“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
I took nine months off when I retired from teaching. Then I started working again. I’ve held a job for 59 consecutive years. This is the complete list in chronological order: Snow shoveler; busboy at 14 at a restaurant where the husband and wife co-owners were both alcoholics and often screamed at each other directly above the main dining room where Sunday lunch was being served; produce boy and bagger […]
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I taught writing for 36 years. I was taught how to write by 3 or 4 very good teachers including colleagues. I learned most about it by teaching it. I cannot imagine my life without writing. I worry, as only a teacher can worry, that the ability to write will slip away from kids as they rely more and more on AI and ChatGPT to do their thinking for them. […]
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Taught to read at a very young age, raised in a house with few books but encouraged to haunt libraries, entranced by the images I could make in my head based on strings of words I heard or read, I took to books as birds take to the air – the element that set me partially free of adult controls and made me imaginatively migratory. I worry that my experience […]
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The manic days are becoming more maniacal. The only restraints on Trump’s actions are ordinary people going to the Street or voting. The Republican House and Senate have stepped away from their powers and become either cowed or rabid, and 6 members of the Supreme Court have become Trump’s collaborators. The powers in business and law are happy to pay their way into his favor. His personal wealth may have […]
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