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Month: August 2015

Teaching as performance art (best done naked)

Sometimes I just don’t have it. The lecture I’m supposed to make is clear in my head, but the words come out in jumbles. Frankly, it’s embarrassing. I have a class to impress. If I don’t impress them, engage them, they lose interest. They lose interest and I’m a failure…

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The time I banished my daughter to homelessness

I banished my daughter to homelessness. I didn’t feel bad about it. In fact, I felt quite adult. Sydney lived for years between two houses. She stayed with her mother most of the time and then with me every Tuesday and every other weekend. When she lived with me, we first…

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On wordless days

Some days I don’t have the gumption or the inspiration to write. Such times make me feel useless, ineffective at doing what I love to do. Today was such a day until just a minute ago. I left home early today to come out to the college. I always feel…

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Trout fishing in myself

Some books have provided me priceless revelations. W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge turned on something fundamental in me. Larry Darrell’s traveler/loner appealed to me and let me understand that the things he was seeking—humility and egalitarian democracy in his own life—I was looking for myself. In Catch-22, Joseph Heller…

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