What is collaboration?

Ok, but there are different levels. So, how do I know if what I say is working, you never really say one way or the other, and when I change things, it looks like it's ignored totally, so I stop. 

Example of context layering: 

                1. She walked into the room.

                2. She opened the door and listened for his sounds, his breathing, his footsteps. Nothing. She walked into the room.

                3. She put her shaking hand on the door, bruises still evident from the last time, then opened the door......

This type of writing occurs after a fast writing process, you just have to get it down, but there is still a lot missing, it is the kind of changes that happen as you get to know a character.

Other examples include looking through the whole piece for:

--consistency in message

--repetition that is unnecessary and distracting

--repetition that drives the point home

--typos

So, is collaboration when I value what you value?  The Vault, Hobart Lake, preserving your farm, keeping Palmer Lake pristine. Or is it when you value what I value? Music and music venues, art, history, the land, and anything to do with nature, but own nothing. 

Or is true collaboration when two worlds work synergistically, not necessarily overlapping but enhancing each other. To me that's the best of all worlds, no one is absorbed or disappears into the other. The latter is called WORK, a four letter word that I believe should be taken out of the equation. "Respect yourself, and others, no one else is ever paid to do that, and they shouldn't be." (my own quote)

All in the eyes of the beholder, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe taking over is not collaboration, maybe it is, maybe you've got such good ideas, mine pale, maybe they don't, maybe I just like to breath fresh air, hang out with friends and encourage them in their ultimate direction, maybe the sun shines through a cloudy day and it becomes a song or a book, maybe you've got a vision and the patience to wait, maybe not, maybe the Lord is looking over the whole darn thing and likes it all and then again....

 I can analyze the whole thing, but ultimately the idea seems like a business model idea and I am liking a more fluid model of respect of the intellect and soul that gets people interested in stuff. So, I have that for you. 

Collaboration at the conceptual level, involves:

• Awareness – We become part of a working entity with a shared purpose
• Motivation – We drive to gain consensus in problem solving or development
• Self-synchronization – We decide as individuals when things need to happen
• Participation – We participate in collaboration and we expect others to participate
• Mediation – We negotiate and we collaborate together and find a middle point
• Reciprocity – We share and we expect sharing in return through reciprocity
• Reflection – We think and we consider alternatives
• Engagement – We proactively engage rather than wait and see

 

Collaboration relies on openness and knowledge sharing but also some level of focus and accountability on the part of the business organizations. Governance should be established addressing the creation and closing of team workspaces with assignment of responsibility for capturing the emergent results of the collaborative effort.

Why do I Write?

•  When I write, it's as though I'm a child again, exploring a world of possibility, of new insights, of learning. I love it. For me, writing is a kind of Victorian love affair, stolen moments, furtive glances, windows opening to unrequited love and the mystery of life. A gloved hand that reaches to the pen or keyboard to touch and send a message of undying love for the written word and all expressions of creativity. For my free moments I love to touch the earth and pull out sweet carrots and beets and all things that it has decided to give me every summer. I love to walk the deserts and the mountains, swim across the lakes, and love the person that reaches out to me.

LEAVE ME ALONE

Johnnie stood proud hands on his hips. “I’m taking the table with me.”

Diane lay stomach down on the top of the intricately patterned coffee table, “never, it’s all I have left of us.”

The picture window fissured in a stellate pattern and in slow motion the splinters slide down, sharp daggers impaling themselves into the outdoor window box and the indoor carpet. They stood like fallen icicles in winter.

The table started to slowly heat up. At first Diane thought it was the heat from the North Carolina summer that flowed in through the window. Relentless heat moist with oppressive stagnation that characterized the valley in summer.

But the table wanted her off. It was tired of the argument, of the people who thought they were more important than the plants that nourished them for years, the thousands of walnuts it had produced when it was a tree, and now suffered through the infidelities of these people. People who never thanked the trees for their support, shelter and nourishment. “Thankless,” thought the table.

“Truly,” spoke the three story tall walnut tree that replaced it.

“My son, I’m trapped in polyurethane, turned in an art object, I should be dirt and dust and help you grow and create.”

“Do it, my great father, break free.”

The table continue to warm. Diane moved away. “Ouch.” The table left her skin red where it had touched.

The varnish slowly melted away, and the table flashed and instantly dust flowed up through the open window and settled at the base of the tree, passing by the roots and sinking into the earth, searching for the roots of the new tree. Suddenly the bark and leaves seemed to shimmer. And a sigh was heard, “together at last.”

NEVER

AN OBJECT OF DESIRE AND CONFLICT

“I’m leaving and I’m taking my stuff with me!” John slammed the front door behind him and kicked it open before it latched shut.

“What are you doing!” Diane drew her hands to her face and slumped to the coffee table.

“Get up.”

“No, no, no. Don’t do this to me John, don’t leave like this.”

“I’m not, I’m taking that coffee table with me.”

“Please don’t.”

“Like you care.”

“I do care, it was the tree the children grew up with.”

“I made that table from scratch.”

“It made us, it was us.”

“Yeh, cut up bits and pieces of death.”

The table shuddered under Diane’s weight. It didn’t really want to leave. Not here, not now,  a new tree from it’s own seed now grew in the yard within view of the picture window. It was already over twenty feet tall and shaded the living room, keeping it cool in the summer heat of North Carolina.

“I don’t want you to go.” Diane was crying now, fingering the inlay on the sides of the rectangular table. Tracing each of the intricate small squares with her fingers. She counted softly to herself as she touched the smooth surface. The complexity of the design was unlike any she had ever seen. The wavy grain of the hardwood so subtle like a small breath of air in the turbulence of winter storm. Unnoticeable in the chaos that surrounded it, Johnnies voice, insistent, loud, cracks of thunder in the heat of a summer day.

“You should of thought of the consequences.” Crack, crack, one word after the other.

Diane’s arms spread over the table, like a bunched up blanket. The table sent it’s warmth to her. “Stay here,” it seemed to say. “I won’t let you go,” Diane whispered into the intricate patterns. The patterns seemed to reach up in response.

Outside the wind blew the leaves of the new walnut tree, spurts of wind, blew back and the leaves twisted so hard some of them fell off. A few blew into the window with a light scratching noise. Diane looked up. “Johnnie, please, I’m sorry, can’t we…”

“What, start over? If you could turn that table into a tree, bring walnuts back to our yard, unlock the prison you put my heart into?”

Just then there was a large thud on the window. They both looked out. A walnut hit the window, the first of the season. Then another, they seemed to be tapping out a message. They seemed to say, “stop.”

“No way,” said Johnnie, “never.” He stood hands on hips, proud.

A small fissure spread across the window, then another, all from the center, silver against the clear glass.

THE WALNUT TREE

AN OBJECT OF WONDER:

The object:

The coffee table.

It was North Carolina, a walnut tree, stood alone in the front yard of family house. For seventeen years it dropped it’s black walnuts on the ground and the family picked them up one by one and peeled off the cracked cover to reveal the hard shell underneath. They waited until the green husk cracked before they peeled it open. The walnuts were delicious but if you tried to open them too soon your fingers would stain with the peeling and pieces would jam under your fingernails until they hurt, and until the nut had dried for a while, its flavor was immature. So, they waited and slowly gathered them up like squirrels, waiting for winter. The nuts ended out in a large bag. If they weren’t careful, the rodents would infiltrate, or the raccoons, so they kept them safe behind closed doors, until late fall.

This year the winter had been particularly dry, and after so many years of abundance, the leaves never showed up in Spring. No buds available, the branches were barren.

“I’m afraid that’s it,” said Pa.

“We’re going to have to chop down that tree.”

The tree itself wasn’t sad, because he had watched the children grow, had led a wonderful life with children climbing on the branches and waiting one more day for another adventure. It didn’t hurt when they sawed, and chopped and pulled it down. When Pa brought it into the woodshop, he created thin veneer, peeled back little strips of the tree and turned it into squares and triangles. Placed it on a flat surface and started to sand. One of the branches became a leg, then another and another until it supported the flat surface.

It’s deepest desire was to live again with the family, and it found itself in the living room holding plates, supporting a card game, listening to the chatter.

Outside one of the nuts had taken root and already sprouted and new branches grew out with leaves and buds and by the time the table was done, it was already 4 feet tall.

The youngest child crawled over to the table and grabbed hold. Over and over again until he was able to stand and look over the edge and reach for the cards that lay on the table and gleefully throw them all over the carpet.

One day Pa took out the stain jar and started to change the colors, alternating dark and red with each of the small bits of veneer that made up the tables design. Then he took a smelly polyurethane coating and layered that on until the squares and design seemed to flow from the table in a mesmerizing design of squares and depth that made everyone want to touch the table to see if it moved.

He loaded it up in his truck and brought it to the county fair, and it was so fascinating people surrounded it and exclaimed when they saw it. But in spite of all the attention, the table felt alone again. It longed to be touched, not to be admired. It longed to be included, not given awards. It waited two weeks and when Pa showed up to take the blue ribbon coffee table home, it seemed to increase in beauty with every mile, until Pa himself sighed when he brought it back to fill up the too long empty space in the home.

DITCHING THE GREBES

DITCHING THE GREBES

Henry Setterholm lifted military grade binoculars to his weather worn ruddy face. 

      “Alma, look at this!” 

      “Yes.” 

      “Uh, oh, you’re here, didn’t mean to shout.” 

      “That Engineering Company got the contract, huh? Did Ole do this, that why he wanted on the Water Board? For one more acre?”

      “Yup.” Henry stood tall, feet planted on the earth his ancestors populated over a century ago. Overnight the Moore Engineering semis swarmed the shoreline of the nearby lake.

      “Like bore beetles, they’re gonna’ put that plastic pipe in the earth and suck the lake dry,” said Alma.

      “Damn!” 

      “Hey watch the language, Junior’s coming.” Alma’s hair, bright red, glowed in the morning light as she stretched her arms out to the youngest of the five.

      “Uppy, uppy.” The littlest jumped up and she planted him on her shoulders.

      Henry shook his head, he remembered his Dad admonishing him to protect the wildlife. “They’re like you son, they survive, you survive.” His Dad had pointed at the Grebe, a bird that required a unique habitat, one this particular North Dakota lake afforded. One where this unique waterfowl could create a nest in the reeds. “You see, the Grebe can’t run like ducks, they just fall over, without this lake, they couldn’t take care of their young.”

      The earth shook him away from his reverie.

      “Those semis comin’ over here?” said Alma. Junior wriggled back and forth on her shoulders.

      “No…… just started to dig.”

      “When did they get here?”

      “Junior and I, we were out at the lake last night, they didn’t see us, but we saw ‘em comin’, the parasites.”

      “Last night?” Alma looked at her husband’s boots, mud caked still wet, slept-in clothes, hands dirty with new dried blood.

      “Need some coffee.” The imprint of the binoculars on his eyelids gave a peculiar look to his face, she had seen that look before, when he came back from Iraq. When he startled awake at night. When he hunted.

      “Come on.” Alma leaned into him, Henry Junior on her shoulders, as though he was a light shawl.

      “Son.” The father’s gaze enveloped his son with crystal blue eyes. Eyes that characterized the whole family. 

      “Daddy, daddy, red glebe.” The boy put his arms out, and stretched his neck, tried to dive like the prehistoric bird he sat so still to watch the night before.

      “Whoa!” said Alma as she adjusted her walk to balance his moves. “They drain the lake…”

      “The habitat goes, even our designated wetlands.” The surrounding yard filled with dew covered prairie grasses glistened in the morning sun.

      “They’re pouring our farmland down the drain.” She patted Junior’s head as he nestled his face in his mom’s wild hair.

      “We’ll have to sift for pieces of it in the Sheyenne River.”

Alma’s face glistened. “We tried.”

      “They don’t give a ..”

      “The kids.” Alma whispered.

      “Sometimes, money don’t always win.”

      “What d’ya mean, now Henry, what’ya do?”

      “You remember that drainage ditch Ole tried to put on our land?”

      “The one they say emptied back into his front yard?”

      “Yup.”

      “The one they say weird stuff from miles away ended out.”

      “Not a myth.” 

      “You didn’t….” Alma looked up at him.

      “Some things are kind of hard to explain, they just happen.” 

      They walked slowly across the prairie grassland to the two story farm house Henry lived in since he was born. Behind them, the shouts of semi drivers as they leaped out of their cabs, and ran for dry land. He looked back and smiled. The earth’s trembling stopped. The last of the semis sunk. The white three-foot diameter rigid pipes followed. 

      The Crested Grebes faced off in the reeds, heads down beaks pointed. They raced towards each other across the open water and stopped. Small waves of water pushed out in front of them and crashed. They lifted their necks high, swam off in pairs, leaving a lazy S pattern in the water behind. The shoreline returned to normal, ready for nesting, and egg laying, and diving. Diving in fresh water. The land had been honored for another generation.  

CAST AND DIALOGUE WEEK 2

You saw the writing for week one of the Iowa writer's Online conference, probably a thousand people from all over the world are in the course it is great!!!!

This week we are:

Thursday, October 8: Class Session 2 ~ Expanding on Character: Cast and Dialogue4 pm CDT:

• Class video: Expanding on Character: Cast and Dialogue by Angela Flournoy and Margot Livesy
• CS2 Required Reading
• CS2 Suggested Additional Reading
• CS2 Writing Assignment for beginning writers
• CS2 Writing Assignment for experienced writers
• CS2 Video Discussions for beginning writers
• CS2 Video Discussions for experienced writers
• CS2 Writing Practices Discussions for beginning writers
• CS2 Writing Practices Discussions for experienced writers
• CS2 Writing Practices Discussion on writing speculative fiction
• CS2 Writing Practices Discussion on writing the novel
• CS2 Community Discussions

Sunday, October 1111:59 pm:

• CS1 Peer Feedback due
• CS1 Quiz due

Monday, October 122 pm CDT:

• CS2 Fiction Fundamentals Expanding on Character video by Alexia Arthurs
• CS2 Fiction Fundamentals Discussion for all writers: led by Alexia; Angela will contribute comments in this discussion
• CS2 Quiz opens

Tuesday, October 511:59 pm:

• CS2 Writing Assignments due

Wednesday, October 1412:00 am CDT:

• CS2 Peer Feedback opens

11:59 pm CDT:

• CS2 Teaching Discussions close

Anything for Irma

Anything for Irma

“Irma, we should take our parish clinic to your home.” Rita let her friend Irma know in a matter of fact way, that she was not a typical "Americana." Irma’s grandmother still lived in that mountain village, one the government entered to rescue her from poverty. Years ago they placed Irma in a type of orphanage in Mexico City and now she was completing her medical studies. It had been a year since she had seen grandmother, it was time to return.

“It’s a long trip across the mountains,” said Irma.

“No problem, my trip here was 55 hours by bus,” said Rita. The Red Cross in Tampico and the Parish Clinic in Ciudad Madero were a reprieve from the politics of medical care in the Midwest. This community reached out for help and Rita gave everything she had.

“That’s about right,” said Irma.

Easily half a foot taller than any other passenger, Rita, a tall white Finn, ducked to walk back to the only open seats in the back of a crowded mountain bus. She smiled when a big voice belted into the famous “Guadalajara Guadalajara.” It was their destination after all. The bus lurched forward as a little boy held out one hand, hung on with the other and continued to sing.

Two days later Rita followed Irma into the dusty village. The only gringa they had ever seen was greeted with the furtive glances of children that ran ahead to hide behind a few walled structures. She followed puffs of dirt stirred up by her friend’s steps towards an apparently deserted mountaintop.

“I need … to stop,” said Rita. Fatigued under a pack heavy with the microscope, donated medications, and various medical instruments, the thin mountain air made it difficult to breathe.

“It’s getting late,” said Irma.

Rita shifted the pack to move the straps that dug into her shoulders. The pack would’ve overpowered her friend.  

“Are we there?”

“Yes, here’s the well for the village, only a half hour more.” Irma pointed to a circular stack of bricks three feet high, a rope hung over the side. Silhouettes of mountains blended into the greying afternoon as they meandered across the plateau.

They passed a grey tattered sheet tacked up to a wall. It moved with a breeze. “This is my cousins house, where I used to live,” said Irma. Inside a woman sat in the corner of the three sided mud brick shelter, a small child huddled, head turned against her shoulder. 

Irma pointed to another three-sided structure, larger than any other Rita had yet seen. A large half empty water cistern occupied one waist high wall, the other walls were thatched mud. A roof spread past the three-sided wall onto a patio. “We’ll hold the clinic at my grandmother’s,” said Irma.

Irma pointed to a wizened figure, legs crossed, blinking her eyes occasionally if a fly got too close to them. She was suspended in a one person hammock, from the ceiling of the porch. Behind her, an opening led to a shelter wide enough for a small mattress. The full length of the roofed porch dwarfed her suspended body. She did not seem interested in her surroundings, perhaps oblivious to them. Irma approached her from behind and started to pick through her hair, looking for something she had searched for a thousand times. She parted the wiry gray mass to the side and looked closely with her enormous eyes. Eyes that seemed to pool at the base of her tall forehead. She pinched her fingers on something and tossed it to the ground.

“Piojos” she said as she tossed them to the ground, they blended into the dust, kind of wiggled away.

“Do they ever go away?” said Rita. She could feel a cold sweat when Irma looked at her. All she ever said to Irma was “yes” to any request. Her heart ached, with a desire to do anything for her friend.

“Never, we all help pick them out.” She continued with rapid movements tossing the practically invisible creatures onto the ground.

Rita felt the urge to itch her own scalp when she saw the lice. “Where should I put the equipment?”

“Sometimes they go away.” Rita saw a familiar smile creep across Irma’s face.

Irma’s wiry black hair touched her grandmother’s as she leaned in to listen to the soft mumbling that escaped from her grandmother’s lips.

“What did she say?” said Rita.

“You’re very strong,” said Irma.

“Gracias.” Rita felt her eyebrows scrunch together as she smiled with what she hoped looked like gratitude.

“Would you help her?”

“Anything,” said Rita.

“Those buckets and that yoke, in about ten trips you could fill the cistern before nightfall.”