Friday, March 21, 2003

Just this Once by Coleman Barks#

Thanks to David Christiano who stayed up late one night this week and forwarded this in an e-mail to all his friends. If you want to send it on to a friend, cut and paste it, or send them the address to my weblog: "www.bayareawritingproject.org/martyWilliams" If you want to comment, go to the lower left hand navigation bar under Membership and click on Join Now. A poem from Coleman Barks, the translator of Rumi, to the US President Just This Once President Bush, before you order air strikes, imagine the first cruise missile as a direct hit on your closest friend. That might be Laura. Then twenty-five other family and friends. There are no survivors. Now imagine some other way to do it. Quadruple the inspectors, or put a thousand and one U.N. people in. Then call for peace activists to volunteer to go to Iraq for two weeks each. Flood that country with well-meaning tourists, people curious about the land that produced the great saints, Gilani, Hallaj, and Rabia. Set up hostels near those tombs. Encourage peace people to spend a bunch of money in shops, to bring rugs home and samovars by the bushel. Send an Arabic translator with every four peace activists. The U.S. government will pay for the translators and for building and staffing the hostels, one hostel for every twenty activists and five translators. The hostels are state of the art, and they belong to the Iraqis at the end of this experiment. Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, and my friend, Jonathan Granoff at The U.N., will be the core organization team. No one knows what might come of this. Maybe nothing, or maybe it would convince some Iraqis and some of the world that we really do not wish to kill anybody, and that we truly are not out to appropriate oil reserves. We're working on building a hydrogen vehicle as fast as we can, aren't we? Put no limit on the number of activists from all over that might want to hang out and explore Iraq for two weeks. Is anything left of Babylon? There could be informal courses for college credit and pickup soccer games every evening at five. Long leisurely suppers. The U.S. government furnishes air transportation, that is, hires airliners from the country of origin and back for each peace tourist, who must carry and spend the equivalent of $1001 US inside Iraq. Keep part of the invasion force nearby as police, but let those who claim to deeply detest war try something else just this once, for one year. Call our bluff. If this madman Saddam's WMD threat is not, somehow, eliminated by next February, you can go in with special ops, and do it that way. Medical services, transportation inside Iraq, lots of big colorful buses --let the pilgrims paint them!--along with many other ideas that will be thought of later, during the course of this innocent, blatantly, foolish project that will all also be funded by the U.S. government. There's a practice known as sama, a deep listening to poetry and music, with sometimes movement involved. We could experiment with whole nights of that, staying up until dawn, sleeping in tents during the day. So instead of war there's a peace period from March 2003 through February 2004. It could be as though war had already happened, as it has, and the healing and rebuilding. Now we're in the celebration afterward. I'll be the first to volunteer for two weeks of wandering the winter desert and reading Hallaj, Abdul Qadir Gilani, dear Rabia, and the life-saving 1001 Arabian Nights. I am Coleman Barks, a retired English professor living in Athens, Georgia, and I don't really consider this proposal foolish. Posted by marty williams on 3/21/03; 4:50:35 PM from the dept. Discuss (2 responses)

Monday, December 16, 2002

Handouts from NWP Workshop, Atlanta, November 2002#

At last, here are the handouts from the inservice workshop conducted in Atlanta at the National Writing Project's annual meeting in November. It was a technological stretch for me to learn how to do this, and I hope it works. It's great to be stretched, however! NWP Workshop cover FAQ Inservice Inservice Inquiry Notes Inservice Checklist Teaching Demo Tips Teacher Interest Survey Documentation Form Loop Writing Loop Writing Prompts Please e-mail me at martyw@uclink4.berkeley.edu if you have problems getting the documents off this site and I can e-mail them to you as pdf or word attachments. Have a peaceful holiday. Marty Williams Posted by marty williams on 12/16/02; 10:44:54 AM from the dept. Discuss

Monday, December 2, 2002

Keep the Home Fires Burning#

Friday morning in Atlanta, Georgia. I can't tell you what the weather is like because I haven't been outside yet today. No, I am not a slacker lying in bed and watching movies. It's just typical convention habits, running from workshop to another, living in hotel conventionland, forgetting entirely, or almost entirely, about the wonderful city beckoning from outside. Tomorrow I will spend some time exploring the rich cultural heritage of this very important place. Today it is giving and attending workshops with other Writing Project folks from across the country who have gathered here for the National Writing Project's annual meeting and the National Council of Teachers of English Teachers Convention. This morning Caorl Tateishi and I conducted a workshop entitled Keep the Home Fires Burning about the site based teacher research model for urban schools that BAWP has been "growing" over the last few years.This afternoon, Pirette McKamey and Lynn Scott will talk about their work with the Teacher Research Collaborative, a national network of teachers working on developing leadership for teacher inquiry with equity at its center. We all know how whenever we do a workshop, we realize both how much we have learned and what new stuff we want to discover. And, when we are far from home, we can most appreciate the tremendous resources and riches of our own contexts. This is just a little hello. We will have a fuller report back with everyone either on line or in person after we return. Peace, Marty Posted by marty williams on 12/2/02; 9:45:23 AM from the dept. Discuss (1 response)

Sunday, October 20, 2002

Writing Retreat Reunion Spawns Collaborative Erotica#

A collaborative oral contemplation on the nature of all things erotic, composed by Julie Chan, Sim Chiang, David Christiano, Kim Gilles, Marean Jordan, Grace Morizawa, Lauren Muller, Margi Wald, Marty Williams on October 5, 2002, and added to by Michelle Quraishi on October 11, 2002. Open for additions..... What is erotic? Anything inside a conch shell...congili Sassy persona poems about matters of the heart Anything Italian - or anyone Oh, yeah, tomoatoes Laughing, bellies Wonderful feet Reading aloud in bed Keep talking and something will come......or someone Frogs Salamanders Cowrie shells and cala lillies, oh, yeah Long, slo, deep, wet kisses Slow hands Baseball players Love letters The blues Chiaroscuro, sotto voce Pomegranates - Yes! Oh! And figs. Especially figs Red Cabbage...it's gorgeous - Oh! Things you have to peel back Eating is erotic We are erotic Grace Jones singing "Pull Up to My Bumper, Baby..." Clean sheets. Hung on the line. Clean cotton sheets hung on the line. Ceiling fans Add artichokes, scraping back the fuzz, opening up the heart of it. O cara mia. Posted by marty williams on 10/20/02; 2:32:09 PM from the dept. Discuss

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

Return to the Bay Area#

I took the redeye out of Anchorage early Monday morning, August 12, standing in line with the same fisherman we chatted with in a sports bar in Seattle on the way up. He had a ten day growth of beard he was taking back to Montana; we both had a load of fish in our baggage. My family is so generous as to load me up with some of their halibut and salmon catch to share with my family and friends southside. The afternoon before I left, my sister, Patsy, her husband, Mike, and I drove an hour and a half north of Wasilla on the Glenn Highway to pick blueberries. Apparently, word on the street has it that it is not a good year for blueberries. There was a terribly cold snap in the spring, and then a long stretch without rain. We did find some blueberries, but we worked for them. Many were very small, often hanging singly on a stem rather than in small clumps as they often do. I started calling them bonzai blueberries because many of the bushes were only 5-6 inches tall. I did leave with a tin full, however, and have already tasted some truly delicious blueberry cobbler. They taste quite different from domestic blueberries; more tart and a hint of juniper or pine about them. It was hard to leave my father, nearly 92 years old, and our wonderful family friend, Roberta, herself now 85. "roberta.jpg" The two of them are testament to the lively spirit and the tenaciousness it takes to live, even for some of the summer months, out in the woods. We had a wonderful visit. Sandy Calvo painted a large lake rock into a Wild Woman of Kenai Lake sculpture. She was so lovely in the end, that Sandy had second thoughts about leaving her at the cabin although my father was anticipating her being a great conversation piece. They negotiated and agreed upon a sort of shared custody; Sandy would leave the Wild Woman for one year so that she could accumulate was great stories. Then, in a year, Sandy could come claim her or have her otherwise delivered to her in Oakland. So, the Wild Woman of Kenai Lake was given a place of honor in the cabin and is, even now, collecting admiring glances,and complimentary comments. Well, that's it for my summer vacation. How's everyone else doing? Hanging on to the last days of August freedom? Marty Posted by marty williams on 8/21/02; 9:23:24 AM from the dept. Discuss (1 response)