Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
I'm only up for a short post today. I've had a lot of evening events during the last week. I'm behind on grading papers. I'm squeezing out some time to keep up with my writing, but only a bit. We're trying to figure out summer plans. Things keep rushing on and keeping up's a challenge.... Continue Reading →
As part of my research for the novel I'm working on, which focuses on ceramics, I've been taking some of my writing time to explore what I can of an important figure in the craft, one who was a "great grandfather" to me in terms of my ceramics education (that is, a teacher of my... Continue Reading →
I'm writing this short post on Thursday night. When it comes Sunday, I'll be away with students skiing. Down here near the fjord, winter cannot hold. It snows and rains, hail and slush and sleet. We will retreat into the mountains where it's cold and clear, the snow so deep, if memories of the last... Continue Reading →
During the last month, I've read (or listened to) two books of history of different Native American peoples, Staci Drouillard's Walking the Old Road: A People's History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe and Elizabeth Fenn's Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People. These narratives took two... Continue Reading →
I am writing this afternoon from home in Norway. We made it back on New Year's Eve after a beautiful and wonderful Christmas together with my parents on the island of La Palma. I feel so fortunate to have been able to do this trip. Everyone has now made it home safely, and we'll start... Continue Reading →
The term ended in a flurry of hard work, and winter break has now opened up before us. Instead of going home this year, we have traveled to Spain, first to Madrid to visit friends of my husband's, then on to the Canary Islands off the southern coast of Morocco. In this post I will... Continue Reading →
Typically the snow here doesn't stay. It falls, it melts, maybe in January and February we will have a few weeks of solid snow. This year, it's come early. In the first days of December, we had our first dusting, followed in the night with enough snow to cover up the grass, to make it... Continue Reading →
We managed to find a turkey this year for our school's Thanksgiving celebration. Turkeys are not common here in Norway--last year we had the school celebration earlier, and not until a few weeks afterward did we find a turkey in the shop. We made three very cute roast chickens instead. This year, we found a... Continue Reading →
The last few weeks, my bedtime reading has been another novel I found in the marvelous book storage room at school: Untouchable, published in 1935. It was Mulk Raj Anand's debut novel, written in English, and it marked the beginning of Anand's use of literature to argue against the British colonial presence in India as... Continue Reading →
I'm an e-reader lover--the convenience of travel, the ready availability of English books when living in rural Norway, their searchability, the ability to convert my own writing into e-book format for a more authentic read-through--there are many things I love about these devices. But of course, the book as a physical object is not to... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 