I bought a copy of The Lake Matters: Notes about Writing and Life by Aram Saroyan. Lorry had just made dinner and we were preparing to eat and there I was standing, reading Aram's book and loving it and I forgot about time. I was standing, reading. Time stopped. Dinner stopped. But life did not stop. Life was going on in that book, especially in that chapter I was reading where the author says -- "The writer reads, so to speak, as the carpenter looks at a newly built house -- with, perhaps, the idea of building another one like it, or maybe incorporating a nicety into an edifice currently under construction." Yes, I thought, yes. This is what's it's like to read as a writer where every comma is a dovetail joint and where every period is a ten penny nail.

What a magnificent book this is for teachers. And for writers. Both of which Aram Saroyan is.

And do not forget, he also wrote a poem that completely changed the way I (and most of my generation) listened to crickets:

Not a
cricket
ticks a
clock

As I read, and the dinner cooled on the table, a blue glow came around Aram's book. And the room, and those in it, were lighter and brighter and wiser. I looked around. The book of the blue glow was still glowing. And that's how writers read books. Something may happen that has never happened before. Aram Saroyan, 1965

Mary woke up and broke her foot. Nobody was in the house. Her closet doors were shaking. She got up very quickly. She went to the kitchen to get the telephone and called 911. When the police got there she was on the floor dead.


The above beginning of a story was written by Claire Lerner who was visiting our home two years ago with her parents, Higgy and Renee. I love the accidental ease with which Claire, age 11, just "fell" into her story. She did this while we, the adults at the table were talking. Bored, Claire opened my laptop, which is always on the long white pine trestle table in our kitchen (in all of our kitchens since 1972) here in Florida. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Claire tickle the keys a little. Then, satisfied she had a good beginning, she quit typing and went outside.

Claire's facile typing produced, I think, a good beginning. A springboard for more, and more. I don't know if she ever wrote another word, but it doesn't matter. In such good beginnings, the story lies in wait for the writer to return.

Here is another from a young writer in New York state. His reading teacher, an old friend of ours, Fred Burstein is a very gifted man -- poet, story writer, picture book author, fine woodworker, sculptor, former actor on daytime TV -- all rolled into one. But it's Fred's finesse and intuitive skill as a reading coach that has made him one of the best teachers in America. His student Joshua wrote this --

In the Woods
>
by Joshua Kenneth Swartz
>
>
>I don't know the last time I was in the woods. I don't live by the woods.
>The last time I was in the woods I had a tick on my shoulder and it was
>sucking the blood out of me. It was this big, about 2 inches, dangling
>from my shoulder. Another time I had two ticks on my leg. My mom used a
>hair clip or something with a rubber tip. She tried to burn the tick off
>with it and instead she burned me. Then she took her name tag with a clip
>and she grabbed it with that and then pulled it out. When she burned me it
>really hurt.
>
>In my back yard there is a water falls like Niagara Falls. It makes
>a "D" and I tried to walk through it and my hand got wrapped around a
>thorn. I don't know how. I can take prickers and regular thorns but not
>blood thorns. Those are the long red ones. That's what I went through and
>they went into my skin. I didn't bleed because I took them out a certain
>way. You have to twist the thorn right a little, then twist it left twice,
>then push down gently and you yank out quickly and put your finger over
> the hole and it doesn't bleed.
>
>Once I was in the woods and I heard a branch start to crack so I
>stood under it so it would hit me. It didn't really hurt. Then I just
>walked home.

Good work, Joshua and Claire, keep those stories coming. With a good beginning, the story will practically write itself.
>

Off and on, for the past two weeks I have been traveling, visiting schools and conferences and reading from my books. Having done this now for 35 years, I have to ask myself -- do I ever get tired of it?

Truthfully, no.

I love being in the midst of young readers.
I love talking about reading.
I love reading.
I love writing.
I love talking.
I love listening.
I love life.

So my motivation remains strong as the day I signed my first-year teacher's contract for The Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts. The year was 1968 and I earned $5,000.00 as a teacher.

That first year I had a troubled, and troubling, student named Devin. He gave me a lot of grief. He really didn't like me. He turned my second period English class into a tactical teacher-student confrontation each day. My other classes were going OK, but Devin made me ask myself every day why I was teaching, why I wanted to be a teacher. Devin made me want to paint houses for a living.

One day I received a letter in the mail from my grandmother who said her grandson was attending my school. She asked if I would look after him. His name was Devin. That same day, my particular Devin was harassing me in my second period English class, and I did something I've never regretted. I told Devin -- in front of the entire class -- that the reason we were always fighting was because we were related.

It could have gone any way at all. He might have thrown his desk at me. He didn't. Devin sat still as a mouse. At the end of class, he asked me if it were true, that we were related, and if so, how. I said, "My grandmother's name is Stella and she asked me to look after you." Devin's blue eyes filled with tears; he reached out and hugged me. He said, "I love my grandmother." I said, "I do too."

Teachers ask me how I like looking out at an auditorium full of strangers. I tell them -- "There are no strangers. We are all related. Each and every one of us."

I have done two performances in the past two weeks. The first at Tice Elementary School in Tice, Florida. The second at Books and Books in Coral Gables, Florida. Both were fun. And each time I learned something -- well, I always learn something. But at both events I re-discovered the power of mime. Mime is something I learned from my father who, most of the time, was a serious man. But he had his odd, loose moments when he'd break into outrageous, footloose comedy.

My dad used to do a really funny little dance and he'd embarrass my brother and me in public by kicking up his heels and occasionally actually kicking us while walking along beside us. His left foot would come out of nowhere and -- thump -- kick our butts. If he was in a ridiculous mood and we were in town walking on the sidewalk, he might step off the curb so that his left foot was in the gutter and his right foot was on the sidewalk, and he'd hump along foolishly like Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Down deep, my dad man was a big clown and I picked up on his clownishness when I was very young.

As a storyteller I weave my dad into a number of little stories he used to tell and quite often I do his foot kicks and funny facial poses. I like to think he's out there in the audience, seeing me horse around, laughing with or at me, I don't care which. Or maybe, better yet, he's right at my side making faces and walking on air. I know one thing. He'd love to see the kids imitating my actions when I do storytelling. There's always one or two little mimers who give me a reflection of every move I make. Little do they know that their hoofer kicks go back to the days of Vaudeville when my dad was a kid. That's four generations of hijinks. Living history.

A teen reader in Italy who is writing a report on my wife Loretta asked us for a complete biography. Loretta, or Lorry as most of us know her, wrote to her devoted reader saying that her biography and her husband's had sort of intertwined over the past 40 years of marriage, but she resurrected some family facts of her own and sent them off in an email. The teen reader wrote back her appreciation and said Loretta is a famous poet.

Loretta (and Gerald) take any and all felicitations, thank you, thank you. BUT, as Lorry just said to me, "I have never written a poem in my life!"

I reminded her that we have three current editions of one of our books (The Mythology of Dogs) in Italian, and that maybe the reader was a little confused. I also reminded her that I had a reader once who stated that I was a German citizen and worked for the German government and another reader who insisted that I was an American Indian high school teacher living in Orlando, Florida. In fact, I have a Hungarian-English background and we live in Bokeelia, Florida.

Readers -- and people in general -- get the funniest ideas about writers. I once had a conversation with a pizza delivery man that went like this --

Pizza Guy: What do you do for a living?
Me: I'm a writer.
Pizza Guy: Published?

For the record, and for Loretta's admirers, here are some interesting facts. Loretta's family came from North Carolina, traveled from there to Texas, and then settled in northern New Mexico in the 1880s. They lived in an earthen house called a dugout, basically a cave. This was in Questa, New Mexico where they eventually built a ranch house and raised cattle. When they sold their ranch the ownership passed to Mabel Dodge Lujan and she gave the house and property to D.H. Lawrence in exchange for the manuscript of Sons and Lovers. Members of Loretta's family traveled to the Farmington area where the town of Chambers was, and still is, named after them. Emma Chambers, Loretta's great great aunt remembered traveling from Texas to California in a conestoga wagon and meeting friendly Indians along the way.

By the way, although Loretta has never written a poem, she should. Her family history is an unwritten poem. And she -- all by herself -- is a celebrated line of verse.