Poet Reporter
A different kind of reporting, through the eyes of a poet.
The Good China
A friend once told me a story about finally getting the kids down for a nap one day just as the doorbell rang. In the driveway, she saw her best friend’s car. She looked around at her messy house, with laundry and life’s debris everywhere…
Blue and Green Marble
It’s been a hard week, regardless of what news channel you watch. This weekend I stumbled upon a Superman movie on TV, one of the newer versions. At first I wasn’t sure what I was watching; I walked into the room and the movie was in full swing. So I watched for a bit and when I left the room I did so with a head full of heroes and heroic deeds.
My thoughts brought to mind a scene from Upside Down Kingdom…
All Downhill
I hit my pinnacle in Grade School. No kidding. I was smart and organized and I had all these great ideas and energy to put into those ideas. Yes, the world was my oyster and anything was possible. And I knew it…
Stacking Up
Labor Day is not just the unofficial start of fall, the last of our lazy summer season before schoolwork and job work kick into high gear. Labor Day is set aside to honor the contributions of the ongoing labor movement to standards, wages, and safety in our workplaces. It’s a day that honors all laborers and the achievements we’ve made with our work…
Space Cadet
Creative writers have a way of writing stories in our heads while observing the world, so reality tends to be a blend of what’s real mixed with some fun fiction. But lately, as I’m doing my usual notetaking of the world around me, I’m noticing a definite reality to the space that I occupy in the world and the space that others take up…
You to You
I’ve told you about a writing retreat I was on years ago with writer Emily Hanlon. Here’s a story from that retreat.
There were about twenty of us women, from all over the U.S., and all ages, staying in an abbey house in a little village in England and we could explore the village during our free time…
Target Practice
I assume everyone has a calling. Some have more than one. It doesn’t have to be something we’re good at. And it doesn’t have to be flashy.
When your dream is your own, it’s worth going after. No one else is going to see it the way that you do and they’re not going to do it for you…
Raising Spirits
If an old job of yours had a reunion, would you go?
I was just telling my mom that class reunions are fine and all and all but what we really need is a reunion of our favorite jobs. (Not like a company picnic, unless the picnic had spiked punch and knife-throwing contests.) …
Ten Percent
In any group setting you can make friends with some people as if you’ve known each other forever. You just immediately click and can finish each other’s sentences and laugh at the same situations with just a look. And then there are those in the very same group you avoid like the plague because they’re needy, dramatic, fussy--you know the type…
Flipping the Script
Like most kids, I grew up wanting to be the smartest, most interesting, and most sought-after person in the room. I lived a lot of my childhood in this mindset. The spotlight was something to strive for, a secret desire propelling me forward…
Denting the Carapace #2
Years back, I interviewed a woman who was part of British Intelligence during WWII. She and I met regularly for two years and had tea and cookies together as she told me her stories. We discussed the war, strategy, her teaching career, egg cozies, life lessons… She told me oh so many things. Here is one of them:
The Belly of the Beast
Holidays used to be like hiccups in my routine. Don’t get me wrong; I like family time and I like food. But the time off—that was tough. The thought of free time was just so disconcerting. How would I fill the time? How will I make ends meet on my paycheck-to-paycheck cycle with a day off?
Back then I spent a long time keeping my head down, staying focused, plowing ahead.
Memory Space
I went to a weeklong writing retreat years ago. One of the exercises we did was to imagine a house full of rooms that we could go to anytime we liked just by closing our eyes. Each room could have any function, purpose, décor, or reason that we liked. In a way, each room was like a different story that we could tell. And some…
Trusting the Whoa
As I was preparing for my talk at the Butler Library, at a certain point I realized I was putting a lot of effort into what I said, my wording, what writing besides my books that I wanted to present… And likewise, I was putting effort into what I’d wear and whether I wanted shoes that matched or shoes that were comfortable. (I went with comfort, of course.)