Below you will find a piece written in response to Kate Messner's Thursday Quick-Write with Erin Dionne .
Thank you for this it is allowing me to play with a setting for a piece I want to work on. This was fun! The smell of manure, I still like it to this day. Cow manure has a sweetness that speaks to me and it’s probably because of this barn. This green barn with the orange roof doesn’t hold 100 cows or have machinery that will milk them. It is the barn of a man who works hard during the day and isn’t afraid to work hard at night and early in the morning too. He likes the idea of having food on the table that he grew. To the right is the manure stall…all collected, piled high and raked in. To the left is the chicken pen with 99 white roosters clucking away behind the wooden barn slats. You might think that chickens were, in general, pretty tolerant of each other, but chickens are actually sexist. Who knew? In the middle of the barn off the concrete floor, with lots of hay tucked into an old wooden watering trough sits the queen of the barn, Henny Penny. She was the lone female in a group of 99 males and they knew it. Once the white feathers came in and the yellow down was gone, the attacks were ruthless. One morning, when my father entered the barn there she lay on the cold, concrete floor away from the orange glow of the heat lamp, nowhere near the metal feeding tray. When my father picked her up, she was still warm and flexible, so while the swallows swooped in and out of the open top of the barn door and Trouble, the cat, wound his way through his feet, my father set up a special section for this half-dead chicken and I named her Henny Penny.
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I haven't written based on an assignment topic since Faculty of Education many moons ago. The "Writing" professor was quite harsh about a poem I had written, in my mind anyways. I know I had just found out that the boyfriend I loved, but had moved to California a few years before, had just called and told me he was engaged. I remember thinking that I thought that I was supposed to be learning how to teach writing, and he'd actually asked for authentic writing and then was harsh. I never did figure out how that was supposed to help me, except that it was a life lesson on how not to treat students who offer there true emotions up in a school assignment. He was nothing like the teacher who taught the reading aspect and introduced me to Nancie Atwell's Writing in the Middle. I guess both have stayed with me though...only teaching memories that I have from that short time in Faculty of Ed...and both, actually, are relevant to my life now. But, I digress... So...Sensory Writing...the mini-lesson from Kate Messner's Blog with guest author, Donna Gephart. Thank you for a great set-up. I love all the examples. She opened the door and knew it was going to be bad. The morning was still wet, even though the sun was coming out and there was that unmistakable earthy, dankness that certain mornings have...of worms. She knew they would be randomly arranged on the sidewalk, trying not to drown in the soil, making the walk to school like a video game of avoidance.
"Mom! Do I have to walk to school? Worms! They're everywhere!" Lily yelled in a hopeful, yet slightly whiny voice. "Lily, you know they're not going to hurt you and they're good for the earth. They aerate the soil and help the plants." "Enough with the earth lovin' lectures," she thought. She'd get no support there. So off she went, eyes carefully eyeing the black pitch of the driveway. "The only worms I like are gummy," she grumbled quietly. Ha! That was so much fun. I tried to think of a smell because I know that's the strongest sense for memory and worms was the first one. Bacon could be second now that I think of if, but my daughter does hate worms. She'll pick up the scariest looking bugs, but put a worm in front of her and out comes the whine...not the kind I like either! Thanks for the fun! |
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Who Am I?I'm a Teacher Librarian and Grade 7 Language Teacher. Many thanks to these forums which inspire, educate and promote collaboration & communication!
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