Recently, I had the opportunity to join some writers from the Senior Center for two writing sessions.

Tuesday, November 16, 1999

Recently, I had the opportunity to join some writers from the Senior Center for two writing sessions. They meet weekly.

The first week our first assignment was to write for ten minutes completing "I remember.." They insisted we make it five. Ten minutes was too long. We settled for five. However, when the five minutes was up not a pen or pencil amongst them was idle. Each was willing to share with the others what they had written. What a joy to hear their recollections, many occurring during the depression, each striking a similar cord. "We were poor but we didn’t know we were" … "Life was harder then, even though we had less, in some ways we had more."

The following week we used one of Carol Bly’s exercises, writing about a nagging, infuriating thought. This quickly busied the pens. In the discussion that followed Mr. Decker, one of the two men in the writing group, mentioned giving up his piano lessons for sports in high school. Looking back now, he wished he had stayed with the piano, realizing that sports often end after graduation but performing arts live on.

Sunday I joined a crowd at St. Olaf Church listening to listen to Jon Hassler, a Minnesota writer whose Irish immigrant family first settled in Rose Creek, discuss and share his writings. Then he opened the floor to questioning followed by the signing of his books.

Never being one to pass up an opportunity to ask questions – stemming from all those years in school being told what we "needed to know" – I asked, "Do you think schools are doing enough to encourage writing? Without hesitation, he said, "Today, teachers are encouraging writing more than ever."

I hope so.

My greatest frustration in school was not being encouraged or invited to write, an area we spent little time in in all grades. Maybe fifth grade was an exception. In my adult life I’ve discovered it just wasn’t me. More often than not it was other males. Males were encouraged to do sports as that is where the glory was. Writing and reading "wasn’t cool."

Boys didn’t even pass notes, which I believe to be one of the "gateways to writing," an activity pretty much reserved for girls. I dabbled a little bit in note writing. My last note was to Judy Dunlap in Mr. Ruppert’s political science class my first year in college. As he lecturing away, without a text, I was busy writing this note to Judy and trying to listen to him tell us about something he didn’t approve of before he added "and another thing that I have little tolerance for is college students passing notes." I didn’t look up, my pencil stopped as the red settled across my face.

Following Mr. Hassler’s presentation a former teacher stopped me and said in her last years as a teacher she didn’t do the creative writing like she did in her early years of teaching. She blamed it on the excessive paper work. Jon Hassler pointed out that as an English teacher he didn’t always get around to getting the papers turned back to students. I took this to imply the writing experience was of greater importance.

We have watched our own children grow through their public schooling and seen some wonderful examples of their creative writing. Assignments such as a recent one at Ellis – Write "If I ruled the world – ." What a joy to read the results. What joy to see young people express their own thoughts. Where each writer is unique, whether "incasts" or "outcasts." This is an area where the students who are challenged academically tend to excel. I’ve heard that many of the "less then high achievers" were most resourceful in their photography assignment conducted with the artists in residency program. I used to read some of the best poetry from students in residential settings.

Again, I would like to share the words of Brenda Ueland who said "Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say."

Carol Bly, who will be at the library Saturday, points out, "The good news is that so many teachers, especially in the state of Minnesota, know that the most important intellectual activity of our species is paying attention to life, then remembering a lot, and finally making conclusions about merciful, unmerciful, just, unjust, beautiful or hideous experiences. They are teaching people to write as naturally as people grin or cry."

Let’s hope both Carol and Jon are right about schools.

Bob Vilt’s column appears Tuesdays