I just had 141 visits to my blog yesterday. All from Russia. #yikes
Wednesday, January 03, 2018
RUSSIA i see you
Labels:
Personal Narrative
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
I Hear You
Theme for English B
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted with the permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.
Source: Selected Poems (Vintage Books, 1959)
Labels:
Poetry
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Gilded Snow
Middle-Aged: A Study in an Emotion
BY EZRA POUND
A STUDY IN AN EMOTION
"'Tis but a vague, invarious delight.
As gold that rains about some buried king.
As the fine flakes,
When tourists frolicking
Stamp on his roof or in the glazing light
Try photographs, wolf down their ale and cakes
And start to inspect some further pyramid;
As the fine dust, in the hid cell beneath
Their transitory step and merriment,
Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus
Gains yet another crust
Of useless riches for the occupant,
So I, the fires that lit once dreams
Now over and spent,
Lie dead within four walls
And so now love
Rains down and so enriches some stiff case,
And strews a mind with precious metaphors,
And so the space
Of my still consciousness
Is full of gilded snow,
The which, no cat has eyes enough
To see the brightness of."
Labels:
Poetry
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Mother
Labels:
Dance,
Issues,
Personal Narrative,
Videos
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Tuesday, November 07, 2017
To Spin on Command
The Movements of Mechanical Objects
by Rebecca Morgan Frank
Someone keeps opening the music box
in the middle of the night.
It used to play "Clair de lune," now
plays Muzak versions of the latest pop song.
I sleep with one eye open.
The figurine has surely been pushing
her way out. Her toes are so slender
she can pry open the lock.
Her sleek limbs bunch their muscles
as she lifts the lid, and
for seconds, she looks
like a sumo wrestler in her tutu.
If you asked her, she'd tell you
what it's like to be buried alive.
To spin on command.
She's been studying to be a DJ.
There are lots of classes on the internet,
she'll say. A girl can be anything.
But the dark trope only lets
her rise into a sea of pink
with plush dolphins.
Maybe I'll grow up,
she says, looking around,
to be a veterinarian.
You don't tell her that her veneer
is wrinkling and her belly
bulges like a squeezed tube.
Her eyes chip
away without her notice.
It won't be long until
she's retired. The body
junked and thrown
from the box. Separated
from everything that moves.
Labels:
Poetry
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Monday, November 06, 2017
26 Dead, Again
I think it is a mistake to reduce this repeated public health/safety issue to EVIL. It is not pure evil. What is evil? A classic definition is that it is the absence of what is good, from Aquinas. So, in that sense there is evil in this equation. Our public policy does not support the mentally ill, does not address the issue of domestic violence AND provides easy/legal access to firearms. This means we have created a culture that allows these shootings.
EVIL is not a force out of nowhere, a big bad devil. It is when there is a good--civic life and even perhaps the right to own guns--that is flawed. The shooters are wrong, they are criminal, they are mentally ill, they are domestic abusers, or all of the above. But the shooter is not evil, the culture that has given him access to guns is.
Don't call the shooter's acts evil. If you do, it means that there is NOTHING that can be done to prevent this symptom of evil (a lack of public policy regarding mental health/domestic violence/guns). This is not true. If the society cannot see this, they lack insight--a technical psychological term. It means you are not able to know that you are sick, as in the case of schizophrenia.
I don't know the way out of this conundrum. Except to teach my kids that access to mental health care and health care are essential, that domestic abuse is unacceptable, and that access to firearms should be regulated as part of our national security.
There is no pure evil. Pure evil is a slogan, an excuse, a smokescreen. It cripples us. It prevents insight.
Labels:
Personal Narrative
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Sunday, November 05, 2017
Top Ten
turkish delight
wide-brimmed straw hats in summer
jasmine pearl tea
eyewear
outdoor fruit and vegetable markets
tepertős pogácsa
freshly ground peanut butter
wide-brimmed straw hats in summer
jasmine pearl tea
eyewear
outdoor fruit and vegetable markets
tepertős pogácsa
freshly ground peanut butter
peanut butter on toast with tabasco and cucumber slices
baking bread
being in my body
baking bread
being in my body
whiskey, neat
pockets
Széchenyi Fürdő
my mother's dumplings
rocking chairs
scarves
giving books I love to people I think might love them too
The Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
diners
grandma Kelley's rice casserole
Le Mans Hall
midwives
baking muffins
Spencer Tunick
wool socks, knee-high, with stripes in the winter
clowns
"In My Mind" by Amanda Palmer
bread and butter
pumpkin
cooking split-pea soup
democracy
church bells
Gellért Fürdő
African chicken and peanut soup from the New England Soup Factory
martini with blue cheese stuffed olives
1059 Riverside
gesztenyepüré
Greek yogurt with honey, in Greece
listening to my kids giggle and play after the lights are out at bedtime
bodza
Book Club
Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins
Rome
sunflowers
Indigo Girls
dandelions
sleep
Warren Dunes State Park
french fries
Ted Kooser
blue
the fact that baking bread is so simple
clean pressed sheets
One Billion Rising
walking by a lilac bush in bloom
holding hands
playgrounds
NPR
PBS
hard wood floors
handmade afghans
coffee
Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer, by Jean- Hippolyte Flandrin
marching bands
pockets
Széchenyi Fürdő
my mother's dumplings
rocking chairs
scarves
giving books I love to people I think might love them too
The Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
diners
grandma Kelley's rice casserole
Le Mans Hall
midwives
baking muffins
Spencer Tunick
wool socks, knee-high, with stripes in the winter
clowns
"In My Mind" by Amanda Palmer
bread and butter
pumpkin
cooking split-pea soup
democracy
church bells
Gellért Fürdő
African chicken and peanut soup from the New England Soup Factory
martini with blue cheese stuffed olives
1059 Riverside
gesztenyepüré
Greek yogurt with honey, in Greece
listening to my kids giggle and play after the lights are out at bedtime
bodza
Book Club
Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins
Rome
sunflowers
Indigo Girls
dandelions
sleep
Warren Dunes State Park
french fries
Ted Kooser
blue
the fact that baking bread is so simple
clean pressed sheets
One Billion Rising
walking by a lilac bush in bloom
holding hands
playgrounds
NPR
PBS
hard wood floors
handmade afghans
coffee
Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer, by Jean- Hippolyte Flandrin
marching bands
HONK! festival of activist street bands
my clever, funny friend
roasted chestnuts
my clever, funny friend
roasted chestnuts
Rachel flodnija
birdie sing in the tree, woo woo woo, wee wee wee, I love you and you love me
Henszlmann Imre utca, 5
cuckoo clocks
handwritten letters
potluck dinners
Kelet Kávézó
Henszlmann Imre utca, 5
cuckoo clocks
handwritten letters
potluck dinners
Kelet Kávézó
Pad Thai in Budapest
tabasco sauce
massage
Amanda Palmer
marathons, watching them
hiking, with the right shoes
chocolate chip cookies, baking them
snorkling
public schools
neighbors
pie crust
yellow roses
the truth
Labels:
Personal Narrative
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Friday, November 03, 2017
#MeToo Research Questionnaire
Please contribute your answers (10 minutes) for this research project. The survey is available in English and Hungarian.
https://elteppk.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eS6m6FJIsC89ojz?Q_Language=HU
#MeToo
#Hungary
#OBRHungary
#onebillionrising
https://elteppk.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eS6m6FJIsC89ojz?Q_Language=HU
#MeToo
#Hungary
#OBRHungary
#onebillionrising
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Found To-Do List
Labels:
Brookline,
Personal Narrative
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Friday, October 06, 2017
Kids are More Powerful than Guns
If this populace believes that the 2nd amendment teaches unrestrained access to guns, then I am going to teach my kids that they are more powerful than guns. I will raise the next generation to think politically about what is best for our citizenship. Who is with me to develop lesson plans for kids regarding gun control? #education #lifelonglearner #longview
Labels:
Brookline,
Ideas,
Issues,
Personal Narrative
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
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