"Use All The Crayons!" ... " Spring!
Reader/Student Letter of the Week! …
“I remember after the first week of the semester a coworker asked me to use one word to describe each of my professors. I used the word "Intimidating" (IN A GOOD WAY) for you. Listening to other people tell stories and ramble has always been interesting to me. I am a very avid and committed "people watcher". So meeting someone as good at the 'storytelling' craft as you was like meeting the 'FINAL BOSS' of observers. Very rare to meet somebody that talks smart but doesn't talk boring, and that is exactly what you do. That has always been a skill I've wanted to perfect. So when we got our first assignment for the semester I sat down to write it and was just so intimidated. You said something in the email about wanting it to be entertaining and I remember thinking "How the hell is my crappy writing going to amuse this guy?!”
His question led me to some honest-to-goodness soul searching. How do you become a good storyteller? I answered in this blog post.
Spring!
• Spring is when Mother Nature puts on her makeup!
• Just bending your neck and glancing up at the clouds doesn’t count. Lie flat on the ground in a grassy field on a warm spring day and stare at the sky. It is one of the most serene and liberating feelings in the world.
• Mulch! Mow! Plant! Prune! Repeat! If we devoted as much time to understanding one another as we do to lawn care things like checking out opposing Facebook views wouldn't be so nerve-wracking.
• Realize even the most successful vegetable farmers are doomed to live in the seediest parts of town.
• Maybe I'm superstitious, but I only buy things like thyme, basil and sage from farmers named Herb.
• If I ever have any success, I'm convinced it'll be because I enjoy strong grassroots support. Yet I can't help but wonder how much of my grassroots support comes from people who connect supporting me to supporting a guy who has a principled reluctance to ever mowing his lawn.
• Any man who is tossing around lots of BS in the hopes it'll get romance to bloom with a seedy woman is engaged in an act of flertilization.
• Why did the grass farmer cross the road? To get to the other sod.
• Spring is when Mother Nature puts on … and Fall is when she climbs back into her coffin!