I was visiting my cousin Drimay at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel, and while I took a nap after lunch, she set up this blog for me. It seems a little too intimate, like inviting people into your bathroom, but I'll try to overcome my misgivings for the sake of communicative experimentation.
Somehow I got the impression that a blog is for bragging (another thing I have misgivings about), so here goes.
But first, a thank you to my parents, grandparents and teachers (examples: John Griffin, Phyllis Estes, Arthur Joquel, James Freeman, with a special mention to creative writing teachers Charles Clerc, Sam Hinton, Twilo Scofield, Ken Weisner, James D. Houston and Ben Percy) for having instilled in me a love of learning. If you read wikipedia for fun you know what I mean.
As a scholar and teacher, I am an interdisciplinarian. That means I'm interested in connections and interactions between disciplines like language, literature, music, history, folklore, education, and American culture in general. Probably my obsession with my homeland comes from having lived and taught in Italy for thirty years. I have also taught Vietnamese refugees and in Zimbabwe, Egypt, Mexico, and California, including my first job at 16 teaching juvenile prisoners to read.
I graduated from Fresno City College, University of the Pacific, San Francisco State University and San Jose State University. I also attended (summers) University of California Santa Cruz, Sacramento State University, Foothill College and College of the Redwoods (Mendocino Coast Campus). And I've done research at Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, Fresno State University and University of California Davis.
From all this study came a number of academic articles, some practical some theorical, with titles like: “The Dreary Life of the Cowboy,” (winner of the 1998 EdPress award for best feature article in a U.S. academic/pedagogical journal) “Paul Bunyan between Scylla and Charybdis,” “Dressing the Skeleton,” “Was Tom Jack?” “The Music Changed at Fort Wagner,” “Storytelling and the Art of Teaching,” “Ending the Yarn,” “Factlore, Fakelore, or Folklore,” “The Poet Lariats,” “The Hellenic League Plays in the New World,” and “‘Tally Ho!’ or ‘There goes the little son of a bitch’.”
I also wrote the non-fiction books: Hear America Sing, You Tell ‘Em Jack, Writing the English Essay, Singlish, and Oltre Stelle e Strisce. (available from the author)
Besides this non-fiction, I've always done creative writing. For the last decade I've dedicated myself to it almost exclusively, producing three novels: Avvocato Ottavio Faranda di Rocca Ginepro, Heal Thyself, and The Basement Tapes (currently unavailable). Right now I'm working on a novel called The Hundred-Year-Old Senora. I've written much and published little: poems, musicals and plays, short stories, songs.
Hopefully, this 'going public' aspect of blogging will help me decide to dedicate the necessary time to sending out things for publication instead of keeping them in my basement.
I will also consider publishing right here.
So have I told you who I am? No, just hiding behind a mask, one of several. Better luck next time.
Happy trials, Martin.
