The latest issue from Longridge Review includes six skillful essays. This batch contains a haunting piece by the remarkable Risa Nye, who is so special to me. We met when she was already established and I was just sowing the seeds for a writing life. I looked up to her then and continue to admire her today.
Enjoy this six-stop journey through childhood, courtesy of Longridge Review.
Ten, maybe more, years into our relationship, J and I traveled to southeast Asia with my sister and her husband. While they had progressed to engagement and marriage, J and I remained in our relationship: in relation to one another, relatable for each other, sometimes unable to relate. At the Bayon Temple, Angkor Thom, Cambodia, something shifted in both our closeness and our distance, as if the space around us had not changed in size but in shape, letting us—or me, at least—see it new. Not too long after the trip, we too became engaged and were married.
“Married by a Monk” first appeared in print in the now-closed Tiny Lights. Today it reappears in Wanderlust. Hit the road with Sarah and company: Wanderlust is adventure!
When I was a teenager, I committed a minor crime. I’m pretty sure it was a misdemeanor. Maybe it was as low on the pole as a petty infraction. Decades later, I come clean in a piece called “Department of Penitence.” It’s on the record now, in Volume 18 of The Offbeat.
One of the best publication experiences is when the envelope with your contributor copy arrives and you rip it open immediately (even though you’re making dinner for three hungry boys) and you scan the table of contents to find a friend—a very, very good friend—in the same issue (even though you had no idea you’d both happened to submit pieces of different genres to the same magazine in the same time period). You text that friend a photo of the TOC with the words: “It’s magic!” Dana Perry, I’m so happy to share these pages with you.
My issue of The Offbeat, containing my criminal act, set against a wholesome, regular, righteous Friday-night activity: making chicken-and-rice soup for my family.
Today on Edutopia, I list my 12 fundamentals of teaching and encourage other teachers to try the same exercise. I first crafted The List—which includes items like “flexibility” and “a community of mutual respect and safety”—when I started teaching an education intro course a couple of years ago. As a happy coincidence, Edutopia chose to run the piece today, the same day I taught the list to my newest group.
We started the process in quiet, as students reflected on their PK–12 school experiences, noting standout teachers and classes as well as those they feel let them down. We moved into small groups, where students looked for overlaps and begin to combine their items. Then we gathered as a whole class to create a master list and attempt precise, succinct phrases. I shared my own list and the process by which it came to be. Then we noted more overlaps and the ways the items on my list could encompass the thoughts they generated—it’s as if they, new to teacher education, had these fundamentals in their minds all along. Now the students will mull the list over as they read, discuss, and observe classrooms. It will likely change, just a little, by the end of this semester. It always does.
I find listing an essential act, and the resulting list an essential resource. (See Listing to Love for a list of lists!)
R. is missing a significant part of one lung. Walking can be hard because breathing can be hard. Yet, when she parks—legally—in a handicapped spot meant for drivers just like her, people sometimes sniff and scowl. My sister told me this story on Sunday. We talked about how some needs are visible, while others—so very many others—are invisible.
As it happens, my latest essay, “Big Boy Steps,” explores this very fact. My eldest son, with an invisible need, and I both take steps toward something new in this piece.
Thank you, Crack the Spine, for the gift of space and editorial eyes.
A couple spacing issues appear in the online format, though I believe they will be corrected soon!
Why do we write—why especially do we write real life—without knowing what we’re creating? Without a conscious plan? Because our lives happen minute to minute and there’s nothing we can do about it. Sometimes, as we’re trying to “stay present,” and the future is coming up and up and up, and the past is growing bigger but our memory of it is growing smaller, we start writing. We let our subconscious find a line of thinking that just maybe points to something in the past, or to something that is coming down the road and already causing anxiousness or dread or excitement though it hasn’t happened yet, and the writing is the only thing that helps us stay present. It’s our subconscious, seated in the present even as it feels the anxiousness or dread or excitement and even as it descends into memory, that leads us to that line of thinking. We follow, without knowing where or why or what we might find hanging there on the line and certainly without knowing what we might do with what we find to make it pretty.
I couldn’t be more proud and delighted to announce that my sister, Deb Farrell, is the featured artist in the latest issue of Longridge Review. As is custom, a Q&A with the artist accompanies the work, but as is not custom, little sister got to ask the questions. Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher elegantly and aptly paired Deb’s pieces with the essays published this month. I’m also shining a spotlight here on Victoria Waddle’s “A Bowl Full of Jelly,” which undid me without me realizing it. Please do take a look and a read. Deb, as it happens, is driving up here tomorrow and will help my five-year-old son create something for the Thanksgiving table. He has no idea how lucky he is, but I do. Happy Thanksgiving!
