It was fine, of course, all fine. Bells ringing and students moving in and out of my classroom. The days pass this way and sometimes at the end of the week I can’t remember what we did two days ago. They are marvels, these students of mine: people in progress, suffering a pace of growth […]
Read moreShe’s doing it: she’s shutting it down. That’s right, folks. In addition to the changes you may notice on this page, I will shortly be adding (or, shall I say, subtracting?) another. Beth is shutting down her blog. She’s flirted with it for awhile. We entertained it together, in fact, she and I, as our […]
Read moreWe’ve been listening to a little Pearl Jam lately. That’s just some of what we’ve been listening to. We’ve also been listening to Damien Rice and Thad Cockrell and Jars of Clay and a little Rihanna and, of course, the Odyssey story discs that Emma loves. But tonight on my way home from book club, […]
Read moreTonight, to save myself from exhaustion (and how can you be exhausted, one might reasonably question, when you are not teaching, as your students are away on the camping trip you are supposed to be on? to which my answer can only be a guess: that the infection my body is fighting somewhere in the […]
Read moreEmma Grace received her first American Girls catalog today. We looked through it together (after she looked through it while she was waiting for me to look through it with her), and then we looked through it again, this time with a Sharpie marker wielded perilously by her hand, circling the (many) items she might […]
Read moreHe needed new shoes. We got the ones for P.E. (that’s “physical education,” don’t you know) on the evening of the first day of school, the ones that he can’t wear anywhere other than the new gymnasium because we are all taking care of the gymnasium floor. And don’t read any resentment from me in […]
Read moreExhibit 7,182: “I brang it in the car with me, and I brang it to the store.” “I ‘brought’ it, Emma.” “I like my sentences the way they are. And I don’t need any corrections.”
Read moremephitic adj of, relating to, or resembling mephitis; foul-smelling Right. Do Not Define a word employing a word I do not know. That is Not Helpful, Merriam Webster. Unless, of course, the word I do not know can be Easily Found (don’t you know how easy it is for me to get lost –and for […]
Read moreI’ve just finished reading this book, The Sea, by John Banville. I didn’t read it for a class, or a book club. I read it for myself, a rare achievement for me these days. I’d never heard of it before. But when my friend Jennie-Rebecca was visiting last spring, and she and her husband and […]
Read moreMy students and I spent a portion of our class today examining a well-known story from Matthew’s gospel. I’m sure you know it: Jesus has spent the day with crowds and crowds of people, and at the end of it all, he needs to get away. He asks his disciples to take their small boat […]
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