Every recent generation, I expect, had an Important Movie that somehow explained, shaped, or defined it. According to the rules—movies made about young people when I was that kind of young (now I’m just a different kind of young), I think I was supposed to resonate with the mood of Garden State, or a panoply…
Tag: Literature
Selva Oscura
Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. from Inferno, Dante Alighieri I could say it started in June, when I dropped my husband off at the beginning of the race, on one of the hottest summer days Washington has ever seen….
Being Meg
I wasn’t alive in 1868, so I can’t be certain, but I have a theory. Before we sorted ourselves into Hogwarts houses, becoming reluctant Hufflepuffs or defiant Slytherins, or used the characters of Friends to describe our twenties, there were four women who defined us: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. I don’t know if women…
On Entering A Bookstore In My Thirties
All the people you could have been had you chosen differently—they haunt the bookstore alongside the person you became and could still become. Steve Edwards It’s been ages since I was alone in a bookstore. I’m not sure I remember the last time, actually, though to be perfectly accurate I’m not even alone now. But…
American Girls
I’m just going to say that “nesting” made me do it. Nesting, that biological imperative. That habit we share with creatures who spend their last days of gestation preparing a home for their coming little ones. That urge to go to Target just to look at small clothes and different shapes of pacifiers. That millionth…
Last Day Letter: Our Better Country
Ever since the student-teaching days, I’ve ended school with a letter. It’s something I remember loving in high school—the one time a teacher did it—these final written words that summed up a year. Now, I write as much for myself as for them, this summing-up providing my own version of closure. I started posting them…
The Civilly Disobedient
Is it ever right–ethically or morally–to break the law? Explain why or why not. -Honors American Literature journal question, Monday It’s always a good day when I get to stand on a chair. I sense that the students understand this, also, even as they mutter about being hustled, a few minutes into class, from their…
Angelina & The Lupine Lady
“That is all very well, little Alice,” said her grandfather, “but there is a third thing you must do.” “What is that?” asked Alice. “You must do something to make the world more beautiful,” said her grandfather. “All right,” said Alice. But she did not know what that could be. In the meantime Alice got…
The Canyon of Enough
Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is my portion, That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or that I not be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God. Proverbs 30: 8b-9 Thursday morning, the English teachers assemble in…
Professionally Curious
I’m walking in circles these days, dizzy spirals around the library under the rounded hangar ceiling of our school. Once in a while I’ll pause by a computer and a student, stopping to give advice or ask a question, but most often its a leisurely drift, digital eavesdropping on the eleventh-graders as they start their research…
The Way Home 