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thepauser

~ “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren)

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Category Archives: Creativity

PauserPrompt: The Personal Universe Deck

04 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Creativity, Fiction, Writing, Writing Prompts

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

creative writing, fiction, grand canyon, Personal Universe Deck, writing, writing prompts

In my new Friday feature, I'm going to generate writing using types of prompts, and invite you to do the same.  This month, I'm 
using my Personal Universe Deck, or PUD, to prompt some new writing ideas.The Personal Universe Deck first originated with 
poet Michael McClure.  He describes how he created his Personal Universe Deck in this speech at Naropa University.  You'll find good descriptions for generating the PUD on this website, and on this one. This week, I shuffled my deck and pulled three cards containing the words turmeric, eggplant, sugar, wait, silence, and skip. 

Silence, Turmeric, Wait

Father and Daughter, a special bond

Father and Daughter, a special bond

“Does this have turmeric?” she asked, sniffing the contents of the pita suspiciously. “Cause you know I don’t like that stuff.”

Lilly looked at her.  “You are six years old.  You live in Texas.  You’ve never had turmeric.  How did you even know turmeric existed?”

The girl eyed her mother with precocious disdain.  “I read about turmeric in my book on Asia.  I decided I don’t like it.”

Lilly sighed. Her father and brother, Will, suddenly got busy with their food.  Will stifled a giggle by coughing into his plate.

Lilly spoke. “The pita does not have any turmeric. I guarantee it.  We are at the base of the Grand Canyon.  This is the food the donkey brought down for you.  You won’t get anything else, so I suggest you eat.” She glared at her headstrong second child, willing the conversation to turn in her favor.  She pushed the sweaty veil of blonde hair out of her daughter’s eyes and implored, “Just try it for me, okay?”

The girl, Annie, widened her eyes and stuck her tongue out. Then she slowly moved her tongue toward the offending sandwich. Upon touching the contents, she cried, “Ew!  Definitely turmeric, Mom. Definitely. It’s going to be against my principles to eat it, Mom.”

“Upon what grounds did you base your decision to dislike turmeric?  What has turmeric ever done to you?” Lilly looked at her husband, Bob, and said, “Am I really having this conversation?”

He replied, “Keep your voice down.  People are looking at us.”

“Do you want to handle this, then?” She whispered furiously across the picnic table.

“No, just keep it down, okay?”

Lilly leaned into Annie’s ear. “This pita has chicken.  You like chicken.  It has mayonnaise, your favorite. It has grapes.”

Bob piped into the conversation then. “Yeah, Annie, I don’t like grapes, but I’m eating them, see?”

“Not helping,” Lilly said.

Nonplussed, Annie stated, “It has turmeric, too,”

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s yellow.  Turmeric is yellow.”

Bob spoke again. “That’s not turmeric, sweetheart, it’s called curry.”

Will, who’d been quietly wolfing his pita, picked his head up and said, “Curry?”

He started crying, the loud way, the way a sudden squall hits in the middle of summer, the way a kid cries during a vacation even though he is too old to cry in public any more.   Now, people were really looking.  His eyes were full of accusation.  “You know how much I hate curry! What is wrong with you two?”

Lilly said, “Now you know why I can’t remember our vacations.  My mind erases the trauma.”

By now, Will had reached across the table and pinched Annie on the arm, and both children were crying.  Bob and Lilly looked at one another for a moment, and then he started laughing.  Lilly did not see the humor, and told him so.

“Come on, now,” he said, “look on the bright side. We’re at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We came all the way down here on freaking mules.  We have a six year old who reads books about Asia.  She knows what turmeric is, and she uses words like ‘principles’ in the right way.”

Annie walked around the table and crawled into Bob’s lap.  “I’m smart, aren’t I, Dad?”

“Smart is as smart does, Annie,” he said.  “I think you are going to be very hungry in a little while, and there’s nothing Mom and I can do to help you, so would you say that’s a smart decision?”

She patted his face. “But you’re forgetting about my principles, Dad.  And the candy bar in your pocket.”

I'd love it if you joined me in the Friday prompt.  Create your own PUD and write.  If you post the 
results on your blog, please feel free to post a link in the comments section here.
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pauseRReport: Year One

31 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Creativity, Education, Goals, Social Media, Writing

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

blogging, creative writing, Education, social media, writing

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

At home, examining the light.  A description that fits for the last year.

The Pauser marked its one year anniversary just a few days ago, and I feel like celebrating!  Here are the big lessons I’ve learned this year:

  • Digital, schmidgital! People make social media interesting.  I have enjoyed the personal connections I’ve made more than any other aspect of blogging.  While my virtual relationships are not the same as those real-world, on-the-ground ones, the generosity, kindness, and encouragement you all have shown me has helped me grow, and to heal hurts that I hadn’t even been aware of.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.
  • Starting a blog was not that hard. I still don’t have the “bells and whistles,” skills my children have, but I can drive the boat.  Blogging is a testament to life being doable.  In year two, it’s time to learn at least one bell/whistle.
  • Blogging is a measuring tool. When I look back at some of my early writing, I can envision ways to make the writing more effective than it was then.  I also look back at some of the writing I did about my husband’s journey with prostate cancer and I think about the way the writing helped me to achieve some emotional closure.  Because I flung my words out into the universe, they became a kind of commitment to my soul, something I had to go back to when the downs came calling.  Those words, once spooled out, became a permanent record of all I have felt, all I have achieved, all I have hoped.
  • I’ve been fairly consistent with my posting, but I have learned that sometimes I just can’t keep up.  I’ve also learned not to worry about it.  The earth won’t stop spinning on its axis if I go a couple of weeks without a post.

Year One STATISTICS

Blog Posts: 86

Blog Views: 3027

Total Comments: 293 (Half of these are mine, because I always reply to comments. I’m Southern.)

Followers: 117

Top Three Posts:

# 3  Daily Discomfort: Frozen

# 2   Daily Discomfort: Love and Time

# 1  Daily Discomfort: Getting A Pedicure

The post with the most comments:

 DD: Mozart and the Beautiful Tears

Up Next:

EPSON MFP image

My editorial calendar for the year: It will probably change, but at least I’ve got a plan.

For year 2, I’ve changed the editorial calendar a bit.

Each week I’ll write a feature article based on a monthly theme.  I’ll also write once a week from a prompt I generate in a new way each month.  Each month, I’ll write an article for the paus(ed) category based on how to use that prompt generation in the classroom.

In September, I’m writing about the New Guard.  You know, my kids and their kids.  I have just learned from NPR that I am of the Old Guard.  I (and apparently many of you) am classified as the Old Guard because I am are still using Twitter.

I’ll also write from a series of prompts generated by my Personal Universal Desk.  It’s a cool tool.  I’ll write about how it works so you can use it too if you want. I’ll also write about how to use the PUD(makes me feel good just to put it into writing) in your classroom.

pauseRReport, April 2015: On Dry Wells

05 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Blogging, Creativity, Writing

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

blogs, creativity, Dachau, Germany, writing

April 28, 2015 marked the end of my eighth month as a blogger.  While I’m still struggling with consistency and keeping pace with my internal schedule for posts, April, like the four months before it, was a time of slow, steady growth of the site. I now have 92 followers. If I had 100 by the end of August, I would be happy. I know that those numbers may seem paltry to some, but I come into this spot with no expectations. Super Husband constantly reminds me that I’m blogging for fun, not to have something else to beat myself over the head with.

Here are some of the things I noticed in the month of April.

  • I am still trying to find ways to balance part-time work and writing. In the last couple of months the job has taken more of my time than I anticipated.  Even though I still have plenty of time to write, my creative well has been dry. Perhaps this is due in part to my body’s muscle memories from the end of the last twenty-three school years.
  • I also need to learn to handle responses (or non-responses) to posts that I did not anticipate. The post I wrote about my visit to Dachau did not get much response.  In fact, the posts I quickly put up to explain my lack of comments on other posts got more reads than this piece of writing that I spent a great deal of time thinking through.  I have no regrets about this post—it’s a documentation of how I interpreted my experience, a snapshot of my thinking that my children will be able to read when I’m gone.  I just need, perhaps, to learn to take it more in stride when others don’t see the value in some of my ideas.  Writing is risking, and I’m determined to keep sticking my neck out even if it gets whacked.

In May, I plan to write two more posts about my trip to Germany.  Then I’m going to start a series of posts inspired by other posts I have read in the month of April.

Here’s what I’ll be writing about:

  • Why I Cried When He Talked About Mozart
  • Beautiful Faces: What I Loved about Germany
  • A post inspired by Mom’s Purse, Musing off the Mat
  • A post inspired by My Dirty Little Secret about Inspiration by 101 Books
  • A post inspired by Geronimo: On Falling with Style by Such Small Hands

I hope everything is copacetic in your world today.  Thanks, as always, for your support.

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Recent Posts

  • New Site:On Revision
  • Finally…
  • Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two Babies
  • We all Fall
  • If you get an Outfit, You can Go to Zumba, too.

Recent Comments

Charlotte Hoather on New Site:On Revision
koehlerjoni on Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two…
Jalyss Smith on Where I’ve Been: A Tale of Two…
Charlotte Hoather on We all Fall
koehlerjoni on We all Fall

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