It was my very first sixth-grade faculty meeting at Little Lake Valley Middle School. There were just four of us, all men, but we were waiting for one more teacher before we could proceed. That…
Posts tagged as “essays”
The possum baby slashed and jerked its way around Joanna’s uterus in a river of milky white mucus and blood. “Ya muthafuckin’ beast!” she wailed at it, her back grindin’ into the bed while she…
The Turks were so patient for putting up with me this fall as I cycled around the western half of Turkey. I cringe now when I recall the many times, while in conversation with strangers,…
“To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.” — Nadia Boulanger During the four years in the early 1990’s when I ran the Creative Writing program for the…
“As you walk, you cut open and create that riverbed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow.” — Nikos Kazantzakis In 1965, when I was 16 and deeply unhappy, I went…
Dear AVA, I don't know what all the fuss is about. “Awesome” is the most phenomenally iconic word ever. Actually I buried and mourned it long ago, interred it with a host of other cheapened,…
Most everyone in the County will observe the holidays in one way or another. I can remember the first Christmas tree I ever saw and it was about the year 1900 in Murray's Hall in…
I went to Spain at the end of last summer, spending most of the time in Madrid, a fabulous city despite patches of air pollution. There's a large park, Retiro, comparable to Golden Gate Park…
“If there's not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.” --Eminem For many people, December is the most neurotic month; and Christmas marks the apogee…