Final Advent Poem: Bloom

Bloom

This is my final poem for the 2026 Advent of Joy calendar that Deanna put together. I’ve been reading the poems she curated each morning, stealing lines for inspiration for a poem. You can find her calendar and explanation and more resources here.

I appreciated the break from my morning haiku writing and feel refreshed to return to the three lines. With the Advent poems, I noticed the joy and explorations of love and appreciation that Deanna pulled together and I tried to keep that going in my poems.

Lord knows we could use some light in our days.

Peace (in explorations),
Kevin

Book Review: Partypooper (Diary of A Wimpy Kid 20)

I’ve spent 20 November/Decembers reading Jeff Kinney and his Diary Of A Wimpy Kid series — first as a read-aloud for my boys, and then as a teacher keeping up with the reading trends of my students, and now? It’s tradition, and one I do enjoy, even if the books are a bit of fluff.

“Is Greg still in middle school?” one of my sons, home for the holidays, asked, as he picked up the latest book in the series — Partypooper — and I nodded in affirmation. Some things never change.

In this latest, Greg plans a birthday party, and as expected, it all goes awry. But the sheer number of gags and jokes continues to show Kinney at the top of his game for this kind of story, with visual puns and pop culture jabs, and Greg always on the lookout for something better to come along, only to be foiled by family, friends and circumstance.

National Public Radio did a recent interview with Kinney that I found interesting. Among the things that Kinney talks about is how he writes dozens of jokes and gags each day and then culls through them to find places in his books, and that every single Wimpy Kid book is exactly the same page length (217) so that all of his books fit nicely on a bookshelf.

I don’t see as many students reading Kinney as I used to but there is still a large audience out there — he has sold more than 350 million books — that is a mind-boggling number in this day and age of screens and distractions.

I wonder what the 21st book will be about?

Peace (and time),
Kevin

CLMOOC Collaborative Calendar 2026

For the past few years, the CLMOOC Community — and its various connected cousins, like DS106 and NetNarr — has come together to create a calendar project for the coming year. I have taken the reins for the past two years, and what a pleasure it is help connect us together from around the world through art and words and more.

This year, we chose “A Colorful Year” as our theme, and each month has a color theme for photographs, artwork and poetry. The calendar is free to download from the CLMOOC website.

Peace (a rainbow of possibilities),
Kevin

Poetry: Poems For The Family

She’s parsing pieces
of old magazine pages
into odd collage
(for my wife)

An eye for detail,
and cinematic focus;
he threads each story
(for my eldest son)

Switching to vinyl,
the Brooklyn club DJ spins
his grandfather’s jazz
(for my middle son)

Beats and loops and rhymes –
broken signatures of time –
he builds songs, slowly
(for my youngest son)

These poems were inspired by a prompt at Open Write this morning, using haiku.

Peace (and verse),
Kevin

AI: Musical Instrument Car

The prompt this morning for the DS106 Daily Create was to create a hybrid vehicle of some creative fashion and I had the idea of a musical instrument car. I had Adobe Firefly create this roving orchestra and then went down a rabbit hole to find the Car Parts Music band, which used actual car parts fashioned as musical instruments. It was the brainchild of Bill Milbrodt.

Peace (and wonder),
Kevin