Day Three

Ellen: What will she will cover.
1. animoto
2. writing ideas
3. our own writing
4. sharing our writing

Sandy: What she will cover
1. images
2. sound

animoto.com
play with pictures and music
no voice over
Ellen's Red Hat Group
free

Writing Ideas
reading photographs to write with meaning and purpose (book)
creating a memoir from a list
go into "you"
pick a place
write a list of what comes to mind about this locale
pick one item off the list to write from
the list
maple on the hill
maple
large tree
furrowed bark
huge
wounded
incredible fall color
sitting place
thinking place
watching place
six of the seven watersheds
years later returned
rotting and falling down
now gone
as a kid growing up a place to be by myself, okay
a reflective spot
safe supportive
I loved that tree
safe
powerful shared
connection
nearby, sedimentary fossils
they went together
private

----------------- line of demarking the first flush of labels, and the second

attracted lightening yet I sat there in rainstorms
place to peer from, binoculars
place to fantasize from, as I got older
being there with someone else, sharing - I never did, really.
I took my Mom there. We could walk by it on our way back from "the woods."
couldn't encircle it with my arms and touch my fingers, it was that big
on top of that world
could view so much
above Hamilton
the Chapel tower across on another hill, pearsall's barn

lasso one
the start of a story?

the lasso
"years later returned, rotting and falling down"

the story

I felt like an old friend was dying, almost dead actually. And I felt vulnerable and isolated, without the partner I'd grown up with. There were large Douglas Firs nearby that I'd planted as a kid in a Christmas Tree money making venture that never came to pass. They didn't grow fast enough. Plus, Joe Browns cows did a number of them in. But those tree, though big now, never evoked the emotion the old tree did when I returned as a college graduate many years later and went there, to say here I am, and it was dying, split, limbs already dropped, huge ones, and the little bugs and insects of the field were now in it as their home. Its funny, but after that visit, I rarely took that trail again. Except once, to see if it was all gone, and it mostly was. From this age now, I look back and realize how incredibly fast its demise was, maybe fifteen years from giant to compost. The interaction of course during that time is that I'd grown from an eight year old to a thirty year old. During that span of time, the large things of childhood often shrink to adult size. But the feeling of loss has never shrunk. I still miss the feeling of sitting by that tree, it's uncomfortable deeply furrowed bark digging in my back, looking down at the valleys, the town, the houses of families of many kind going about their business, the incredible summer clouds moving across the blue screen of that vast central new york sky. Maybe that's what home was to me. That feeling, more than that tree. I don't know. It still all seems like one. I can't conjure up the feeling of home without the maple by my side. I can't believe it's gone.
[that becomes the title: Maple By My Side]

stories of others
the first apartment of college and the dogs not welcome
father in law's camp that burned
christie's honeymoon
"spike" and the trail by the river
hard for nj, our computer science major who won't do freewrites (he writes about not doing the freewrite)
might be better to pick a several places, then go there to the best place

Follow up - story and building community
the idea we share is a way we build community, we know more about each other we'd never have spoken during introductions - build a place where kids can come together about their writing, through their sharings and appreciation.

lots of research that says if you teach one genre really well, there will be added benefit to other pieces of writing...don't just focus on the requirements...deep study will generalize across other writing requirements

books:
1. the writing workshop, working through the hard points (and they are all hard points) - Katie Wood Rae
2. Ralph Fletcher - Craft Lessons
3. James Zull - The Art of Changing The Brain. There are so many connections here. I had to put in my 2 cents.

Now, moving into ds, the pictures become the words, and the writing becomes a statement of economy.

break

TIme spent reviewing assignments.
Do the storyboard.
Pass in the script. First and Last.
Friday's assignment is to show competence in iMovie.
A week from Friday is the second piece, to show competence in a ds memoir. The third piece is also coming in a week from Friday and is a 2-3 page reflection on the process of writing and making the s(d).

Sandy
Images and Audio
1. scanning, using Elements
2. audacity, play with music: shorten, sample, record voice
dave matthews Grave Digger
shows cuts and edits and fades in and fades out
export as mp3