Once, on a writer’s retreat to a desert in south-central Utah, I was caught in an unexpected downpour while standing on a red rock ridge high above a green grass valley where a river meandered through the late fall day, slow with sediment, the drowsy water a small relief from the drought and dust that…
The woman was older, but in a way that spoke more of experience and enthusiasm and vibrant life than of age, really, her gray hair swept back from her face and held in place with ornate combs. They were interesting things, those combs, bright and colorful against the sober shades of her hair, as bright…
What no one tells you when you begin to teach is that probably the most effective teaching you will do will be in that little sliver of time before and after class, the quiet conversation in the arriving or the leaving, the whispered questions, the impromptu conferences, the getting to know you and how was…
It started with an idea. A problem really. One with no easy solution. So what do you do? You get creative. The problem? A growing number of coral reefs around the world are dying. The task? Crochet a coral reef. Now, you might be asking why, and we will get to that in a moment,…
“The world is full of obvious things, which no one by chance ever observed” —Sherlock Holmes On Sunday evenings, my family goes for a walk. I am not sure when this tradition began, or who started it, although I have a sneaking suspicion it was my husband, and that he regularly dragged me along, as…
I’ve been thinking about tomatoes. Not the uniformly red tomatoes of about the same size and shape that you can buy in the produce aisle at your local grocery store. No, I have been thinking about late summer tomatoes grown in a backyard garden, the gloriously uneven and brilliantly colored globes sheltered from the midmorning…
The desk in my room is the perfect height to lean your elbows on and ponder the world outside the picture window it sits in front of—to watch the row of houses across the street and all the comings and goings of the day, to see clearly the sidewalk that used to be decorated by…
In 1964, on the album Wednesday Morning, 3AM, the Simon and Garfunkel song, The Sound of Silence, made its debut. It wasn’t the song as we know it today, a quiet echo with electric guitars rippling softly in the background. A stripped down acoustic version, the song didn’t get much airplay, and the album itself…
Just for a minute this morning, between the shock of waking too early and the rush of getting ready for the day, in the early bright light of a still summer day, sit with me as I poke and prod through some stories, to remember, and ponder, and look at the things that can, for…
The most beautiful thing in the sterile white classrooms where I teach are the students themselves, full of vibrancy and noise and mess, enthusiastic in both their excitement and confusion, bringing color into the room in the same way that a flung open window brings in light and sound and gently wafting breezes to tease…