Welcome to our Blog!

Hello students, and if you've made it this far, you've found our blog.  Good job!

As a way to develop and expand the introductions we did in class Monday, I'll say a few words here. 

I'm originally from a farm in southwest Minnesota and was the first in my family to go to college.  Before I became a teacher, I was on a road crew and built grain bins in Nebraska, worked as a Schwan's Man (meaning I sold food prouducts door-to-door in Oklahoma), a warehouse manager in Texas, a journalist in Minnesota, and a graduate student at The Ohio State University.  At 33, I attained my Master's of Fine Arts in both fiction and poetry, and have been teaching at OSU ever since.  I have published a few stories and poems in my days as a writer, and hope to publish a book of stories and a novel in the future.

I really look forward to teaching this class and hope you will enjoy it!

The last good book I read was the novel The Kite Runner.  It has also been made into a movie, but I did not see it yet.  The book is a coming of age story and involves two main characters who start as young boys in Afghanistan.  It is a very good story of the differences in class and race and how this affects them.  At its heart it is about a character who has to face some bad choices he has made and the way that these choices hurt others close to him.  It has many tragic elements to the story, but the strongest part of the book is the characterizations and the inner lives of the true main characters, plus the relationship between the boy and his father.  I'd give the book at 7 on a scale of 1 to 10.  The villian in the book was a bit over the top and hard to believe at times.

All best,

Mike

P.S.  HOW TO USE BLOG:  To do a post, sign in first.  Then you should see your e-mail address in the upper right hand corner of the blog.  Also, you will see a link to click called New Post.  This is how you write an entry.  You will also see the Comment feature, and the Edit feature.  Play around with using these and you will see the blog has many features we can use, including adding pictures, links, and even video.