I dreamed class met in a smokey pub, with a damp and dim and foggy English landscape outside. I did not teach them about writing and thinking critically, but instead had to teach them how to play soccer and make calzones. (Note: I've no experience in either of those areas.) Explaining the rules of soccer, which I…
great is artemis of the ephesians
"This Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into dispute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even…
Five-Minute Friday: Wide
Five-Minute Friday again, with Lisa-Jo and the others. I'm glad to be here. Today's word is "wide," and I'm five years old singing that "There's a fountain flowing deep and wide," and I'm twenty-five years old singing that "There's a wideness in God's mercy," and today, maybe for the first time, I realize that the…
homeward
The cotton harvest is begun, heralded by six tarp-covered bales waiting in the dusk outside the gin. I am neither farmer's daughter nor farmer's wife, but I've been driving by the fields for upwards of seven years, hearing the talk of the farmers and their families, watching the different machines roll out to do their…
Five-Minute Friday: Focus
Participating, again, in Lisa-Jo Baker's Five Minute Friday. This week's prompt? Focus. Here goes: The microscope, purchased in the name of homeschool biology more than a decade ago, worked well. I collected pond cultures, made slides, viewed them under the microscope. Focusing was the challenge: the large handles and the small handles had to work…
dear me
Celebrating the release of her new book, Graceful, Emily P. Freeman invites us to write letters to our teenage selves. I accept the invitation. Dear Me-at-sixteen, The truth is, I feel almost as tongue-tied addressing you as you feel trying to address other teenage girls – as I still feel, often, trying to talk to teenage…
300
Gideon and his three-hundred men, torches shrouded in clay pots, trumpets clasped in clammy palms, creeping all around the camp of the Midianites: "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!" Here I am, with my army of three-hundred. Posts, that is, not men. And we've not been creeping around any enemy camps recently. No, I…
graceful
Today I'm trying something new and participating in a link-up: Lisa-Jo Baker's Five Minute Friday. Every Friday, she gives a word, and participating writers write for five minutes on the word. My confession: I was just a bit over five minutes writing mine; imperfection, again. In any case, here it is: Graceful. It's the way…
my cup runneth over
She came up to my desk hesitantly, the girl with the brown braid around her head: "Have you ever seen Anne of Green Gables?" "Yes." "Well, you remind me so much of her!" She doesn't know she made my afternoon, but now you know it.
in which I think about pyramids
The students are to write remembered event essays. I am to read them. And I am to instruct them in the writing. I have begun that, actually. We read a fine example in class and discussed it. We talked about dramatic pyramid structure in narratives. (Their textbook says "resolution" where mine, seven years ago, said "denouement."…
Between Blue Rocks 