues who are teaching underclassmen. They have the toughest job of all at this time of year.

So…my hat’s off to you guys, should you ever stop by.

I’m pretty happy with how the whole Coulter piece played out for me in my previous entry, but there are revisions I want to make to it. At first, when I played around with the idea of revising it, I jotted down in my daybook the areas that I thought could use some work. Here’s what I wrote:

1. Include more direct quotes from her book.
2. Include more from the Lauer interview.
3. Integrate the 9/11 widows’ response to Coulter’s attack on them.
4. Set it up more as an analysis of rhetoric and the use of the devices and make it less about Coulter and the widows.

That’s when it struck me that there’s no way I’m going to get this piece published with a slant on Coulter or on the 9/11 widows. The issue of timeliness will prevent that from happening. Already, the buzz is calming down about this. So, that’s when I realized that, perhaps, the real approach is in my no. 4 area of need. Certainly, if I use the Coulter model to demonstrate my point about one of the greatest fallacies ever abused by the American public, then the piece becomes much less time-sensitive, and my windo for publishing opens widely.

So, when I revise, it’s going to be for this specifically: How is the appeal to emotion abused in the 21st century? We have endured so many tragedies even in the last five years, and we are inevitably going to come across a situation where appeal to emotion is being used to make a point.

Not to sound cold and heartless, but I’m on the lookout for it, and I will do my best to find such flaws in my own arguments. Not an easy thing to do, of this I am sure…

But revise Cold Rock too. Do not let that sit and gather dust–

Stop.

A note to my readers: 15 on the Fives is posted twice-daily at 5:16 a.m. and 5:16 p.m. These entries are what I call “vomit” or discovery drafts, where I write uninhibited for 15 minutes. There are no rules about topics, content, form, grammar, or spelling. The only rule is that I don’t stop writing. By following this one rule, I almost always discover something new in my writing, and more often than not, I find a seed or two for future pieces I feel I can take to publication. Give it a whirl; there’s nothing to lose (but 15 minutes, of course!).

Go.

It’s been a long day, and I’m slightly out of sorts from the randomness of all that I’ve been involved in. Not that this is new or unique to me; I thrive in randomness. The difference here is that all of the projects I’ve been engaged in are so, well, engaging, and I’ve been wanting to do all of them at the same time.

Just to mention a few: AP planning for next year, designing my blog and understanding the behind-the-scenes operations of all that I can do in WordPress, completing yearbook and Maryland Voices deadlines, wrap up a senior supplement that needs to be mailed out next week….all on the last full day of regular classes. Former students have been stopping in all day to say hi or finish yearbook spreads….I’m grateful for it all, but it has caused an unsteady buzz within me as I try to settle into a groove to finish one thing, and finish it well.

And of course, there’s the buzz of the year ending, the unlimited opportunities of a summer to come, with reading lists, writing projects, and old friends to enjoy at least a coffee drink or two and spill stories of all that has happened in the past year.

Still more, I guess, is the anxiety of all that my sister is going through with her cancer, the fact that there’s brewing trouble on my wife’s side of the family with her own mother’s illness, and the lingering concern about my mother, 80 years young and battling her own fight with cancer.

But I stop for these fifteen and let the world spin around me, at its own speed that cannot touch me, as I remain still within this small, small bubble that is quickly becoming a trusted sanctuary.

SK wants me to pursue the coffee shop piece, and I agree with him. i think I will focus on the best small coffee shops in Baltimore City, County, Howard, Carroll, Harford, Anne Arundel, and Frederick. That hits a good reader base for any local pub I can pitch this to.

Maybe the query will go something like this:

I have the great fortune of knowing a colleague who teaches in Frederick County. She knows all the good places to go where we could sit for a while and chat comfortably about some summer writing workshops we’re directing. We were in a time crunch one afternoon, and we both realized that it would be better to meet halfway, say, in Mt. Airy. She googled the small town for a good coffee shop, and we happened upon the Vintage Coffee House on Main Street (I think I need to verify this name later). What a treasure of a place. To think that we in Towson don’t have anything that even remotely touches the character and personality of this little shop. That’s when I realized that, although I am a daily supporter of Starbucks, the small coffee haunts are in grave jeopardy of being pushed out for good. I want to spotlight these few remaining places that—

Stop.

Okay. I have to stop here…but I’ve got a good idea of where to go with this query. I’ll publish it here when I get a solid draft written.

A note to my readers: 15 on the Fives is posted twice-daily at 5:16 a.m. and 5:16 p.m. These entries are what I call “vomit” or discovery drafts, where I write uninhibited for 15 minutes. There are no rules about topics, content, form, grammar, or spelling. The only rule is that I don’t stop writing. By following this one rule, I almost always discover something new in my writing, and more often than not, I find a seed or two for future pieces I feel I can take to publication. Give it a whirl; there’s nothing to lose (but 15 minutes, of course!).

A note to my readers: 15 on the Fives is posted twice-daily at 5:16 a.m. and 5:16 p.m. These entries are what I call “vomit” or discovery drafts, where I write uninhibited for 15 minutes. There are no rules about topics, content, form, grammar, or spelling. The only rule is that I don’t stop writing. By following this one rule, I almost always discover something new in my writing, and more often than not, I find a seed or two for future pieces I feel I can take to publication. Give it a whirl; there’s nothing to lose (but 15 minutes, of course!).

Go.

The web that joins us all in this world, across counties, states, and continents as well as across days, years, and decades is so vast and deep that to even begin to say we understand it is just ridiculous. I was talking with Cindy, my sister, last night about this very thing. Well, actually, she was talking to me about it, telling me a story of how one of her oncologists handled a case similar to hers—actually it was nearly identical—where over 20 years ago, he too had lymphoma, and now he finds himself battling the same kind of cancer Cindy seems to be battling. Despite great efforts from the doctor to locate his files to be able to discuss more competently the similarities, she couldn’t find a single file. She was a little discouraged, for here was a patient that Cindy could relate to, even in a distant way, for they both shared this experience of being cancer free for so long, only to have this happen.

Well, as many such things turn out, who do you think was in the waiting room when Cindy wrapped up her meeting with the doctor? Exactly. The same person the doctor was talking about to Cindy not 15 minutes earlier. Cindy got the chance to hear firsthand what the treatment is going to be like. But more important: she got the chance to hear straight from the guy himself that it worked, and despite the pain of the chemo (she’ll be hospitalized for four days during each cycle of treatment b/c it is too rough on the system), it was all worth the great days that have followed.

Now, my sister is a naturally upbeat person, and so many people love her unconditionally because of this. She serves as an inspiration to so many and for so many different reasons. I hope I can steal the chance to get down to Florida (Tampa, specifically) and just be there for her during those hard treatment days. . . .
Who knows? Maybe it’s not too late to work something out to go down.

My first 15 on the fives didn’t save, and so I can’t even remember what I wrote about in that post. Oh well….it is vapor now, my friends. Pure, pure vapor.

Right now I’m listening to Miles Davis’ So What. LOVE IT. Actually, a student of mine, Chip, actually turned me on to Miles one day in class, when he started humming a few bars of it after I asked the class the very open-ended question: So What? What was the purpose of all of this, and did you take what you wanted so badly to be given to you? After a few students went the route of sharing what they had written in their Daybooks, Chip proudly took center stage (figuratively, of course) and just started humming Davis’ So What.

Beautiful, I thought. Simply beautiful.

I think maybe there’s something there in that, that one or two moments when Chip started humming a few bars, and nobody—I mean absolutely nobody, knew the notes to it. So, he finished his entry and we all moved on.
Ugh

Maybe next year’s team will be much with all of this….
You think?

Stop.