Living in a flat world

This is what happens when we live in a flat world.

A few months ago I finished the memoir Zigzag by Tom Romano.

I liked it so much, as well as several of his other books, that I decided to shoot him an email.

I found his faculty page at Miami (Ohio) University and wrote him a short note thanking him for the book, telling him how much I liked it, and explaining how one of his chapters served as an impetus for that day's writing topic (which I stole from the chapter called "the way I'd like to teach." I planned to use it with my
College Composition class.  They loved it.  So I devised an
assignment where students reflected on their best moment, a moment where
they were "in the zone" as Romano was in a neat little personal narrative in which he recounts a little league game against an arch rival It allowed them to work with all of those powerful elements
that make writing so vital: voice, style, reflection, thoughts, dialog,
humor, analysis, and personality)

Amazingly, fifteen minutes later I got a reply from Dr. Romano.

He thanked me and said it was great to hear how his work was being used by fellow teachers. He liked my writing assignment so much that he was going to use it later that same day with his methods students - and he'd give me credit for it (which was ironic because I got the idea from him!).

He also suggested that I keep track of what my students come up with, do some additional research and then develop a presentation for the 2010 NCTE convention in Orlando or in 2111 in Chicago.

Wow.

It is a flat world indeed.