Scott Seckel \u201984 graduated from Trinity-Pawling with a class that is so tight they have a nickname: Big Blue Crew. \u201cWe get together outside of reunions often. Whenever we get together, it\u2019s like being 17 again, at least for me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seckel is currently a science writer for the in-house news bureau of Arizona State University. He goes into the field with scientists conducting research at the school. \u201cI sometimes say I write about the world 20 years from now, because I write about things which have just made it into proof of concept, like controlling drones with your brain or a white laser which is going to give your TV 70 percent more color than it has now.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before landing where he is now, Seckel\u2019s work as a journalist brought him all around the world, reporting in such places as Hong Kong, Mexico, and New Zealand. \u201cI\u2019ve been in forest fires, riots, murder scenes, and war ships, and I\u2019ve met ALL kinds of people, from peasants and serial killers to soldiers and presidents,\u201d he says. After graduating from college, Seckel spent some time covering crime for the South China Morning Post. \u201cOn day one I had to figure out how to get around, deal with a foreign police force, interview witnesses, and so on. When I walked down Nathan Road in Kowloon one morning and saw my byline on the front page at a newsstand, I knew I had it all down.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seckel says going to Trinity-Pawling gave him \u201cthe confidence and skills to thrive anywhere, doing anything.\u201d But two literature teachers in particular had a powerful influence on him: Ted Kneeland and John Lloyd Owen. \u201cTheir classes were divine. As an American writer you need to know and understand the literature so you can build on it and run with it, and that\u2019s what Mr. Kneeland gave to me. He drew a tornado shape on the blackboard one afternoon and said, \u2018That\u2019s Moby Dick,\u2019 \u201d recalls Seckel. About Mr. Owen, who taught AP European Literature, he says: \u201cThe first day he told us, \u2018I\u2019m not going to teach you to take this . . . test. We are going to study pears on a windowsill under a lace curtain.\u2019 Mr. Owen taught truth and beauty.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two teachers had such an impact on Seckel’s writing that his first novel, Arizona Time,<\/em> published earlier this year, is dedicated to them. \u201cWriting a novel is the loneliest thing in the world. No one\u2019s holding your hand or pointing the way ahead, but those two teachers were there with me in the darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n by Lisa M. Kelsey<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scott Seckel \u201984 graduated from Trinity-Pawling with a class that is so tight they have a nickname: Big Blue Crew. \u201cWe get together outside of reunions often. Whenever we get together, it\u2019s like being 17 again, at least for me,\u201d he says. Seckel is currently a science writer for the in-house news bureau of Arizona […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-december-2018"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"THE IMPACT OF GREAT TEACHERS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2452"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2530,"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions\/2530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinitypawlingthequad.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Arizona Time, A Novel and Five Shorts <\/em> is described as being set in \u201cthe post-frontier American West, in a landscape shaped by Larry McMurtry, Breaking Bad<\/em>, Sam Shepard, and Leslie Marmon Silko. It is a classic Western, but like no other Western before.\u201d The novel is available on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n