Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
I remember a fable I heard once, from some origin that I can no longer locate. I think I was told this story by a speaking voice, perhaps by a teacher at school, perhaps elsewhere. The situation of its telling has thus vanished, but I remember the story perfectly. Let me share it with you... Continue Reading →
Words like Trees began two and a half years ago, December of 2018, as a way to build some kind of an online presence for myself and for my writing. I was planning at that time to be applying to MFA programs in the near future, and I was focused on the science-fiction novel I... Continue Reading →
Spurred on by an IB Extended Essay I am supervising, a couple of months ago I waded precipitously into Gayatri Spivak's 1988 essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In this vitally important essay on the West's erasure of non-Western women, Spivak makes the case that colonial ideology stops Westerners from knowing anything about the most disenfranchised... Continue Reading →
My husband is not a reader. While I wade up to my eyes through stories, he stays dry. We are different people, and that is fine, but I have wondered for years precisely why he doesn't love to read--to me it seems so natural. To me, it is necessary. He has told me sometimes, that... Continue Reading →
The last part of this week, I have been participating in a virtual teacher training workshop about conceptual learning and inquiry. Nine teachers and the workshop leader have been gathering on Zoom for in-depth discussions of how to reframe learning to promote a deeper conceptual understanding (rather than memorized content) that better enables students to... Continue Reading →
In my first few years of teaching English, when people asked why I had chosen this career, I liked to say that I had chosen it because they paid me to talk about love. This was horribly simplified, delightfully whimsical, and ultimately self-indulgent, I can see now, but it is not entirely untrue. The language... Continue Reading →
A quicker post today. I am the teacher on duty this weekend, and yesterday medical situations kept me down on campus a couple of hours past the norm. I'm also running the last day of a project-week of bread baking with students. Monday I begin oral exams for my English language learner students. It will... Continue Reading →
The school year has begun, and with most students arrived and out of quarantine, things feel more normal than they have in months. I've taken on two second-year Language & Literature courses from a colleague, and in a lesson reviewing the myriad ways we might analyze texts, one lovely pair of words emerged that will... Continue Reading →
This week's post is part of the monthly Author Toolbox Blog Hop. Check out others' great posts about the craft and business of writing! I first encountered Haruki Murakami through his short story collection The Elephant Vanishes. These stories of middle-class life in Japan were bizarre, esoteric, often difficult to get my mind around. The... Continue Reading →
A week ago, just as I was finalizing last week's blog post, I received an email letting me know that a magazine wanted to publish a short piece I had submitted to them. Oh? They do? Oh! Oh my. My that feels good. It has taken me some time, some grief, and lots of effort.... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 