Pepperoncini peppers, 7 or 8, and 1/2 jar of the vinegar
Put all ingredients in crock pot and cook on low for 8 hours.
Add vegetables to the pot if you wish – carrots, petite red or gold potatoes
Our Conclusion: I recovered the fumble but scored no touchdown. There is no comparison between the Instant Pot and the Crock Pot! Cook this one low and slow in the Crock Pot and not high and fast in the Instant Pot. It scored a passing grade and was tasty, but not melt-in-your-mouth delicious as it usually is. The meat was not as tender, and the potatoes were a bit too soft. But hey – now we know the scoop!
Today I share a poem in response to Margaret Simon’s post yesterday in her blog This Photo Wants to Be a Poem: Snowgirl
Margaret posts photos and asks writers to post poems about the photo. I composed a Haiku of a snowgirl decked out in nature walk findings. You can see the prompt here:
Thanks to Susie Morice for the inspiration to write a poem about a favorite car on today’s Open Write. I chose the nonet form, a poem with 9 syllables on the top line, with descending syllables on each line thereafter. A reverse nonet goes from 1-9. My favorite car was a Volkswagen Squareback I learned to drive on the back roads in the late 70s, and then became legally licensed to drive in 1981….oh, the days…..
You can visit the site and read her prompt and the car poems of others here throughout the day: http://www.ethicalela.com/cars/
Today I’m hosting the Open Write at ethicalela.com, so I’m sharing my prompt for paint chip poems. A special thanks to Sarah Donovan for her leadership and space at ethicalela. Please visit the site throughout the day and read the colorful poems that come to life at http://www.ethicalela.com/paint-chip-poetry/
but you can also find your own colorful words for free at paint stores or on websites such as Sherwin Williams here: https://www.sherwin-williams.com or Glidden here: https://www.glidden.com by clicking on the color chips to discover vibrant color words (deep onyx, copper pot, heartfelt, hot cocoa, dirt road…)
Process: Gather some paint chip words from a website or a paint department and have fun arranging the descriptive colors into lines of poetry!
Example using colors that I selected from Paint Chip Poetry:
I’m hosting today at Open Write. Please visit http://www.ethicalela.com/multiple-shovels/ throughout the day to read the poems of a group of talented teacher writers who truly empower each other with encouragement and positive feedback. If you are an educator – homeschool teacher, retired teacher, instructor in any setting – please join us monthly at the Open Write to read our work or to write with us!
I’m sharing my prompt today for the process of writing Golden Shovel variations here on my blog as well on this day that we set aside to remember the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his leadership in the fight for civil rights. In the past few years, I have accompanied a group of middle school students to Selma, Alabama, where we visited the churches where he spoke. My favorite memory from one of those trips was walking with the students over the Edmund Pettus Bridge as the chorus teacher led the students in singing We Shall Overcome. The spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lives on, alive and well in our world today. I’m grateful for this day to reflect on his courage and bravery and his legacy of activism.
Inspiration
Multiple Shovels
One of our favorite previous forms to write is the Golden Shovel poem. Today, let’s try different versions of the Golden Shovel – a Golden Shovel, Double Shovel, or Multiple Shovel. We can begin with single or double shovels (vertical spine lines at beginning or end, beginning/middle, middle/end, or beginning/end), and later experiment with triple/quadruple/quintuple shovels (vertical lines appearing at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end) once familiar with the Golden Shovel form.
Process: Begin by selecting lines of poetry (or lines from a famous speech, perhaps, as we celebrate the accomplishments of and reflect on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today) with the same number of words, and write the lines vertically (I call them spine lines). You can decide whether each spine line fits best as a beginning, middle, or end spine. Next, craft the lines of a new poem around the spine lines you have selected.
Example: Here is a Double Golden Shovel that uses spine lines at the beginning and end – comprised of two seven-word sections found in MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech:
When Will One Day Come? (Title chosen by Dr. Wilson Felix Haynes, Jr. – my dad)
There are multiple shovel poems throughout October 2021 and some in October 2020 that you can find in the search feature as well, although some did not convert from Blogger to WordPress in the correct format.
Special thanks to Sarah J. Donovan of http://www.ethicalela.com for offering the Open Write each month as a safe and supportive space for us to write. I hope to meet many more of my family of writers at this year’s NCTE Conference in Anaheim, where I hope to present Mashed Potato poetry in a roundtable session, showing how even the most reluctant writers can compose poetry without lifting a pencil! Mashed Potato poetry uses a bank of borrowed lines already written on tongue depressors, with lines of poetry on one side and poets and poems on the back. You can see an example here: https://kimhaynesjohnson.com/2021/10/22/stars/
Stacey Joy challenged our writing group to write monotetra poems today at the Open Write at Ethical ELA, which you can visit here: http://www.ethicalela.com/monotetr/
She writes, “The monotetra is a poetic form developed by Michael Walker consisting of mono-rhymed quatrains with a refrain. It can be only one quatrain or as many as you choose to write. Each line consists of 8 syllables.”
I look forward to hosting the next two days at Open Write, where we will explore variations of Golden Shovel and Paint Chip poems.
Beneath Implied
listening takes more than clean ears listening’s more than what one hears it may mean one exposes fears it evokes tears, it evokes tears
to listen takes an open heart to listen may bring a fresh start or may rejoin things torn apart wisdom impart, wisdom impart
listen! healing lives deep inside listen! heart and soul open wide expressed truths within us abide beneath implied, beyond implied
Many thanks to Sarah J. Donovan for her work at EthicalELA, for continuing to provide a safe and challenging space for us to enjoy.
I can’t think of a more powerful way to begin the 2022 Open Write than with poetry written by Stacey Joy and Kwame Alexander – two of my favorite poets to read! Stacey challenges us to write list poems to start the year. The link to her prompt is below. Beginning 2022 with a list poem reminds us that poetry can be free of rules and forms – it’s breath and thought and heart all blended in expression.
My one not so little word for 2022 is listen, so I made a starter kit of some ways I’ve discovered I can listen without using the word hear.
I was the band director and the chorus teacher for two hours today at the high school. Overall, things did not go so well.
First, I can’t read music. Second, I can’t sing.
I went from a morning of covering a high school history class and testing preschoolers’ Literacy skills to an afternoon of sheer cacophony surrounded by brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments I knew nothing about.
In the midst of this surreal assignment, I looked up and smiled and thought of my one little word I’d chosen for 2022: listen. And as I did, it occurred to me that others might want to listen, too.
I texted a few 15-second audio clips to my closest people with no accompanying explanation.
“Wow, what was that?” my husband replied.
“It’s my band class. I’m directing,” I informed him.
“Oh my goodness, that’s hilarious,” he texted back.
“What in the world?” from my daughter.
“It’s my band class. I’m directing,” I told her.
She was amused. “Hahaha! Directing? Or do you mean telling the band to play something reminiscent of a Disney movie set in the Great Depression that was decades before their time?”
Another family member was so concerned that he tried calling, but I couldn’t answer in class.
“I’m busy directing the band today. I’ll have to call you when I’m headed back to the office,” I told him.
“Oh dear,” another replied. “I’m going to need video evidence.”
And so I got it.
So that for the rest of 2022 when I need to think of the most unusual way I listened on the 13th day of the year, I can revisit this experience and be ever mindful that the words we choose for the year can truly take us to some places we never dreamed we’d be.
Common Threads 