Last week, I “attended” the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) Novel Retreat, an event that was supposed to be held on campus but like so many summer events became an online retreat via Zoom. I’m better on Zoom than I am in real life. Many complain about the platform’s impersonality, and I certainly understand … Continue reading Zoom Bloom
O suns and skies and flowers of June, Count all your boasts together, Love loveth best of all the year October's bright blue weather. --Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) In the early third of this month comes three loaded dates for me. I love October. I love Halloween. But each year I have this snag to … Continue reading Reclaiming October
Spring is upon us at last! I write from the chair next to the window in my second story office from which I can see the apple tree beginning to blossom. In the side yard near my garden is a subspecies of apple that is not crab apple but blooms hot pink like a crab … Continue reading Pleasant Fifty-Year-Old Female
Reading isn’t private; it's done in public all the time. Yet without actually asking, you wouldn’t be able to tell what kind of reading life a person cultivates, if any at all. Other things you can't tell about people you know: if they carry grudges. You don't know how many or how far back they … Continue reading Secrets and Forgery
clarity: n. 1. the quality of being easy to see or hear; sharpness of image or sound. 2. the quality of of coherence and intelligibility For seven weeks now, we've been socked in by smoke from wildfires. The eerie, orange-white light is surreal, intensifying my sense that modern life has become a science fiction novel. … Continue reading Clarity
You ever had one of those years, the sort that turns everything upside down? Mornings you can't really lay in bed, even on a Sunday, because your mind is going to find its way down the drain-of-no-return, and soon you'll be thinking about all your carefully laid plans, the trips you meant to take, where … Continue reading Things That Make Sense
As I've said I like to follow a "pulp" novel, usually a thriller, with a literary one. This spring I drifted from The Hound of the Baskervilles, to Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. A jolt, to say the least. Where Doyle is spare and quick, Hardy is thick and slow. Hardy takes his … Continue reading More on the moors and other matters
My grandmother believed that all children like to be scared, at least a little. In Sunday school, elementary school, even as a babysitter, she taught kids her favorite rhyme: Here’s a candle to light you to bed here’s a chopper to chop off your head! Not all parents endorsed her ideas about kids and fear, … Continue reading The Great Grimpen Mire
A snapshot of July, 1979, at our house in southern Illinois: Dad, at work. My little brother, I don’t know. My twin sister, I don’t know. My mother, possibly in the basement sewing, in the kitchen doing dishes, or out front in her flower garden with the dog. In short, I don’t know. Me: barefoot, … Continue reading Hammock
I don't want to follow Tipper Gore's lead and start another Parental Advisory bru-ha-ha, but I've gotten into some trouble recently with my advanced reader. I've got an eleven year old who's reading beyond her grade level, and I know a lot of people in this situation: your reader is eager to read, picks up … Continue reading Your Young Reader: A List