Educating Our Children — And the Rest of Us, Too by Cati Porter

My weekday morning routine is always the same: the only variable in recent years has been where I drop them off – first it was both to Victoria, then Victoria and Gage, now Gage and Poly. Invariably, the car door slams as they hop out and disappear into the crowd. Our goodbyes are always some combination of affection and admonishment. I feel fortunate to have never had occasion to seriously question their safety or the quality of the education they are receiving.

After drop off, for years I have driven the same route downtown, taking Victoria Avenue around the bend and over the bridge where more kids on their way to Poly walk, past the Victoria Club and the arroyo, where rows of mostly bungalows line each side of the road. Just a bit farther down is the intersection of Cridge and Victoria. For years I had driven that route, past the stone-columned multi-hued cottages of Wall Manor, without any knowledge of the history of that plot of land. I only recently came to learn what once stood there – Lowell Elementary – and what its absence represents.

Early in the morning of September 7, 1965, Lowell School was set ablaze. No one has ever been charged, and likely no one ever will be, but it is almost certain that it was arson. And whether or not anyone knew it at the time, that fire served as the catalyst for monumental change.

Set back from Wall Manor, facing Cridge but with a Victoria address, is the St. James Restoration Tabernacle. Originally that building served as a kindergarten classroom for Lowell; now it’s the only remnant of that school still standing.

At the time, the Riverside Unified School District was growing, but as a result of housing covenants restricting where people of color could live, some schools, including Lowell, had become de facto segregated, which is to say, not purposefully but rather as a result of the fact that they were located in neighborhoods where minorities predominated as a result of these covenants. Even where those schools had to some degree been integrated, the opening of new schools in majority white neighborhoods had siphoned non-minority students away.

By the time of the fire, Lowell was populated primarily by African-American and Mexican-American students. Parents of students at both Lowell and Irving schools, the de facto segregated schools located in Riverside’s Eastside community, had decided that they wanted integration.

This fire occurred at the height of the Civil Rights movement, shortly after the Watts riots in Los Angeles. There was some fear that there could be more fires, and that the situation could unravel, but what happened instead was rather astonishing: the community came together, and the students were not just moved but carefully and thoughtfully placed, a few in each classroom throughout the district, so as to ensure not just desegregation but a true integration of these displaced children. Riverside Unified became the first large school district to voluntarily integrate, thanks to its strong and outspoken community leaders, and in particular, Arthur Littleworth, who sat as the chair of school board during this entire period, ensuring that the integration was implemented as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

In November, Poly High School will be unveiling a timeline dedicated to Mr. Littleworth’s life, and at the same time, Inlandia will be releasing his book, No Easy Way, which includes his personal reflections on that period as well as includes interviews with other important local figures who were there too, and details the struggles and events that led up to this voluntary and comparably peaceful integration. I say comparably, because, unlike in other parts of the country, there was no National Guard called in to escort the students, but that is not to say it wasn’t without strife. One of the many things that I learned in bringing this book into the world is that there were parents who objected to the integration, those who were present as the bus pulled up to Alcott Elementary, protesting and harassing the children as they tried simply to make their way to class, in a new school.

These days, children of all races and ethnicities attend these same schools. I don’t know whether or not it is something to be proud of, but my own sons have no clue about the concept of racially segregated schools, except in the abstract. It has never been any different during their lifetime. But now, at Poly, I have had to explain to my son who the theater is named after, and why. Why it is significant. What it stands for. And the struggle for equality in all things is far from over. And that even in a community like Riverside, there is a history that we have to overcome – as far back as the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s as a result of a nationwide revival—to the neo-Nazi resurgence in recent years, leading to community protests, and finally, the death of a local party leader by the hands of his own child.

When I moved to Riverside in 1994, I had no idea of the history here – and regrettably, so many still do not. But often, when I drop my children off at school, I try to reflect on what brought us here, what it means to be a part of this community, how grateful I am to all those that came before me, paving the way for all of our children’s futures, and how far we still have to go.

Connections: Huxley, Stravinsky, Krishnamurti &Wood by Joan Koerper

“Human beings are multiple amphibians, living simultaneously in half a dozen radically dissimilar universes—the molecular and the ethical, the physiological and the symbolic, the world of incommunicably subjective experience and the public worlds of language and culture, of social organization and the sciences.” Aldous Huxley from the Foreword in You Are Not The Target, by Laura Archera Huxley

My paperback copy of Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World almost disintegrated in my hand when I was packing last October to move to Wrightwood. I’d had it since early high school. I carefully placed my hardback copy of Island, a softback of The Art of Seeing, along with my also falling-apart-at-the-seams copy of Laura Huxley’s 1976 edition of You Are Not The Target, into a carefully packed, plastic box of classics by George Orwell, Edward Bellamy, Ernest Callenbach, Hermann Hesse, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, a lost feminist utopian novel, and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, among others. I had no clue at the time that I would be living less than a mile from a house Huxley once owned.

When I learned Huxley was Wrightwood’s most famous one-time literary resident I engaged in online research and hoofed it to the Wrightwood Historical Museum to see what info could be gleaned in person. There is a display case dedicated to Huxley at the museum, and also a bit of filed material on him.

In my first round of research on Huxley after moving, I found a photo on www.WrightwoodCalif.com in a blog posted by Graham_Ranch on 12.7.2007. It was an image of Aldous and Maria Huxley, Mr. and Mrs. Igor Stravinsky, J. Krishnamurti and Radha Rajagopal (Sloss) at a picnic in Wrightwood in 1949. I looked up Radha and identified her as the daughter of Rosalind and D. Rajagopal who lived with Krishnamurti for a number of years, located the photo at other places online, then put the photo and the information in my mental “revisit later” file while I continued to unpack.

In early July, coinciding with the scheduled talk at the Wrightwood Museum about Huxley, I was asked to write up a short biography for the museum’s newsletter, a distasteful task at best. I was copying the sentence, “Joan (MJ) Koerper is passionate about exploring our souls as artists: the intersection of art, music, creativity, writing, and human emotion in the everyday sacred of our lives” when my mind flashed on the photo of the Huxleys, the Stravinskys, Krishnamurti and Radha. I returned to explore it.

I began meandering: about my relationship with these people and their works, their relationships with each other, and how they influenced each other…how their lives, ideas and arts intersected.

Huxley, as you know, and was previously noted in another of my blog entries, is considered one of the most important literary and philosophical voices of the 20th Century writing in English. Huxley’s classic, and other works of his, were required reading in both my high school and undergraduate classes at Michigan State University, as well as simply pertinent works to read and re-read over the years.

Growing up in the home of a musician, the works of the Russian-American composer, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), oft considered the most versatile and greatest composer of twentieth century, was well known to me. I met him once during my early years. Whether I liked his music or not, I gave one of his books to my father as a birthday present one year. I just let it go during my “great giveaway” prior to moving to Wrightwood. Somewhere in my memory I knew, but was recently reminded, that in the 1950’s there was even talk of Huxley, Stravinsky and Martha Graham turning the Tibetan Book of the Dead into a ballet with a Greek chorus.

(Jiddu) Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was a world-renowned spiritual teacher and philosopher. In the winter of 1991, tricycle magazine reviewed the book Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti written by Radha Rajagopal Sloss. Radha was in the photo taken in 1949. The introduction to that piece noted that “… by the time he [Krishnamurti] died in Ojai, California, in 1986 at the age of 91, he had helped-perhaps more than anyone in this century-to introduce Eastern teachings on the nature of mind to the West.”

Krishnamurti’s works, and in particular the book Education & the Significance of Life, were required reading, and the centerpoint of much discussion, in my doctoral program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Krishnamurti believed it is necessary to face experience and disturbance as it comes to keep “intelligence highly awakened; and intelligence highly awakened is intuition, which is the only true guide in life” (1953:11). He further posed that if we are being educated to simply get ahead, obtain a better job or more power, “then our lives will be shallow and empty…Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky….” (1953:9).

He spoke of two kinds of revolt: violent, which is reactionary against an existing order and without understanding. The second is the deep psychological revolt of intelligence.

Perhaps, most importantly, Krishnamurti spoke of integration: “We may be highly educated, but if we are without deep integration of thought and feeling, our lives are incomplete, contradictory and torn with many fears; and as long as education does not cultivate an integrated outlook on life, it has very little significance” (1953: 11).

When I was working on my doctoral thesis, a work of creative nonfiction exploring pottery and writing as expressions of our souls as artists, I had the opportunity to learn about the pottery of Beatrice Wood (1893-1998). I visited her studio in Ojai, CA, in 2001, where Wood continued to work until the age of 104. I was totally enamored with her studio, her determination, the ceramics she produced and collected, and most of all the immersion in nature with which she surrounded herself. Her pottery wheel sat in front of a large window looking out over the valley. How could anyone fail to call forth songs from their soul to be transformed into clay in such an environment?

While Wood originally lived across the street from Krishnamurti when she moved to Ojai, in 1974 she was invited to move her home to the grounds of the Happy Valley Foundation in the upper Ojai Valley. In her autobiography, I Shock Myself, Wood relates that Dr. Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, Dr. Guido Ferrando and Rosalind Rajagopal founded the Happy Valley Foundation in 1927. The Happy Valley School, where Wood also taught ceramics for many years, was a project of the Foundation. She speaks of Huxley’s frequent visits to Ojai to have long talks with Krishnamurti about education, thus she was able to see the Huxley’s often. Huxley also served on the Board of the Happy Valley Foundation for fifteen years. Her home, studio, work, library and massive collection of folk and Eastern art were gifted to the Foundation upon her death. So there I was, back in 2001, in Beatrice Wood’s home, studio, and walking the grounds where she, Krishnamurti, Huxley, Anais Nin, Alan Watts, no doubt Stravinsky, and so many others gathered to socialize, exchange ideas, challenge, and nurture each other as friends do.

In 2001 I also had the outstanding good fortune to meet world-renowned woodworker, or furniture craftsman, as the Smithsonian refers to, Sam Maloof (1916-2009), when he hosted an event on his property to honor the potters of Mata Ortiz. A night under the full moon I will never forget. A story in itself, for another time. When Sam Maloof took us on a tour of his home, I recognized a number of Wood’s pieces about the premisses. He knew her, of course. We discussed Beatrice’s unique style and unconventional life among many other topics.

And so the linkages continued. I needed to take it further. It’s the detective in me. The researcher. The scholar. I wanted to observe the resulting affects of these relationships without having to get bogged down with all the details. I wanted to grasp the larger picture.

I re-visited some of Huxley’s stories and essays, picked up a new addition to my library, The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment (Jacqueline Hazard Bridgeman, ed.), put my nose to the pages of Krishnamurti’s writing, re-read Beatrice Wood’s autobiography and played some of Stravinsky’s compositions I have in my music library. I was able to perceive, with much more clarity, how these great minds influenced each other, and subsequently influenced me. Each expressed similar ideas using different mediums.

I was spurred onto this recent voyage of the integration and expression of ideas, philosophies and talents by one photograph of a musician, author, and philosopher…people with whom I’ve been familiar with since my youth.

Truth be told, for me, all forms of life are creative, and all life is art. One of the many uncoverings I learned by studying linguistics, for instance, is that in Tewa, Navaho, and most, if not all, indigenous languages, there is no separate word for art. Tewa potter and poet Nora Naranjo-Morse relates that in Tewa there is, “the concept for an artful life, filled with inspiration and fueled by labor and thoughtful approach.” Educator Kenneth R. Beittel, in Zen and the Art of Pottery (1989) writes, “From earliest times, art and life have been one.” Conceptual artist Damien Hirst and naturalist and writer Terry Tempest Williams both write that every society and each person designates what is art. “Art’s about life and it really can’t be about anything else.”

These quotes are only a smidgen of those I’ve gathered confirming what every child, indeed every animal, knows instinctively.

Yet in the Western world, the social construct of dualism is the foundation of our philosophical and psychological worldview. It teaches us to separate all aspects of our lives…indeed to separate us from our lives, our minds, our souls, our artful life. It is indeed a challenge when one embraces the whole while living in a society based on dualism. Hence, speaking in Western terms, I look at how the intersection of these perceived disparate parts of our lives form a much larger worldview. I like to explore how they unite us…how they come together to make us whole. Because when the focus is really on the art that is our lives, however it is expressed in the everyday sacred, it inspires us to be more fully creative beings.

My research offered me a glimpse into how the creative lives of Huxley, Krishnamurti, Stravinsky, Wood, and others, including Alan Watts, intersected: how they came together to nurture, inspire, enjoy and support each other. They carried forth the art of their lives into different mediums and, in turn, produced opulent, radical, lasting, artistic, literary, and philosophical gifts for the world. They were revolutionaries, in the intellectual sense of which Krishnamurti spoke. They impacted each other, and generations to come, including me, as they engaged each other and practiced the arts of their lives. For me, this dialog and communion of minds became yet another example of how important it is for us to have our own commitment to depth, breadth, vision, imagination, integrity, and integration, as well as a wide range of interests, friends, and colleagues who express their art in different mediums. And how critical it is to relate with people who care enough to honestly share, listen, dialog, mentor, honor, and nurture each other. Finally, this voyage into connections became an opportunity to express my deep gratitude for all who have cared enough to share their art of being, expressing, transforming and living with me.

Talent is Overrated: A Free Five-meeting Fiction Writing Workshop at CSUSB by Cati Porter

Join the Inlandia Institute and Cal State San Bernardino for a free five-meeting fiction writing workshop, “Talent is Overrated.”

Writing isn’t glamorous and it isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. With determination and hard work you can become a writer, but you have to choose to be one. Join Andrea Fingerson for a 5-meeting workshop where you will learn how to become a writer. (Note: there will be homework. Please be prepared to commit to the workshop.) The workshop will discuss what it means to be a writer, share strategies that will help you develop the necessary disciple, and review basic fiction techniques and strategies that will help you write a short story or picture book. By the end of this workshop you will have a completed and edited story that is formatted for submission. Writing is in your future. Let Andrea help you get there.

Workshop dates and times:

Sept. 25, 6-9 p.m.

Oct. 2, 6-9 p.m.

Oct. 16, 6-9 p.m.

Oct. 30, 5-6 p.m. (optional meeting)

Nov. 13, 6-9 p.m.

Nov. 20, 6-9 p.m.

All workshops will take place at CSUSB in the Pfau Library, room PL4005A (4th floor).

This workshop is limited to 15 participants. The only requirement is that only people who are sincerely willing to commit the time and effort take one of the places. You will essentially be writing, rewriting, and editing a short story in under two months. If you would like a place in the workshop email jvlong@csusb.edu, and include a phone number that she can reach you with. Reservations will be made on a first come, first served basis. If you are interested, please email today.

KIDLANDIA: Trout in the Classroom Time, Again!

I’m writing a little early again because tomorrow morning I’ll be helping teachers learn how to raise trout in their classrooms. Yes, I said trout. As some of you already know, my students and I have been raising trout in the classroom for close to fifteen years now. We have had a blast learning about the life cycle of trout, what their environmental needs are as they grow and change, and how we affect their environment. As students learn to care for and observe the trout they also learn to be good stewards of the earth. The Trout in The Classroom program has been developed by the Department of Fish and Game, locals to the Inland Empire, brought to teachers by the Deep Creek Fly Fishers Club. If you are interested in learning more about the program you can visit the Deep Creek Fly Fishers site. If you are a teacher who would like to be part of the Trout in the Classroom program, please come to the Isaac Walton House at Fairmount Park, Riverside, CA 92501 tomorrow, Sunday September 14, from 8am to 1pm and ask about how you can get trained.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Julianna M. Cruz is a teacher, an author, and an Inlandian.

The BIG READ at Corona Public Library – Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 by Cati Porter

This fall, the Corona Public Library is hosting an array of events related to the Big Read, featuring the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The library will be handing out free copies of Fahrenheit 451 in anticipation of these events.

Join Inlandia Institute presenters in exploring this incredible book. Upcoming event dates:

September 10, 2014, at 7 pm join Lawrence Eby for a talk on the future of publishing.

September 23, 2014, at 7 pm join Suzanne Maguire for a book discussion.

October 1, 2014, at 7 pm join Jennifer Williams-Dean for a book discussion.

These events are free and open to the public. Stop by the library to pick up your copy of the book and we hope to see you there!

“The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.”

Poetry Called Present by David Stone

I stammer taking roll call the first day of a new school year. My multicultural classroom comes with a roster with names like those of the United Nations. After more than a decade at the same school, I have the advantage of having practiced a fair number of surnames, but the first name of a sibling can often leave me stuttering its first letter in a stall to determine which syllable to accent.

Jason McCall’s “Roll Call for Michael Brown,” published by Rattle on August 17, brought new meaning to roll call anxiety for me. His poem evoked my feelings of the inevitability of “honest mistakes ” but then led me to the “groans” of grief and the weight of responsibility as I came to identify my connection to the death of a young man who lived halfway across the country.

Attempting to make personal sense of Michael Brown’s death and the ensuing demonstrations and violence in Ferguson, Missouri, I found more in McCall’s poem than many of the news articles I read. I am convinced that America needs more poets to answer the roll call and write in response to events in the news. In the wake of advertisement revenues dispersing to an ever broadening array of media outlets, our nation’s newspapers falter. The number of reporters pounding the news beats of America dwindles. No wonder we turn to the archetypes of town criers, jesters, and troubadours.

I do not wish for a further demise of our nation’s longstanding fourth estate, the newspapers of traditional print journalism; however, I am grateful for our contemporary criers, the newer Internet news agencies, and our jesters, the comedic news shows that fill the expanding gap left by the thinning of America’s newspapers. I wish for more venues for troubadours, more poets to sing the songs of our evolving history.

Rattle’s new weekly “Poets Respond,” an online project that presents one poem about an event that occurred in the past week, joins New Verse News in what I believe is a small number of current-events poetry publications. James Penha has edited New Verse News since founding it in early 2005.

On Sunday, August 31, the Los Angeles Times ran a page of “opinionated poetry” for a second time as a result of the more than 1,500 poets who responded to last year’s call for current-events poems.

Southern Californians interested in poetry, music, and art promoting peace will find current-events poetry live at numerous venues on Saturday, September 27. Search the Internet for 100 Thousand Poets for Change to locate the nearest venue. Since 2013 the grassroots organization 100 Thousand Poets for Change annually organizes an international day of events.

Newspapers should seriously consider the regular inclusion of current-events poems. People still buy papers for the comics. I bet some would buy them for poems.

The poet and political activist Denise Levertov wrote for a 1967 symposium, “Good poets write bad political poems only if they let themselves write deliberate, opinionated rhetoric, misusing their art as propaganda.”

As much as current events are too important to be left to the bare recitation of facts or the fulminations of politicos and pundits, current-events poetry needs to be more than mere propaganda.

Levertov questioned whether the role of a poet should be “observer” or “participant.” I would argue we need both in our newspapers. Contemporary war poetry shows the power of both perspectives. Citizens need to read poems from soldier poets like Collin Halloran’s Shortly Thereafter and spouses like Elyse Fenton’s Clamor.

Well-written poems provide more than a sound bite.

No doubt, we need more poetry called present.

David Stone is a poet who teaches English at Loma Linda Academy.

As a Living Language, English is Malleable and Still Changing by Matthew Nadelson

When I think back about what I really learned in college, aside from the insights I received during a handful of fascinating lectures and conversations with excellent professors, the ideas I still remember today are the conclusions I came to myself regarding the material presented, much of which were based on material presented in other courses.

Looking back, I realize that it was the culmination of these courses that allowed me to observe alternative, and often opposing, viewpoints and arrive at my own conclusions.

Of course, I wasn’t just drawing on my experience from other college courses when I came to these conclusions, but my life experiences as well. And, the clearest material was the material I could most relate to personally. Now that I have taught for eight years, I understand that a similar personal connection to the material can be beneficial to the teacher as well.

Because of this, I think the best advice I could give any teacher (of high school and above), in addition to more obvious things such as letting students’ questions and comments direct the discussion, is that we not only must show the students how the material relates to their lives, but we also must present the material in a way that relates to our own lives.

When teachers don’t do this, students lose interest. And really, why should they care about something that they can’t imagine providing any practical benefit to their lives? Grades are rudimentary motivators at best.

Another problem I see is that too often too many teachers fail to place their subject matter in the proper context. They present it almost in a vacuum.

Here is an example: About five years ago, when we were both 30, an extremely smart woman I had grown up with, asked me whether it was OK to start a sentence with “and.”

She didn’t know whether it was ever OK to start a sentence with one of the most common words in our language. I don’t know where my friend went to school, but I’m pretty sure she has lived in Orange County all her life, and somewhere along the line, a college professor had told her it was never OK to start a sentence with “and.”

Of course, what this person had neglected to tell her was that in a college-level essay, it is generally not a great idea to start a sentence with “and” because it is informal (and it could be argued that the job of a coordinating conjunction such as “and” is to coordinate between independent clauses or … blah blah blah).

But this teacher had failed to explain to my friend the importance of audience, purpose and occasion in college writing, and how all these things determine the level of formality in the writing, and also the fact that English is a living language and English punctuation is only a few hundred years old and has changed radically in that short time.

For my money, the great American poet Walt Whitman said it best:

“Language, be it remember’d, is not an abstract construction of the learn’d, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea.”

My friend’s anxiety over the use of “and” is not even the best example of this. One time an English tutor told me that he had been told by his teachers that the word “good” was never correct to use… ever – that “it should always be ‘well.’” He had no idea that “good” is the adjective and “well” is the adverb, meaning they are both good but should be used well.

Hopefully, this student wasn’t actually told this, but this is what he remembered … perhaps because he (or the instructor) couldn’t understand the practical application of such knowledge and therefore (perhaps even subconsciously) had no interest in really understanding the material.

Matthew Nadelson of Corona teaches English at Norco College and leads an Inlandia creative writing workshop every other Tuesday night at the Corona Library. Contact him at mattnadelson@gmail.com.

Inlandia’s Fall Creative Writing Workshops Set to Begin by Cati Porter

The Inlandia Institute’s Fall Creative Writing Workshops are set to begin. Led by professional writers and writing instructors, each workshop is designed to meet the needs of writers working in all genres at all levels. Currently there are six different workshop locations:

Ontario, led by Charlotte Davidson [*Closed: Full]; Riverside, led by Jo Scott-Coe; Corona, led by Matthew Nadelson; Idyllwild, co-led by Myra Dutton and Jean Waggoner; Palm Springs, led by Alaina Bixon; and San Bernardino, led by Andrea Fingerson.

Each workshop series is approximately 10 weeks long, meeting every other week unless specified. Workshops are free and open to the public but registration is required.

Please RSVP to cati.porter@inlandiainstitute.org. Registration forms will be emailed prior to and/or distributed during the first session.

And, while these workshops are free and open to the public, in order to keep them that way, we do ask that you consider an optional but suggested donation of $25 for the entire series. Information about why this is necessary is included in the registration packet.

Dates and times vary by location:

Ontario [*Closed: Full]

Led by Charlotte Davidson

6 pm – 8 pm

September 10 & 24, October 8, 22, and November 5

Ovitt Family Community Library

215 E C St

Ontario, CA 91764

Idyllwild

Led jointly by Myra Dutton & Jean Waggoner

2 pm – 4 pm

First Friday of every month

Idyllwild Public Library

54401 Village Ctr Dr

Idyllwild, CA 92549

Corona

Led by Matt Nadelson

7 pm – 8:30 pm

September 9, 23, October, 7, 21, and November 18

Corona Public Library

650 S Main St

Corona, CA 92882

Riverside

Led by Jo Scott-Coe

6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

September 25, October 9, 23, November 6, and 20

Riverside Public Library

3581 Mission Inn Ave

Riverside, CA 92501

Palm Springs

Led by Alaina Bixon

2 pm – 4 pm

October 8, 22, November 5, 19, and December 3

Smoke Tree Racquet Club

1655 E Palm Canyon Dr

Palm Springs, CA 92264

Free parking, accessible from E Palm Canyon or the Citibank lot on the corner of Sunrise/Hwy 111.

San Bernardino

Led by Andrea Jill Fingerson

3:30 pm – 5:30 pm

September 23, October 7, 21, November 4, and 18

Feldheym Library

555 W 6th St

San Bernardino, CA 92410

Alaina Bixon leads writing workshops, including Inlandia’s creative writing workshops in Palm Springs, edits books, and reads for the online journal The Whistling Fire. She is working on an article about women at MIT.

Jo Scott-Coe is the author of Teacher at Point Blank. Her essays can be found in Salon, Memoir, TNB, River Teeth, Hotel Amerika, Fourth Genre, and the Los Angeles Times. Jo is currently an associate professor of English at Riverside City College and the faculty editor of MUSE.

Charlotte Davidson received a Masters in English from Syracuse University followed by an MFA in poetry from UC Irvine. Her first book, Fresh Zebra, appeared in 2012. Charlotte leads Inlandia’s creative writing workshops in Ontario.

Myra Dutton is the author of Healing Ground: A Visionary Union of Earth and Spirit, which was a 2004 Narcissus Book Award finalist and a 2006 selection for “Ten Books We Love” by Inland Empire Magazine.

Andrea Fingerson has taught preschool, reading, and high school English. Currently, she teaches Child Development classes to teen parents. She received her MFA in Fiction from CSUSB. During that time she was a Fiction Editor for Ghost Town and the high school Outreach Coordinator for The Pacific Review. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and is currently in the process of editing a young adult novel.

Matthew Nadelson teaches writing at Norco College and leads a creative writing workshop at the Corona Public Library (every other Tuesday from 6 pm to 8 pm) through the Inlandia Institute. He has lived and worked in Riverside County since 1997 (with the exception of a brief stint in San Diego at SDSU, where he earned his MFA in creative writing, from 2002 to 2005). His writing has been featured in more than 20 journals and anthologies, and he was recently featured on the Moon Tide Press website as their “Poet of the Month” for December 2013. His first poetry collection, American Spirit, was published in August 2011 by Finishing Line Press.

Jean Waggoner, a published fine arts reviewer, poet, essayist and story writer, has taught college English and English as a Second Language in Riverside County for the past thirteen years and co-leads the Idyllwild poetry and creative writing workshops for Inlandia Institute. Jean is an advocate for part time faculty equity and co-author of a book on the part-time professor experience, The Freeway Flier & the Life of the Mind.

* Charlotte Davidson’s workshop is now CLOSED due to maximum enrollment; please check back in winter to see if openings are available or join one of our other upcoming workshops that still have seats. San Bernardino and Corona both have openings.

KIDLANDIA: Six Degrees of Separation

It always amazes me when I meet someone who I think is a stranger and it ends up we are related in some way. I’m sure this has happened to you too. Well as weird as it sounds, it keeps happening to me. But not just with people—with situations, and even with food! Let me explain. I’ve been living with the belief that everything happens for a reason—whether that reason is divine intervention, or merely the choices one has made—one thing definitely leads to another. So, with that said, for the last month or so I have been having very powerful bouts of déjà vu. This déjà vu seems to be strongest with food, but situations in which I am meeting people are also strong. I wonder: am I really experiencing this again, or am I so focused on what I want to happen that everything is just falling into place? Let me make clear that things can’t just fall into place if you haven’t already created a place for things to land—usually through hard work and preparation. I know sounds like a philosophical ramble, but bear with me–you’ll see how it all falls into place.

For the last year, my incredibly talented husband, Curtis Cruz, has been attending the Riverside Community College Culinary Arts Academy. He left his teaching position at Redlands High School in order to pursue his passion, first he saved a year’s worth of wages in order to go without working. He recently graduated, with medals in Hot and Cold Food competitions, and the Outstanding Baking and Pastry Award. To say the least, I am very proud. So what is he doing now? That’s where I get that strange feeling about how I fit into the whole plan. You see, over the summer, I met a distant cousin, Mitzi, and she and I formed a fast connection. During a visit to her home and business in Redlands she introduced me to a friend, who sells olive oil at a shop in Redlands, and like I said before, things started falling into place. Energy just keeps flowing in the right direction—it’s amazing, and a little scary.

Curtis and I will be sharing her booth at the Redlands Farmers’ Market next Thursday night. Look for My Goodness, Artisan Breads together with Stone Wheel Olive Oil Co. next Thursday night. What a natural pairing of two great flavors! I hope that when you let that olive oil soaked sourdough touch your tongue that your eyes close involuntarily and you let out a little sigh of pleasure. Then, and only then, will you know that feeling that I’ve been having.

Hoping to see you all again.

Julianna M. Cruz is a teacher, an author, and an Inlandian.

Literature Conference in Riverside by Isaac Williams

The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) is having its 2014 conference at the new Riverside Convention Center from Friday, October 31 until Sunday, November 2. Workshops are varied in focus and run the gamut from classical literature to new mediums, like webcomics. In addition, many workshops are based on literature’s connection with sociopolitical issues.

Registration for the conference at its regular price closes on September 10. Students from Riverside City College, La Sierra University, University of California, Riverside, Cal Baptist University, and Chaffey College can attend for free.

If you know of any other upcoming conferences or panels that are (relatively) local, please let us know!