Group 5: Keisha Draft #1
Pros: Writing is clear, carries energy and a comfortable tone. You convey a good sense of place and set the scene well. With your use of dialogue and physical descriptions of the campus, you have set the stage for a good scene.
Concerns: We are rooted in a fixed place and time, which creates a visual in my head, but there is no action. Who is “he”? Need to know why this guy matters and why he is hung up on HES being an inferior designation within the Harvard universe. I had a writing teacher once who called this kind of intro (of which I have been famously guilty) as throat clearing. Where’s the beef? We need some red meat to stick our teeth into.
Intrigued by info you added in class. This guy goes on to be an academic star. Was this his intention? Or did the HES bias he felt drive him to prove others wrong? What are your feelings?
Workshop Group 1/Draft 2
Karen: Draft #2
Pros: Karen, gargantuan leap from where you started. Really impressive work. I like how you were able to better pull out the characters and give them roles in your emerging drama. Your writing is clear, descriptive, and you’ve done a remarkable job using historical detail to get us back in time. Indeed a tough time to be a woman, especially an ambitious one.
The opening italicized set up works well. It allows you to launch into the story without getting bogged down in a distracting set up.
Concerns: There is a lot of info here and I think a challenge unique to your piece is helping us keep all the characters straight in our heads. Individual roles are emerging but I still feel like Emily needs to be even more central if she is going to carry the story.
Also, I would continue to streamline your narrative: consistent name references, name of school, succinct language. Perhaps each character serves to represent a facet of your story? I don’t want your storyline to get lost in - or a reader to get distracted by - extraneous info.
I like the way you created chapters, but didn’t feel your breaks were the most natural places to pause the action: For example, p.3 midway: "Emily Talbot was outraged ... two daughters received the very best education possible.” This felt like a natural stop. P.13: Also mid-page “Would it be approved?” This too felt like a natural breaking point and an opportunity to heighten tension.
Perhaps there is a way to chunk the action around the meetings? You feature three. Might help enhance drama as stakes get higher? Convergence of characters and action?
Sunday January 7, 1877: Possible to capture any of Warren’s original speech?
Durant: do you know why he was so vested in the education of women?
“at fourteen years of age opened a private school” Israel Talbot? If so remarkable. Was this usual or unusual?
Winthrop: do we know who he is? Emily’s son? Was he introduced earlier in the narrative?
Stephanie Draft #2:
Pros: Your piece has great energy, natural dialogue and wonderfully crafted imagery. Your story is alive! Reminds me of Susan Orleans’ piece about the Hawaiian surfer girls. I especially liked the three paragraphs you wrote about the game of footy: “The sight of a kicked ball....Among the world’s many forms of football, only the Rugby school can boast any older.” Tough to do but your elegant descriptions “run, leapt, launched” got us right with you. Your handling of imagery to convey an idea and emotion particularly strong bottom of p.6: “training, partying, playing, celebrating...their moment...she was going to milk it for all its worth.”
Concerns: For me the energy of your piece flagged at transition points. Didn’t feel prepared for the change of tone or scene when you launched into “Before the PA.” Not sure where we are and I feel like we have been pulled away from the action. Your writing implies same: “Now to the night’s formalities...” Same true for “which brings us back to the early March Saturday.”
“I’m getting a bit confused.” Your presence here feels abrupt. Have you actually spoken in first person before? “My daughter had chided me.” reads like a more natural reference, plus it's nice to have Lydia make another appearance in your story.
Some awkward phrases: “for example,” sentence that ended with “becomes clear,” “niggling” Tendency to overly complicate sentences with description. Love the word "larrikinism" whatever it means!!!
You’ve crafted wonderfully vivid scenes, conveyed a lot of information new to me, and the women are distinct characters. Looking forward to see how you shape shape and cut cut. (Right there with you!!!)
Friday, March 30, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Character Development:
A Brevard Woman Disappeared... by Michael Kruse is a curious piece of work, and profile, because the main character is deceased. A woman's death is accidentally discovered. The story is a back-in-time unraveling of how this woman could have been dead for 16 months in her own home. The challenge of the reporter was to piece together this woman's life through investigative reporting, heresay, and anecdote. A puzzle he had to reasssemble.
He opens with a set up. As with Johnny Francis, the author gives us the facts of the story up front and then takes us with him on his hunt to solve the mystery of this woman's lonely life. For 16 months, no one asked where she was. As a reader, we're curious about this seemingly improbable end to a life but we don't want to emulate her tragic end.
The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert, in comparison, proceeds in a polarized direction from Kruse's Bereaved Woman. Where Kruse never met his main character, Gilbert is so intimate with her protagonist one wonders about the actual nature of their relationship. We are invited to fall in love with Eustace Conway. Gilbert takes great care to build Conway into an American icon and uses his iconic stature to embody a prototypical American male: a rugged independent loner; a forlorn lover with a streak of sentimentality as deep as his sense of alienation from a throng. We are as close as Gilbert is to her character. Through her we are an intimate voyeur into a very private life.
In places she uses colloquial language to reinforce the context of her character "reckoned, learn-ed" and she gets a lot of mileage out of well crafted imagery. By providing his family history, we intuit much about Conway without Gilbert bonking us on the head. I particularly liked the line "Eustace is too hard." People are drawn to Eustace, but no one wants to live his life. I reckon it might be pretty hard for him to wrastle down a woman.
A Brevard Woman Disappeared... by Michael Kruse is a curious piece of work, and profile, because the main character is deceased. A woman's death is accidentally discovered. The story is a back-in-time unraveling of how this woman could have been dead for 16 months in her own home. The challenge of the reporter was to piece together this woman's life through investigative reporting, heresay, and anecdote. A puzzle he had to reasssemble.
He opens with a set up. As with Johnny Francis, the author gives us the facts of the story up front and then takes us with him on his hunt to solve the mystery of this woman's lonely life. For 16 months, no one asked where she was. As a reader, we're curious about this seemingly improbable end to a life but we don't want to emulate her tragic end.
The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert, in comparison, proceeds in a polarized direction from Kruse's Bereaved Woman. Where Kruse never met his main character, Gilbert is so intimate with her protagonist one wonders about the actual nature of their relationship. We are invited to fall in love with Eustace Conway. Gilbert takes great care to build Conway into an American icon and uses his iconic stature to embody a prototypical American male: a rugged independent loner; a forlorn lover with a streak of sentimentality as deep as his sense of alienation from a throng. We are as close as Gilbert is to her character. Through her we are an intimate voyeur into a very private life.
In places she uses colloquial language to reinforce the context of her character "reckoned, learn-ed" and she gets a lot of mileage out of well crafted imagery. By providing his family history, we intuit much about Conway without Gilbert bonking us on the head. I particularly liked the line "Eustace is too hard." People are drawn to Eustace, but no one wants to live his life. I reckon it might be pretty hard for him to wrastle down a woman.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Group 5: First drafts
Dan:
You have so many wonderful gems in here. Great potential. I liked being in the amphitheater with you, especially when you started to reveal your discomfort and irony. Law school is such a curious place and to an outsider even more strange. Would be great for you to share that "what have I gotten myself into" queasiness with us, your readers. Also, the story "arc" you revealed in class: you the under-schooled outsider befriending and ultimately being coached by the big man himself, Nesson - thematically very rich.
In writing, I would watch out for redundancies. The sparer the language the more I can engage my imagination. Also, we need to know Nesson by only one name; otherwise he becomes hard to follow in your story.
Can't wait to read more!
TJ:
Great start to a work in progress (aren't we all?) Have faith in what you started. As Greg said - and I thought - this guy is so familiar but why don't we know anything about him? There's a lot of tension between his thumbing his nose at the Harvard Sq business association and his insistence on operating on his own terms. He may be homeless but he's got a spine and principles. Which, from what you stated in class, have played a big part in the choices he's been making for the past 35 years. If he hates people and authority so much, why did he set up business on a busy corner in a people dense area? There is a lot to tease apart on how he presents himself and the choices he has made.
Go for it!
Dan:
You have so many wonderful gems in here. Great potential. I liked being in the amphitheater with you, especially when you started to reveal your discomfort and irony. Law school is such a curious place and to an outsider even more strange. Would be great for you to share that "what have I gotten myself into" queasiness with us, your readers. Also, the story "arc" you revealed in class: you the under-schooled outsider befriending and ultimately being coached by the big man himself, Nesson - thematically very rich.
In writing, I would watch out for redundancies. The sparer the language the more I can engage my imagination. Also, we need to know Nesson by only one name; otherwise he becomes hard to follow in your story.
Can't wait to read more!
TJ:
Great start to a work in progress (aren't we all?) Have faith in what you started. As Greg said - and I thought - this guy is so familiar but why don't we know anything about him? There's a lot of tension between his thumbing his nose at the Harvard Sq business association and his insistence on operating on his own terms. He may be homeless but he's got a spine and principles. Which, from what you stated in class, have played a big part in the choices he's been making for the past 35 years. If he hates people and authority so much, why did he set up business on a busy corner in a people dense area? There is a lot to tease apart on how he presents himself and the choices he has made.
Go for it!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Distant Third Person
Tim had been at the helm for almost four hours. The waves were cresting over 15 feet and their crashing on the bow exploded into a torrent of spray that left him temporarily blind. It felt like it was taking days to cross the Gulf Steam and they still had at least two more long days of sailing before they could anchor in the calm waters of Bermuda.
Close Third Person
Tim's hands had frozen around the wheel of the helm, his grip was so tight. His stomach churned with every heaving of the boat as it crested and crashed over the 15 foot high swells of the Gulf Stream. He'd been at the helm for four hours but it felt like days. He was aching and shivering from the water that drenched him every time a wave exploded across the bow and his eyes stung when the wind whipped spray back in his face. Just two more days, he thought. Just two more days.
Tim had been at the helm for almost four hours. The waves were cresting over 15 feet and their crashing on the bow exploded into a torrent of spray that left him temporarily blind. It felt like it was taking days to cross the Gulf Steam and they still had at least two more long days of sailing before they could anchor in the calm waters of Bermuda.
Close Third Person
Tim's hands had frozen around the wheel of the helm, his grip was so tight. His stomach churned with every heaving of the boat as it crested and crashed over the 15 foot high swells of the Gulf Stream. He'd been at the helm for four hours but it felt like days. He was aching and shivering from the water that drenched him every time a wave exploded across the bow and his eyes stung when the wind whipped spray back in his face. Just two more days, he thought. Just two more days.
Toxic Stress: Fran Cronin
Draft 2: 3/22
Our flight from Moscow back to the U.S. during the summer of 1998 was long, hurtling for over nine hours across the Arctic Circle at a pressurized altitude of 35,000 feet. Like most direct flights between New York and Moscow during the years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the passengers on the plane were voluble and restless, the background noise a chronic din of Russian and English mashed together. The seats crowded with assorted American tourists, some hard drinking Russians and their families, rows of Russian and American businessmen, and some - like my husband, daughter, and me - were families returning to the United States with an adopted child.
Just one week before we had flown an hour south from our home in Moscow to Saratov, a congested port city along a wide expanse of the Volga River. It was the middle of July and Saratov was bleached a hot white from sun reflecting off its broad water way. We had been waiting three months to make this trip. Our five-month old son, Nick, was being readied for his adoption inside the hospital where he had lived since birth, a modest single-story brick rectangle. The long corridors and small rooms darkened and kept cool by the habit of keeping unnecessary lights off. Officious hands were swaddling him, mummy style, in a brightly patterned yellow cotton cloth.
When we arrived, Nick was placed in our arms and we left, the over-sized wooden doors closing heavilly behind us. In our waiting car was a change of clothes and a ready bottle.
As we flew back to Washington D.C. with our three-year old daughter sleeping quietly, and our new son by our side, my husband and I felt complete. But we also wondered about our new baby. Despite the novelty of us, our smells and unfamiliar language, the sensation of flying, and the constant barrage of sound and light on the plane, Nick remained passive the entire flight home. He didn’t smile and he never cried. When I kissed the downy blonde hair on his head, his scalp smelled like something that had been singed, as if the internal workings of his brain were smoldering.
Nick had just turned five months, unusually young for a Russian adoptee. If my own personal survey is any indication, he remains the youngest child I know to have been adopted from Russia. Legal requirements and political posturing did then, and still do, corral children into overly long stays in institutional care. Oblast, or regional law, in 1998, required newborns to be placed on a four-month waiting list before they could be available for an international adoption. Today, the wait time is eight months. Need to verify this. But most Russians felt culturally disinclined to adopt from outside their families. A Communist hangover also contributed to the wait and see attitude. Children abandoned to state care were tested at three years to determine their intelligence and aptitude. The more poorly a child tested, the less the state would allocate to house and educate that child. With a notorious lack of resources and vested caring, children languished, months then years, eventually sinking into listless despair and poor health.
The circulating estimate in 1998 for the number of children institutionalized in Russian care ranged between 500,000 and a million. [this needs to be verified]. The number of Immigrant Visas issued to Russian orphans coming to the United States was almost 4500. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute reports these adoptions were almost one-third of all U.S. international adoptions My husband, surveying the circle of friends we had in Moscow at that time, said, “We are living in the land of adoption.”
*Not sure of the following will stay here
Letter of Relinquishment
I relinquish my male child out of wedlock...I renounce my parental rights regarding the child forever. I will not have any gradge against his prospective adoptive parents...My mother does not want the child.
Entry No. 245 on 02.24.1998
The data on the child’s father has never been confirmed by any official documents and has been indicated according to a verbal statement of of the mother c/o I.M. Klimova, a staff member of the Maternity Hospital.
Director of the Registry Department, L.S. Doroshenko
Date: 07.13.98
During the child’s stay in the hospital since 02.24.98 till 07.08.98 neither his parents nor his relatives have ever visited the child or taken any interest in him. The child was proposed as a candidate for adoption to RF citizens but failed to be adopted by any Russian family.
Head of the Medical Institution, L.D. Lavrenchuk
I, Rybchinskaya Galina, certify that I am familiar with the Russian and English languages, and that I have translated [these] documents faithfully and accurately.
At Harvard, Jack Shonkoff, founding director in 2006 of the university-wide Center on the Developing Child , has become the go-to-guy when it comes to early childhood development, particularly with children who have experienced early trauma and abuse. The trauma, which Shonkoff likens to the effects of PTSD, could occur envitro, if the mother was stressed from chronic malnutrition or abuse, or post-natally, due to the deprivations of institutional care such as in Russia or the orphanages of Romania. Children placed in foster care, who experienced abuse or exposure to abuse, Shonkoff says, can manifest the same disregulated and maladaptive traits.
Since graduating from New York University School of Medicine in 1972, Shonkoff has been making a name for himself in the neuroscience of early adaptive behavior. The prestigious academic handles that follow Shonkoff's name like a comet trail, leave little doubt as to the ferocity of thinking he has been developing. For Shonkoff - who wears an impish grin like a cat about to fess up a mouse and has short gray hair he's barely tamed - it’s all about the science.
In a forum convened this past February by Harvard’s School of Public Health in Cambridge, Mass., Shonkoff sat on a distinguished panel with Robert Block, President, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Roberto Rodriguez, a Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy, who was beamed in remotely on a screen from his office in Washington, D.C. The moderator opened the forum with the question “What is toxic stress?” Shonkoff was in his element. He himself had coined the phrase “toxic stress” to telegraph the complex panoply of emotional and neurological fallout that resulted from early and debilitating chronic trauma.
Sitting on a simple frame chair on small stage barely large enough to contain the panelists, Shonkoof looked out over the stolid crowd of academics. “We’re at a tipping point,” Shonkoff says, “in the development of this biological revolution we are living through in science...We are beginning to understand - in a way we never did before -how early experience literally gets into the body and effects the development of the brain, effects the development of the cardiovascular system, the immune system, metabolic systems, and provides new insights, new opportunities to ask the question: What is it about hardship that leads to more illness, that leads to more problems in learning, more problems in decreased economic productivity, and a shorter life span?”
Diary Entry - March 3, 2003 - 11:48pm
Good day. Bad night. N and I got into a terrible multi-stage escalating brawl. How can such anger and fury be generated between me and my 5-year old? Tried to take him up to his room after several bouts of spit-fire. Wouldn’t budge. Hung onto the banister for dear life. Tried to pry his fingers off. Instead we tumbled backwards; he in my arms against my body. I could feel myself start to free-fall back. Terror...panic. Somehow I managed to keep myself upright. Released him; shaking.
Stood in the dark several minutes with my face in my hands. Didn’t know what else to do.
Diary entry - March 19, 2003 - 12:41am
Tired..so tired...N had a meltdown over a tongue depressor he found in the parking garage. Cried almost until we picked D up form school. At home, the 2 started on each other. N karate chopping. D eventually started to cry. Starts silly; ends badly. Probably N’s new medication today? Funny how I initially resisted the medication and now I want anything that will make our situation better. Hard times seem worse. Is it by comparison?
Diary entry - March 30, 2003 - 1:12am
D & N cuddled up together in N’s bed. D got into his bed. Very precious. First time, I think? I’ll leave them. I think it’s good or them to feel peaceful together. We’ve had such a roller coaster all week.
Scene: Andy Garner: expl of physiologcal changes due to toxic stress
Scene: Some history in neuroscience: Ed Tronick, “Still Face video
Stephanie Shelley welcomes me into her uncluttered third floor office, in Somerville, Mass., a modest sunny spot that is far removed from the wide avenue of traffic below. At 63, Shelley is athletically trim and animated; her energy and presentation well suited to the demands of her therapy practice. During the past 20 years, Shelley has worked with over 400 children and families suffering from what she describes as complex trauma and attachment issues. Issues Shonkoff would say, result directly from toxic stress. She is also the only Dyadic Developmental Therapist in the greater Boston area.
DDP, as it is known, was first introduced into the therapeutic canon in 1991 by Dan Hughes, then a recent Ph.D. graduate in clinical psychology from Ohio University. He had moved to Maine and begun to work with a population of domestically traumatized children. Hughes soon realized his training hadn't taught him how to treat these kids. He couldn’t get through to them. They were remote and manifesting serious psychological problems. Scouring through research findings, Hughes started to incorporate new therapies he found circulating to help treat kids with attachment and trauma issues. Like a clinical quilt, Hughes started to stitch together what he found worked, and began to develop his own novel attachment-focused treatment. He knew these kids wouldn’t heal through talking. They had no language to describe what they felt. They had to be taught to feel and trust what they their environment had denied them. The only path to healing, Hughes determined, was through a trusted guide, a loving adult, who could nurture them back into accepting safety and security.
Using this relational model, Hughes placed kids in supportive foster or adoptive homes with coached parenting. Slowly, these children started to engage. Like turtles poking out from under their shells, Hughes watched these kids emerge from remote distrust, to tentativeness, to a trusting relationship. The enormity of this phenomenon was not lost on Hughes. To help these kids overcome their trauma and deeply internalized fears, he started to spread the gospel of DDP.
When Shelley met Hughes in Maine the summer of 1999, it was her “aha” moment. “I walked through a door,” she said, “looking through new lenses.” what else here?
Scene: exposition, transition?
Scene: Jan 25, northern GA, out in the field with Nick, transitioning from wilderness program to new therapeutic school
Closing reflection?
Draft 2: 3/22
Our flight from Moscow back to the U.S. during the summer of 1998 was long, hurtling for over nine hours across the Arctic Circle at a pressurized altitude of 35,000 feet. Like most direct flights between New York and Moscow during the years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the passengers on the plane were voluble and restless, the background noise a chronic din of Russian and English mashed together. The seats crowded with assorted American tourists, some hard drinking Russians and their families, rows of Russian and American businessmen, and some - like my husband, daughter, and me - were families returning to the United States with an adopted child.
Just one week before we had flown an hour south from our home in Moscow to Saratov, a congested port city along a wide expanse of the Volga River. It was the middle of July and Saratov was bleached a hot white from sun reflecting off its broad water way. We had been waiting three months to make this trip. Our five-month old son, Nick, was being readied for his adoption inside the hospital where he had lived since birth, a modest single-story brick rectangle. The long corridors and small rooms darkened and kept cool by the habit of keeping unnecessary lights off. Officious hands were swaddling him, mummy style, in a brightly patterned yellow cotton cloth.
When we arrived, Nick was placed in our arms and we left, the over-sized wooden doors closing heavilly behind us. In our waiting car was a change of clothes and a ready bottle.
As we flew back to Washington D.C. with our three-year old daughter sleeping quietly, and our new son by our side, my husband and I felt complete. But we also wondered about our new baby. Despite the novelty of us, our smells and unfamiliar language, the sensation of flying, and the constant barrage of sound and light on the plane, Nick remained passive the entire flight home. He didn’t smile and he never cried. When I kissed the downy blonde hair on his head, his scalp smelled like something that had been singed, as if the internal workings of his brain were smoldering.
Nick had just turned five months, unusually young for a Russian adoptee. If my own personal survey is any indication, he remains the youngest child I know to have been adopted from Russia. Legal requirements and political posturing did then, and still do, corral children into overly long stays in institutional care. Oblast, or regional law, in 1998, required newborns to be placed on a four-month waiting list before they could be available for an international adoption. Today, the wait time is eight months. Need to verify this. But most Russians felt culturally disinclined to adopt from outside their families. A Communist hangover also contributed to the wait and see attitude. Children abandoned to state care were tested at three years to determine their intelligence and aptitude. The more poorly a child tested, the less the state would allocate to house and educate that child. With a notorious lack of resources and vested caring, children languished, months then years, eventually sinking into listless despair and poor health.
The circulating estimate in 1998 for the number of children institutionalized in Russian care ranged between 500,000 and a million. [this needs to be verified]. The number of Immigrant Visas issued to Russian orphans coming to the United States was almost 4500. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute reports these adoptions were almost one-third of all U.S. international adoptions My husband, surveying the circle of friends we had in Moscow at that time, said, “We are living in the land of adoption.”
*Not sure of the following will stay here
Letter of Relinquishment
I relinquish my male child out of wedlock...I renounce my parental rights regarding the child forever. I will not have any gradge against his prospective adoptive parents...My mother does not want the child.
Entry No. 245 on 02.24.1998
The data on the child’s father has never been confirmed by any official documents and has been indicated according to a verbal statement of of the mother c/o I.M. Klimova, a staff member of the Maternity Hospital.
Director of the Registry Department, L.S. Doroshenko
Date: 07.13.98
During the child’s stay in the hospital since 02.24.98 till 07.08.98 neither his parents nor his relatives have ever visited the child or taken any interest in him. The child was proposed as a candidate for adoption to RF citizens but failed to be adopted by any Russian family.
Head of the Medical Institution, L.D. Lavrenchuk
I, Rybchinskaya Galina, certify that I am familiar with the Russian and English languages, and that I have translated [these] documents faithfully and accurately.
At Harvard, Jack Shonkoff, founding director in 2006 of the university-wide Center on the Developing Child , has become the go-to-guy when it comes to early childhood development, particularly with children who have experienced early trauma and abuse. The trauma, which Shonkoff likens to the effects of PTSD, could occur envitro, if the mother was stressed from chronic malnutrition or abuse, or post-natally, due to the deprivations of institutional care such as in Russia or the orphanages of Romania. Children placed in foster care, who experienced abuse or exposure to abuse, Shonkoff says, can manifest the same disregulated and maladaptive traits.
Since graduating from New York University School of Medicine in 1972, Shonkoff has been making a name for himself in the neuroscience of early adaptive behavior. The prestigious academic handles that follow Shonkoff's name like a comet trail, leave little doubt as to the ferocity of thinking he has been developing. For Shonkoff - who wears an impish grin like a cat about to fess up a mouse and has short gray hair he's barely tamed - it’s all about the science.
In a forum convened this past February by Harvard’s School of Public Health in Cambridge, Mass., Shonkoff sat on a distinguished panel with Robert Block, President, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Roberto Rodriguez, a Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy, who was beamed in remotely on a screen from his office in Washington, D.C. The moderator opened the forum with the question “What is toxic stress?” Shonkoff was in his element. He himself had coined the phrase “toxic stress” to telegraph the complex panoply of emotional and neurological fallout that resulted from early and debilitating chronic trauma.
Sitting on a simple frame chair on small stage barely large enough to contain the panelists, Shonkoof looked out over the stolid crowd of academics. “We’re at a tipping point,” Shonkoff says, “in the development of this biological revolution we are living through in science...We are beginning to understand - in a way we never did before -how early experience literally gets into the body and effects the development of the brain, effects the development of the cardiovascular system, the immune system, metabolic systems, and provides new insights, new opportunities to ask the question: What is it about hardship that leads to more illness, that leads to more problems in learning, more problems in decreased economic productivity, and a shorter life span?”
Diary Entry - March 3, 2003 - 11:48pm
Good day. Bad night. N and I got into a terrible multi-stage escalating brawl. How can such anger and fury be generated between me and my 5-year old? Tried to take him up to his room after several bouts of spit-fire. Wouldn’t budge. Hung onto the banister for dear life. Tried to pry his fingers off. Instead we tumbled backwards; he in my arms against my body. I could feel myself start to free-fall back. Terror...panic. Somehow I managed to keep myself upright. Released him; shaking.
Stood in the dark several minutes with my face in my hands. Didn’t know what else to do.
Diary entry - March 19, 2003 - 12:41am
Tired..so tired...N had a meltdown over a tongue depressor he found in the parking garage. Cried almost until we picked D up form school. At home, the 2 started on each other. N karate chopping. D eventually started to cry. Starts silly; ends badly. Probably N’s new medication today? Funny how I initially resisted the medication and now I want anything that will make our situation better. Hard times seem worse. Is it by comparison?
Diary entry - March 30, 2003 - 1:12am
D & N cuddled up together in N’s bed. D got into his bed. Very precious. First time, I think? I’ll leave them. I think it’s good or them to feel peaceful together. We’ve had such a roller coaster all week.
Scene: Andy Garner: expl of physiologcal changes due to toxic stress
Scene: Some history in neuroscience: Ed Tronick, “Still Face video
Stephanie Shelley welcomes me into her uncluttered third floor office, in Somerville, Mass., a modest sunny spot that is far removed from the wide avenue of traffic below. At 63, Shelley is athletically trim and animated; her energy and presentation well suited to the demands of her therapy practice. During the past 20 years, Shelley has worked with over 400 children and families suffering from what she describes as complex trauma and attachment issues. Issues Shonkoff would say, result directly from toxic stress. She is also the only Dyadic Developmental Therapist in the greater Boston area.
DDP, as it is known, was first introduced into the therapeutic canon in 1991 by Dan Hughes, then a recent Ph.D. graduate in clinical psychology from Ohio University. He had moved to Maine and begun to work with a population of domestically traumatized children. Hughes soon realized his training hadn't taught him how to treat these kids. He couldn’t get through to them. They were remote and manifesting serious psychological problems. Scouring through research findings, Hughes started to incorporate new therapies he found circulating to help treat kids with attachment and trauma issues. Like a clinical quilt, Hughes started to stitch together what he found worked, and began to develop his own novel attachment-focused treatment. He knew these kids wouldn’t heal through talking. They had no language to describe what they felt. They had to be taught to feel and trust what they their environment had denied them. The only path to healing, Hughes determined, was through a trusted guide, a loving adult, who could nurture them back into accepting safety and security.
Using this relational model, Hughes placed kids in supportive foster or adoptive homes with coached parenting. Slowly, these children started to engage. Like turtles poking out from under their shells, Hughes watched these kids emerge from remote distrust, to tentativeness, to a trusting relationship. The enormity of this phenomenon was not lost on Hughes. To help these kids overcome their trauma and deeply internalized fears, he started to spread the gospel of DDP.
When Shelley met Hughes in Maine the summer of 1999, it was her “aha” moment. “I walked through a door,” she said, “looking through new lenses.” what else here?
Scene: exposition, transition?
Scene: Jan 25, northern GA, out in the field with Nick, transitioning from wilderness program to new therapeutic school
Closing reflection?
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Michelle: 1st Draft
Your story opening is compelling and the action of the fire scene gets us right there into the drama with your characters. But there's also a danger to being so close to the scene: since this is in the past, it begs me, the reader, to wonder how you know so much. Is this fact or fiction?
Also, given the strength of your opening scene, I felt like the spell was broken when you took us out of the scene with interior dialogue. You are showing us so much, you don't need to have your characters tell us anything more.
This story/history is obviously very meaningful to you, but not yet clear why it is important to you or what you want us to take away from it. Your comment about your father never expecting he would live to adult hood is a great hook. He is a survivor. Perhaps your Dad is who your story will be about?
Your story opening is compelling and the action of the fire scene gets us right there into the drama with your characters. But there's also a danger to being so close to the scene: since this is in the past, it begs me, the reader, to wonder how you know so much. Is this fact or fiction?
Also, given the strength of your opening scene, I felt like the spell was broken when you took us out of the scene with interior dialogue. You are showing us so much, you don't need to have your characters tell us anything more.
This story/history is obviously very meaningful to you, but not yet clear why it is important to you or what you want us to take away from it. Your comment about your father never expecting he would live to adult hood is a great hook. He is a survivor. Perhaps your Dad is who your story will be about?
Workshopping 1st Drafts: Greg and Michelle
Greg: Strictly Strings
What to say? You nailed the dialogue and set the scene pitch perfect. Now what? This reads so well it could be a stand alone, but of course, our assignment is a long-form piece of work. For me, now that I find myself in the room with these 2 characters, I want to know why I'm there with them. Who are these people and what about this "project" appeals to them? I want to know if this is a lark and if so, what's in it for them? No matter the motivation or the outcome, this project will suck up time and energy.
When not in the studio, who are these people? Relationship outside the studio? Now that you've gotten my attention, I want to know more.
Loved the "projects scene" idea we discussed in class. Sets up their location as a character and a foil for their personas.
Do you want to interject you're take on this project?
Greg: Strictly Strings
What to say? You nailed the dialogue and set the scene pitch perfect. Now what? This reads so well it could be a stand alone, but of course, our assignment is a long-form piece of work. For me, now that I find myself in the room with these 2 characters, I want to know why I'm there with them. Who are these people and what about this "project" appeals to them? I want to know if this is a lark and if so, what's in it for them? No matter the motivation or the outcome, this project will suck up time and energy.
When not in the studio, who are these people? Relationship outside the studio? Now that you've gotten my attention, I want to know more.
Loved the "projects scene" idea we discussed in class. Sets up their location as a character and a foil for their personas.
Do you want to interject you're take on this project?
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Four Personal Stories/Essays
Of the four pieces we read: The Inheritance of Tools; I, Nature Boy; Mister Lytle: An Essay; and Say Hello to my Little Friend, my favorites were Nature Boy and Mister Lytle. Very different reads, voices, and contours in their telling but both are full of wonderful detail and personal reflection.
Nature Boy made me laugh out loud. Rakoff was the perfect foil to the story he was telling and made maximum use of his personal preferences in contrast to the dogma of the survival school. Rakoff gets us right there with him but never takes himself or the "school" too seriously. Instead of destroying the mood, his personal zingers add a needed perspective and distance from the alien intimacy of the survival experience. The characters we meet are fully realized as is he as a particpant/observor.
Like Rakoff, JJ Sullivan is also an uncanny and unexpected participant who finds himself out of his comfort zone and in unusual circumstance. Neither writer really knew what they were signing up for but were game to what came their way. Each could stand back and appreciate the humor of their odd but informing circumstances.
While Nature Boy occurs over the span of a week and feels almost real time, Mister Lytle covers more than a year and takes us back and forwards in extended periods of time, almost as if we were plopped down in a time continuum, which is a nice pairing with his subject - an almost 93 year old man with an illustrious past. Lytle's past is fertile terrain for plucking anecdotes about the south, about a literary circle, and sexual mores. Sullivan puts all of this background to good use as he himslef sorts out his life and the beginnings of his own career as a writer and of his love for the woman he will marry.
The other two pieces, The Inheritance of Tools and Say Hello to my Little Friend, are well-crafted but did not engage me as much. I missed the self-depricating humor that worked so well in Nature and Lytle. Felt like they worked too hard to make their points. Tools went on too long and felt repetitious.
Of the four pieces we read: The Inheritance of Tools; I, Nature Boy; Mister Lytle: An Essay; and Say Hello to my Little Friend, my favorites were Nature Boy and Mister Lytle. Very different reads, voices, and contours in their telling but both are full of wonderful detail and personal reflection.
Nature Boy made me laugh out loud. Rakoff was the perfect foil to the story he was telling and made maximum use of his personal preferences in contrast to the dogma of the survival school. Rakoff gets us right there with him but never takes himself or the "school" too seriously. Instead of destroying the mood, his personal zingers add a needed perspective and distance from the alien intimacy of the survival experience. The characters we meet are fully realized as is he as a particpant/observor.
Like Rakoff, JJ Sullivan is also an uncanny and unexpected participant who finds himself out of his comfort zone and in unusual circumstance. Neither writer really knew what they were signing up for but were game to what came their way. Each could stand back and appreciate the humor of their odd but informing circumstances.
While Nature Boy occurs over the span of a week and feels almost real time, Mister Lytle covers more than a year and takes us back and forwards in extended periods of time, almost as if we were plopped down in a time continuum, which is a nice pairing with his subject - an almost 93 year old man with an illustrious past. Lytle's past is fertile terrain for plucking anecdotes about the south, about a literary circle, and sexual mores. Sullivan puts all of this background to good use as he himslef sorts out his life and the beginnings of his own career as a writer and of his love for the woman he will marry.
The other two pieces, The Inheritance of Tools and Say Hello to my Little Friend, are well-crafted but did not engage me as much. I missed the self-depricating humor that worked so well in Nature and Lytle. Felt like they worked too hard to make their points. Tools went on too long and felt repetitious.
The Pasta Trail: A True Story
Many years ago, while still a college student, a friend of mine, more unsettled and undecided about his future prospects than I was, took off for Italy in search of something. He returned knowing his passion, he said. He was going to be a vet, a surprising choice given his overt disdain of people and pets. Whatever. But what he really found was his passion for a delicate dish of pasta made with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil.
Like most kids who grew up in the 50’s, we ate what our mothers cooked. My mother, coming from the Bronx, made a legendary flanken but her pasta never got further than spaghetti or elbow macaroni loaded with butter, or occasionally smothered in red sauce sprinkled with parm straight from a can. In my case, I crowned my spaghetti with ketchup.
The summer he returned from Italy, Spieg (as he was affectionately nicknamed being one of three Robert’s in our high school crowd) meticulously prepared for us in his parent’s kitchen this radical pasta dish. It was a quick fix from fresh ingredients and a meld of flavors I had never before tasted. No tomatoes spewing and sputtering on the stove for hours to make a sauce that in reality was no better than what came out of a jar. This was one pot, one bowl, a dice and a toss, finished with a generous drizzle of olive oil. Delicious culinary magic.
Since then, I have made this dish with no name many many times. (I’ve googled in search of a handle but have only come up with its list of ingredients.) As an orphan dish with no lineage, my kids affectionately dubbed it my “Summer Pasta” because that’s when they first remember me making it for them. And like good spaghetti thrown against a wall, the name stuck.
I’ve traveled through Italy with my sister-in-law on a perpetual hunt for this dish. From one hilltop town to the next, we savored every variation. And recently, an ill friend asked for my “Summer Pasta” as her fantasy food request. I hope it lived up to its billing.
Over the years I’ve tweaked with the recipe, such as it is, and now add sautéed onions and garlic to the tomato-basil toss and I infuse the olive oil drizzle with some balsamic vinegar. But no matter how you dice your tomatoes or shred your cheese, you can’t go wrong.
The moral: If you want good pasta, keep it simple.
Many years ago, while still a college student, a friend of mine, more unsettled and undecided about his future prospects than I was, took off for Italy in search of something. He returned knowing his passion, he said. He was going to be a vet, a surprising choice given his overt disdain of people and pets. Whatever. But what he really found was his passion for a delicate dish of pasta made with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil.
Like most kids who grew up in the 50’s, we ate what our mothers cooked. My mother, coming from the Bronx, made a legendary flanken but her pasta never got further than spaghetti or elbow macaroni loaded with butter, or occasionally smothered in red sauce sprinkled with parm straight from a can. In my case, I crowned my spaghetti with ketchup.
The summer he returned from Italy, Spieg (as he was affectionately nicknamed being one of three Robert’s in our high school crowd) meticulously prepared for us in his parent’s kitchen this radical pasta dish. It was a quick fix from fresh ingredients and a meld of flavors I had never before tasted. No tomatoes spewing and sputtering on the stove for hours to make a sauce that in reality was no better than what came out of a jar. This was one pot, one bowl, a dice and a toss, finished with a generous drizzle of olive oil. Delicious culinary magic.
Since then, I have made this dish with no name many many times. (I’ve googled in search of a handle but have only come up with its list of ingredients.) As an orphan dish with no lineage, my kids affectionately dubbed it my “Summer Pasta” because that’s when they first remember me making it for them. And like good spaghetti thrown against a wall, the name stuck.
I’ve traveled through Italy with my sister-in-law on a perpetual hunt for this dish. From one hilltop town to the next, we savored every variation. And recently, an ill friend asked for my “Summer Pasta” as her fantasy food request. I hope it lived up to its billing.
Over the years I’ve tweaked with the recipe, such as it is, and now add sautéed onions and garlic to the tomato-basil toss and I infuse the olive oil drizzle with some balsamic vinegar. But no matter how you dice your tomatoes or shred your cheese, you can’t go wrong.
The moral: If you want good pasta, keep it simple.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
One Cat's Addiction and her Enabler (ala Calvin Trillin)
The cat made it clear. She needed a fix, now. "Meeeeooww," she pleaded in a low, almost inaudible voice. This was not a conversation for all to hear. Her owner (I confess that's me) knew that plaintive cry and knew that I was the keeper of my cat's satisfaction. I had in my possession the coveted cotton ball.
From down on the floor she turned her head up to me, her saucer green eyes wide with expectation. Urgency was etched into her brow. I may not share my cat’s insatiable need to pounce on white fluffy tufts, but I know what it's like to plead and be ignored. I've asked my children to clean their rooms many times with no response, unless you call them closing their doors a call to action.
Now Mew Mew, as she's known, is a chatty cat (hence her name) and she's a master at letting her wants be known. Before she got hooked on cotton balls, (which I have to confess I turned her onto) she had an insatiable appetite for faucets running cold water. But with water running down her head, over her ears and eyes, things got messy and she got tired of the soggy fix. Pining for something new, her senses alert, she saw me carelessly toss a cotton ball into a wastebasket. Cravings for her first passion flooded back like a tsunami.
The mighty cotton ball had to again conquer and possessed, over and over....
The cat made it clear. She needed a fix, now. "Meeeeooww," she pleaded in a low, almost inaudible voice. This was not a conversation for all to hear. Her owner (I confess that's me) knew that plaintive cry and knew that I was the keeper of my cat's satisfaction. I had in my possession the coveted cotton ball.
From down on the floor she turned her head up to me, her saucer green eyes wide with expectation. Urgency was etched into her brow. I may not share my cat’s insatiable need to pounce on white fluffy tufts, but I know what it's like to plead and be ignored. I've asked my children to clean their rooms many times with no response, unless you call them closing their doors a call to action.
Now Mew Mew, as she's known, is a chatty cat (hence her name) and she's a master at letting her wants be known. Before she got hooked on cotton balls, (which I have to confess I turned her onto) she had an insatiable appetite for faucets running cold water. But with water running down her head, over her ears and eyes, things got messy and she got tired of the soggy fix. Pining for something new, her senses alert, she saw me carelessly toss a cotton ball into a wastebasket. Cravings for her first passion flooded back like a tsunami.
The mighty cotton ball had to again conquer and possessed, over and over....
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