When I began my career as a first-grade teacher, writing in the first grade meant handwriting. But change was in the air. Led by Donald Graves, education professor from the University of New Hampshire, and many others, composition was beginning earlier, moving to the primary grades. I loved it. Growing up in a small town […]
Public Speaking–One Sip at A Time Read More »
Steve Weber hadn’t stayed in touch with anyone from the little farm town he left as a teenager. The place was a static reminder of high school glory or failure, early marriage, divorce and custody battles, dead-end jobs, and not much else–the face of endurance masking a vortex of interior desperation. Forty-one years later, he
In the mid-fifties a nation-wide re-release of the 1939 block buster, Gone With The Wind , hit the screens. In our small town, you could easily spot the sole movie theater on Main Street by the vee-shaped marquee that protruded over the sidewalk above the double doored entry. Movies remained one of the main
Learning to Cuss in North Dakota Read More »
Interlaced by Lucy Bell When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, When despair for the world grows in me And when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, let us
Great exercise, walking into your resistance. The dog’s ears blown back like golden sails. The last quarter mile is the hardest. Then, unexpectedly, you cease your assault. For a second, I pretend you’re a conquered foe and that I’m the master of Nature.
Colorado Prairie Winds Read More »
He woke in the middle of the night in a burning fever, his brain boiling and his sheets soaked in sweat. He rose from his bed and staggered to the bathroom, then collapsed. His last thought before he passed out was that he would die alone. At sunrise, he crawled to his knees, wedged his
Island in a Furnace Read More »