My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of some unpredictable force that might, at any moment, break loose, and do something terrible. ― John Burnside, A Lie about My Father: A Memoir I must have been about seven or eight, certainly no more,…
Wrestle bears, bring them to their knees; Steal the honey from killer bees. Find love, then give it all away. – Clem Snide (Eef Barzelay), Find Love PrideFest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has been around for more than 25 years. Each June, on the first full weekend, tens of thousands of people jostle their way past protesters…
You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. – Tom Brokaw Most nights when I let Dexter out at about 9:30 PM, I…
Thus, in sharing stories, we have the potential for forging new relationships…. – Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (1994). The need for story: Cultural diversity in classroom and community. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. This week I have been contemplating the mediating power of words as I blog about community building. This exercise…
This week in a dressing room in a well-recognized Seattle department store, I had a major melt-down. It wasn’t the I-look-fat-in-these-jeans sort of experience when I am sure that the mirror is distorted and comes from a fun house. Nor was it the where-in-the-universe-are-jeans-actually-$200 hissy fit. No, this was a I-cannot-decide-on-a-purchase-because-my-husband-is-dead flat out bawl. Paul…
First this: On Saturday evening, a beautifully coiffed woman outside the Seattle Repertory Theater clutched her phone in what looked like a last minute call just before curtain. She wore what appeared to be a darn good knock off or a real Channel suit, that kind with the short jacket, narrow shoulders, and tweedy weave…
Having an adolescence was sort of a new thing when I was growing up. I know that my parents didn’t have an adolescence. They went from school to work. In fact, more accurately they did them both simultaneously. It is possible that other people, perhaps the middle class, had those teen years as depicted by…
The revolutionary eats and sleeps the revolution, the grand cleansing moment when a new order will triumph, and then, once it has happened, he finds himself wandering among corpses and ruins. — Siri Hustvedt, Living, Thinking, Looking These past weeks, particularly this week, news in the US has been directed toward unrest in Baltimore and…
Desire is the engine of life, the yearning that goads us forward with stops along the way, but it has no destination, no final stop, except death. – Siri Hustvedt, Living, Thinking, Looking This week I am writing with Martha, Rose, Gail, David, and Julio in mind. My weekend was filled with them, filled before they…
Every book is for someone. The act of writing may be solitary, but it is always a reach toward another person – a single person – since every book is read alone. The writer does not know for whom she writes. The reader’s face is invisible, and yet, every sentence inscribed on a page represents…
Creating Community for Everyone 