A friend of mine is an online teacher of 8th and 9th graders this year. Usually an in-classroom math teacher, this year she wanted to teach 100% online due to Covid-19, so she agreed to teach the full slate of subjects to students who opted for full-time online courses. After the holiday break, she had […]
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12 Things Writers Should Never Tell Themselves
It’s still January. Yes, that longest of months (187 days, by my count) is still with us, dragging its heels through the snow like a remorseless kid being towed to the principal’s office. During January (and its partner in crime, February) it’s easy to give in to cold, dark days. Cold, dark thoughts. Cold, dark […]
Breaking Through the Gloom
Back in September, when we thought we were living through the worst of the pandemic (I’ll pause here while you get that hysterical laughter under control), I’d had it with humanity. Sure, there are a lot of individual humans that I like—love, really—but by September, humanity as a whole had reached a whole new level […]
New Year’s Resolutions: How to Douse a Dumpster Fire
The phrase “dumpster fire” seems to have been invented purely for the year 2020. With the year’s passing, most of us are looking with sad puppy-dog eyes at 2021, hoping for a smidgeon of mercy. A modicum of normalcy. An ounce of civility. And a big ol’ dollop of hope. But, of course, we all […]
Art and Smiles in a Quarantined World
I saw one of my favorite bands perform live today. Well, “live” in the sense that at the same time I was watching them online, they were playing together. Well, “playing together” in the sense that although each was playing an instrument alone in their own home, they somehow managed to sync up with each […]
How Can Unique Lives Be So Universal?
There was a mountain lion in our neighborhood a week ago, and apparently she was in heat. Yeah, that’s a sentence I never dreamed I would type. But now that I live in Colorado, I find that many of my conversations involve animals I have, until recently, most often encountered on TV. We’re only 45 […]
