My seventh graders are writing children's books, so we've been reading lots of mentor texts in that genre.  This week, I asked them ...

My husband has been away for a week, but I have been far from alone.  I've had my son keeping me company, plus lots of friends and horde...

When I read the Odyssey with my daughter last summer , we noticed that Odysseus was very dismissive of the emotion of grief.  Anytime someon...

It's been a while since I've updated on the status of my QWP ( Quinquagenarian Writing Project ).  My goal is 50 first drafts by Feb...

I have two poems today, one by Adam Zagajewski and one by me. Impossible Friendships by Adam Zagajewski For example, with someone who...

A friend is keeping a bedside vigil for her husband, who is in hospice care, and I have been reflecting on the truth that whenever we love, ...

Book #68 of 2017 was written by one of my husband's teachers from childhood, Frank Stanley Placzek.  I read I Surrendered All aloud t...

Last week in a newsletter from On Being , I read a poem that apparently Krista Tippett uses for her email signature (she doesn't email m...

Today I had my seventh graders working in pairs coming up with lists of reasons why you would start a new paragraph.  I get tired of the ans...

Ocean Dream I dreamed we were swimming in the ocean, and the whole surface of the water was a jigsaw puzzle, blues and whites fitted t...

I have been thinking a lot lately about forgetting, and especially about forgetting people, and being forgotten by other people.  I kept thi...

I've posted quite a few Jane Kenyon poems recently, here , here , and here .  Today I have another one from her. The Pond at Dusk by...

Book #61 of 2017 was a short one, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists .  This is adapted from her TED Talk and is a q...

What could be more dispiriting than a flood?  Nothing that's been under it will be the same, ever, even when the waters recede and the l...

This morning, thinking of this day, and of the Open House at the end of it, I read this essay , about how poet Jill Bialosky started writing...

We're finishing up our first week of school.  I have a fresh batch of seventh graders.  Ah, seventh graders.  I always forget, from year...

Last week I was working in my classroom when someone brought in a new student to introduce to me.  We bonded over the fact that I had a few ...

I had to say goodbye to my daughter yesterday as she went back to college.  This made me think of a poem I wrote back in 2012 and posted her...

Sonnets from the Portuguese 44 Elizabeth Barrett Browning   Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers   Plucked in the garden, a...

Book #56 of 2017 was Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France , by Sue...