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YALSA is seeking teen programming Content Experts for its upcoming web resource, Teen Programming HQ. The mission of the new site is to provide a one-stop-shop for finding and sharing information about programs of all kinds designed for and with teens. The site will promote best practices in programming by featuring user-submitted programs that align with YALSA’s Teen Programming Guidelines and Futures Report. The site will also enable dissemination of timely information about emerging and new practices for teen programming; raise awareness about appropriate YALSA tools to facilitate innovation in teen programming; and provide a means for members and others interested in teen programs to connect with one another to support and share their efforts to continuously improve their teen programs. The site is in beta testing now and will fully launch October 1st.

The Content Experts will work with the site’s Member Manager to vet all incoming program submissions and determine which meet the necessary criteria for being featured on the site. As part of this effort, Content Experts will be expected to give timely, constructive feedback to individuals regarding their program submissions. Please note that the Content Experts will not be submitting the content; rather, they will be reviewing content that is submitted by others.

List of Qualifications for Content Experts:

• Thorough knowledge of best practices in teen programming, especially as outlined in YALSA’s Teen Programming Guidelines and report, “The Future of Library Services for and with Teens: a Call to Action”
• Strong background in engaging teens and community partners to plan, implement and evaluate innovative and impactful programs for and with teens that meet their developmental, educational and recreational interests
• Ability to devote a minimum of 1-2 hours per week for 12 continuous months to the HQ
• Excellent written communications skills and good netiquette
• Successful experience in coaching, mentoring and/or teaching other adults
• Ability to work well in a team environment
• Ability to work well in a virtual setting, including using tools such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, Skype, etc. to coordinate work and communicate with others
• Membership in YALSA and a passion for YALSA’s mission
• High ethical standards and no real or perceived conflict of interest with YALSA or its portfolio of print and web publications
• Dynamic and self-motivated

Up to seven Content Experts will be selected by Sept. 21, 2015. The term of the appointment is one year beginning Oct. 1, 2015, with an option to renew for a second year, based on performance. Candidates must complete the online application form by no later than Sept. 15. Please note that this is not a salaried staff position, but a member volunteer opportunity. Please direct questions to YALSA's Communications Specialist, Anna Lam at [email protected]

One of my favorite sections of the Teen Programming Guidelines (is it nerdy to have favorite sections?) is "Align programs with community and library priorities." But you have to be deeply involved with community agencies and activities in order to be ready to act on the community's priorities as they arise. This sounds obvious (and it is!), but it's taken me a few years to figure it out.

Several years back my coworker and I began working with the Seattle Youth Employment Program (SYEP). SYEP is a city agency that places youth with barriers in paid internships in a variety of environments in city government and the private sector. It also provides them with job training and academic support. We worked with SYEP staff to design a curriculum that would build the interns' digital and information literacy skills. We were sometimes surprised by the needs identified by SYEP staff and the interns' employers: touch typing, for example, and basic MS Word. We learned a lot about putting our own assumptions aside.

Over the years, we continually evaluated and adjusted the program. We dropped some pieces and added others to make it as relevant as possible to the youth's needs and the needs of their employers. 

This year, Seattle's mayor put forth a huge Youth Employment Initiative in which he asked SYEP to more than double the number of youth placed in jobs over the summer. Suddenly, the community had spoken: youth employment was a major need. Because we already had an ongoing relationship with SYEP, the library was poised to expand the partnership to serve more youth with our trainings. We also helped in other ways, like providing meeting rooms for SYEP staff trainings. Next summer, the mayor intends to make the program five times larger than it is this year (eep!), which will present a huge opportunity for library involvement.

Of course, being in the right place at the time is always partly a matter of luck. But you can't be lucky if you're not out there.

Admission time: like many of us in Library Land, I am still figuring out the best ways to measure program outcomes. Marking attendance is relatively easy (although to be fair, sometimes the teens move do around a lot, which can make them tricky to count). It's a bit harder to identify the changes I want to see as a result of my program, and then accurately measure those changes.

The Programming Guidelines ask us to "Engage in youth-driven, evidence-based evaluation and outcome measurement." I'm not quite there yet. As I mentioned in my post about our weekly drop-in, we've been working with participants in that program to identify priorities, and now we're moving towards evaluations that will measure whether those priorities are being met. But it's still a work in progress.

What I have gotten better at is working with community partners to create evaluations for programs. For example, we regularly work collaborate with Year Up to build their students' information and digital literacy skills. Before each workshop, we meet with Year Up staff to make sure that we'll be teaching the skills they want participants to gain. Collaborating with partners on our evaluations and learning from them about their own evaluation methods has made a huge difference in the quality of our evaluations overall.

At Year Up, I give the students pre- and post-tests to see how much our classes are moving the needle on desired skills and knowledge. We send Year Up staff an early draft of the tests (same questions for both) and incorporate their feedback in the final evaluation tool. Seems foolproof, right?

Well, here's a graph I made from the results of an earlier incarnation of those pre- and post-tests. Can you spot the problem(s)?

Library jargon. Words like "catalog" and "keywords" muddied the results, because (especially before the workshop) students didn't really know what those words meant. My vague question about whether "all the world's knowledge" is available via Google wasn't great either. Students figured that the answer was probably "no"--because of course librarians hate Google. (I don't, honest!) As I phrased it, the question didn't measure the movement I saw in their understanding of WHY a lot of the world's best info isn't available on Google. (Which as we all know is about money, honey.)

This wasn't the best evaluation tool. The next time I created a survey for Year Up, I drastically rewrote the questions. But that's okay! This survey did measure some outcomes--e.g., a huge increase in library resource knowledge among participants. And I learned some pitfalls to avoid next time.

I'm a big fan of giving myself permission to fail, and I take myself up on it a lot--especially when it comes to measuring outcomes. The important thing is to learn and adjust, and get better data next time.

Name: Green Screen by Do Ink
Platform: iOS, compatible with iPad
Cost: $2.99

While digital media labs complete with green screens, cameras, computers and software may be out of reach for many libraries, creating composite photos and videos with your teens doesn't have to be. I set out a few weeks ago to find a free or low-cost green screen option and have been fortunate. After testing several chroma key apps, Green Screen by Do Ink is the one I keep coming back to for flexibility and user friendliness. I had begun by looking for free apps, and quickly discovered that I could either pay up front for green screen capabilities, or download free apps that include "in-app purchases." In-app purchases meant paying to unlock the chroma key tool or to get rid of an obtrusive watermark that rendered the free version essentially useless. I also discovered in one case that the developers' definition of green screen did not match my own (it was basically a $4.99 masking tool, something that comes included in many photo editing apps). With no advertisements or watermarks, Green Screen's $2.99 cost is worthwhile.

Originally debuting in October 2013, Green Screen has undergone several updates including bug fixes and recently added features that let you crop, scale and rotate source images. Video projects can also now be saved to Dropbox and Google Drive for easy archival.

Designed and tested to be kid and classroom friendly, Green Screen comes pre-loaded with a tutorial video starring a very enthusiastic grade-school-aged girl. Teens might laugh at this video, but it provides a good introduction to the tools and controls. It's also completely editable. Depending on the skill-levels of your teens, you may want to skip watching the video, and jump right into playing around with it. A potential first project might be to challenge them to create their own introduction tutorial using a mix of prerecorded and live footage.

Despite the simplicity of its design, Green Screen offers a full range of features. You can record live images and video using the iPad's camera, and also import prerecorded videos, photos, and artwork. The scrollable timeline allows you to add an unlimited number of sources, move them around, and trim as needed. Images can also be rotated, scaled and cropped. Finished projected are easily rendered into MOV or MP4 files for sharing on youtube and other places. Green Screen also does a couple of things that I didn't see in the other apps I tested. One: It allows you to combine up to three image layers at a time. The other apps I tried only allow two. Two: The chroma filter (which can be turned on and off for each layer) uses a full-spectrum color picker, so that you can effectively key out any background color that you have available. I tested it using a reddish octopus graphic in front of the blue-green wall in my poorly lit office, and found that I could easily key out the wall (minus a couple of pesky shadows, which I later cropped out).

This app definitely rewards a little pre-planning and practice when it comes to recording and putting together a video project. I found the timeline controls to be a little clunky; a combination of tapping, holding and swiping is needed to move the clips around. It also took some trial and error to figure out how to set the automatic stop timer on video and image recording. I discovered that the timer is necessary to keep the still images you add to the timeline from stretching on into what seems to be infinity.

Even with these quirks, I found the learning curve to be fairly gentle. Teens could get the hang of it and create an original project of their own over the course of a 1.5 to 2 hour program. Setting them loose in the library with an iPad and a prop or two would give them the opportunity to experiment with different background colors and lighting situations, and set up a discussion afterwards about what background colors work best and why green might be the standard color choice. However you decide to use it, Green Screen has plenty of potential for teen-led programs (YALSA Teen Programming Guideline 3) that support connected learning (YALSA Teen Programming Guideline 4).

Green Screen can also be purchased as part of a creativity bundle along with Animation & Drawing by Do Ink for $5.99. It is only available for iPad at this time.

For more app recommendations, check out the' YALSA App of the Week Archive. If you have an app you think we should review,' let us know!

A partner brings some skeptical-looking teens to the library for a research workshop. (I'm pretty sure we won them over in the end.)

In my last post, I talked about the importance of relationship-building in outreach and community partnerships. It's not always easy to create the time and space necessary to figure out what a partner organization really needs from the library, but for a strong community partnership, it's well worth the investment.

But "community partnership" is a pretty vague term. I should probably clarify what I'm talking about.

For me, library partnerships fit into one of two main categories. The first is partnerships with other major organizations, like the symphony, the zoo, or the local school system at the superintendent/library director level. For the sake of this blog post, let’s call them macro partnerships.

Macro partnerships tend to be large in scale (duh), and are often designed to give current library patrons access to cultural or other enrichment that they might not otherwise experience. For example, a library system might partner with an art museum to provide occasional free museum admission for library card holders. This kind of partnership is incredibly important and worthwhile, but in general, it’s not what I’m talking about here.

The second category of community partnerships is the one that I engage in most often: working with nonprofits or government agencies that serve high needs, marginalized, or underrepresented groups. I would also include in this category those crucial partnerships between individual librarians and school teachers.

For fun, let’s call these micro partnerships—not because the organizations involved are necessarily small (though they often are), but because the partnerships tend to be built on relationships between just a few people, perhaps one or two library staff and one or two staff from the community-based org. The library’s goal in creating micro partnerships is usually to serve patron groups that it otherwise struggles to reach; in other words, to promote equity. Micro partnerships are the kind I’ll mainly be addressing in this blog series.

Of course, as I've said, building relationships with partners takes time and effort. It’s much easier to create our own programs and services, in our own buildings. So why not leave it at that? Our doors are open to everyone—isn’t that enough?

Well, not really. Because as we all know, it’s harder for some people to get to our doors. Some groups of potential patrons face barriers of income, language, transportation, and a whole host of other factors. So we have to do a little more to reach them.

For example, a library might open its meeting room to host a college application workshop that’s open to everyone. That’s equality, and it’s not a bad thing.

But it's often the case that the students who are most in need of programs like this one aren’t the ones who attend. We might end up mainly serving students who already have a lot of support in their college application process. Maybe those students were told about the event by their English-speaking parents, or their guidance counselor, or even their hired college admission coach. They may have their own transportation, and fewer after school and weekend responsibilities.

By also hosting the same program at an ethnic community center or in partnership with an organization that serves the rural poor, the library eliminates some of the barriers for underserved students. We commit resources in an attempt to “level the playing field" and promote equity.

Tell me how this looks at your library. What kinds of micro partnerships are you involved in? How are your partnerships helping you reach target audiences? I want to hear all your success stories!

One thing I like about the New Jersey library community:

They know how to throw a good conference!

The New Jersey Library Association is having their annual conference June 2 to 4 in Atlantic City.



I'll be involved in the following sessions:

The Who/What/When/Where/How of Successful Online Book Discussion: a Panel Discussion Tues, 9:00-9:50

Best of the Best Fiction for Young Adults Tues, 11:30-12:20

Book Buzz for Young Adults and Children Tues, 2:00-2:50

I.D. Required - Books Beyond the Drinking Age Wed, 11:30-12:20

Apps, Audiobooks, and Libraries – Oh, my! Wed, 2:30-3:20

Yes, that sounds like a lot -- and, well, it is five -- but all are panels, so it's not five solo programs. They are all group efforts.

I will have time for actually attending programs!

Top of my list are What Is This? Middle Grade? YA? New Adult? Top Authors Address Category Crossover Confusion and the Garden State Book Awards Luncheon with Daniel Kirk.

Hope to see some of you there!



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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

Download a copy of the new white paper today! (image courtesy of ALSC)

The white paper explores the critical role libraries play in helping children make cross-cultural connections and develop skills necessary to function in a culturally pluralistic society. It states:

By including diversity in its programs and collections, the library has the potential for helping children make cross-cultural connections and develop the skills necessary to function in a culturally pluralistic society.

As this paper calls for libraries to include diversity in programming and materials for children as an important piece in meeting the informational and recreational needs of their community, ALSC encourage you to take action in your own library and community. The paper is available online at: http://www.ala.org/alsc/importance-diversity. Hard copies can be requested by emailing Joanna Ison at [email protected].

The Importance of Diversity in Library Programs and Material Collections for Children, and its message, has the endorsement of ALSC, the world’s largest organization dedicated to the support and enhancement of library service to children.

Even in a slowly recovering economy, Americans are still givers, donating over $316 billion last year (an increase of 3.5% over the previous year), with the vast majority of that money coming not from companies or foundations, but from individual donors.

At First Book, we rely on the generosity of our donors to help put new books into the hands of kids in need. But we understand how difficult it can be to make decisions about where your money will be used most effectively.

Which is why we’re pleased to share some great news: for the third year in a row, First Book has been awarded four stars — the highest rating possible — by Charity Navigator, the leading charity evaluator in America.

Charity Navigator rates nonprofit organizations to provide donors with reliable data about the impact, efficiency and fiscal health of the organizations, and their online rankings are visited more than all other charity ratings groups combined. So we’re pleased to earn this distinction and proud that we’re using your gifts effectively to help children in need.

When you donate to First Book, 97% of your donation goes directly to putting brand-new books into the hands of educators serving kids in need — not to administrative and fundraising costs.

If you have any questions about how First Book operates, or exactly how your donations are used, we’d love to hear them! Get in touch through Facebook or Twitter, or send us an email.

Click here to see First Book’s profile on Charity Navigator.

The post Are My Charitable Dollars Going to Good Use? appeared first on First Book Blog.

Even in a slowly recovering economy, Americans are still givers, donating over $316 billion last year (an increase of 3.5% over the previous year), with the vast majority of that money coming not from companies or foundations, but from individual donors.

At First Book, we rely on the generosity of our donors to help put new books into the hands of kids in need. But we understand how difficult it can be to make decisions about where your money will be used most effectively.

Which is why we’re pleased to share some great news: for the third year in a row, First Book has been awarded four stars — the highest rating possible — by Charity Navigator, the leading charity evaluator in America.

Charity Navigator rates nonprofit organizations to provide donors with reliable data about the impact, efficiency and fiscal health of the organizations, and their online rankings are visited more than all other charity ratings groups combined. So we’re pleased to earn this distinction and proud that we’re using your gifts effectively to help children in need.

When you donate to First Book, 97% of your donation goes directly to putting brand-new books into the hands of educators serving kids in need — not to administrative and fundraising costs.

If you have any questions about how First Book operates, or exactly how your donations are used, we’d love to hear them! Get in touch through Facebook or Twitter, or send us an email.

Click here to see First Book’s profile on Charity Navigator.

The post Are My Charitable Dollars Going to Good Use? appeared first on First Book Blog.

For some of us, it’s an uphill battle advocating for the teens in our libraries. Budgets are never quite large enough, there’s never enough time to do everything, so if any group gets the short end of the stick, it’s our teens. We all know how important it is to have teen programming and teen spaces and an excellent teen collection, but it can be difficult getting the higher-ups to see it our way. You might find, as I have, that you need to justify your teen programs beyond getting teens in the door.

No one really questions the benefits of Storytime for the kids. It’s fairly obvious how it fits in with the library’s mission. A teen Halloween party, on the other hand, might be subject to more scrutiny. Recently, I found out that the Halloween party I’d been planning for our teens didn’t pass muster in its current state. It wasn’t enough to try something to increase our program attendance. Our circ starts are awesome, but we have an unfortunate floor plan for our teens, so they don’t really have a place of their own to hang out. They get their books and go, which has made it a lot harder in creating relationships and encouraging them to come to programs. There was no way I was giving up on this party. Instead of a Halloween party, it’s now a Favorite Character party, where you must come dressed as your favorite book character (and act the part, if you’re really good).  The activities we’ll have will tie in to our collection, like YA horror trivia, and we’ll be more book-focused than Halloween-focused.

The key to justifying a program or a service for teens is two-parted. First, tie it to your library’s mission. Say that your mission statement includes words like informational and enriching your community. There you go. Teens are part of the community and the Favorite Character party will enrich their lives by widening their exposure to the YA collection and allowing them to use their creativity to enhance what they’ve read to a tangible form while testing their knowledge and sparking their interest to seek more information about the horror genre.

Second, beyond the direct result of such a program, look for other possible objectives. For example, providing a program for teens not only accomplishes the objectives of the program, but also gives teens a feeling of being welcome in the library. Teens who feel welcome in the library may be more interested in volunteer opportunities at the library. Teens who volunteer can take over tasks, such as shelving or shelf reading, from staff members, who are then free to complete other tasks. This in turn can lead to improved customer service because staff members will be able to spend more time with patrons and will be less stressed about helping someone with a particularly difficult or time-consuming problem because they will know that they have the time to devote to the problem.

It would be great if we could have teen programs just because they’re fun and it’s what our teens want, but a lot of us are under constraints that are out of our hands. Being prepared to justify your programs might mean that you’ll need to broaden your focus to find the positive outcomes.

Is this what they call the dog days? Not for me! This is my first summer living in Boston instead of Tucson, and I’m soaking up the beautiful high-80s temps they call “hot” around here and spending as much time outside as possible. But I did manage to go inside and find a few interesting tidbits for your personal interest and professional usefulness.

• Have you ever tried to explain to someone why their offhand comment that “that’s gay” offends you? Or been annoyed when you offer to help carry something heavy and you’re refused because you’re female? Maybe someone made a rude joke about Middle Easterners not knowing you are of Saudi descent? These are called “microaggressions,” and the Microaggressions Project, a collective blog made up of submissions from anyone who wants to share an experience of feeling belittled, ignored, or just frustrated, whether because of their religious beliefs, gender identity, race, victim status, or a variety of other factors. Without resorting to hate speech or angry tirades (and no specific names, locations, or other identifying information is in any of the submissions), this blog would not only be a great resource for teens who feel like their voices aren’t being heard, but you could talk with your advisory group and possibly start your own project, with something as easy as index cards and a locked jar or box.
• Do you do any prevention programs in your library regarding tobacco, alcohol, or substance abuse? Not that you aren’t doing a good job, but you might want to think about asking teens themselves to develop an engaging, innovative program. In a paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers found that teenagers were most receptive to anti-smoking ads when they were delivered by peers, not adults, and they were more interested in those ads that stressed the lifelong effects of smoking, particularly the negative ones like money spent on packs per week. Maybe sometimes negativity isn’t such a bad thing.
  Latimer, A.E., et al. (2012). Targeted smoking cessation messages for adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 50(1): 47-53.
• I hope it isn’t wishful thinking when I propose this next topic for your thousands of patrons who will be coming in in the next few weeks before heading off to college, maybe to return one last pile of books and DVDs or just to say goodbye and thanks to you, their ally. Make sure your collegebound patrons (as well as those who will be entering the workforce or alternative programs) know that reading doesn’t stop after high school. While the publishing industry makes up its mind on whether or not New Adult is a viable new category, plenty of bloggers are gathering resources for writers and readers who want to graduate from YA but not jump straight into books about 40something divorce(e)s. And the Book Report Network, a set of linked book review sites, recently launched 20Something Reads, a special branch dedicated to that same group. Slowly but surely, books are trickling out that deal with post-high school confusion to post-college drama.
• Weeding a bunch of old magazines? Before tossing them in the recycling bin, check out Ben Heine’s Pencil Vs. Camera Project. First, be wowed. Look up and count how many hours you’ve been at your computer. Then consider tearing out interesting pictures from magazines, printing out or Pinning some of your favorites of Heine’s, and encouraging your patrons to do the same. As someone whose stance on fine art is to enjoy but never partake, I recall a similar assignment in fifth grade art class, and I’m so proud of my drawing of deer that I still have it, more than a decade later. There’s somethin
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As the school year winds down for me, it’s easy to get caught up in the last minute whirlwind of final exams, papers, coercing materials returns, and talking my wonderful faculty off the proverbial ledge.

But when I’m really on my game, I begin thinking about the first couple of months of the next school year and cataloging what, if anything, I need to do to lay a foundation for successful programming. Teen Read Week is always an event that sneaks up on me (and I’m on the committee, for goodness sake!) since it usually happens mid to late October and I’m in full project swing by then.

After over a decade of being a school librarian, I can chalk up my success to that much-overused word, collaboration. For me, collaboration just means using the network of relationships I already have with my teachers and students and searching for any new relationships in my community that will help me do my job which, in the case of Teen Read Week, is promoting recreational reading.

My Library Advisory Board and I have already tackled some preliminary brainstorming. Teachers have already been approached for posing with their favorite horror books and these will advertise our offerings and be showcased on the school website. We are going to have a community poll with various horror movies listed and the top two winners will be a “Creature Double Feature” complete with popcorn and blankets to make our own picnic style movie night.

We are also going to produce a short library video (showcased on the library website and the school website, and shown during an assembly to promote our programming that week) interviewing two of our English teachers who teach related classes, Science and Society and Novel to Film, about the meaning and importance of the horror genre. My LAB came up with the idea of also interviewing dedicated gamers who can speak about what they find so appealing about the recent trends in zombie or other horror games. A few book covers and promotion snippets about programming and we’ll have an interesting vehicle for TRW.

When we had our amazingly successful Hunger Games movie premiere party, the most popular stations were the ones where student volunteers taught flame nail polish effects and did Capitol-style makeup on participants. With that in mind, we will be offering a session prior to our horror movie double feature instructing students in horror movie makeup, complete with faux vampire bites, zombie face makeup and gory wounds. My theater faculty have friends in the local community and university theaters who are proficient in these areas and have expressed an eagerness to come and instruct. I imagine we are going to get some great pictures from this instruction!

If you can, begin talking up possible connections with teachers and students so everyone will be ready to leap into the fray of the school year. Join the Teen Read Week 2012 Ning and peruse the ALA Store items with them to help with brainstorming. You can be sure that in October it will be something great that “Came from Your Library!”

– Courtney Lewis, Director of Libraries, Wyomin

The Star Trek fanzine Spockanalia contained the first fan fiction in the modern sense of the term. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An entire genre has developed itself over the past 40 years or so. Ever since the original Star Trek warped through space, we’ve toyed with the idea of all those stories that never got written about the characters that intrigued us, who captured out respect and hearts. The movement became known as Fan Fiction.

I doubt any serious TV viewer has passed up an opportunity to fantasize about what would happen if… and brought the conjecture back into the series fold as a full-blown story, whether it was written down or not. I’ve done it for years—had whole scripts with good plots, great characters, and even parts for all the regular characters. And the sad thing is that I could have done something with them, if only as fan fiction and not sent the script to the studio for consideration by that series’ team of writers.

It’s one of those “I should have” things that many of us live with on a daily basis. “I should have” gone to see… “I should have” known better than… Truth is, I had a girlfriend back in ’67 when I lived in LA, who’d just sold her script to Desilu Studios for a Star Trek episode. The day after she got word, she was murdered two blocks from our building. The incident sort of put me off Fan Fiction for a while.

Last year I sat down to write poetry of a minor competition—there were no prizes involved, but critiques. My piece didn’t do very well. The audience was too young. That happens more frequently than older writers want to believe.

I still have the poem, which I’ll share here in a moment. I went back through it and changed a few things here and there. It leaped out of the hard drive this morning, screaming at me to find it a home. Since I don’t have any markets (that I can find), I decided to drop it here in order to create a challenge for those who’re up for it.

Everyone has/had a favorite show from their childhood. Now’s your chance to create a little fan fiction to commemorate that show. Write a story in 200 words or less using your favorite character from that show. Or write a poem about said character in a new situation. Recapture the heart of the character and share it here with us.

There’s no prize involved; no judging either. We are merely sharing bits of imagination for the fun of it. Be sure to inform us at the end of the piece the name of the show and the character’s name if you haven’t used it in your story. That’s all there is too it. Don’t be shy. Branch out and explore some fun. I can hardly wait to see what everyone comes up with.

Here’s my poem and how I approached my character from those long ago days of the 60’s,

Rememberin