Seven years ago, I wrote here about a colleague who starts each semester prompting her students to consider: Who am I? What am I doing here exactly? What more is there to learn about me? How can I possibly be happy or seek fulfillment when pain, suffering, and death are inevitable? I wrote here about…
What role do we as parents play in determining which experiences our children will remember, and how they will remember them? Do we secretly (or not so secretly) have our hearts set on our kids remembering particular things about themselves, about their childhood, about us? How do we navigate the excess of methods that promise…
I am excited to join fellow VCFA graduates Benjamin Woodard and Sophfronia Scott at the East Hartford Public Library next Thursday. We will read from our work and share the reasons why, with all the urgent environmental, political, financial, social, health, and humanitarian issues facing our world, we keep reading stories and writing our own.…
In 2006, I started grad school at The New School for Social Research with a 1,201-word memoir, assigned in a course, which I wrote by borrowing my sisters' memories. I left with a 21,000-word MA thesis that summed up the research and memory hunting I did in the program. I called it "Chalk Drawings." Much,…
Months ago, partly in response to reports on how many of our recyclables don't actually get recycled, I started a creative bin. It's an old basket into which I chuck clean cardboard, paper, and plastic. When the bin gets full, and when the weather is bad or the boys are under it, I pull out…
