GENIUS Photo Courtesy of Lance Grandahl 0:00 / 0:00 Genius My seventh grade French teacher, Mr. Cook (name changed), was a bona fide genius. Or, so he told us every day, for ten months straight. We happened to be his first teaching job right out of a top-notch university. He said some strange twist of […]
COW PANTS AND THE MOON LANDING Photo Courtesy of Wolfgang Hasselm 0:00 / 0:00 Cow Pants & The Moon Landing When I was a teenager, I lived in a pair of shorts that looked like the brown and white mottled hide of a Holstein cow. I loved those shorts with an inexplicable fervor. Why was
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Dressing As If You’ve Given Up On Life Photo Courtesy of Qinghom Shen 0:00 / 0:00 Dressing As If You've Given Up On Life Last year, the locker rooms were under renovation at my gym. Each morning, I headed to a tiny, co-ed space where, for obvious reasons, no one was allowed to actually change.
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IN PURSUIT OF NATURE 0:00 / 0:00 In Pursuit of Nature Years ago, I wanted my friend, Meredith, to take me with her on a camping trip to Lake George. I deliberately didn’t tell her that I knew nothing about camping. I didn’t want her to ditch me for a more experienced companion. Up until
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LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP 0:00 / 0:00 Look Before You Leap As I look back on my life, I’ll have to admit that I’ve been plagued by less than stellar judgment. I’ve identified three categories: pure bad judgment, bad judgment with good intentions, bad judgment with bad intentions. After college, I lived next to a
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DREAMING 0:00 / 0:00 Dreaming I write for a living, which means I sit in front of a computer for hours. For years, I balanced on the edge of a rigid wooden chair. Later, I moved to a tipsy rolling chair. Neither provided back support. Four years ago, I bought a metal chair for a
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WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE?MOVIE REVIEW I thoroughly enjoyed Maria Semple’s quirky book, Where’d You Go, Bernadette and looked forward to viewing the movie adaptation. The day after it opened, I went to the theater with friends. Cate Blanchette is a spectacular actress. She played the part of Bernadette to perfection, with exactly the right amounts of
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GRAVITY Photo Courtesy of Across the Margin A literary journal called Across the Margin just published my short story, Gravity. You can read it down below. However, the journal is so interesting and the graphics are so cool, I suggest you take a look at it online. *** Marilyn’s last sight before dropping dead on the steaming
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THE WRITER’S STORY PODCAST ON MAINTAINING CRITIQUE GROUPS Would you like to hear a discussion about writing communities and critique groups? How to form a group? How to organize meetings? Ways to think about group dynamics? Meredith Cole and Kristin Swenson invited me to participate in the podcast discussing the topic. I join the discussion
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EVERYONE BRAVE IS FORGIVEN Everyone Brave is Forgivenis a book you should read if you would like to nourish your brain. Just about every sentence is deliciously well written. The novel is set in London and Malta during World War II and addresses the themes of class, race, and the morality of war. Eighteen-year-old Mary,
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