Archive | October, 2018

The winner of the mentor contest is…

Special thanks to everyone who contributed a story about their mentors. I enjoyed reading every one of them. The winning submission is by Todd Gardner, and he writes:

“Sunny Days and Willie Mays!”, exclaimed John Haynes, my art teacher and head baseball coach at Shortridge High School here in Indy. Whether in the classroom or on the ball diamond, he led by example always offering timely words of encouragement.

Besides instructing us in various art techniques using a myriad of materials, he hand painted eye catching signs for various Shortridge events, often including clever illustrations and typography. This was of course before digital clip art or fancy color printers.

Mr. Haynes was a great former college buy fertility drugs online uk baseball player who decided on a career with IPS teaching high school art. He supplemented his teaching income in the summers by painting intricate realist watercolors which he shared with us in class.

Thanks to him, I realized being a creative person and an athlete were not mutually exclusive. For all your knowledge, advice and inspiration, here’s to you Mr. Haynes! I can’t ever thank you enough.

Special honorable mention goes to Aleta Hodge for her wonderful story, too.

I look forward to seeing everyone at the Jazz Kitchen on Wednesday night for the next Uncle Dan and Sophie Jam as Sophie and I share stories about our mentors. More information is available here.

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James Alexander Thom – Lifetime Achiever

James Alexander Thom has been given The Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Lifetime Achievement Award. It is difficult to imagine a more deserving recipient. Many fine newspapermen say they will someday write a great novel, but Jim Thom is one of the few who really did it. After a distinguished service as a reporter for The Star, Thom warmed up with a novel based on the Indy 500, but then he really got serious with the heart-stopping story of a woman whose only strategy was to Follow The River and make her way over seemingly impenetrable mountains and forests to her home and freedom.

Since that triumph of a book, Thom has written a series of powerful historical novels native to our land and culture, from Native American and Civil War tales that are not only great story-telling but also impeccable history. My own favorites are Panther in the Sky, based on the life of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and The Red Heart, a dramatic retelling of a true story of a young girl’s kidnapping by the Delawares. In the course of his research for the Tecumseh novel, Thom met and married the beautiful Shawnee woman Dark Rain, and collaborated with her on the novel Warrior Woman and a book on writing historical fiction.

Many of his fans will arm-wrestle you to the ground proclaiming that his best works are those set in the Civil War era (Saint Patrick’s Battalion, Fire in the Water), but all will agree that no one delves into our American past and comes up with fictional pearls to match those of Jim Thom. He not only does his research by means of books and interviews, he puts himself through the ordeals of his characters to verify their deeds. He once filled his bathtub and sank below the water to breathe through a straw in order to test if a character in his novel cheap viagra online paypal could have done that when his paddle wheeler sank in the Mississippi river.

Jim and Dark Rain live in a log cabin in the woods in Southern Indiana – I am not talking about an architect’s version of an updated luxury imitation of a historical fantasy, I am speaking of a “real,” genuine cabin in the woods, made of logs, built by hand – or hands, both of them belonging to Jim.  From his porch you do not see a highway, or a building, or a paved road. You see the forest primeval. Where he lives is simply an expression of who is – “the real thing.” So is his wife, Dark Rain, the storybook companion such a man deserves. They both look the part – Jim, his Marine-tested body in good shape, his white beard glowing; Dark Rain’s black hair cascading down her back in full glory.

They not only “look the part” of genuine flesh and blood incarnations of the best of the American spirit, they live its ideals. I know. When I first moved back to Indianapolis after sixty-one years away, I had the good fortune to meet them early in my re-settlement days. In those first shaky months I was told I might need a surgery, and when Jim and Dark Rain heard of this, they volunteered to come and be with me during the ordeal. Fortunately, the surgery was not required, but I will never forget the offer of aid and comfort from two new friends who proved to be as genuine as their image of hardy frontiers people, the Americans we always hope are still here among us.

This is what I would have said had I been given the opportunity to present Jim Thom with his lifetime achievement award.

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Dan Wakefield was given the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

 

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How Judy Collins Found a Mentor

The next Uncle Dan and Sophie Jam is October 31 6-8pm

Submit a story about your favorite mentor for a chance to win tickets!

Learn More



Kurt Vonnegut often asked people, at the end of his talks, to turn to the person next to them and say the name of some teacher from your time in grade school, high school or college, who in some way made you feel better about yourself, gave you a good memory of your time in school, encouraged you to do better in your work, or simply brightened your day.

While writing a book on creativity (Creating from the Spirit), I interviewed the singer-songwriter Judy Collins, and learned that she often found mentors in books, in authors whose work she liked and identified with. She liked to do “dialogues” ventolin hfa inhaler 90 mcg with people who had written about their lives or whose lives had been written about in histories or biographies. She’d imagined dialogues with Socrates, and with Picasso, among many others.

In high school she had worked very hard on a paper in English class and the teacher had accused her of plagiarism. This was so hurtful and discouraging, she thought for a long time she “couldn’t write.” Years after, her friend and fellow songwriter Leonard Cohen read some of her journals and said “I see you’re writing songs.” Collins said “No, I can’t write.” Cohen pointed out that if she set some of the words in her journal to music, she’d have a song! This began her songwriting career. Leonard Cohen was a true mentor!

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Dan Wakefield

Dan Wakefield

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