I am so excited about this!  Yeah, Ellie, for your great choice!  I'll read it this evening and have some things to say about it (or be very ashamed) by tomorrow!

Good challenge, too.  I believe many things.  I'm trying to think of one I can express well in five hundred words.

That's more than a problem!  ;-)    Perhaps the Readers Digest Abridged version of the essay would be more palatable (in a scientific writer's kind of way, I mean)?

I'm going to stand between Mish and Ellie on this one.  The writing didn't particularly strike me, but I'm not sure it always has to be the writing that makes a piece "good." 

What did strike me was how very much he told us in five hundred words!  The opening, with the author and his father fishing on golf courses, was really lovely.  I think the two images... the father who hit, the father who orchestrated these fishing capers... created a surprisingly rich tapestry in a very short time.  (Although it may be that I read more than is there, having just finished Sigrid Nunez's "A Feather On The Voice of God," with it's simliar father and all.)

I struggle with the short form.  Give me something that has limited itself to 1500 words, and if it's well done I won't feel like it's abridged.  Five hundred, though, seems a terrible challenge.  (Though I expect our resident Haiku artist, Mish, will do great with this challenge!)  I do not know what can be said if 500 words.  No, that's not right.  I don't know what can be WRITTEN in 500 words.  When I hear these essays read aloud on NPR, they do not see abbreviated to me.  They seem the perfect length.  I wonder what that tells us?

I'll read it again when I am not so tired. 

I realize what set me off was the violent father---I wasn't going to like anything after that, particularly acceptance.

  However, this is a reflection of my own reality that i don't need to carry with me when I review.

I also prefer a more literary style, but this essay really struck a cord with me and I was able to identify well with what the author was saying. 

When I was younger, we used to go tubing and at one point we would reach this man made shoot, rocks built up on either side so the water came through with much greater force, carrying us with it.  You would always be drawn under and the one thing I was told the first time I gave it a go was to relax when the water took me down and not fight it and the current would spit me out several yards away from the shoot.  I didn't listen the first go and I struggled to reach the surface until terror calmed my mind and reminded me to relax.  POP up I came in no time, so I knew instantly what the author was saying and I thought it was very well said.

I, too, liked that it was with the father the boy first learned this concept, the same concept that would help him move past the turbulance created by the father.

I thought it added a great layer to the story.

Pam, I suggest you write something and post it here first. That way we can pick it apart before they do.

I have to agree with Mish, I didn't find this essay particulary engaging either. Perhaps the violent side of his father was thrust in too fast, I don't know, I just think he could have played out his hand a little more carefully and finessed the reader along a bit. Again, maybe just a preference for style. I found his style to journalistic I think and I tend to be a sparse writer.

Pamela, what assigned site? I'm lost did I miss something?

Okay, Thanks Ellie, I see now.

Yeah, this is for the month of June and it is only June 2.

I'll look for that.

My Ellie's challenge piece is posted, Liberating Love, hope you give it a read so I can send it on it's way after reviews.

Yeah, I get what you mean. THanks Mish, I'll think about Love Liberates, I just am not sold on what I have to far for a title. Thanks for reading. You don't have to review, unless you need the points. This is adequate. nancy