Category Archives: Uncategorized

National Poetry Slam 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

Hideous

I was browsing blogs, putting off working on taxes and the evil treadmill and I came across this phrase: “Michael Vick and the hideous dog fighting scandal” and thought, great word! Hideous. You don’t hear that word so much anymore. The irony here is that there’s so much that is hideous

open door policies

We keep the doors open in the summer. For the dogs. Or that’s the excuse. The sliding glass door off of our bedroom, the side kitchen door. When we are home, they are open. I like it that way. Did the same thing at my last house.
Guests helpfully close the doors or comment, “oops,

Nothing trumps crab grass

I dream about crab grass. What a pathetic confession! Crab grass slinks into my gardens, sending its scouts ahead of each invasion like spacewalkers suspended on life lines. Its tentacles lurk beneath the grass as it races to strangle all growth. I love growing things and have tried to live in harmony with crab grass,

The News?

Everyday I read the Huffington Post the way my Dad used to read the Free Press in Detroit. Today I read that some high school scholars took Bush to task for his stance on torture, that politicians take money from big tobacco (like this is news?) and that Murdock is close to firming up his

Beaches

Our family flows toward the Atlantic each summer with our rafts, sunscreen and spawn. We go there to study our familial three R’s, to relax, reconnect and recollect. Memories of past trips to the beach are filed in my head going back to when I used to hide True Story magazines under

NYC

Everything in NYC is bigger, faster, brighter. After a day’s work in Brooklyn, Louisa, Kelly and I supped at a little Italian (yummy) place and went to see Spring Awakening, which would later sweep the Tony Awards. Here’s the truth — I didn’t love it. I liked it. But I wanted to LOVE it.

A Long Way Gone

Just back from a Janet Allen Institute in Florida. The skies were blanketed heavily with what looked to be rain clouds but turned out to be clouds of smoke. Florida is on fire, and you can smell it everywhere, even in the hotel room. Made me add a line to a poem

IRA Toronto

Once a year reading teachers from all over gather at the International Reading Association meeting — this year in an attempt to fulfill its name, the conference was moved across the border to Toronto — a town with great theater, efficient public transportation and terrific restaurants that just happens to be in Canada. I wish

Mother’s Day Proclamation

Arise then…women of this day!Arise, all women who have hearts!Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!Say firmly:“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,For caresses and applause.Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearnAll that we have been able to teach