What Taylor Mali Makes

His name is Taylor Mali. He is the four-time winner of the National Poetry Slam, a team competition pitting teams of poets against other cities. While he is the most decorated contestant ever, it is not his awards I want to focus on here.

When I stumbled across the above poem on HBO one night, I was taken aback. I didn’t know poetry was so raw, so real. Mali is powerful, representing the same passion he brings to his teaching. Mali is clever, quick-witted, and at the same time smooth, the same mind which puts together poetry and pens.

 

I had the pleasure to meet Taylor Mali when he came to the college where I tutor to give a reading. I picked him up at the airport, had dinner with him, and any worry I had that the strong, well-spoken man who so loved teaching was a phony, as is the case with many celebrities, was put to rest. He was genuine and kind, blunt but still respectful. He asked me to read before he did, a warm up so to speak. When I was done, he handed me a copy of his book What Learning Leaves. He had signed the book for me, making note of the poem I’d just read about grammar in hip-hop music being so bad.

 

I had many friends in the crowd that night. Some begged to come, others I demanded attend. My family was there too, my little sister also a big fan. She was too afraid to request a poem, so I did it for her. Taylor did in fact read that poem, and dedicated it to her by name on stage. My friend Mario was also in attendance. He said, “Anything you’re that passionate about is worth a look.” He left a fan.

In May, I stood up in Mario’s wedding. As part of my groomsman gift bag, Mario and his fiance gave me a copy of Mali’s new book, which I didn’t even know was on the market yet!

 

Mario also left me a poem in the gift package. It was, as far as I know, his first poem. While it’s not Shakespeare, the thought is amazing, and really hits home for me how important poetry has become in my life. My friends write poetry for me out of love and respect, and that’s an amazing thing. The inspiration I hope to get out of my students is evident in my friends and family already.

Having Mali inspire me with his words was gift enough. He gave me direction, awoke within me a passion I didn’t know existed. To have friends and family come along was also a blessing. I have since been to my sister’s special education class to give my presentation. I could see some of them light up when I read Mali’s “What Teachers Make” – minus the swearing of course. I could tell that for some of them, poetry was no longer a closed door, and for a teacher, who could ask for more?

Summer’s Garden

It’s been a mild two days here in the Buffalo area. With temps near 70, it’s almost more autumn than summer. I’ve always had a love affair with fall, for its beautiful colors, cooler weather, and its ability to to bring out of me some of my favorite poems. For this post, I’d like to focus on the natural end of that equation, but I don’t want to stay in the autumnal passing of things. Summer is equally beautiful in its own way, even if i didn’t always realize it.

I’m always taken aback by how beautiful nature is. When people post gorgeous vacation photos or I open my father’s NatGeo, I marvel at how the world around us is full of color and wonder, from plants and animals to the sky and heavenly bodies. I have a friend who lives in the south while I’m here in Western New York, and I often take photos of our yard to share with her.

This bush always catches my eye when I’m coming or going. As the summer winds down, this will become totally red and even more special.

Just across the driveway from the bush is what we call the circle garden. Originally, it was to be all red plants, but some things grew purple and pink, and we abandoned the color scheme after one year.

In the garden are some amazing flowers. I’ve always enjoyed these for their beauty and unique look. It is a great reminder that fall is not the only time plants become beautiful, especially in my own backyard.

Summer Theme Party

Every year my father and I throw a huge theme-based party. The party’s origins were not always structured. For four years, we just got together, played lawn games, had some adult beverages, and partied it up. Our first theme idea was “The Beatles.” That was the only caveat. People had to have something Beatles themed, whether it be a hat, a shirt, a button, or a full-out costume. My father grew out a full beard, shaved it the night before into a fu man chu, had a war jacket, scarf, and glasses to come as John Lennon. My sister printed a shirt with the previous day’s date to be “Yesterday.” My friend Mike came as “Help!” with an SOS on his shirt. We were hooked.

The next year was the ’80s. I rocked a Luigi hat, 1981 Pumas I found in my dad’s closet, stone washed jeans, and a Saved by the Bell shirt. My sisters crimped their hair and had shirt scrunchies. People really started to go all out for costumes.

Last year we had a hard time deciding on a theme. Finally we settled on Saturday Night Live. It was incredible. I came as Will Ferrell’s Harry Caray. My father came as the Spartan cheerleaders with his girlfriend. My friend Joe was Wayne, and my sisters came as the delta delta delta girls. Some came as guest singers, others as characters like Pat and the guys from Scmidt’s Gay Beer. Not only were people dressed like characters, they had studied lines, phrases, and stayed IN character! Others put on whole sketches, giving 2 or 3 minutes in front of the whole party. It was outstanding. I was Mr. Caray, with his trademark shaking and all, for nearly 8 hours.

This year we did movie characters. Each season, we put out a suggestion box for next year’s theme. We had many Star Wars suggestions, but we didn’t want a whole party devoted to it (most of the costumes would be very hot in mid-summer). So we settled on all movie characters to appease those who wanted the SW theme and also those who did not. The costumes were simply amazing, with people coming as Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen to others as Luke Skywalker and Bill &  Ted. Most people stayed in costume for hours, even if they didn’t stay in character that long. More people than ever gave up a simple shirt or hat in favor of total transformation. It really makes next year’s White Trash theme very exciting.

Running Softball

I run the Saturday co-ed softball league for the Town of Hamburg. This is the banner I put up of the diamonds using Google Earth on the league’s Facebook page.

It is a 15 team league, with team made up of at least five men and five ladies evenly. We play a divisional style schedule, with every team playing its divisional rivals twice. The schedule is rounded out by playing every team in the other division one time, thereby ensuring each team plays every other team at least once. Sounds simple, right?

This past Saturday, the 7th of July, over 1/4 of the league was absent. Some of them I knew about earlier in the week, some I did not.

Here are the changes the schedule went through:

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On Tuesday the 3rd, I lost one team, which was obviously not ideal, but it was at least enough notice to cancel umpires without having to pay a fee.

I had a team who was trying to move into an earlier slot, so I could now do that and at least please one team in the process.

The major issue began Friday, the 6th. Two more teams called off, sending my entire schedule into meltdown mode.

I was sent scrambling teams, umpires, and frantically making phone calls to captains to explain things. After nearly three hours, I finally settled on what was at best a “good enough” re-scheduling of the league. I went to bed Friday hoping for a rain out for the first time since I took over the league three years ago.

Saturday brought a deluge, but only for about 25 minutes. Without any considerable rain here for weeks, the water did little to the diamonds. Games on. The first games are always at 6:00 pm. At 5:05, a fourth captain, the one who wanted to move to an early slot, called to say he was also cancelling. Four out of fifteen, gone. I was in full on drooling rage mode!

This meant more tinkering with less than an hour to game time. At that point, cancelling the umpires meant forfeit fees, so even if it did rain, the league was out money. I asked for no water from the skies at that point.

My only recourse was to shift my own team into a single game instead of the regular double header. As we have six men, it was my turn to sit half a game, which meant instead of playing 1.5 games, I was at the diamonds for six hours, banged my head off a wall and a schedule for two days, and played all of three innings.

To make matters worse, it was somewhere around 90 degrees and humid to the max. The bugs were so heavy in the lighted air that pop flies looked to come down through giant snow. It was frightening and uncomfortable at the same time, looking something like this video.

While I hit a double and a triple, we lost and were sent home with one game and a loss. The Saturday softball night from beyond was finally over.

Laying Floor: Family Adventure Time

When it comes to laying laminate flooring, it’s alwayys as easy as the how-to video, right?

My sister and I are helping our father lay laminate wood flooring throughout the first floor of his house. It is an adventure to say the least, and often not the good kind. We started in his dining room. We had moved all the furniture out and were left with a skeleton of a room. My dad had painted from the ceiling down, stopping halfway as he plans to add wainscoting to the rest. So for a two-week span, half of the dining room was some dark variation of pink, the other half was white, and the carpeting had been removed and not replaced.

He also wanted to add tile to the entry ways, which meant more work, less time, and a great deal more arguing. It was difficult to work around the design he had created. This is on top of the fact that the good people at Lowe’s cut the tiles upside down, so that was delay one. This was further compounded by the fact that while I was at work, the two of them began laying the flooring. When I got home, I realized a dilemma. I pointed out that the wood sections interlock on four sides, creating a nice seal. they had left the section closest to the tiling of the French doors undone, thinking they could go back later. But that proved impossible. While three of the edges would fit, a fourth – no matter which way you chose – had to fit  under its latching point on the bordering piece. We couldn’t lift that piece, as it was locked into the next piece in two directions, and so on. Four rows of flooring came up in the span of ten minutes. Six more rows went back down, after figuring out the pattern, in the next four hours. So far, we had managed two tile runs, laying flooring, picking it back up, and then finally getting it right.

The next day, Dad and I finished without Laurie, who had to work. We worked our way slowly across the room, measuring and re-measuring, tapping and laying, until at last we needed one final row to finish a room. We had laid seven rows in two hours, a considerable improvement considering that we still had to cut pieces to fit the length of the room and take into account that we did not want the floor to have a pattern. We cut multiple pieces to fit around the doors to my father’s room and the bathroom. We measured, 3″, twice. Cut the board, and it doesn’t fit. How can that be, we wondered. Measured again, 3″. Cut again. Wrong again. Eventually we figured out we were putting the 3″ on the wrong side, but by then, another hour had gone by. We finally finished that row, 90 minutes after we started it. Seven rows in two hours followed by one row in an hour and a half.

We started the kitchen, again without Laurie, and were met with dismay to find that the wall was not straight. The planks didn’t butt to the wall flush, so there was no solid edge to push into. We had to abandon our starting point and flip to the other side of the kitchen, near the sink. That also meant the stove and dishwasher had to some out. My dad could not loosen the valve from the water line to the washer. In the unusual angle he was twisting from, he broke the trap under the sink. To further compound the issue, the trap would not loosen by hand either. We of course have no pipe wrench, assuming we did would be to ignore the entire flow of the project thus far. We borrowed a pipe wrench from our closest neighbor. To describe this thing effectively, I will say that my exclamation was “Well, we can’t lay floor without messing it up, but we’re sure set for the zombie apocalypse now!” Of course, the line broke in half like it was paper. So there we were, two hours into another room, zero rows done, and plumbing to buy, replace, and still with a need to turn off the water to the washer. Four hours later, and we had bled, cursed, and actually managed a solid start of flooring once nothing else went wrong with the new piping.

The stove is back in place now, but the refrigerator is in the middle of the room still. We pulled it out to finish one last row, and we cannot put it back until we’re ready for the rows to head into the living room, which meets the kitchen just after the fridge.

We’re both off Wednesday again, and I am so looking forward to a road with no bumps in it…though I’m sure we’re going to find an Indian burial ground, a thousand staples, or even Atlantis when the carpeting there begins to come up. Since the burial ground and the lost city would be a hindrance, they would also be amazingly cool to find. Here’s to hours of staple removal and all the adventure I can take interlocking flooring with my father. We only have a “small” stack to go!

Dorkus Malorkus

This is the KanJam how-to video. It features KanJam finalist Kim Daugherty, 2010-2012 World Champions Eric & Dan Klavoon, and 2001-2004 World Champion Josh Greenauer. It shows not only how to keep score but also how the game works in terms of throwing and tipping. Partners are on opposite ends, like horseshoes.

[audio http://static.queenonline.com/uploads/02_We_Are_The_Champions_30secs_1_4.mp3]

We were at the Gratwick Hose fire company athletic fields in North Tonawanda, NY. It’s the last round of the day-long KanJam World Championship, and my father and I are in our fourth straight final. We won the previous three years. This was our chance to become the only team to win the tournament four years in a row.

KanJam is a flying disc game invented by Paul Swisher in 1990. Think Frisbee meets horseshoes meets volleyball. From fifty feet, two KJ goals (think garbage pales) are set up with a partner from each team on either end of the court. Each team alternates rounds, until one team has twenty one without going over. Each player throws the disc to his partner. If that partner knocks the disc into the can, it’s three points. A direct hit of the can is two points. A deflected disc which hits the can but does not enter it is worth one point. If the throwing partner manages to throw the disc into the can without assistance, then game is over. We practiced nearly every day, from the moment his girlfriend at the time mentioned the game to when we decided to see how good we really were.

When we entered our first WC in 1999, we tipped the brims of our thinking caps in homage to Sabres play-by-play announcer Rick Jeanerette by name ourselves after one of his famous animated calls: we were “Hotter Than a Firecracker.” We had settled there mostly because it was the only name either of us brought up which the other didn’t immediately hate.

In 2000, we again entered the tournament, also as Hotter Than a Firecracker, and also because we could find no better team name. We made the playoffs in both of those two years but failed to make it deep enough to play for the title.

In the spring of 2001, we were watching The Simpsons one night. Lisa turned to Bart and said something in French. Bart retorted, “You are what they call in Latin a Dorkus Malorkus.” My father and I both turned to each other, and we knew. Dorkus Malorkus. Game on. In the summer of 2001, our reign atop the KanJam world began, as Dorkus Malorkus won three straight world titles. No other team had ever won four in a row. The Rochester Killer Bees won five total, but they only managed the three-peat. We were hoping to top that mark.

With what was at the time the single longest game in World Championship history (6 overtimes), game 5 of the best of 7 went to Dorkus Malorkus, as did our fourth straight title! The winner of either of the two official KanJam tournaments (the WC and the Winter Klassic) takes home The Hammer trophy. It’s similar to the Stanley Cup in that the winning team takes home the trophy for one year, carves their name into the handle and returns with it the following season. We won the 2005 Winter Klassic, and with that Hammer, we were the first team ever to hold both trophies at once! Below is us with the two hammers just after winning the 2005 KanJam Winter Klassic.