One English Classy skill is to make connections with a text. Sometimes it is framed this way: TEXT TO SELF, TEXT to TEXT, and TEXT TO WORLD. The more you read, and notice, and experience, the easier this gets.

I just read the first 8 pages of George Watsky’s How To Ruin Everything. I […]

I love things named Douglas. Maybe I don’t love all things named Douglas, but certainly these: the fir, the squirrel, the Scottish naturalist, the lounge and restaurant and music venue in Portland that is aptly described as Paul Bunyan meets The Jetsons, and my nephew.

And not in that order. Douglas, welcome. We’re glad you’re […]

I love passionate writing about subjects I may or may not know anything about. It’s almost better if I don’t think I like the topic. It’s the passion that I love. I want to hear about it, and know why others like it. Sometimes I’m converted, and sometimes I’m confused. I want to understand. I […]

I get embarrassed about what I don’t know. And I think I should know everything. Talk about a recipe for failure. I shouldn’t think like this. I’m getting over it. Me be fallible. I just wrote about collective nouns (Appreciation #78). I started to call them proper nouns, and then plural nouns, and then compound […]

As a way of warming up, or getting inspired, or searching for something, I write lists. One of the lists I like to write is a list of my COMMUNICATION HEROES. Doing this helps remind me of what I am trying to do as a writer, and it reminds me of all the different ways […]

I am faithful in my marriage. Not in my reading. I feel no obligation to commit to finishing a book I’ve started. I have no moral qualms of starting and abandoning a book. I can get halfway in, and then stop. I check out stacks of books from the library and sometimes don’t go much […]

We’re putting together a map of Africa, listening to the soundtrack of Dave Grohl’s documentary “Sound City” on vinyl, and my daughter picks up the blue racquetballs I use to juggle. She picks them up and plays with them, and she says this:

I can’t quite juggle yet. But I try.

Quite. Yet. But I […]

And the artful use of the sentence fragment.

I hope I didn’t react too strongly to my freshman English class today. Someone read a sentence that I wrote that started with the word and.

They said that I couldn’t do that. They then listed teacher’s names and how those teachers had punished them or red-inked […]