How I Spent My Summer Vacation, State by State - Part I

After winding down from an intense school year in 2015-2016, I took a couple of weeks in June to get some rest, practice yoga, and spend time with family and friends. I set up a watering schedule for the garden via SignUpGenius.com, and that worked beautifully - the students have shown a commitment to the garden that far surpassed my expectations, especially during an arid summer that could have easily destroyed the plants we have worked so hard to acquire.

Em takes a driving selfie

I spent most of my summer traveling, so the easiest way to describe my literary garden adventures is to give a state-by-state breakdown.

Indiana:

Me, Dr. Talhelm, and Vonnegut puppets

In July, I was invited to speak at the Teaching Vonnegut Workshop at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis. Dr. Melissa Talhelm of Southern Connecticut State University was able to join me, and together we discussed the ways that the Literary Garden enhances the content of Vonnegut's works, connects strongly to his family history, and is providing interdisciplinary opportunities with colleagues in art, science, drama, and the iCenter. I met authors Tim O'Brien and Dan Wakefield, both of whom agreed to provide plants for the garden. I also met Dr. Jon Eller of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies; he is working with me to provide a plant from Bradbury's childhood home in Illinois. Finally, Melissa and I even managed to snag a plant from the home where John Green wrote The Fault in Our Stars. Talk about a windfall! Many thanks to Julia Whitehead, Max Goller, and the rest of the folks at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library for their generosity, goodwill, kindness, and inspiration. I'm proud to be a member of their karass.

Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried

Dr. Jon Eller, Center for Ray Bradbury Studies

Typing on Kurt's typewriter...you can follow it on Twitter @kurtstypewriter

Author Dan Wakefield, a dear friend of Vonnegut's

Dr. Talhelm, me, Tim O'Brien, and KVML Founder Julia Whitehead

Trying to strike a pose as cool as Kurt's!

New York:

In Rochester, New York, we were delighted to meet librarian site supervisor Erin Clarke at the newly named Frederick Douglass Library. Justin Murphy of the Democrat & Chronicle writes:

More than 140 years after Frederick Douglass' South Avenue house burned to the ground in an apparent arson, the distinguished Rochesterian has been honored with a new home on the same spot.The former Highland Branch Library at 971 South Ave. was formally renamed the Frederick Douglass Community Library Monday morning at a ceremony led by Mayor Lovely Warren.The plot where the library now stands was mostly farmland in 1852, when Douglass and his family moved there from their home on Alexander Street. Douglass was one of the most prominent abolitionists in the country, so it was fitting that his house was a well known stop on the Underground Railroad.

Erin explained that the site, which connects to a community center and a school, were all part of a parcel of land that Douglass and his family owned. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact spot where his house stood, and a survey of the grounds for a suitable plant proved to be fruitless given the plethora of poison ivy that snaked along the grounds. However, the beautiful old trees that line the lot may need to be looked at by a specialist to determine their age; their size alone convinced me some of them could have dated back to Douglass's time. 

In any case, Erin was a font of information and an enthusiastic supporter of our garden. The library would also like to create a Victorian garden that would feature plants that Douglass and his family would have grown, and they would also like to work with us to connect our students to their younger patrons. It's so exciting to have the potential for these kinds of collaborations around the country.

We are also working with Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester. The cemetery has important links to American literary history, as Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony are both buried there. And, in a nod to Vonnegut, Joe Crone, his fellow soldier who inspired the character of Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five, is also interred there. It is only fitting that we work with the cemetery to obtain plants or flowers to place in our literary garden to honor these significant literary and historical figures. 

Massachusetts:

We headed to Walden Pond, of course! Emily had never seen it! 

We are working with American Heritage Trees to purchase a red maple tree from Walden, as they work with The Walden Woods Project to sustainably propagate historic trees of national importance. I cannot praise both of these fine organizations enough, and if you are looking for a literary tree of your own, I would urge you to contact and support American Heritage Trees and the work they are doing.  

We visited the site of Thoreau's original cabin, which is now marked with a pile of rocks,

a sign bearing some of his most famous words from Walden, and site markers that clearly delineate the size of the cabin. It's clear Thoreau would be a big fan of today's tiny house movement! 

We also stopped in Concord to visit my friend Tom Beardsley at The Old Manse. Last fall, Tom and Susan Adam donated at least a dozen plants from the Old Manse to our Literary Garden. I wanted to stop by and let him know how well the plants were doing.

Tom was delighted by our surprise visit and even more impressed by my picture of the corn. If you scroll below, you'll see the bloody butcher corn in the Literary Garden and the same corn at the Old Manse taken just days apart:

Tom's generous donations - which are tied to three key American Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau - formed the foundation of the Literary Garden and are absolutely integral to the teaching of the garden in American literature classes. Thank you, Tom, for recognizing the importance of bringing a sense of the authors' landscape to the students of West Bloomfield High School! I know the garden started to make sense for my students this past year when they read Hawthorne's "Buds and Bird-Voices" on Tom's recommendation and were able to see, touch, and smell the very same lilac bush that had inspired Hawthorne himself. 

Here's to you, Tom, and to all of the wonderful partnerships that I have made through my work on the Literary Garden in the last year! 

Please stay tuned for Part II of "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" for more news on Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, and Ernest Hemingway!

One Year

One year.

It’s been one year since we broke ground on the semicircle of sod and weeds surrounding a red brick wall in the West Bloomfield High School courtyard. In May, 2015, I had some promised literary plants and a couple of volunteers. By June I had picked up a second grant, and donations were trickling into the school website, but it wasn’t enough “seed” money to fund everything we needed to do over the summer.

I did not own a wheelbarrow. (Sorry, William Carlos Williams, I just hadn’t quite caught on yet.) I was begging – yes, begging – for dirt from the big box stores, from landscape supply companies, on Facebook, from signs on the side of the road that promised “free fill dirt.” The Mark Twain wisteria cuttings? They DIED. The Emily Dickinson rosebush cuttings? They DIED.

I was starting to freak out. How was I going to make this happen?

And then, on July 31, 2015 (a VERY important date in literary history; it is a birthday shared by Juliet Capulet AND Harry Potter as well as Harry Potter’s creator, J.K. Rowling), something magical happened. Amy Goldman wrote me an email at 9:17 P.M. that night that changed the course of this project completely.

I know that you are working to fund this project and what a difficult job that can be. My grandparents established a family foundation prior to their passing in order to help organizations that our family felt were meaningful. Upon hearing about this project, I presented a request to my family to consider a donation.

I am excited to tell you that the Garber Family Foundation will be donating to the Literary Garden.

The donation was completely unexpected (I did not know Amy, nor had I had her children in my classes), but I could not have known that three weeks later Amy and I would be, with dozens of other volunteers, hauling wheelbarrows full of pea gravel and dirt as we began creating a home for the plants I did not yet have. National Public Radio came out to cover our fledgling efforts!

Also in August, I visited the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library and met with founder Julia Whitehead, who agreed to be our Literary Garden sponsor; more funding meant more essentials for the garden. Even more exciting, Julia set up the opportunity for Melissa and I to meet Edie Vonnegut to get the Vonnegut hydrangeas for the garden.

By September and October, the plants came rolling in, by mail and by car, a plethora of perennials populating the backseat of my Jeep, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s false indigo pods shaking in terror as we made our way into Michigan. My students and I planted on a warm October afternoon under the direction of master gardener Dani Connolly. We made it into The Detroit Free Press, my mustachioed mug plastered across the front of the Life section for the world to see!

In November, tragedy struck our West Bloomfield community for the third time when we lost another tenth grade student to suicide. I had just learned about the Carton2Garden challenge and wondered how we could use it as an opportunity to help the students process their grief. Driving home one night, my playlist randomly shuffled to They Might Be Giants – “Put a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul.” My mind immediately flashed to Emily Dickinson:

What if we made the cartons into BIRDHOUSES? Birdhouses that wouldn’t just house our feathered friends in the courtyard, but birdhouses that would symbolically remind our struggling students to keep room for hope to perch in their very souls, that things would get better? I called on my dear friends Karen Matynowski (science) and Mimi Hoffman (art) for help. I knew I could not do this alone, but I was so excited about the idea, I had to share it immediately!

This was another aspect to the garden entirely, but it was so very important. So important to acknowledge the grief and pain and worry I saw in their writing. None of us could make sense of these tragedies, but we could try to move forward, one inspirational quote at a time, nudging each other towards brighter days.

I would stand at the window over the winter and worry endlessly about the school, our students, the plants. Would we survive the ice, the frost, the snow? It was so important that we try.

My dear friend Robin Tracey and her team at Moonlink Studios / Ringside Creative donated their time and efforts to create a video for us to submit to the Carton2 Garden contest in April, and in May, we found out that we were one of 14 national award winners! Prairie Farms Dairy rewarded our students with an ice cream social, and The Detroit Free Press covered our award in its Life section on June 11, 2016.

In May, the West Bloomfield Public Library announced that they would be donating a deposit collection of books to our WBHS iCenter to allow students to check out books for the authors they find interesting in the garden. Media specialist Julie Abeska and I are working on providing a special space in the iCenter to showcase this generous collection.

Spring finally sprung, and after a rash of late frost warnings, we finally had our official spring planting on June 3, 2016. We have been approved to begin a WBHS Literary Garden Club and have over 60 interested members signed up – as a matter of fact, they have already begun working on cleaning the courtyard, and they helped with the spring planting and with the decorating for the Literary Garden Grand Opening Gala.

On Friday, June 10, we opened the doors of the courtyard to the West Bloomfield Central Administration, School Board, Educational Foundation, donors, volunteers, students and parents to give them a chance to see the garden in all of its glory. 

None of this would have been possible without the generosity of the organizations that have supported the garden through generous grants, starting with the West Bloomfield Educational Foundation, the Garber Family Foundation, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Public Education Leadership Community Grant, the Penguin Random House Teacher Awards for Literacy, the Troy Garden Club, and the Carton2Garden Middle/High School Award.

There would not be a garden without the herculean efforts of the museums, homesteads, families, scholars, and organizations of authors - and some of the authors themselves! -  from around the country. They include: Pearl S. Buck, Willa Cather, Eugenia Collier, Emily Dickinson, Sharon Draper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nikki Giovanni, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Ken Kesey, Thomas Lynch, Carson McCullers, N. Scott Momaday, Flannery O’Connor, Holly Painter, Marge Piercy, Edgar Allan Poe, Theodore Roethke, John Steinbeck, Wallace Stevens, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Walt Whitman, and Jeff Zaslow. I am so grateful that when I came knocking at your doors, you responded so generously. I know that you don’t necessarily have the time and funding that you need in your own organizations, and I am endlessly grateful that you took the time to bring a swath of American literary history to the students of West Bloomfield High School.

We have so much more that we want to do! Here are just a few of the goals we have set for the next year.

a. Care and maintenance of the plants of the garden, year round

b. Acquire new plants generated from student reading, interest, and discussion

c. Read books and poetry not already in curriculum tied to the authors and poets in the garden and explore the connections to the plants.

d. Write “secret poetry” on the sidewalks in the courtyard that only shows up when it rains. 

e. Plan poetry slams, yoga in the garden, and other events would showcase student talent and provide opportunities for student community building.

g. Provide West Bloomfield community opportunities to create literary-themed art projects in the courtyard.

f. Become the umbrella organization for courtyard improvement. We would work with the Art Department on the Art Garden to help get them up and running. They will apply for grant money this fall to revitalize their end of the courtyard.

If you would like to support the garden, we have set up a way for you to do so that provides a more lasting legacy. You can now purchase a tile to commemorate a special moment in a student’s life, to cement a connection you have to the Literary Garden, or to note some other seminal moment you have connected to an American author or with West Bloomfield High School. See the brochure information here for more details.

Thank you, all of you, for making the West Bloomfield Literary Garden a reality, and stay tuned for YEAR TWO!

Birdhouses and More - Read All About It!

It all started with a simple paper carton...with some inspiration from Emily Dickinson...

 and They Might Giants...

Read all about our latest garden project in the West Bloomfield Spectrum here!

A Student’s Perspective on the Literary Garden

A Student's Perspective on the Literary Garden

By Lily Rosenberg, 

West Bloomfield High School

Every day I do the same thing, ESPECIALLY in school. I go to a class, I do my classwork and then the teacher gives me homework that may or may not match my skill level because school is not personalized to me. I go home to spend hours and hours on it and possibly still won’t understand it. Over and over and over and over again for seven classes. It’s monotonous. It’s dull. And frankly, it’s flat out boring. Finally somebody is doing something DIFFERENT! Finally somebody realizes that we are not made to sit in a four white walled classroom with no windows, hard chairs, and glaring lights while staring at our computer screens all day. The literary garden gives students a chance to think differently about coming to school and the way a classroom is run. It breaks the routine of sitting in a desk so that we can go outside and experience nature. It challenges the norm so we can learn in a way that is not based on points and grades.

Many adults have recognized that the monotonous routine of school is limiting students’ creativity and imagination. Parents do not want their children to go into the fine arts professions such as a singing or photography because it’s unpredictable and might not bring in a steady income. This shows how schools no longer value the creativity and imagination that should naturally accompany certain subjects, including American literature. The literary garden is an example of how we can use creativity and nature to expand our freedom and decrease our stress in school. It provides students with relief from the stress that comes with constant work because when did school become solely about grades and homework? Students don’t prioritize learning and education but instead put grades and points first. The garden defies these standards because you cannot get points or a grade for feeling the connection between nature and literature. All you can gain is the experience. Shouldn’t that be enough? The garden opens up the doors of creativity for those students who feel confined and stuck in the rut of school life.

I have migraines in almost all of my classes every day of the week. Sometimes my eyes glaze over and I cannot see the board because I have been staring at it for too long. I noticed immediately the first time Mrs. McQuillan took us outside that when I am able to breathe the fresh air and see the natural sunlight that my migraine will quickly ease away. When I am outside, I find a new path for my mind to travel because I’m not confined to the strict learning guide that most teachers have set. I learn in my own way.  I am not stuck in a rut. When given the opportunity, I can make connections from the real world and plants that I see every day to the literature we read in class. Now, every time I see daylilies, I think of Emily Dickinson. Every time I see daisies, I can make a connection to The Great Gatsby. When I see the sedge in the garden, I picture the rough environment of the house in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Without the garden, I would never be able to make those connections. There is no stress in the literary garden. I’m never wrong in the garden and nobody judges me because there is no limit to the creativity and ideas that can be produced when connecting nature’s big ideas to that of famous and extraordinary writers.  

Hemingway and Steinbeck Plants

This week has been full of unexpected surprises! My cousin David headed down to Key West, Florida, on vacation, so I asked him to do me a favor: would he go to The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West and ask for a plant donation?

David, you have a mission!

David and the master gardener, Dustin, picked several specimens from the Hemingway garden.

They include saplings of mahogany and tamarind trees:

Dustin also sent back royal poinciana seeds.

Royal Poinciana Seeds

As these are tropical plants, we may have to care for them indoors, but this will just allow the literary garden to expand beyond the parameters of the courtyard!

It's also exciting to have Hemingway plants from two very different locations: Michigan and Florida. This will allow me to pull writing from those different periods in Hemingway's life and ask the students to consider how his landscape affected his subject matter. I'm so grateful to Chris Struble of The Michigan Hemingway Society and to The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum for their support of the West Bloomfield High School Literary Garden. Thanks, too, to David for all of his help!

In addition, the Director of the National Steinbeck Center, Susan Shillinglaw, sent along the John Steinbeck plants I talked about in last week's post. They arrived today!

They may look a little rough, but if YOU tried traveling in a box from Salinas, California, to Michigan in mid-February, you might be huddled and frozen, too! Here we have an "indestructible" calla lily, a naked lady, and a succulent plant. Our intrepid master gardener, DaniAnn, will take charge of all of our new arrivals tomorrow. Many thanks to Susan and the National Steinbeck Center for their support of the Literary Garden!

I have some exciting news on the horizon regarding Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker...so stay tuned!

Counting Down to Spring

Welcome to my first post of 2016!

When I last left off, we were about to plant the West Bloomfield High School Literary Garden in preparation for fall. Thanks to Kristen Jordan Shamus of the Detroit Free Press, you can read all about our endeavors here! I'm especially a fan of this photo: 
There are few photos that capture the essence of my teaching quite like this one, but yes, this is a typical day in Mrs. McQuillan's classroom, Poe regalia and all. You can also see the daisies we planted in honor of The Great Gatsby there on the bottom left. 

I've thanked many of the folks who have sent us plants, bulbs, and cuttings, but since November, I have been in contact with a few more, and I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank them for their support of the Literary Garden.


I've long been a fan of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, so I was beyond excited to connect with April Moon Carlson, the Assistant Director of Andalusia Farm, the Home of Flannery O'Connor. April sent us a "few of the bearded white irises from Andalusia Farm (where O’Connor’s peafowl wreaked havoc upon her mother’s lilies, leaving an overabundance of the lovely bloom)." They made it just in time, too - they were the last plants I managed to get in before our first snow. Thank you, April!

Back in December, I received an unexpected - and wonderful - email from retired English teacher Michael Brown of Missouri, who wrote: 

"My wife gave me a Mark Twain bur oak about 15 years ago.  Starting as a 3-foot-tall sapling, it has thrived in our yard and is now about 30 feet tall.  It is from the Historic Tree association, and it is a direct descendent of the bur oak in Hannibal, MO, at the entrance to the cave Twain used as a springboard for his Tom Sawyer cave (where Tom and Becky Thatcher got lost).  I don't know if my tree was started from a cutting or an acorn, but I've taken a few acorns (the ones the squirrels haven't filched) the past few years, and I successfully started a sapling 3 years ago and gave it to another Twain fan on his 70th birthday.

I wanted to offer to send you an acorn or two if you would like to try to grow one with your class.  Don't know if you have space for a tree of that size in your garden, but even if you got it started in a pot and gave it away, auctioned it, or whatever, it might make an interesting class project next spring."  

I was taken aback by Michael's generous offer but eagerly accepted. I was jumping up and down when his beautifully hand lettered package arrived in the mail this week with a message for me and my students. Thank you, Michael!

Last night I heard from Susan Shillinglaw, Director of the National Steinbeck Center. We had hoped to procure a mattress vine from John Steinbeck's former home, but after further inquiries, Susan had other ideas. She writes: "...we decided on other plants from the yard that have been there since JS's time--a calla lily we uprooted, a naked lady, and a succulent that grew near the outside fireplace that John and his father built in 1930."

Naked Lady

Calla Lily

Susan also wrote a fantastic article supporting our efforts for the National Steinbeck Center Newsletter in October, 2015. You can find it here on page seven. Thank you, Susan! You can bet I'll be checking the mail every day this week!

I would also like to thank the Troy Garden Club and the Penguin Random House Teacher Awards for Literacy for their generous support of the Literary Garden. Not only did I receive financial support for the garden, but I won a LOT of free books - every English teacher's dream!

And despite the bitter cold, when Dr. Melissa Talhelm came out to conduct more research in December, we did manage to celebrate Emily Dickinson's birthday out in the garden! Happy birthday, Emily Dickinson!

Our master gardener, DaniAnn, came out this week while we had a bit of a thaw and checked on the plants. She definitely saw signs of life!

Even though some of the plants didn't make it (yes, Chris Struble, you'll be seeing me in Petoskey in the next few months to get more Hemingway mint!) our fingers are crossed for a healthy and vigorous spring. Plus, we have more planting to do!

My students are chafing at the cold weather and cannot wait to get back outside to their garden classroom. With their permission, I'll be sharing some of their observations on the garden in my next post.

You can read all about the garden in the press coverage we've received in the last six months:

Detroit Free Press: http://www.freep.com/story/life/family/kristen-jordan-shamus/2015/10/31/west-bloomfield-high-literary-garden/74750992/
National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/2015/08/26/434821478/authors-garden-clippings-grow-students-love-of-literature
University of Michigan School of Education: http://www.soe.umich.edu/news_events/news/article/nature_takes_root_in_pedagogy_with_alums_literary_garden/
Oakland University English Department: http://wwwp.oakland.edu/Assets/Oakland/english/files-and-documents/The%20English%20Channel%20Volume%2015%20Issue%201%20Fall%202015.pdf
Bustle.com: http://www.bustle.com/articles/106758-a-literary-garden-is-a-thing-all-book-lovers-are-going-to-want-stat
West Bloomfield Beacon: http://www.candgnews.com/news/growing-american-authors-85792
West Bloomfield Spectrum: http://wbspectrum.com/7259/news/literary-garden-set-to-bloom-at-west-bloomfield/
USA Today: (reprint of Free Press article) http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/family/kristen-jordan-shamus/2015/10/31/west-bloomfield-high-literary-garden/74750992/

Most of all, I would like to thank all of YOU for your support of the Literary Garden! Your kind messages, emails, monetary support, and generous offers of help have made this dream a reality. I cannot wait to see what the summer holds. THANK YOU!