Biscuit City

 Voices United 2012, sponsored by the Manassas Chorale, will take place this Saturday, March 10 at 7:30 PM in Merchant Hall at the Hylton Performing Arts Center, with composer Joseph Martin leading the 150-voice Voices United Choir in a selection of his arrangements. Joe is one of the leading composers of choral music today with over 1200 compositions to his credit. He is also a phenomenal piano player and will play one piece during the concert. 

The first half of the concert will feature the 100-voice Manassas Chorale under the direction of Artistic Director Becky Verner in a program of anthems written, composed or arranged by Joseph Martin. Don’t miss this annual event of great and moving music! http://www.manassaschorale.org/home.aspx http://hyltoncenter.org/ http://www.martin88.com/ 

I read to my daughter Amy’s fourth grade class on Read Across America day and also for Mary Ruth Spencer’s class (loved her Cat in the Hat hat!) at Signal Hill Elementary.

I chose part of biography about Amelia Earhart and read the last chapter,  about her last attempt to fly around the world at the equator. Then I taught the class the chorus to a song that was popular right after her disappearance in 1939, “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight” and we sang it together. I was amazed at how well-behaved the kids were and how well they sang.

I also had a chance to watch the teachers and students in action. The kids move through the halls to French or P.E. or lunch and are orderly and quiet. Kudos to the teachers and staff at this school, at any elementary school or any school for that matter for the amazing job they are doing nurturing and instructing the future. All you guys–students, teachers, staff, wherever you are–ROCK THE HOUSE!

I’ll be back next year! Thanks!

Here’s a link to the original song by “Red River Dave.” Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAvtHMJS1O8

I was reminded of this poem yesterday when our papers landed in a puddle and, in spite of being in a plastic bag, ended up soaked. I had to spread them out to dry on the deck railings and was reminded of the image in this poem,” Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair/ Before them over their heads to dry in the sun,” a sight not often seen in these days of electric hair dryers.

“Birches” is not as well known at “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Road Less Traveled,” but well worth a read.

WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

When I am around other writers, they sometimes will talk about having “writer’s block” or experiencing difficulty writing. I feel their pain, having experienced this from time to time myself. I heard a writer once answer the question, “What do you do about writer’s block?” He said, “I lower my standards and keep on going!” He went on to say that he could always revise what he had written when he got his mojo back (my words, not his–he said, “When I’m able to write well again”).

I think a key is also to write at the same time, in the same place if you can do it. I’ve known writers who are still working at their day jobs who get up early (4 AM for example) and put in three or four hours before heading to work. Others who can’t manage a block of time (like me, even though I am retired) will write whenever and wherever they can. That’s what I tend to do although most of my writing is done on our desktop in the “computer room” (AKA the glass-enclosed nerve center of the Biscuit City Network–a fiction of my mind, I have to admit). If I can’t use that, I have a laptop and email the files to myself so I can have them on the desktop. I don’t like to carry a laptop around when I’m running errands, so I will end up putting down ideas or phrases or even paragraphs on notecards if I have one or scraps of paper if one is available or my hand (the original Palm Pilot–ar, ar). I could carry my writer’s notebook but I’m afraid of losing that after I misplaced it for a month because I took it to church and left it there and forgot about it.

I’ve also talked recently with another writer about the usefulness of deadlines to move the process along. I along with others  always want to change what I’ve done, fiddle with it, make it better. A deadline puts a stop to that, although deadlines do result in some late nights and close calls. I do have a deadline for my Observer column although my editor is very understanding. I still try to respect deadlines so I don’t inconvenience the publication which has to meet a publishing deadline.

And if I want to change something that has been published, I can always put a “director’s cut” here. I can do that because I write short pieces that will fit into a blog space, although I don’t really know how long these posts can be. I haven’t written pieces that are that long. It is possible to re-do a book, but you have to be Stephen King or someone like that to do so.

One author said it well about finishing a work when he remarked, “I never finish a piece: I simply give up on it.”

So good luck to all those of us trying to finish pieces and meet deadlines. I hope you’re able to do so, and that you don’t have to give up on them! Keep writing!