We’ve just finished restoring Jill’s office. You may remember that our house was a fraternity for ten notorious years. Jill’s office was one of the less-destroyed rooms. It was notable, though, for its wall-sized painting of a rebel flag. It’s also the only room with a big arch, which was crumbling. We had stabilized the room but weren’t sure what we’d do to make it the showcase room that Jill wanted. I wasn’t eager to work on her room because one of the things she wanted was to rehang the door to the porch so that the door would swing from right to left instead of left to right. Have you ever tried to re-hang an old door? Oh my. Our renovation work on this room took six months — three times longer than we had planned. But that’s the way old-house rehab goes. If we didn’t think we could get such work done quickly, we might not be so quick to start it. So, always we dream of things being fast and easy, even though — deep down — we know it won’t be so.


It’s the same kind of hope that keeps people buying lotto tickets. You might get lucky! If our species didn’t believe in luck, there would be too many things we’d never try. So we moved Jill out of her office and into the TV room way back in March. Then I stripped the woodwork in her office. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again any time the topic comes up: I’d rather do sit ups, hundreds of them, than strip paint from old wood. That said, I’ve gotten really good at it. And we’ve arrived at a method that works well at restoring wood — which you can learn by watching our very popular Youtube video: “How to Strip Paint From Wood.” Stripping wood is like long-distance running. You’ve got to hang in there.


After stripping, then refinishing the woodwork, including the room’s original oak mantel (Jill’s not allowed to do paint-stripping any more for health reasons), we went after the wallpaper. Victorians loved their wallpaper — and they wall-papered everything, including their ceilings. We’ve got the stuff all over the house. We advise that you don’t go after old wall paper until you absolutely have to. Life is complicated enough.


Then there was lots of plastering, then new electricity, including a pair of antique schones over teh fireplace (don’t forget, the Victorians had very little use for electricity). Then refinishing the floor and the radiator, then hanging the porch door so that it opens from left to right instead of right to left (so that Jill can get a breeze at her desk), and then reinishing and installing antique crown molding (a pile of which we found incredibly cheap at a salvage warehouse). And installation of Jill’s cool library ladder (which she found on Craig’s list, of all places). Then, at last, the fun part: building stuff.




I built two window seats, which Jill helped design. Her designs always demand much more time than I want to take. In this instance, she insisted on having faux doors to make the seats look more antique. I built it to her specifications and, as usual, I must admit that she was right. After that, finally, I got to put together the ten-foot-long, eight-foot-high Victorian display cabinet that Jill had found at a local auction. This is something Jill does to make my life more exciting: she finds interesting architectural artifacts at local auctions, then comes home and says, with much excitement: “Guess what I got today!” At which point, I draw a deep breath, grip the nearest solid object, and utter: “What?”


Once, when Jill and I were at a big outdoor auction, I turned my back for a minute and the next thing I knew she had bought a big, iron-frame Victorian fish tank. It now lies in pieces in our basement. She can’t bring herself to sell it and suggests that we could use it as a terrarium. The Victorians loved terrariums.


The display case is cool but, like the acquarium, it was in pieces. I’ve never been a fan of puzzles but, in the case of furniture, I kind of like trying to figure out how the pieces go together. The display case came together nicely. Jill uses it to show off her considerable Steiff toy animal collection. Seems to me you could display anything in a cabinet like that — old socks, say — and it’d look good.


Now, Jill has a showcase office. And she’s feeling a little pressure because she says she’s got to keep it neat to do it justice. This makes me laugh because we’re not neat people and my little cubby hole of an office, on the third floor, demands nothing of me. Which is why it’s always a mess.

To see more of JIll’s way cool office, click here: Jill’s Victorian Office!

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When I began teaching a course called “Writing for the Web” three years ago, I pictured myself scrambling to keep up with my plugged-in, tech-savvy students. I was sure I was in over my head. So I was stunned to discover that most 20-year-olds I meet know very little about the internet, and even less about what they need to do to become effective communicators online.

The media present young people as the audacious pilots of a technological juggernaut. Think Napster. Twitter. Facebook. Given that (according to the Kaiser Family Foundation) the average 18-year-old spends almost eight hours daily immersed in media, we oldsters tend to assume that every other teenager is the next Mark Zuckerberg. Aren’t kids crazy about downloading music, swapping files, sharing links, texting, and playing video games?

But video games do not create savvy users of the internet. Video games predate the internet and have little to do with online culture. When games are played online, the computer is no longer an open portal to the world. It is an insular system related only to other gaming machines, like Nintendo and X-box. The only communication that games afford is within the closed world of the game itself–who is on my team? At their worst, games divert children from other, more enriching experiences. The internet’s chief similarity to video games is that both are siphoning off audiences from television, which will soon reside exclusively on the internet. As a delivery system for TV, film, and games, the internet has proven itself a premier source of entertainment. And that’s all that most young people know about the internet.

Why wouldn’t we educate students in more sophisticated uses of the internet, which is commanding an increasing amount of the world’s time and attention? I’m not talking about a course on “How to Understand the Internet” or an introduction to searching for legitimate research-paper sources online (though this is useful, obviously). I’m talking of the need for students to understand and produce texts online–essential skills for life beyond college.

Look at the strategic plan of any American college and you will find an emphasis on helping students “meet the demands of the information age.” But walk into many college classrooms and you will see only a single computer at the front of the room. In most cases, that computer functions as an overhead projector. Where are the computers for students?Apparently, many professors believe that students’ ownership of computer notebooks and pads somehow guarantees that students will learn all they need to know about computers. But who is teaching students how to write, say, a marketing report or an historical overview for an online readership? I am surprised at the number of my colleagues who prohibit the use of computers in their classrooms because they fear that students will “surf the web” during a lecture.


The absence of computers in the classroom sends the message that computers are ancillary to learning. This misconception of the computer is due, in part, to the fact that the majority of faculty are Baby Boomers who didn’t need computer technology to succeed as professionals. That’s why most university professors have not integrated computer use into their courses.To most of them, it seems, the computer is a fancy typewriter, a means of sending memos, and, generally, a distraction. Students write papers on their computers, but those papers are handed in as hard copy. Never mind that the world outside of college does very little business with hard copy. In short, there exists a huge divide between the college classroom and the world outside, where work and life thrive on the internet.

Presumably, we want our students to have an impact on the world. But how can that happen if we don’t teach them how to use the primary tool that would make that impact possible? To be fair, there are some important developments taking place in the Digital Humanities movement, which aims to expand the notion of “legitimate” research by including nonlinear sources, such as videos, digital images, and hyperlinks: why not augment texts with digital tools? There are also a number of professors of Composition and Rhetoric who are teaching digital literacy. But such efforts remain marginal. One of my students recently wrote, “The world is moving closer and closer to being a completely technological place, and those who don’t understand it are going to be left behind.”


It seems clear to everyone that our increasingly technological world demands technologically adept citizens. Start with the simplest act of online communication: e-mail. Recent studies have shown a significant decline (59%) in e-mail usage among teenagers (Pew internet & American Life Project, Comscore Media Metrix report, Neilson report).Why? E-mail is for business, not entertainment and socializing. Young people have abandoned e-mail for text messaging. I often hear faculty members complain about the ineptness of student e-mails—whether as queries or as a means of presenting proposals—but very few professors seek to rectify the situation by teaching effective online communication in their classes. They don’t seem to understand that emails are as important as more formal correspondence, even though, ironically, the professors’ own daily use of emails underscores this fact.

How can discipline-specific computer teaching begin? Let’s start with the fact that every academic discipline makes use of databases. Do your students know how to access these databases? Do they know how to write articles of their own that might appear in these databases? Are they aware of the ethical dimensions of placing information online? Those studying social work, for example, should know that all client records and reports can be subpoenaed. Social-work students, therefore, need to be aware of confidentiality laws. These students also need to know that any report submitted online will remain online forever. There is no such thing as expunging a record from the internet. This is just one of countless examples of internet protocol and online constraintsthat impinge upon a student’s understanding of a particular field of study.


Nearly every discipline now has an online journal and may also have blogs and special-interest web sites. Until quite recently, online literary journals were considered inferior to their print counterparts. That’s no longer the case. My students should be reading online journals, but they should also understand how an online journal differs from a traditional print journal. Online journals make use of multimedia—video, audio, photos, chat rooms—that are not available to print journals. The rhetorical package online is very different than in print. My students hope to write for online journals—in addition to or in lieu of print journals. They may also have an opportunity one day to manage or edit an online journal of their own. If they have not studied the medium, if they have not written in the style of online journals, if they have not analyzed how online journals are keyed to rhetorical aims that are specific to the internet, then they will be unprepared for the field they hope to enter after graduation.


American colleges and universities send 1.7 million graduates with bachelor degrees into the world each year (National Center for Education Statistics).Why would we not give them every advantage? As we help students strengthen their knowledge and ability to write, read, and communicate effectively, we must prepare them for the online cultures that will be central to their private and professional lives. Undergraduate writing majors at my university end up in a variety of fields, but they share at least one thing: much of their work finds and defines itself on the internet – that’s where the readers go; that’s where the markets reside. If using the computer to write, read, and produce texts is not yet central to their identity as professionals, it will be soon. It should be central to their education, too.

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If you haven’t heard of book trailers, that’s understandable. They’re something new and, so far, untested. But they appear to be growing in popularity. Book trailers are like movie trailers, except they’re for books. You may wonder why anyone would produce a trailer for a book because, at first glance, it doesn’t make sense: a video that promotes a text? A movie trailer, on the other hand, make sense because it’s simply an extension of the movie: excerpts from the film itself. But there’s no rule that says a certain medium, like text, must confine its advertising to that same medium. So, video trailers are to books what audio (radio) trailers are to movies or print ads are to music albums. At bottom, the book trailer is an indication of how we’re mixing media to good effect these days.

I made an animated trailer for my illustrated novel, Kiss Me, Stranger, because a trailer made sense — it brings the book alive and puts the story in front of readers in a very direct and (I hope) intriguing way: Kiss Me Stranger trailer. Think of the book trailer as a pitch to prospective readers. It’s the most direct, effective pitch you can make because it employs sight and sound, music and motion. Static text can’t compete at this level. If you send an e-mail blast out to 1,000 prospective readers, chances are more of them will take the time to view a brief video than read a paragraph synopsis.

Still, many writers look askance at book trailers. Terese Svoboda, who made a trailer (her fourth) for her latest novel, Bohemian Girl admits: “Making a book trailer can be very expensive and time consuming, the time which could be better spent writing or in conversation about your new book.” Bohemian Girl Trailer here.

Steve Almond, who made a trailer to promote his latest story collection, God Bless America, adds, “Trailers probably are a waste of time and money — if you spend time and money on them. Mine cost me a grand total of maybe ten hours to make. Given that I waste that much time avoiding writing most days, I figured it was worth
a shot. My ‘pay’ to the amazing young women who filmed and edited (Burnt Twig Productions) is a gift basket that will include books and homemade CDs”: God Bless America trailer.

Even though I don’t have a filmmaking background like Terese Svoboda, I made my own trailer, animating it still-by-still in Photoshop, simply because I had no other resources. I asked friends to serve as voice talent, then recruited a splendid composer friend, David Smooke, to do the score. All for free. My second trailer — From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story – was also low budget, except this time a filmmaker friend, David Grossbach, offered to shoot it for me: From Our House to Animal House: A Love Story.

Obviously, it helps to network. Or, better yet, like Jessica Anya Blau, to be married to a filmmaker. The trailer to her first book, The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, is the work of a professional with an auteur’s flare (the same David Grossbach) : The Summer of Nake Swim Parties trailer. The trailer for her new book, Drinking Closer to Home is something completely different.

Carolyn Parkhurst was willing to pay for production to make a trailer for her novel, The Nobodies Album, but found “most … video production companies … were looking for corporate projects, not a quirky, low-budget, one-time deal.” So she emailed her friends for help and one of them introduced her to just the right filmmaker, Gabriel Rhodes. “He and cinematographer Hope Hall were great at throwing around ideas and putting the whole thing together”: The Nobodies Album trailer.

Michael Downs, for his debut story collection, The Greatest Show, enjoyed a similar experience with filmmaker Brian McDermott, who “shaped [my idea] in so many ways. . . . He found performers and scheduled the filming.” Downs is convinced that it’s more than worth it to “spend the money on a pro.” He also points out that making a video trailer is one of the few opportunities writers have to collaborate with other artists: “[My trailer] stands alone … as the collaboration of five artists, thrilling and disturbing in its own ways – far better than anything I could have imagined on my own”: the Greatest Show trailer.

Should every writer try to make a trailer? Carolyn Parkhurst says she’ll make another “only if I have an idea that will engage and entertain people.” “Don’t do it,” Michael Downs advises, “unless you have an idea that has a shot at going viral.” Steve Almond says, “If I do [make another trailer], it would only be to have FUN. It should feel like a creative act, not a promotional one.” I agree: if it’s not creative fun, why bother?

If you do make a trailer, Terese Svoboda says, “keep it simple and, if at all possible, funny.” And, cautions Jessica Anya Blau, “Make it shorter than you think–60 to 90 seconds. People don’t realize that three minutes is too long to ask someone to watch something that’s not about them!” “Try to find a student filmmaker,” Steve Almond suggests, “someone who’ll work on it with you as a creative act … Honestly, with the current technology, there’s no reason not to make your own trailer, if you have an idea that excites you.”

For me, it’s a creative challenge. I like making things. Why not a book trailer? Carolyn Parkhurst sums it up aptly for American writers at this literary/marketing juncture: “The book industry is at a weird moment right now. It’s less clear than it used to be what’s going to make people buy one book instead of another. We’re all throwing ideas around, and any strategy an author comes up with has as much chance of being successful as a strategy a publicist comes up with. But none of us seem to know quite what to do.”

This post originally appeared on the Baltimore Sun blog, Read Street

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Our big brazen tabby, Simon, got out of the house last week, ran into the street, and got hit by a car. He was 12 and in great health. I love a cat that knows what he wants – the kind that’s wholly comfortable anywhere with anybody and unapologetic about his needs. Simon was all that.

He came to us through a consignment store, left among the furniture an old woman had to surrender when she was committed to a nursing home. He had been thoroughly spoiled and, as a result, he knew no fear.  At the consignment store, he lay wherever he pleased – sometimes on the floor in the middle of an aisle during the busiest times. Jill feared somebody would step on him because, who expects to see a cat laid out, napping on his back, where everybody walks?

Jill, who was working at the consignment store then, brought Simon home to meet me because she thought him exceptional. If he liked you (and he liked just about everybody), Simon would — upon being picked up — put one paw on each of your shoulders and then nibble your earlobe. It was as close as any cat might get to hugging. After he spent one night with us, I said, “We’re keeping him.”  He was four at the time.

He became my cat and spent much of his time shadowing me. Every morning, he’d stretch with me as I did my yoga. I’d give him a good massage. He’d stay up late into the night while I worked in my office. If he wasn’t on my lap, he was nearby.  One of the many things I liked about him was that he wasn’t a needy cat. He wouldn’t stay on my lap long, for instance, but he always came back for more. He wasn’t importuning in any way — never a complainer. But he could be a pushy little shit.

Always his tail was flicking. It seemed he could never relax fully unless he was sound asleep. His flick-flick-flicking tail was a sign of his inner restlessness: there was always something to do. He loved to escape to the out-of-doors. Usually we caught him on his way out, but, one time, he got out and stayed out for three days. We resorted to leaving the front door open (with only the security gate closed) and, finally, he came in, waking us at two in the morning as he padded over our bed.

We installed the iron cresting on our brick garden walls in part to keep Simon in. We discovered that he would leap to the sidewalk from the top of the brick wall – a five-foot jump. Then he’d take off. Usually, he’d sneak through the bushes in front of the row houses on our block and end up in a fenced garden halfway down the block. We never imagined he’d cross the street. We’d get him back by clanging an empty cat food can with the flat of a kitchen knife. It almost always worked. But sometimes we’d have to go out a few times before he’d answer.

We were dismayed to discover, just this year, that — as formidable as the iron cresting may be — it didn’t keep Simon from getting to the top of the garden’s brick wall and then, in an impressive leap, hurling himself over the top of the garden gate. We re-doubled our efforts to watch him. But this last time, he bested us again. Apparently, while I was working on the front doors, he sneaked out, maybe when I turned my back for a moment to grab my paint brush.  We noticed him missing within 30 minutes. And we did our usual search of the block. When he didn’t answer after our third round, I worried — as I always worried. I knew that he could tempt fate only so many times. Cats do not belong outside, especially in the city. They are no match for the hard world.

When we got to the vet’s ER, we found Simon in an oxygen tent. He seemed to be doing okay. His hind legs were immobilized. I figured he’d broken his hips. Jill and I were ready to do whatever we had to – it’d probably be a long convalescence, we told each other. When the veterinarian saw us after doing some x-rays, the news was the worst case. Simon was paralyzed, had a broken hip, and ruptured bladder. It was a triple whammy and the best prognosis was that he might be able to drag his legs around with minimal function and feeling.

Our choice was to put him through weeks, even months, of tests and surgery — with little hope that he would be able to go to the bathroom without special help, much less walk again — or we could let him go. Simon was a runner, a restless soul. I wasn’t about to relegate him to the kind of frustration and pain the vet described just to have him by my side for a while longer. So we let him go.

I can’t imagine much that’s harder than holding the animal you love so dearly as the vet is putting him down. We told ourselves the good things: Our neighbor got him out of the street the moment he was hit. He wasn’t in pain at any time because he was immediately paralyzed. He got to see us soon after and we stayed with him during his last minutes.

But, oh, the loss. It took us days to recover our equilibrium. And the emptiness left by his absence echoes loudly. But what is there to say or do afterwards? We go on. We carry his memory close. We try not to flinch when we think we hear his call or see his tail darting in the shadows of our hallways.

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I was trying to extract a plastic produce bag from its dispenser at the grocery store yesterday — and having a hard time of it, since I was holding a basket in one hand and a bag of potatoes in the other. The dispenser pedastal was wobbling like a dizzy stork. And I had three plastic bags unspooling, unable to get leverage to tear one off. But then the wobbling stopped and the pedastal righted itself abruptly, and I was able, at last, to extricate a single bag. That’s when I noticed that another shopper, nearby, had casually but deliberately put her foot on the base of the dispenser’s pedastal. She had seen my trouble and quietly offered assistance while, at the same time, bagging plums for herself. She didn’t even look my way for a nod of thanks. It was an elegant example of inobtrusive, highly effective multi-tasking and the mark, I decided, of the Ultra-competent.

The Ultra-competent (UC) is detail-oriented, thoroughly organized, and good at doing just about everything. She meets her deadlines with such aplomb, she just might have time enough to do your job too. The world could not run without Ultra-competents. About one of every ten people you meet will be a UC. The rest, well, they might try hard and be well-intentioned but you don’t necssarily want them on your team. The UC, on the other hand, is the one you want at your bedside in the ER — she’ll make sure the nurse don’t give you the wrong pill. She’s the one you want looking after your cats while you’re away on holiday. She’s the designated driver. The finder of the house keys. The one who’s got your back.

The UC is not to be confused with the Perfectionist, who often gets little done because he’s overly careful. Nor is the UC to be confused with the know-it-all, who is a wholly different creature and insufferable. What makes the UC so admirable is that he doesn’t flaunt his abilities. He just does what has to be done. On time. And usually better than anyone else. As a teacher, I love to work with a UC — every classroom has one. I look for UCs to run our university’s literary magazine or head the honor society or organize an awards ceremony. UCs make life easier for everybody because they pick up the slack.

It’s not necessarily fair to let the UC work so hard, but that’s their nature. It’s their mission to make things run right, which is amazing considering how many people strive to make things go wrong. Or just don’t care to make much of anything happen one way or the other.

Sometimes I fancy myself a UC becasue I get a lot done. But then I remind myself that being a UC isn’t just about getting lots done. It’s about taking care of business really well all the time. When I get a lot done, I let a lot go too. I’ll forget to pay bills or I’ll forget a doctor’s appointment or I’ll stop going to the gym. Something’s got to give, in other words. That’s not the hallmark of a UC.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with many UCs. I have one in my band. She’s amazing: for every rehearsal, you can count on her to have photocopied music for all the band members and put it into binders — including one in B-flat for the horn players. Once, we went to a gig and couldn’t find parking. The only free spaces were in a lot behind a restaurant that announced parking was for patrons only. So she walked into the restaurant’s kitchen and introduced herself to the chef/owner. He happened to be Italian, so she started talking to him in Italian. Then they had a chummy chat. And, yes, we got free parking.

Everywhere I go, I seek out the UCs and am convinced that there are the primary reason we have civilization as we know it. Look around: there’s a UC nearby. You may be relying on one right now to steady a wobble in your life.

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