Home stretch...For those of you still keeping track of my grad school process—and I am genuinely surprised and pleased by how many of you there are—I thought I’d quickly outline what’s to come for me during this, my FINAL semester at Goddard College.

Lifting directly from my semester’s Study Plan (all such text is italicized), here’s where I am sitting as I head into the last laps:

I am in my G-4 Semester. I have completed 40 Annotations, my two short critical papers, my twenty-page critical paper, my teaching practicum and teaching paper, and I have written two feature length screenplays with the help and guidance of my advisors.

And my specific goals for the semester are:

To complete the final semester degree requirements including:
- the final twenty-page process paper
- the course equivalents
- the annotated bibliography
- the complete bibliography
- my final five annotations
- my publishable graduating draft of my Creative Thesis

I will work with my advisor and my second reader as I revise and hone my Creative Thesis, my latest screenplay which is currently in its fifth draft form.

In addition, I am writing a series of related ten-minute plays that I hope to be able to share (at least in part) with my advisor during the packet process.

THE NITTY GRITTY:
Here’s my calendar for the semester:
Packet #1, due Aug. 27, though I am aiming for Aug. 6th:
(Sent to BOTH my advisor and second reader)
- Process Letter
- Creative Thesis, revised (Draft #6)

Packet #2, due Sept. 17:
(Sent to my Advisor)
- Process Letter
- Three Annotations
- Annotated Bibliography
- Course Equivalents & Course Descriptions, First Draft
- Overall/General Bibliography
- Creative Work, my secondary Play Project
- Copies of all my self & faculty evaluations

Packet #3, due Oct. 8:
(Sent to my Advisor)
- Process Letter
- Two Annotations
- Process Paper, First Draft
- Creative Thesis: scenes I may need read before the next draft
- Creative Work, my secondary Play Project

Packet #4, due Oct. 29:
(Sent to my Advisor and my Second Reader)
- Process Letter
- Creative Thesis, (Draft # 7, “Final Draft”)

Packet #5, due Nov. 19:
(Sent to my Advisor)
- Process Letter
- Rewritten Process Paper, if necessary
- Rewritten Course Equivalents, if necessary
- Rewritten Annotated Bibliography, if necessary
- Creative Thesis: rewritten scenes, as necessary
- Creative Thesis Reading: possibly a first draft of my ten-minute graduate reading
- Creative Work, possibly some pages from my secondary Play Project


And how will all the work of my final semester address the degree requirements for Goddard’s MFA degree program?

I will complete my graduation binder requirements including a publishable draft of my Creative Thesis. I will also complete the literature component of my degree requirements by writing my final five annotations.

The final note on the Study Plan is our Bibliography. It’s long, so I’ll spare you that.

And that’s it. Accomplish all this and I will receive my graduate degree on January 6, 2008. It’s been an incredible journey! Thanks for tagging along.

(Top photo taken of a New Hampshire farm by my husband; the pines and chairs are from the Goddard College website--a beautiful place to study.)

Son's set...
So my latest published work may not have the sort of panache that comes with length. But as a scriptwriter, and a former radio news and ad writer, at least I can write short...occasionally. It also happens to pay better than most of my previous gigs.

You can read about our last summer's drive to “Boring Nowhere” (as our son thinks of it) here: Laugh Lines on the Reader's Digest website. Scroll down to "Life in These United States."Enjoy!

(Photo above taken at Cliff Island, Maine by my husband last summer.)

Field Notes...Am just back from a crazy, hectic, exhilarating week of residency at Goddard College and am diving into the numerous tasks here at home…including printing off an “A” boarding pass for my husband as he prepares to visit his stepfather tomorrow.

It will be a trip that reconnects the two of them. As I help him pack, I remember to slip a copy of STORIES OF STRENGTH inside his briefcase so he may share with his stepfather the poem he wrote in tribute to him. (The collection was edited by Jenna Glatzer in 2005 and dedicated to the Survivors of Hurricane Katrina.)

Hope you enjoy the poem. And that you may connect with your friends and loved ones soon.

THE WELD MAKER
written by Jan P. Myskowski

After each of those endless days riding
Bulldozers or loaders across the plains
Of construction sites, every one the same,
Pushing and pulling levers, pushing dirt
Into piles, lifting it onto the backs
Of trucks, before the days of heated cabs,

His relief was to crack a beer in the
Garage, throw the switch on the arc welder
And make a hitch or trailer frame for some
Friend he’d made himself indebted to just
For the excuse to lay those luminous
Beads, and make blue light flash rectangular

In the conifer trees that lined the drive.
Day after day he gave his body up
To the unforgiving sun, gunmetal
Cold, and long endured atrophy’s triumph.
So many days he walked stooped to his truck,
Lunchbox in hand, squinting all the way home.

But see him there now, large in his spark-proof
Jacket, long-cuffed gloves, the omnipotent,
Stoic mask, watching through the tinted glass
The firmament, formed as electrons jump
The arc to make steel know his intentions,
With flux smoke rising like greasy incense.

(Field photo above taken in the Quaker District of our small New Hampshire town by my husband.)

UPDATE: Our son was accepted to the B.F.A. program at the New Hampshire Institute of Art, where he received a four-year scholarship based on the quality of his artwork in his portfolio!

What would these trees say if we were to ask them about global climate change, presidential primaries that last way too long, and sons who graduate high school at the ripe young age of 16?

That’s right: it’s a new chapter. After scoring in the top two percent of current American high school graduates on his GED, we now wait to hear if he will be welcomed as a member of the freshman class at NH Institute of Art this fall.

Meanwhile, my daughter did so well all year long in her advanced math that she doesn’t have to take the final exam. Now that’s sweeeet!

Be well. Be safe. Enjoy nature. And each other.

Cheers,
dana

(Aged Crooked Trees in Henniker photo by me hubby.)

FADE OUT!

I did it. Just rewrote my screenplay from scratch. Kept my main characters, but cut all the extraneous stuff.

Have decided to retitle this version, too: NIKI SWEET TALK MOVES.

The new title is derived from the phonetic pronunciation of Nikisuittuq, which means never moves, and also stands for the North Star in Inuktitut. So the new title literally means “[she who] never moves, moves.” It’s meant to be a pun that plays on a couple situations that occur in the tale.

My story still tells of an environmental anthropologist, but instead of studying the effects of global warming on the Inuit of Nunavut, Canada as she did in her graduate intern years, she now works for Erdol, the [fictional] oil company in that region. As a public relations spokesperson, Wyn’s been hired to write about and photograph the very natives that Erdol will likely eradicate with unsafe drilling operations. As Wyn grows wise to the greater picture, she focuses on what she can do: and snaps enough pictures to record evidence for her photo essay that will help compensate the native Inuit for their losses.

Writing--and rewriting--a screenplay from start to finish is a great feeling. Thanks for stopping by and sharing this moment with me.

Cheers,
Dana

Dog Days of Summer Movie ListOkay, so you know how most teachers and schools assemble a summer reading list. Well, this is that. Except it’s WAY BETTER homework. So what are you waiting for? Get crackin’!

Yeah, so, I kinda just lied cuz one of the BEST movies of the summer so far is actually a script of an older movie I found in my local used bookstore: LIGHT SLEEPER by Paul Schrader. That’s right: the same guy who wrote TAXI DRIVER, which is another brilliant script, by the way.

But LIGHT SLEEPER wasn’t just brilliant, it was BETTER than brilliant. It was the perfect pat of butter that dribbles off your summer corn on the cob.

Too bad he didn’t tap Scorsese to direct, though. But the film fiasco is another story. Read the script if you can get your hands on it. Schrader now makes my favorite screenwriter list: right up there with Frank Darabont and Andrew Niccol.

Last night my kids and I saw DISTURBIA. Yeah, I’m a little disturbed I saw this. But as I teach: you can learn a lot from a BAD movie. Often MORE than you can from a good movie.

It did have one of the best car crash scenes I’ve ever witnessed on screen, though. And contrary to my bubbly neighbor’s perspective: yes, I think he COULD have walked away from that crash. I did once upon a time. It’s the first movie that’s ever taken me so vividly back to my roll over accident that prompted the Statie on the scene to ask a driver who stopped, “have you located the body?”

“I’m the body!” I screamed as I ran right into him.

Anyway, another day. Another dementia.

I highly recommend the SCIENCE OF SLEEP and another with actor Gael Garcia Bernal (who is rapidly becoming one of my all time fave actors—he dissolves into his roles flawlessly)—MOTORCYCLE DIARIES.

So, any of the THREES make a recommended viewing list yet? We’ve attempted to see Spidey Man III three times, without success. First time we had to leave waaayyy to early to pick up kids from a junior high dance so I saw nothing and my son and his girlfriend saw one of the worst movies ever made (title forthcoming when he awakens); second time it was SOLD OUT at the tiny (but very cool) Peterborough theatre; and third time—last night—we just couldn’t get out the door in time to see it. I think the movie goddess is trying to tell me something.

PANS LABYRINTH is on my must see list after being highly recommended by two friends. And I can’t wait to see HOT FUZZ (as I look at the SHAUN OF THE DEAD movie poster hanging in my office) and SUPERBAD, which comes out really disappointingly late in the summer line-up.

I also just bought the SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL collection celebrating 25 years with a bunch of movies and screenplays I already own, like SIDEWAYS—awesome both on the page and on the screen. But I like that it has a few that haven’t made it to my collection yet: like AMERICAN SPLENDOR, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE.

Okay. So that pretty much does it for my “new” movie summer viewing list. Now I NEED, indeed I BEG your help: what ELSE should I be viewing and/or reading?

Oh, that reminds me. I know this isn’t supposed to be a summer reading list: but I just read Peter Hedges’ awesome novel WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, which inspired, yes, his well-adapted flick. The novel is delightful. I had trouble putting it down. One night I even read till midnight. Those who know me and my 9 PM bedtime (so I can rise and write at 4 AM) know what HIGH PRAISE it must be to say a novel was worth staying up till midnight to read. OH: I just realized he wrote the script ABOUT A BOY, too. I’m gonna have to add that to my list of must haves.

Now send me your list. Please. I’m dying here in my own revisionists hell…as I rewrite from scratch (once again) my latest screenplay…that hopefully will lead me to my graduation after only ONE LAST semester to go!

Thanks for stopping by. --Dana

PS This June’s READER’S DIGEST: next to last page, LIFE IN THESE UNITED STATES, read all about lobsters and 15-year-old nightmares while vacationing with family. Yep. That’s right: OUR family. ‘Nough said, huh?

(Photo above of Ellory, our recued Greyhound, taken by me hubby. I think she's saying, "Now what?")