For the instructor who likes to doodle drawings on the board, who often draws flow charts, or even those whose handwriting is so terrible that they wish there was an alternative to the classroom whiteboard, Dabbleboard may be the solution.

Dabbleboard is a free online whiteboard that is incredibly easy to use. I created a simple diagram illustrating the difference between sacred and profane space for my mythology class in just a few seconds. I downloaded the file as a .png file which allows me to post it on the web. I can also link directly to the image.

The best features of Dabbleboard are the ease in creating line objects, line connections, and text. Images can also be incorporated into the drawing. Drawings can be saved online, downloaded, or linked. A Share+Chat button provides a dedicated link to the image and a chat window. One awkward feature is that, in order to save a complex object, each individual element must be selected and added to the whole. However, the key here is to double check before saving.

One caveat: The Terms of Service say that Dabbleboard owns any images created and the concepts contained in the image. If that is an issue, another service might be used.

There is also a Pro version which offers further functionality and more storage.

The best way to learn about Dabbleboard is to see it in action by viewing the online tutorial. Online instructors and those teaching in smart classrooms may wish to consider adding Dabbleboard to their arsenal of resources.

Tonight was the first night of this spring’s Meacham Writers’ Workshop, a creative writing workshop held every spring and fall. The Meacham was established from an endowment by late UTC professor Jean Meacham in honor of her husband, Ellis K. Meacham, attorney, judge, and novelist. The Meacham is unique among workshops of its kind, first, in its emphasis on face-to-face contact between writers and participants, and, second, because it is free. The Meacham is currently hosted at Chattanooga State, UTC, and Rock Point Books.

I have been associated with the Meacham Writers’ Workshop since its inception in the mid ‘80s, first as a graduate student in the English department at UTC and later as a faculty member at Chattanooga State. Over the years, the series has grown, especially on the Chattanooga State campus, where attendance has increased nearly 400% over the last ten years.

Over the years, the Meacham has been an inspiration and motivation to me as a writer, and I have tried to pass that on to my students, and have taken on the responsibility of the Meacham Writers’ Workshop’s web site, which is hosted by Chattanooga State (http://www.chattanoogastate.edu/Meacham/). My goal for the web site, which I began around 2000, has been to both promote the Meacham and to create a repository of information on the many writers who have participated. For the future, I am hoping the site can also serve as a resource for those interested in creative writing and for those who teach creative writing and literature.

Since Bill Teem joined the faculty at Chattanooga State, we have expanded the website to include podcasts of the readings. This year marked a new technological adventure as we audio simulcast the readings in our virtual campus in Second Life (through the efforts and resources of the Chattanooga State Augusta R. Kolwyck library and staff). Eventually, we hope to do even more to make the Meacham accessible and useful, both for those who participate and those around the world with an interest in creative writing and literature.

Not only has the Meacham been important to me professionally, but I have made many friends over the years among the writers who have come. I could not begin to name them all. With that joy has come sadness for those we have lost, including Bill Matthews, Lynda Hull, and recently, Ken Smith.

I only met Bill Matthews once, during my years as a student at UTC. He came to our creative writing class, taught by Rick Jackson, and he and Rick proceeded to engage in the literary equivalent of dueling banjoes.

Ken Smith was my teacher, my colleague, and my friend. Both of us bearded, I often jokingly called him Dad, even though he was only a few years older. I can still hear his voice with its soft undertones and easy grace. Somehow, despite how much I love the Meacham, it always feels a little emptier with him gone, especially on Saturday evenings, which was when he and his wife, Maddie, would fix pasta. One of my fondest memories of Ken took place at the old Cameron Hills clubhouse above downtown Chattanooga, when Ken and his friend and teacher Bob Houston worked behind the kitchen counter crooning old cowboy songs. The Cameron Hills apartments are gone, and Ken is gone, but he still lives on in our memories and in our hearts. Kenny, we miss you.

Those of us who have had the privilege of being part of the Meacham Writers’ Workshop over the years, “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers” and sisters, share a rich heritage and tradition. After all the hard work and preparation, each of us, as the conference ends for the season, looks forward to the next. May we always do so.

© Bill Stifler, 2009

As I was browsing the mythology section at McKay’s Used Books, a woman in her mid-thirties in the aisle with me looked up from where she was kneeling by the stacks and asked me, “Are you Jewish?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, what are you, then?” she said.

“Pennsylvanian,” I said.

I’ve lived in the Chattanooga area most of my life, thirty-seven years now, but I still think of home as Pennsylvania. For a long time, I thought I had lost my Dutch accent. Then about ten years ago, a motorist with a flat tire pulled into my driveway in Ooltewah. I talked to him for awhile, and he said, “You’re from Pennsylvania, aren’t you?” The accent was still there. Sometimes, I’ll hear a recording of myself on the phone, and the voice reminds me of my father’s or one of my brothers’.

A few years ago, I was in a laundromat in Cleveland, TN. Another patron was on his cell phone, and the longer he talked, the more I heard home in his voice. After he finished his phone call, I asked him if he was from PA. “No,” he said, “Michigan.”

“I thought I heard a bit of a Pennsylvania Dutch accent,” I said.

“I did live in Glen Rock, PA, for several years,” he said.

I explained that Glen Rock was just a few miles from where I had grown up.

In the South, people define themselves first and foremost as Southern. I suppose if asked to define ourselves regionally where I grew up, we’d say, Mid-Easterner or Mid-Atlantic, but the question would seem odd. Most of my neighbors were Pennsylvania Dutch, with names ending in -er. Stifler, Olewiler, Bortner, Frutinger, Dellinger, Stover, Kaltreider. And those whose names didn’t end in -er mostly sounded German. Rexroth, Leiphart, Ludwig, Dagenhart, Parr. There were a few generic names, Taylor, Miller, and Robinson, but not many.

When the VW bug appeared in the ‘60’s, the older people at church called it a “Wolksvagen,” falling naturally into the German pronunciation. Even as a child, their voices always had an accent to my ear. And when old fashioned Sunday was celebrated at Windsor Church of God, a member of a Winebrennerian denomination split from the old German Brethren, the song service was in German, my mother, a Methodist from just over the border in Maryland, stumbling over some of the words and surprised at the fluency of my father, who seldom attended church, but had learned the songs as a boy as an Evangelical United Brethren. A few years ago, when my mother was visiting, someone asked her what our background was, and she answered, “Mennonite,” which wasn’t strictly accurate but was a clearer answer than many to my friends in the South who were largely unaware of the rich religious tradition inherited from the German states.

While I seldom eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s, or feast on Lebanon bologna, or routinely use words like “nebby” or “doppy” or “fressen,” at heart, I’m still Pennsylvania Dutch. When I think of home, I think of the rolling hills of the piedmont along the Susquehanna River, of cornfields, tobacco fields, cow manure, and dairy farms, of apple orchards and well water, the cluck cluck of pheasant in fall and the foggy breath of deer on a cold November morning.

Much of that world has disappeared in the years I have lived in the South. The pheasant are gone along with the tobacco fields and many of the farms. Clusters of condominiums sit where once were open pastures. The old Dutch farmers have been replaced by commuters from Baltimore and others who like the benefits of open country coupled with easy access to the major cities of the Mid-Atlantic.

But there are still those of us who remember. You’ll find us scattered around these United States, not from around here, sounding like home.

© Bill Stifler, 2009

Published in Being Home: An Anthology, Sam Pickering and Bob Kunzinger, editors. Madville Publishing, 2021, pp. 214-216.

Used by permission of the author

On Wednesday, January 20, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River after striking a bridge in Washington, D.C (Rosenblatt, pars. 1-2). The following week Time carried an editorial by Roger Rosenblatt describing reaction to the crash. He writes,

But the person most responsible for the emotional impact of the disaster is the one known at first simply as “the man in the water.” (Balding, probably in his 50s, an extravagant mustache.) He was seen clinging with five other survivors to the tail section of the airplane. This man was described by Usher and Windsor [the park police helicopter team] as appearing alert and in control. Every time they lowered a lifeline and flotation ring to him, he passed it on to another of the passengers. “In a mass casualty, you’ll find people like him,” said Windsor. “But I’ve never seen one with that commitment.” When the helicopter came back for him, the man had gone under.   (Rosenblatt, par. 4)

In John 5, Jesus tells us “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (KJV, John 5.13). “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that ye love one another” (KJV, John 5.16-17).

God wants us to be “the man in the water.” All around us, people are drowning. Some are drowning in sin, some, in doubt. Some are drowning in heartache, some in sickness, some in pain. Some are drowning in debt. Some are drowning in loneliness. So many are drowning, believing they are all alone in the water, trapped in the swells, desperate for help.

God calls on us to hold them up. We hold them up in prayer. We hold them up when we give them a shoulder to cry on. We hold them up when we lend a helping hand. We hold them up when we listen. We hold them up when all we can do is hold them.

And when we are drowning, we have the promise that the God of all comfort comforts us in all our troubles, holding us up, so we may comfort those we will find in the water by that same comfort we receive from Him (II Cor. 1.3-4).

_______________

Rosenblatt, Roger. “The Man in the Water.” Time. 25 Jan. 1982. Time, Inc. 4 Feb. 2009 <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,925257,00.html>.

 © Bill Stifler, 2009