2012 CAMP!
Dates for the 2012 Rena’s Promise Intl. Creative Writing Camp in the USA
on Shelter Island, NY
June 30-July 6
Poetry Blimp
Carol Muske Dukes has sent out the Magical Poetry Blimp
to help parents and educators and young people connect to writing and their love of words! Join the flight!
ANTHOLOGY is For Sale
I am thrilled to announce that the Anthology is up for sale-100% of the sales go to the scholarship fund for young writers. The work is fantastic and I am so proud of our students and all they accomplished in one very short week. Kudos to you all!
https://www.createspace.com/3652331
KUDOS from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EDITOR
Great work by all! This is an incredibly valuable taste for Jason and Mimi (our journalism students) of what it takes to be a reporter and a storyteller. Experiences like this will change their world, and with any luck they’ll become journalists whose work in turn will change the world—for the better.
–Oliver Payne, Articles Editor, National Geographic
In the NEWS
Wonderful articles on the Camp in the East Hampton Star
and the Shelter Island Reporter.
Thank you, Joanne Pilgrim with The Star and Carrie Ann Salvi with the Reporter.
Our Task is to Speak Aloud
Our task is to speak aloud what others may feel but may be afraid to voice. Perhaps the most radical act today is to speak the truth about a darkening sky and remain committed to organizing, knowing there is no guarantee we can endure, let alone prevail.
This spirit is captured in the last stanza of Stafford’s poem:
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes, no, or maybe –
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
The potential power of social movements at this moment in history flows from this commitment to speaking the truth — not truth to power, which is too invested in its delusions to listen — but truth to each other.
From the article “The Power – and Limits – of Social Movements” byRobert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Anthology
I am SO lucky. While all of my writers have flown to the far corners of the earth and our baking hot country, I am reading your work and marveling at it. So I get to hear your voices and putting them together into our first Anthology. It is SO wonderful. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about what I read last night. You have touched my heart, my soul, my life.
A true…
GIFT
Some ask the world
and are diminished
in the receiving
of it. You gave me
only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.
All My Mermaids
Tanger and Two Parties
Well, Tanger Mall was a blast! Georgie and I found Hurleys and Zumies! She was psyched and I found a cool shirt, she says I can get away with, even though it says Love Kills Slowly. We went from Tanger to the beach for one last swim. The water was like a bath tub and the Poko ran along the beach and splashed in the shallows, while Georgie and Simon and I floated lazily with the tide. Then we hauled Georgie’s mammoth suitcase back into the car and headed for my BFF, Detective Devon Halsey’s house, where there was a cook out and fireworks. It seemed fitting to go there at the end of the trip, as Georgie had been there a week earlier. We had lovely picnic on the Rockville 
Centre river, then headed to the airport. The fireworks started just as we pulled onto Sunrise Highway–a good bye for our sparkling girl and her “ponts” (which had a hole in them, by the way–I could tell because her low slung super skinnies revealed the holes!) Her suitcase was pounds over weight, so we have to repack it and then her Mum’s was pounds over weight and we had to repack her too! I kept dashing back and forth from my illegally parked car to the check in, to see if they needed more help. Then had to stay in the car because an angry guard wanted to tow it. Simon saw them off without me, but we had hugged good bye about 50 times by that point. My only concern was security – I’m quite sure Georgie set off a hundred beepers because of the studded belt she had slung low on her hips too. “Poor Mum!”
This morning, I woke late and had to get dressed up and beetle off up to Ossining and Croton on the Hudson for a croquet party, where I talked up my amazing students and our wonderful week together. Folks were thrilled to hear about the camp and what we are up to! 
2012 Here We Come!
