A chorus of chirping crickets outside my window kept me company this afternoon while I prepared a public speaking exam for tomorrow's class. My exams are tough:  definitions, true/false statements, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and brief essay questions. I do not want students to simply memorize a batch of material, spit it out onto an exam, and promptly forget what they memorized within the hour. I craft the exam so that students must apply what they read in their textbook to their lives and future career. In class we can discuss, chart, and debate communication theory until we turn blue, but discussion is pointless unless students have opportunities to practice communication tools in their private and professional lives.

   

My fall semester has gotten off to a positive start. I teach public speaking as well as writing courses, but in all courses I uncover voices - student voices. Through assigned readings, classroom discussions and activities, students' essay drafts and revisions, speeches, and presentations most students will learn the value of their own unique perspective and voice. They discover that they do have something important to say amid our culture's chorus of conformity. One of my goals as a facilitator of learning is for students to discern what THEY think about an issue outside their comfort zone of family, friends, and place of worship. Heady stuff.

On August 12, I completed a 65,000 word memoir titled, Sing Me a Lullaby. It was a six year journey that saw many false starts - and successes. SMAL is the story of my journey through high school as a single mother living alone with my infant daughter in rural Maine in the 70s. During the writing I accumulated three 3-ring binders crammed with lists, timelines, research notes, drafts, copies of legal documents, obituary notices, maps, photographs, newspaper clippings, and copies of medical records. I read diaries and love letters. I filled 4 composition notebooks with rough drafts, brimming with poor sentences that thankfully will never see the light of day, and rich sentences that hopefully will. I wore out a dictionary. I created 20 file folders - one for each chapter - and filled them with more notes and drafts, which I eventually shared with my writing group. Typing "The End" was bittersweet. Now I am querying literary agents to represent the work. In the meantime there's a space within me waiting to be filled. I am filling it with writing.  

The male cricket's chirp is the song of September as he sings to attract a mate. Our days and nights here in Maine are currently filled with his hopeful exuberance.  Ditto for the katydids, grasshoppers, and cicadas. It is the insects' time for romance, and they court without cash or cards or wine and flowers. They are simply themselves, wings and all. They remind me that all I need to be is who I am, no more, no less, and authenticity is more attractive than any expensive dress or perfume.

Summer is slipping away. Daily temperatures have been in the mid-70s, and soon they will dip into the 60s. A few years ago we allowed one stalk of goldenrod to flourish in our backyard; now it grows everywhere and threatens to take over the place. We have cleared dead lupine stalks from the gardens. Bee balm lingers like a long good-bye. We are already enjoying the first Jersey Macs from our local orchard; soon cider will follow. Apple crisp. Sweaters and long johns and warm socks.

I want to hold Summer's hand a little longer and savor the sun's warmth against my back. A little longer, please, before the first frost creeps in while I sleep and I awaken to Autumn's crystalline hello.