I work as a grant writer/technical writer at the College of Information Science & Technology at the Peter Kiewit Institute in Omaha. I've worked with scientists and engineers in private industry and academe for many years. My work currently focuses on helping faculty and students identify, write and submit research proposals. Most of our grant proposals are submitted to federal funding agencies, and the application process is challenging and very competitive. I also edit journal articles and other technical documents.
Although I'm not currently teaching, I'm working on a book and curriculum project through the Loren Eiseley Society that I want to dovetail with this class. (For more information on Eiseley, go to http://www.eiseley.org/). We've just published a reader of Eiseley's most notable essays. The reader will be distributed free to all schools and public libraries in Nebraska. As part of this project, we're working with teachers to develop curriculum to accompany the reader that will be available online. I hope to elicit some great feedback and participation from this class!
Dear Deb,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your different places. All of these spaces have shaped the person you are today so I’m glad I had the chance to look through and read about some of your past. I must tell you that I bought my first book by Loren Eiseley this summer. It is anxiously waiting for me to read it at the moment. A good friend and science teacher from Rhode Island absolutely loves Eiseley’s work and is a huge fan. Upon hearing I had never read his work, he gave me a pretty hard time. I collaborate with our science teacher at the end of the school year to have our students create some nonfiction writing. I had thought I would check Eiseley out to see if he could play a part in this unit, as well. I look forward to getting to know you and am interested in having a conversation about more of this in the future.
Jennifer Troester
Deb,
ReplyDeleteI love Loren Eiseley's writing. I often just go back and read All the Strange Hours, because I love reading what he had to say about his own life. I look forward to reading the website and learning more about your work. It sounds to me like you had an idyllic childhood. Ah, the joys of safety and freedom.
Deb,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the introduction to Loren Eiseley's writing. I can't remember ever hearing of him (I tell people I was trained as an elementary teacher, not an English teacher, as an excuse), but I bopped over to the website so that I could bookmark it for later, and lo and behold, I found a kindred spirit. He likes to use metaphors. As anyone who knows me well, (and will get to know me), I use metaphors like the frequency of Nebraska winds which pick up the sand to blast new forms upon the people trying to find place here. So all you former out-staters, look out. Change is acomin'.
I also appreciated the manner in which you wrote about the poignancy of wanting to leave your idyllic childhood place when its only crime was to create a self-assured, independent woman who needed to leave. Thanks for the thoughts.
Deb:
ReplyDeleteI loved the organization of your blog, around "working" "being" and "in" place! Some of us have been thinking hard about what metaphors to use to describe the mental acts of place work, and "working and being" are two worth considering. I wonder if your "in" places (Isles of Shoals and Leon) might be like Nedra Reynolds' metaphors of "dwelling" or "mapping" place, in her GEOGRAPHIES OF COMPOSITION?
But enough of that: why I chose to post here in your blog was to connect with your Eiseley project. I knew his work well before coming to Nebraska, through the "science writing" world, and it's been a treat for me to live in the neighborhood of Lincoln that he grew up in. I expect we'll talk a lot more about him, and your project making this Nebraska writer accessible for teachers, as our course goes on!
~Robert
Hi Deb!
ReplyDeleteI miss our chats from ecocomposition and hope this class will help us reconnect!
I liked your chapters of different places in this blog: work place, homeplace, "spirit place" etc. I will borrow that format if I every do a place-conscious blog again.
Someday I really must get to the Isles of Shoals. Hearing you talk about it so passionately in class and seeing the pictures really makes me want to go there. New England is one part of the country I still really need to explore. I think the "place of spirit" concept is a powerful one, one perhaps related to "spirit of place." I used to think my place of spirit was in the Pacific Northwest, but now New Orleans has a hold on me. Both are beautiful. Thanks so much for bringing up this rich topic!
Hi Deb,
ReplyDeleteI’m fascinated by so much on your blog—your Eisely reader (the curriculum idea sounds intriguing), the way you describe your Dundee place (I’m not too far from you—south of Dodge), your roots in a variety of places (as are mine) in the Shoals and the Adirondacks—place I’m unfamiliar with but sound fascinating. The description of your childhood as “walks in the woods (delighting to find raspberry bushes or wild strawberries), read books, and dreamed a lot. We had no television until I was 12.” is wonderful. I, too, am thankful that my parents limited TV in my childhood and that books were a huge part of that existence. Sometimes I’d really like to escape to that life again.
Thanks for a great introduction to your places.
Mary
I would love to have a copy of that Eisley book as soon as it comes out. Send it to Jeff Lacey at Ralston High School, 8969 Park Drive, Ralston, NE 68127.
ReplyDeleteI am a great fan of Eisley, and I even use some of his passages in an ecolit unit I do with honors 10th graders at Ralston High School.
I also have a lead for you: if you are interested in seeing how you might fit Eisley's work into a secondary school curriculum, go to lep.org and surf around. This is a website dedicated to the works of Aldo Leopold, and one of its goals is to make his writings and ideas accessible to secondary education teachers, science, English, and otherwise. I utilize a version of it in my ecolit class. It might give you some good ideas.
I look forward to working with you!