Tacoma never won many beauty contests. My first memory of the place involves a nasty stench. The Tacoma Aroma wafted through my family’s car as we drove past the port with it’s smokestacks spewing the stench of I don’t know what. The smell rolled out from any number of smelters. It probably damaged my growing… Read more
2013
About once a year, I do an activity with my students that I learned in my undergraduate days. It looks like this: I call two volunteers to the front of the class. One is male, the other is female. I ask them to walk toward me one at a time and put my hand up… Read more
“Creative isn’t the way I think, it’s the way I live.” – Paul Sandip (Quoted from Chapter 6 of The Artful Parent)A few weeks ago, I walked into a teacher training. One of the other teachers had put a pile of small canvas coffee bags with intriguing logos in the middle of our sign-in table… Read more
Many thanks to the divas at readergirlz for the chance to give back today. I dropped POISON by Bridget Zinn at my local junior high. I asked the school librarian to do as she thinks best with the book — give it away to a kid who would enjoy it or add it to the… Read more
When I was about 12 I longed for a silk jacket like the ones on the movie Grease. In my dreams, it was pink with white stitching on the back and made me look like a Pink Lady. I remember waiting a long time for my parents to buy it for me, but it probably… Read more
Every month I get together with a group of writers called Our Spirited Pens. Martha, a member of our group, has been telling us for some time about her talented daughter-in-law who writes and illustrates children’s books. We were thrilled this past month when Lorie Ann Grover said she’d come to speak to our little… Read more
Last week a meteor blasted across the skies of Russia with many a car camera catching it’s unforeseen flight. At about the same time, people gathered in other locations with their telescopes to watch a much larger but predicted asteroid slide harmlessly past the earth. The two events were completely unrelated according to all the… Read more
Two weeks ago I took a class entitled “I EAT FEAR” taught by Kristin Bair O’Keeffe as a part of her 38 Write series. After some self reflection, I chose to eat my fear of electricity. It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t triumph. But here’s what I wrote for the class: Electric shock. I abhor… Read more