From Al Haley, dated Jan. 15

Debra,
I'm deliberately hitting "reply all" as I want to go on record with everyone sitting around our virtual seminar table.
I think what you and your students did with the $100 is truly inspiring. It's exactly in the spirit of our two weeks this summer -- it was creative, it was faithful, it brought people together. It even involved a bit of risk taking.
Those poem excerpts! My compliments to the young poets.
Creating a printed booklet of the poems was the perfect conclusion to the project. For the kids to go home from school and show their parents or caretakers something they're proud of doing can't be beat. And years from now those kids will be adults and perhaps they'll find their work in a box in an attic, their first "publication", and who knows...?
I've lived with my hole in the ground long enough. Since it so happens, I'm teaching a "Christians and Creativity" course, I'm going to take advantage and try to make a comeback from my own four-month failure of the imagination. Our first class meeting is tomorrow and guess what homework assignment no. 1 is? Figure out something for your poor ol' prof to do with his buried money. Maybe one lesson we're learning from this project is that we don't have to generate ideas all by ourselves. We shall see.
Thanks again for the blog post and the shot of encouragement - al
PS: I like the idea of making the blog "open".