A note from William Friends! It is happening! The featured image is one of half a dozen educator pages that our web developers are promising will go live on Monday, April 24. The beautiful photograph is by the fabulous Stone Soup contributor and photographer, Sage Millen. Now that the educator pages we have been developing since October are actually going to go live, we need teachers who will beta test this new material. I had hoped to have had more time before school ends, but, we are where we are. Two or three weeks of testing will itself be a huge help. We currently have twelve beta testers. I’d like to have another twelve. What we need is feedback. If you are a teacher grades 4-8, please write to us at education@stonesoup.com and ask to be a beta tester. If you are a child in school and are reading this, and if you think your teacher might be interested, then please talk to one of your parents about asking your teacher to become a beta tester. For everyone else, please reach out to the teachers in your life. This beta testing program is hugely important to us. Long term, Stone Soup needs site licenses in schools in order to thrive Writing Workshops EventBrite registration is still open for the spring session of writing workshops by Conner Bassett and by me, William Rubel. The dates are April 23 to June 4. My class is 9 AM Pacific. Conner’s class is 11 AM Pacific. Yes, you can try a class for free. Write to Tayleigh@stonesoup.com. We want any and all students who want to take the classes, so please get in touch if you need a scholarship. We used to publish book reviews in Stone Soup Magazine. Then, we realized that there was much more demand for writing reviews than we had space, and that many reviewers had a lot of insightful things to say about the books they read. This review by Anirudh Parthasarathy of the classic science fiction book, Fahrenheit 451, is an example of the best of the best of Stone Soup reviews. Thank you, Anirudh. This is a brilliant insightful analysis of the book. You show why Fahrenheit 451—published when I was one-year-old (1953)—remains an important book. Please, all of you, read this review. If you like reading and if you would like to review a book (or books) for Stone Soup, please follow in Anirudh’s footsteps and submit a review to our Book Review & Blog editor, Caleb Berg. You do that by clicking on the link, below, “Submit to the Stone Soup Blog.” Until next week, From the Stone Soup Blog April 2022 The Relevance of Fahrenheit 451 By Anirudh Parthasarathy, 13 (San Jose, CA) Fahrenheit 451 has never been more relevant than it is today. The parlor walls that Ray Bradbury envisioned in his iconic story are similar to the large wall-mounted TV screens with continuous streaming content available for binge-watching. Video games have become immersive with Oculus and Metaverse. Many people (especially children) are addicted to video games, and some play them for a living. City planning often bolsters car culture, with the assumption that everyone has a car, which, majoritively, they do. People either rush to shops in cars through freeways to make good time or order in through Amazon, Instacart, and/or Doordash. A pedestrian walking to a grocery store is a rare sight indeed! As more and more books are made into movies, people prefer to consume the movie version rather than read the same book, which requires a lot more work and time. Movies lack richness, detail, and the nuances of a book, and there’s less power of imagination involved when everything is shown exactly as it is. Beatty summarizes this well when he says “Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume” (26). In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury demonstrates how mindless consumption of entertainment over the pure joy and fulfillment of reading and existing as one with nature leads to addiction to technology. …/MORE Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
William Rubel
Saturday Newsletter: March 26, 2022
Untitled By Sage Millen, 13 (Vancouver, Canada) A note from William What a gorgeous spring day it is here in Santa Cruz, California! I hope that as March gives way to April that all of your gardens are at least beginning their spring re-birth. And, with the coming of spring, I’d like to announce that our spring session classes—beginning April 23—are up and ready on Eventbrite! Once again, we are offering two writing classes—mine, Saturdays at 9 AM Pacific, and Conner Bassett’s, Saturdays at 11 AM Pacific—as well as Book Club with Maya Mahony Saturday April 30 and Saturday May 28 at 9 AM Pacific. We’re sorry not to offer a short form filmmaking class with Isidore Bethel this go-round, but hope to once again offer it in the future. In the meantime, please watch some of the amazing short films our students made in the fall session of 2020. In terms of the behind-the-scenes activity at Stone Soup, these last few weeks find us in a lull. Projects are in process. Our website revisions are coming along. Sophia Opitz, our fabulous administrator, and I had a very good meeting on Friday with our web developers. We will start seeing website changes go live next week. Mostly, Sophia and I have been working on the educator pages getting the new curriculum material in shape preparatory to the launch of our site license beta testing program in a couple weeks. I’d like to talk about Sage’s fabulous photograph showing two kids reading Stone Soup under a blanket. As part of our website revision we are making sure that all photographs on the site are by kids. And, I will say, what a difference that is making! Our Stone Soup photographers have a creative flair that sets their work apart. If you are a photographer age 13 or younger and would like to be part of our pool of web photographers, please write to sophia@stonesoup.com. Weekend project: I want you to look at this double portrait. It is a photograph in which we, the observers, share a private moment with these two girls. Unlike most portraits in which the subject is looking directly at the camera, the girls in this photograph are focused on the issue Stone Soup they are reading—December 2021, to be exact! There is clearly lots I could say about how this photograph is framed and lit—the black background and gentle foreground lighting frame the girls to perfection—but in the interest of keeping things simple, I want you to focus on their eyes, on the direction of their gaze. I am not asking you today to compose a picture with careful lighting, as we see here, but what I am asking you to do is take a portrait of someone in the midst of an action—someone doing something alone or with someone else. What I want you to capture is that look where the person is focused on something else. Practicing, reading, cooking, drawing, typing. Doing something on their phone. What I want you to do is focus on the eyes. I want you to take a photograph in which the eyes of the person you are photographing are focused on what they are doing, not on you. There is one kind of intensity when the person you are photographing is looking directly into your camera—so that when we look at the picture they are looking at us. There is another kind of intensity when you capture the look on someone’s face who is absorbed in what they are doing, and that is the intensity I want you to go after this weekend with your phone or camera. As always, if you feel especially good about your photograph, please submit to us via Submittable. Until next time, From the Stone Soup Blog March 2022 Spring By Grace Zhuang, 6 (Vienna, VA) Winds are running around Telling everyone the good news, “Spring is coming!” “Spring is coming!” The little delphinium Looking around Looking for spring. She did not know that She herself is the spring. To read more from the March Issue, click here! Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
Writing Workshop #61: Stream-of-Consciousness
An update from our sixty-first Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, March 12th, plus some of the output published below In this workshop, William went over the concept of Stream of Consciousness. He emphasized the lack of traditional structure in Stream of Consciousness writing, and the wondering and wandering nature of the style. The writers saw examples from literature, including Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. As a mini-writing challenge, William played a clip from a silent French film and asked the writers to imagine a stream-of-consciousness from the perspective of the woman in the film. The Challenge: Let the thoughts of your character run freely. Focus on sights, thoughts, feelings, sounds. The Participants: Agatha, Eliana, Lauren, Yueling, Liam, Stella, Kate, Elbert, Peri, Anya, Rachael, Ananya, Kelby, Iago Peri Gordon, 12Sherman Oaks, CA Bad Dog by Peri Gordon, 12 Her Hand reaches Stroke, stroke I love— No, don’t leave Wait— Slam Alone School. Tail Chase, chase, pant Where’s the food? Yesterday’s was good Combined with stroke stroke and music from black and white thing Hoop jump! Treat Hoop jump! Treat Hoop jump! Treat Hoop? Not again Run away Couch Click, flash, see myself tiny Soft hand soft hand stroke stroke Just like her Still at school? Ahhhh Treats without jumping Happyslurplick Couch suddenly gone Suddenly hard brown tiny balls Food! Yuckyewwblech! Like when I licked the old woman’s skin She was so nicesweetgentle but I should have never licked her skin But she was so nicesweetgentle Just like her Still at school? Bite Yuckkyewwblech! Brown balls go flying Deep voice “Bad dog!” Shrill voice “Waffles! Bad dog!” Waffles I think that’s me Or is it sweet round thing with little boxes? I think it’s both But “bad dog” usually means me Usually followed by angry shouts “Bad dog” comes after things like ripping up bed Or running away Or I guess making food go flying Is it even food? She would never give it to me Deep voice and shrill voice people aren’t as nice She is nicer Still at school? Ugh Couch Wait Wait Wait Close eyes Peek Close eyes Peek Blurry silhouette outside Door opens Run run run trip run run run ouch run run shatter noise she’s home!!! Kisskisshappyslurplicknicesweetgentle I love her Soothing voice almost blocks out deep voice and shrill voice saying “Bad dog!” “Bad dog” is okay when I can hear “good dog” too
