Most striking was the gusto the cinnamon buns engendered. Every child consumed every crumb and icing drizzle.Three children, seemingly swept into near unconsciousness by the sugar buzz, finished their pastries, inverted the cellophane packaging with one hand inside, and methodically, carefully, systematically licked every molecule of sucrose off the inside of the plastic as if they were zombies consuming icing popsicles.

The chocolate milk was also greatly appreciated. Every carton was opened. Three-quarters of the kids finished every drop.

Only a few children even bothered to unkink the twist-tie and get to the sugary fruit and hard boiled egg. Of those, only two children ate an egg.

The garbage can was full of food. And plenty of plastic packaging.

Final consumption:

100% Cinnamon bun
75%  Chocolate milk
15%  Sweetened applesauce
5%  Hard-boiled egg

Childhood obesity. Diabetes. Waste.

We’re sowing. And we will reap.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

In addition to great aesthetics, they are expert at branding, marketing, and promotion. They are also good people. I am honored this Holiday Season to be featured on their New Year’s card.

photo credit: Ros Edmonds

About 100 school sessions ago, there I am challenging students and making them laugh while they learn about character, plot, and why, when red-penciled teacher comments include a request to “correct and revise…and turn this back in tomorrow,” the correct response is not, “No! Please don’t make me. Why do you hate me?”

I tell them that pilots have to take flying lessons before they solo.

I tell them quarterbacks have to practice passing.

I tell them carpenters need to apprentice before they build a house.

I tell them no first draft is ever perfect. Writers must re-write.

I tell them that I wrote eight drafts of Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything.

The room goes silent.

*     *     *     *     *

[full disclosure: Waxcreative's proprietrix is my eldest child, Emily Cotler.]

{fuller disclosure: I rewrote this blog post thrice.}

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Some things—no matter which school—are universal.

When Cheesie comes to school, the students are enthusiastic. Their intellectual curiosity is engaged and stimulated. And their laughter is large, spontaneous, and joyful.

And then there’s the nearly obligatory mac ‘n’ cheese luncheon. The kids love it, and I love their gusto.

I often ask for a salad.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Symptoms: Normal start up, but then, as the blue screen and desktop icons appeared, so did the spinning beach ball of death…and a queasy stomach.

Interior sirens wailing, I rushed to my not-too-far-away Apple Store where, amid dozens of milling i-enthusiasts, the patient was taken into the back room, and I was told to go home and wait. Two hours later I got the news. “It’s a severe hard disk charley horse. Maybe even a full quadriceps tear,” the Apple Genius said with great sympathy. This made sense to me; I had noticed, over the past couple of months, a not-so-subtle limp and an intermittent tendency to be slower than normal on ground balls to the backhand.

Never this empty!

Since I was soon leaving for a weekend dalliance in Monterey, followed immediately by five days of Cheesie Mack book events in Tulsa, I raced back to the Apple Store and begged for a transplant…stat!

“Sorry,” Apple Guy explained, “We don’t have any hard drives in stock. Give us two days.”

I spun on my heel, clutched my critically ill friend to my anxious bosom, and dashed out of the mall, prepared to travel to any other Apple Store within unreasonable driving distance. But as I cranked up my hybrid, I remembered that no more than a half-mile away there was an authorized Apple reseller. I burst into his otherwise empty shop and in a few minutes had contracted for a new 300 GB kidney. Cost installed: $193.

“Come back in two hours,” Mac Chap said calmly.

Two hours later and surely not calm, I re-entered his shop and, armed with a very short set of how-to instructions, took my machine home. I set it up next to my back-up Time Machine…and here the story gets scary.

As everyone knows, whenever you change anything—be it an application upgrade, a new operating system, or heaven help you, a new computer—there will be blood.

Following Mac Chap’s instructions carefully, I pressed all the buttons leading to a Time Machine restoration of my backup…and all went as expected…until the window read: “Time remaining 19 hours 54 minutes.” I was leaving for Monterey in 18 hours. Hoping for an overnight miracle (sometimes these things inexplicably speed up), I dimmed the lights, instructed the computer not to sleep, and left it to heal itself. Almost 15 hours later, I trepidatiously looked at the Migration Assistant window: “Time remaining 7 hours 33 minutes.” My hoped-for speed-up had gone south.

Time Machine really works!

When it came time to pack up the car, I put my computer to sleep and disconnected power to the Time Machine. The Mac Chap had warned me that such an action would surely mean starting the restoration from the beginning (almost 20 more hours!), but what could I do?

I carried the various parts and cables to Monterey, set them up as before, engaged the Migration Assistant…and up popped, “Time remaining 31 minutes.”

Huh?

“Maybe the electricity is faster here in Monterey,” my wife suggested.

With little hope that this would lead to a happy ending, we left the gizmos to work amongst themselves, and went out to dinner at a sports bar to watch the Cardinals beat the Rangers in Game 7. (How can any baseball fan not love the David Freese story?)

Upon my return, rays of golden light were streaming out of my Macbook Pro, the sound of elven bells accompanied each disk seek within my Time Machine, and naught but goodness filled my small computer world.

Healed…and excepting my ye-of-little-faith anxiety, all was actually painless.

How did this happen?

I do not have the expertise to ask the proper questions…and I wouldn’t, even if I could.

Thank you, Time Machine and Mac Chap.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I skim those entries, looking for the unusual. Like this in the September 2011 issue from a classmate in France:

I’m now preparing for my next show in the famous Théatre des Deux Anes in Paris, well known for its shows of chansonniers for ages. I do not sing, but under the name of Jean du Frout, I write fables which are told by various actors, including myself, and after the fable, a piano improvises on well-known themes related directly or humorously to the fable. Now you can laugh, as have done many spectators of the show in the past three years…We have a house in Brittany where we spend about ten days a month. ‘Frout’ means a tiny stream. I wanted a name related to the famous 18th-century French fabulist, Jean de La Fontaine, but with all due respect, the fountain had to be much smaller. This explains Frout.

Or this:

[We] traveled to the Ecuadorian mountains and rain forest in January, had three sessions with a shaman, and spent five days at an ecolodge and learning from the Achuar people, among other highlights. In May [we] did a week of bareboat sailing in Canouan and the Grenadines on a 40-foot Moorings monohull, and that has become [our] new favorite sailing destination! Two weeks later [we] were in Lima, Peru, producing a 2½-day workshop for 36 young indigenous leaders from 11 countries across Latin America and 11 participants from Peru, sponsored by Chirapaq, a Peru-based indigenous empowerment organization.

And I got a write-up in the class of 1968′s notes:

How many of us get a chance to start a new career at 67? The irrepressible Steve Cotler has just published a children’s book, and he’s zooming around, entertaining and educating kids in schools and libraries from coast to coast. His middle-grades novel, Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything, the first in a series from Random House, is narrated by the (also) irrepressible Ronald “Cheesie” Mack, an 11-year-old from Gloucester, MA. Adventurous, outrageous, smart, curious, and funny, Cheesie sounds a lot like someone we knew in Section D (third row, center section, if I recall correctly). Appropriate for ages 8-12, Steve’s book is getting rave reviews and is in bookstores and available electronically. The second in Steve’s series, Cheesie Mack Is Cool in a Duel, comes out in June. For a copy autographed by the author, or to arrange an author event at your grandkid’s school, contact Steve.

During the past decade, Steve has also reconnected with the Summer Science Program he attended when he was 16. SSP is a summer residence program in which gifted high-school students complete challenging, hands-on research projects in celestial mechanics. Steve writes: “In 1997, I found a magic bean from SSP’s beanstalk deep in my memories and gave a talk to the future scientists at the 39th annual summer session about connecting creativity to technology. I resolved to rejuvenate and expand what had become one of the longest-lived but terminally tired science enrichment programs in the world. Replanting the magic bean, I became chmn. of an alumni-operated nonprofit that took over SSP, expanded to two campuses, built an endowment, and reconnected with its 2,000-plus alumni. I suspect my work at SSP will live and thrive long after I don’t.”

SSP summer programs are now located on two campuses: New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. SSP appears to be a fairly high-powered operation; the 72 students enrolled in SSP 2011 were selected from 1,054 applicants and will come from 22 states and 14 countries overseas. Our politicians talk about job creation, but think for a moment about what that means in today’s international economy. More than half of the tech startups in this country over the last two decades, including a number of very successful companies, have been created by young tech graduates from overseas. Tech rules, and it’s just beginning. If we were as smart as the overseas kids at SSP, we’d be offering them and their families citizenship instead of making them leave as soon as their student visas expired. Ditto the overseas tech grads at our top universities, whom we expel on graduation. The ship is leaving the dock. We need to get aboard before we get left behind.

We’re not all Wall Streeters!

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Cheesie lives in Gloucester. MA

Cheesie returns to his home state in a couple of days for a two-week whirlwind of book events. The lad “lives” in Gloucester, so of course I’ll be speaking at two elementary schools there, as well as schools, both public and private, in Cambridge, Arlington, Newton, Sutton, Millbury, and Auburn. Plus libraries in Easton, and Millbury (pizza party there!).

It’ll be great fun. My typical presentation is here.

Altogether, I’m doing 12 schools and two libraries in two weeks. Whew!

Then I’m off to Brooklyn for three schools in two days.

If you would like Cheesie in your school or library, contact me. My calendar is getting full, but there are still a few open slots.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Quoting from the Poetry Foundations’s website:

The editors of Poetry magazine selected the winning manuscripts from more than 1,000 submissions. In announcing the winners, Poetry senior editor Don Share said, “Each year the competition grows larger—and stronger. We’re extremely pleased that the 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowships will recognize this diverse and talented group of younger poets.” Editor Christian Wiman added, “The subjects and aesthetics of these writers are as various as their backgrounds, but there are two qualities they all share: excellence and promise. You’ll be hearing a lot from these writers in the years to come.”

Zac…I am awed by your erudition, dedication to art, and discipline.

Congratulations.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

My answer is to show them how reading a good book is an adventure in itself. I get them to ask themselves questions. Questions like: Who are these characters? Why did the plot take that turn? How did the author create this mood?

I call it being a reading detective.

And in that spirit, my school presentations consist of lots of questions. Using my middle grades novel, Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything, first in a series from Random House, I engage students, exhorting them to become reading detectives.

Here’s a short video that captures one such Cheesie Mack presentation.

A typical Cheesie Mack day at a school can have as many as six sessions, each with 25-50 students (one class or two classes in the same grade) for 45-60 minutes. My presentation (which really works for grades 3-5) is educational and fun. It includes:

• intro to Cheesie Mack
• a short reading that emphasizes characters, followed by a spirited discussion (I ask lots of questions and get students very involved)
• another short reading emphasizing character development (more interactive discussion—the kids really get involved!)
• concepts of plot structure, supported by another short reading (and more discussion)
• Q&A about authors & writing & books.

Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything came out in March and is doing very well. I have received excellent reviews and terrific responses to the author events I did at the end of the last school year.

The book is funny and the students are very entertained! So if you are interested in an author visit, I encourage you to contact me.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Initiated by Lincoln, overseen by Johnson, and completed under Grant, the undertaking called for the Union Pacific Railroad to work westward from Omaha and the Central Pacific, eastward from Sacramento. They met, as most schoolchildren learned in my day (do they study this anymore?), at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, in 1869, where a laurel tie was laid and ceremonial golden spike was driven to link the two coasts. With that linking, a cross-country journey abruptly dropped from six weeks to five days. Moving people and freight and the telegraphy that paralleled the tracks changed America forever. The immensity of the undertaking (the equivalent of a 19th century NASA moon shot) captured the imagination of Americans.

At Promontory Summit, telegraphers chronicled the ceremony by sending messages with each swing of the hammer, and church bells pealed in towns throughout the country.

Replica of the Union Pacific's Engine 119 (the replica of the Central Pacific's "Jupiter" locomotive was in the shop)

Even though railroad tracks no longer run through Promontory Summit (a more direct route across part of the Great Salt Lake was completed in 1904 and the tracks were torn up for use in the war effort in 1942), the Golden Spike National Historic Site is there. Only a half-hour off I-85 and I-15 near the north shore of the Great Salt Lake, it is a bit of Americana worth the side trip.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I glance at the headline of an old newspaper that had been used to insulate one of the old log cabins that make up the museum in Frisco, CO.

“Bankers Blame Tax Laws for Securities Drop” (The Denver Post…November 7, 1937).

The Great Depression had been ongoing for over eight years.

Yesterday the Dow fell over 500 points. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sigh…

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.