welcome back, cw!

This is a copy of the email I sent to my CW class today. The referenced letter is linked on the left:

Hi, all!

Welcome to senior year!

This is the first of what will undoubtedly be many emails you will receive from me during this fall semester as we get to know each other and I begin to work with you to help you to improve your writing. I'm cc-ing parents on this one simply because I'm not sure how many of you actually check whatever email accounts are linked to Edline. :-)

Well, we all knew this would be a short summer, and the weird weather didn't help it to seem any longer. I don't know how you spent yours, but mine was basically taken up by writing, reading, and college trips with my daughter Julianne. I did not get enough done in any of these categories.

However, I am excited for a new school year! I'm excited to meet each of you (or to see you again, for those I already know) and to dive in and begin our work together. I don't know what (if anything) you might have heard, but I hope we will have some fun and--somewhere along the line--do some good work together.

I have a few reasons for writing this to you. First and foremost is the already-stated desire simply to say "hello." I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of work each of you enjoys and what we can accomplish this semester.

Additionally, I wanted to take the time to send you a "letter." For those who may be unfamiliar with that archaic expression, a "letter" is something that geezers like me used to use for purposes of communication back when there were no computers and phone calls were very expensive. These were written in PEN on PAPER and sent by the Postal Service (that's the mailman). It took maybe a week or so for the recipient to get the one you wrote, so you usually took the time to make it kind of cool.

These days, email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, etc. make communication so easy and instantaneous that we don't much think about being eloquent. But people used to take the time to say things beautifully when they wrote.

Hemingway: 'A writer is like a Gypsy. He owes no allegiance to any government. If he is a good writer he will never like the government he lives under. His hand should be against it and its hand will always be against him.'

Austen: "I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne; I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand to-day. You will kindly make allowance therefore for any indistinctness of writing, by attributing it to this venial error."

I could go on.

Anyway, I will be writing you letters--LETTERS--this year and I'd like each of you to write back, taking the time to consider how you are saying things as well as what you are saying. And I am posting the first such letter at tophamsattic.blogspot.com as soon as I am finished sending this off. Go there, explore the blog, and read the letter.

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts. :-)

kt