I hate to see it all wind down, but it has to.  Today I visited the Mars Hill Elementary and High Schools, and tomorrow a full day in Ashland. Then home.

Very grateful to the Maine Arts Commission , especially Darrell Bulmer, and to Josh Bodwell at the Maine Writers’ and Publishers’ Alliance for steering me towards the Arts Visibility Grant that made this possible.

What was it about meeting this merry band of Gardiner High School creative writers that made the sun shine brighter and turned the world into a great big sea of possibilities?

Here’s what happened. It was 12:20; lunchtime. They could have been over in the cafeteria, clumped up tight around the tables, but here they were, hanging out in Christina Benedict’s classroom. A few girls sat around a laptop, absorbed. A tall young man wrote out word scrambles on the blackboard, and the guesses flew — silly, fumy, hit or miss. “This isn’t a test” was his attitude. “It’s fun.”

The bell rang and more creative writers filed in. We began. Their questions were writers’ questions — about the process, about where ideas come from, about what it feels like to have a story take over your mind. The changes in publishing. How to make a website. What it costs to self-publish. What the mainstream publishing world is all about. Where do titles come from? Characters’ names? What is the importance of setting? Place?

I read from Spring Bear a bit, but I’d lost track of the section of new work I’d printed out and brought with me. I was really bummed. I wanted to read my new work to these folks. But we talked abut free writing, and I told them how mine gets lost, buried under layers of editing that end up as the final draft. We shared the tricks we all have to escape the fear of the blank page, and confided in each other our writing rituals. I forgot to tell mine about having to have the kitchen tidy before I write, but I did tell them about the long string of mud rooms that has doubled as my study.

Now it was 2:30 and school was over but the buses would make it hard for me to get my car out, so I stayed longer. I got to shake hands with two seniors, one headed for U ME Farmington and the other for Champlain College in Burlington VT, both wanting to become writers. I wish them well. It isn’t easy, but joy and possibility were in their eyes, and I know they’ll be fine.

May their gifts inspire others, just as their teachers have inspired them. The gifts of loving to write, of taking joy in what words can do, of giving yourself the freedom to be yourself on the page — all that shone in their eyes. I saw it in their smiles. May it be with them always.

Up at 6 a.m. and driving on snowy roads by 7 to meet Amber Jeskey’s class, which had just read Spring Bear.  She turned out to be a top-notch, no-nonsense English teacher with a sharp literary mind  and the skills of a drill sergeant.

Her class of thirteen guys and seven gals, all seniors at Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro, fired questions spot-on for an hour and twenty minutes.

It made for quite a workout. So when we were done, Bob and I stopped for a late breakfast at Moody’s Diner, down Route 1 a bit.

Here he is, tucking into scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes.

A very wonderful morning.

1. Waldoboro has an annual fish count. Waldoboro sits where the Medomack River empties into the Atlantic, and it seems that alewives go up the Medomack to spawn. They start up the river in May and local volunteers work two-hour shifts counting them. Between May 17th and June 12th of 2009 they counted 66,000. Why do this? To track changes in the population because alewives are critical to the health of the Medomak River fishery. And the ocean’s food chain.
They care.

2. The poet Robert Creeley lived here. There is still a Creeley living here, I’m told, name of Penelope. Robert Creeley is right square in the line of American poets to give us the meaning of “voice.” Voice in poetry, voice as a writer…“Finding my voice.” I’m quoting a critic, M. L. Rosenthal — Creeley has a “‘preoccupation with a personal rhythm in the sense that the discovery of an external equivalent of the speaking self is felt to be the true object of poetry.“
The speaking self.
Yes.

3. There is a Waldoboro style of rug hooking. It’s a sculptured style. The ladies who developed it called it “raised work.” The yarn is raised so the top of each stitch forms an even curve with the tops of the other ones near it, and the style developed right here in the homes of Waldoboro women who got together and taught each other. They hooked bright patterns with flowers and birds. A rug in the Waldoboro style is highly prized. One hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

And of course, there’s Moody’s Diner.

More on that tomorrow.

Get this. Yesterday was bad, bad bad. Got not a lot done. All my undertakings were not working out. Nothing I did meant a whole lot, except that I was getting a little used to the idea of having become, truly, one who is in the process of breaking down. Aging. Yuk.

But then today came! Things turn on a dime here in Maine. It’s the weather. It’s the major controlling factor in everything, actually. I love it.

So! Have an author visit to Waldoboro a week from today. I will talk to Amber Jeskey’s class. Bob’s driving. He somehow came by a paper copy of a Maine Atlas so we won’t have those infernal conversations about whether or not the GPS device is wrong.

I Write in the Greenhouse is Maine poet Carole Bachofner’s title.

But I am stealing it!  I write in a greenhouse, too, and here it is. It’s warm inside, even in the middle of a Maine winter. I can be near my plants. It’s where listen to the singers of the ‘sixties, my formative years — Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and of course Bob Dylan. Their spiritual father was Woody Guthrie. Guthrie, born seven years after my father, traveled the Dust Bowl trail while my old Dad was learning to be a Bohemian in Greenwich Village, slowly shaking off his “rich man’s son” ways. He did, too, because I can remember him putting a gift — a record — on our record player. It played “This Land is Your Land.” I was still a small girl. That song brings tears to my eyes all these years since.

I’m writing about his life in Truth Teller and Traitor to His Class, which I hope Potomac Books will put out. Am waiting for their editor to read it, and then there will be revisions and if all goes well, the process will begin. It was quite a big day when I finally sent off the final version of that puppy. Took me almost four years; always on my mind.

Potomac will be the publisher of Dad’s World War II memoir Back from Tobruk, coming out this Fall. I’ll be posting on it, too. After his Greenwich Village years, Dad signed up with the American Field Service, who headed him towards the British Army in North Africa. His unit of volunteer ambulance drivers served through Rommel’s bombing of Tobruk, but Dad was a war casualty. He got home via stretcher lines and hospital trains and finally a ship from Durban to New York. He came back a changed man, determined to make meaning out of all the suffering he had seen.

But they did. They wrote me letters. Here is some of what they said.

Armand Pelletier was my favorite character because I want to become a game warden.

First, I would have to say that I loved Spring Bear. It was hard for me to put the book down once I started to read it.

I really enjoyed this book it kept my attention throughout the whole thing. My favorite part was the part the explained the title…it showed how she [Evvie] would do anything to protect that child… That part made the book, the whole thing came together right at that very moment, I couldn’t have asked for a better climax in the story.

When you came into our class last week I was not sure what to expect, or how it would change how I saw the book, if it would change my outlook on it at all. I was wrong, hearing where the inspiration for a book came from and hearing it from the author instead of just guessing was a completely new process for me.

Your novella was one of the best reads I have in recent memory. I thought you brilliantly established lovable and sometime hated (in the case of Lester Darrow) characters. The brilliance comes in the form that they are simple yet complex, which makes them easily accessible. But perhaps the most relatable portion of it was Evvie Mallow. You managed to creat a protagonist that had to face many trials and tribulations, but still maintained the realism readers adore. This seems to be more and more uncommon as time moves forward, which is unfortunate.

If I could have the author of every book I have ever read come talk to me I think my knowledge of each book I have read would double.

One of the many things I liked about your book was how I was able to picture myself in Soper’s Mills even though it is a imaginary place. Coming from a family that is widespread and that live in small towns like Soper’s Mills, I was able to picture what Soper’s Mills looks like, such as the old general store and the two lane road going across town surrounded by an abundance of trees.

Another reason I loved your book is Evvie Mallow. Evvie is faced with problems that I can connect with. Though I will never have to deal with having to choose to keep a unborn baby or give it away to another family because I do not know the father; I will have and continue to deal with my parents controlling my life.

As a teen, I automatically connected with Evvie. It was easy to really understand her situation and kind of comprehend her reasoning for doing some of the things she does.

For the most part, I really enjoyed reading the book. I felt like it was written for high school students, but I later found out it was written for any age group. But it was definitely easy to connect with it being a teenage girl like Evvie. You made it pretty easy to get into the book. I felt like I was right there along with Evvie the whole time on her journey through some tough decisions in life.

Thanks, guys!

(If you want to read what a few grownups have to say about the book, check out the Kirkus and Kennebec Journal reviews on amazon.)