Want to enjoy a "learning vacation" this summer? Join me at John Campbell Folk School August 15-21 for my class on "Harnessing the Power of Words." Learn which genre suits and serves you best, then start telling the world what's on your mind or in your heart. There'll be no shortage of inspiration, with gorgeous Appalachian views in every direction, three hearty homestyle meals every day, and evenings full of music and mountain magic. Click here to make your reservation, but do it now; only a few spaces remain!
If you live anywhere close to Hayesville, Sylva, or Asheville, NC, I'm reading in your area in August. There'll be plenty of time to chat before and after, and I'd love to meet you or catch up if it's been a while. See details here!
My poem "Blood Loss" is included in a new anthology called From the Porch Swing: Memories of Our Grandparents (Silver Boomer Books), and in the 2010 edition of Gardner-Webb University's annual literary magazine,The Broad River Review. I also have work featured in Echoes Across the Blue Ridge: Stories, Essays and Poems By Writers Living In and Inspired By the Southern Appalachian Mountains (Winding Path Publishers). All three titles can be ordered at your local bookstore, and all three have pages on Facebook, if you want more details!
There's no predicting the topic du jour at my blog, but for now, I'm ranting about creativity, the plight of the American family, and how we fix our current state of affairs. I'd love to hear YOUR ideas on these subjects!
Not a fan of poetry? Maybe you just haven't read the right poem! Take a moment to check out this one and this one. Lots more like those on my Your Daily Poem website. Come on; try it!
This month's Wonderful Word isthermophobia; if you have it, I hope you're living in the Arctic Circle right now!
Attention, residents of Upstate South Carolina: the Upstate Women's Show is coming up on August 26-28. I was a featured author in their "Writers' Block" at the very first show and had a blast. The event keeps getting bigger and better and I'll be there again this year--not as a featured author this time, but with my day job as creative director at Practical Business Systems. See details here!
It’s official: American creativity is going the way of the dinosaur—
--and if that pronouncement doesn’t push the BP oil spill to the very bottom of your worry list, you should remember that more creative brains might have come up with a way to stop—or even prevent—that oil spill in the first place!
Newsweek’s cover story for their July 10th issue is a piece called “The Creativity Crisis,” by Po Ballard and Ashley Merryman. You can read the entire text here --and I strongly encourage you to read and reflect on every word—but I want to latch on to two of the more salient points that hit me.
The first is the assertion that highly creative adults tend to come from stable homes with encouraging environments—homes where children are nurtured, their needs are met, and they are challenged to be creative problem solvers. No real surprise there, but if that’s the environment necessary to foster great creative minds, America is in dire straits. Look at these statistics:
·1 in 2 American children will live in a single parent family at some point in childhood
·1 in 3 American children is born to unmarried parents
·1 in 4 American children lives with only one parent
·1 in 8 American children is born to a teenage mother
·The United States is the world's leader in fatherless families.
·Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers.
·75% of children/adolescents in chemical dependency hospitals are from single-parent families.
·63% of suicides are individuals from single parent families
·75% of teenage pregnancies are adolescents from single parent homes
Forget being creative, the children in the U.S. are struggling just to survive! That nurturing family environment--where everyone's loved, everyone's employed, everyone gets help with their homework and everyone goes to bed happy and well fed--is becoming a fantasy.
Here’s the second assertion from the article that caught my attention: a creative child will excel with a supportive teacher in the classroom, but will become bored or disruptive without stimulation and support. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that creative children are exhausting. They ask more questions, they demand more attention, they require more interaction. But it’s not the kids napping in the corner who are going to solve the energy crisis; it’ll be the ones dismantling the space heater or frying the caterpillar with a magnifying glass. They deserve our attention—and we’ll be well rewarded for our investment. The problem is, many teachers are burned out and overwhelmed or too busy trying to maintain control in the classroom to worry about stimulating students. Others are so stifled by tests and standards and mandated administrivia that teaching and learning are almost secondary. And we won't even talk about budget cuts.
Bottom line? There's not much nurturing out there these days, which is scary--because diminished creativity makes an economic recession look like a walk in the park. So how do we nurture our children's (and our own, for that matter) creativity in these days when no one dares to take security or a steady paycheck for granted anymore? How do we encourage right-brain thinking, thinking outside the box, and coloring outside the lines when "Modern Family" rather than "Leave It to Beaver" is the norm? Join me on my blog for discussion and to share your ideas and comments.
Wishing you cold air and lemonade,
Jayne
Statistics used in this article are based on reports from the Children's Defense Fund, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Center for Disease Control, the FBI, the Committee for Economic Development, and Rainbow International.
Welcome to my website! Whether you're here by intention or accident, I invite you to spend a few minutes looking around. Some elements of the site are permanent; others are changed and updated on a regular basis. Feel free to e-mail comments or suggestions. PLEASE NOTE: I'm happy for you to share my work with others, but please contact me for permission--and so I can acknowledge your publication--before including any of my poems in a personal website, church newsletter, etc. Thank you!
