Mom was fond of calling me a “Bicentennial Baby,” since I was born in 1976. It’s not a term that I’ve heard very often outside of my family; earlier this year I used it when I was talking with a grocery store worker, who said that he thought I was too young to be wearing the Nirvana t-shirt I had on, when he asked what year I was born, and he just smiled and shook his head. From what I’ve seen of the first two seasons…
Since I mentioned my beloved Detroit Red Wings in my last blog, I suppose that some of you are wondering how I feel about them missing the playoffs for the first time in a quarter-century this past season. First of all, given that Mom passed away less than a month into the regular season, it was pretty much impossible for me to feel any kind of emotional attachment to the team in the wake of everything else that was going on around me. Honestly, I…
I’ve mentioned before, on several occasions, that one of the most profound and affecting lessons I learned about being a teacher, back when I was still reading up on pedagogical basics, is that when you don’t teach that something is capable of being changed, then you teach — through your silence — that it can never be changed. This doesn’t mean that change is likely, or that attempts to change won’t be met with strong resistance, or that teachers shouldn’t caution students about the difficulties…
After one of the warmest winters in recent memory, trees are just now beginning to take leaf here in Toledo. That event is normally a happy one for me, as I can finally relax about the perils of winter driving, hang my heavy coat up and get ready for the most tolerable of all the seasons in this part of the country. (I’m still a summer child, but great googly moogly, have they been getting too hot around here lately.) This year, though, the reminder of…
The art of grabbing the attention of agents and publishers to try to get your book published is not easy, and while a large part of me still wishes that I’d been able to get The Prostitutes of Lake Wiishkoban published “traditionally,” I can’t say that I miss the rigmarole of emailing agencies and publishing houses all that much. In addition to dealing with a shrinking number of opportunities for traditional publication, trying to market a book to literary agencies and publishers is a process full of…