Famous Schools

We did an activity today with Naomi Nye's poem "Famous" in Creative Writing (http://www.amyjanecheney.com/famous.html). Students wrote their own poems about celebrity and being famous. The following is mine.

Famous Schools

A school is famous to those who learn.

Principals are famous to the school board;

for his dreams of commuity reach

beyond geographical borders.

Teachers are famous for teaching;

even when what is taught

is less than famous.

Students are famous for challenging;

more famous than prior

graduates who thought themselves

crowned in infamy.

We all are famous to our schools;

for what we do, what we achieve

is the celebrity of our time.

An all too brief time

Famous for four years Warhol'd down

to a fifteen minute era of

famosity.

World's Worst Blogger

I am the World's Worst Blogger!

For a man who has so much to say, I find myself speaking aloud rather than blogging.

I've only told a few close friends (and Lisa of course) about this blog and everyone is like, "When are you going to write something else?" I have tons of ideas, which I list in my journal, but don't list here for fear of commie thieves taking my ideas and writing them better than me and making a small fortune used for the sole purpose of electing McCain, killing him, and using Sarah Palin as their biatch.

You may think I'm kidding, but this actually happened to my father. In the 1970s he was working at a huge manufacturer as a draftsman. He would draw these very detailed views of machine parts which would become blueprints for some engineer. He really wanted to be a cartoonist. So often in life we find necessity trumps free will.

Anyway, dad wanted to be a cartoonist and came up with an idea to do this while still doing tri-views of eighth-inch screws, or some other inane task. He had this idea to create "baseball cards" of co-workers as a gag gift. His idea was to do his caricatures on the front and some bogus stats on the back which were based on what their specific tasks were for the company. He did a bunch and distributed them. They were a big hit. He thought if the idea took off, people would want some cards more than others and he could make multiple copies for trading.

Well, somehow another company saw, heard, or thought of the idea at the same time, or just after he did. They created a marketing scheme for the idea and successfully marketed the "baseball card" idea to salesmen throughout the tri-state area and made a small fortune.

My father was very angry at first. I have memories from when I was seven of him cursing their thievery. "If I can teach you one thing," he said to me, "it's how to lie, cheat and steal." He meant those words with the best intentions. He didn't really want me to be a liar, a cheater, or a thief; what he meant was, "Don't let this happen to you kid."

So, that's why I don't post many of my ideas in this blog.

And that's why I am the World's Worst Blogger.