Sara Holbrook author/poet/educator
September 17, 2007
“It was my Granny who taught me to sew”
That’s a line out of a poem I wrote on the occasion of my grandfather’s 100th birthday. Thinking back on their house, the sweet smell of bacon, whir of the manual lawnmower, rose garden, and the goodie drawer, the memory of Granny was stronger. I think
September 8, 2007
Today I visited three elementary schools in Sheldon ISD. My thoughts about foreign language skills fresh in my mind, I asked every group, “How many people here can speak two languages?” In every case, the majority could! I let them know how much I admired their skills. I think it’s important to let kids
September 4, 2007
Here’s something I don’t get and it’s come up in casual conversation twice in the last two days — once with a guy buying aspirin for his bad knees in the check-out line at Drug Mart, me holding my soon to be new hangers. “All these people speaking Spanish. They should just learn to speak
August 29, 2007
The editor sent an email today that she’s sending edits on Informally Yours. This book was such fun to write. Two years ago Allan Wolf and I thought of the idea on the plane home from IRA — a book of boy/girl love poems. We had known one another since the 1995 National Poetry Slam
August 24, 2007
In Florida they have a law named for Jessica Lunsford, the poor girl attacked and killed by a neighbor, a repeat offender, a kind of scum lower than whale poop. In response to this attack (which did not take place on school grounds during a busy school day by a school contractor, let’s remember) the
August 22, 2007
I was all over the place this summer in books — Africa, Pakistan, Peru, Chile, colonial America and perhaps the most frightening land of all — adolescence. I didn’t have a summer reading list and I’m not facing a quiz. I can’t figure out if this is an advantage to being out of school or
August 19, 2007
Coming home from visiting Kelly and family today we hopped off the turnpike to take winding route 30 through PA. Coal country. Laurel Highlands. 2909 elevations. Towns too small to make the map. Whoever heard of Shanksville? That is before September 11 when Flight 93 dropped out of the sky into a field there. At
August 17, 2007
This cave in, this hurricane, this almond-sized explosive device found in the breast of my daughter Kelly. This can’t happen. That’s what I said when I heard about the lump, what I said on the phone, what I said to friends, and what I continued to say until 3AM on the morning of her surgery
August 14, 2007
What could bring 3 generations of chicks together for a fun night along with a gender, age, race, economic diverse audience of great music and smiles, dancing in the aisles, albeit somewhat pricey — joy?
American Idol comes to Cleveland in concert. Okay, okay, I know. But as an event to take a wide-eyed
August 13, 2007
Austin is hot — once again. I mean the thermostat in the car read 108 one day. That’s hotter than a match head, as the saying goes.
For the first time in a few years, Cleveland sent a team. They are a young team with lots to learn about reading the audience, but they performed