Kingman, Arizona

I spent most of last week in Kingman, Arizona with Judy and her family. Kingman was a work detour on the Goulds on the Run Pacific America Tour '07. Judy and I spent three days with the teachers of the Kingman Learning Academy in a bit of writing training. There's a remarkable mix of energies that churns during these three days. I tell ya, it's not work when you have teachers like these who were open and engaged during all our sessions. When you're a teacher who just finished the school year and you agree to three full days of training at the start of your vacation, that's dedication that should garner more print space than a spoiled hotel socialite going to jail.
These teachers were cool.
We wrote, we laughed and we cried and I'm talking the good cry not the "oh-mah-ghad-I'm-listening-to-Michael-Bolton-accompanied-by-Kenny-G" cry. My favorite thing about writing training, besides marveling at the silky smooth delivery of one Judy Gould, is discovering the layers of lives of our attendees. You want to talk family values? Then you should listen to the way these teachers talk about their children and their wives and husbands, words wrung from memories, sacred, fragile and affirming.
We heard about triumph and loss. We heard the truth come out in verse and song and priceless prose in alliterative anthems. We heard about backyards and porches and new borns and books yearned for and enemies defeated. There were people who approached author's chair the way most of us look at jumping out of a plane with a parachute. As they read, I hope they felt like they were floating because that's how a spirit learns to soar, with acts of bravery, in a room full of people who have their arms extended to catch them.