“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences” Sylvia Plath
Grief and Miscarriage — in Quito, Ecuador
Nature’s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay. “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Robert Frost One of my first little class activities for my students is to use cut-out lines of…
Getting Rejected and Other Fun Things About Publishing a Book
At the beginning of [chess], there are no variations. There is only one way to set up a board. There are nine million variations after the first six moves. And after eight moves there are two hundred and eighty-eight billion different positions. And those possibilities keep growing. There are more possible ways to play a…
The Summer of COVID: 5 Questions To Ask To Protect Our Kids
Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. Pau Casals, by way of Brainpickings Listen 7:44 Having kids is the best reminder of this. When they’re little, so much for them is new and exciting and marvelous. Just a…
Church in the Time of COVID
The evangelical church fears that recognizing women’s leadership will mean bowing to cultural peer pressure. But what if the church is bowing to cultural peer pressure by denying women’s leadership? Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth And in other words: what if we’ve gotten it…
Which Side Will You Be On?
Which way are you going? Which side will you be on? Will you stand and watch while all the seeds of hate are sown? Jim Croce, “Which Way Are You Going”; cover and revised lyrics by Drew and Ellie Holcomb You know, with all the craziness (read: pandemic, mask politics, vaccine skepticism, conspiracy theories, protests,…
Grief and the End of the World — in Quito, Ecuador
The sting of a fly, the Congolese say, can launch the end of the world. How simply things begin. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver Even though we are still lumbering through this pandemic — this pandemic that all simply began with one itty bitty bat (or an itty bitty pangolin, or an itty bitty lab…
Don’t Be an A-hole. Read a Book.
When he needed to calm his mind, he opened a book. Any book. He had never failed to feel refreshed, even if the book was no good. The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich The skies are gray today. We are enduring another pandemic weekend lock-down, unable to leave our apartment. I look out at the other…
I’ve Had an Accident. So May You All.
I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known. The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah Listen 8:09 Never have I resonated with this more than now. (OK, well, maybe with the exception of middle school because that was a complete nightmare of no one…
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