I was thinking about the book The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert.  I love the first paragraph, and the rest is pretty good too. You can read the first chapter on the NY Times website. I recommend it. Over the years I have assigned students to read and imitate the first paragraph. It has great […]

I spend more time praising questions than answers. It might be reactionary. No, the Bible isn’t the answer book. It’s the question book. Everything great begins with a question. Blah. Blah. Answers are nice too. If they exist, if they are correct, if they are honest, than answers are real nice. These are my favorite […]

I love questions. I love examples that help explain or show why or otherwise illuminate. These are three of my favorite stores or illustrations about questions:

1. When you ask a question, you are making a place in your brain for the answer to fit.

(I first ran across this idea here: What are questions?) To […]

Starbucks VIA coffee was introduced when I lived on the island of Saipan. It’s fun to have in my desk at school, then and now. Whenever I stir it into hot water, I remember talking to Stuart about the Constitution or Oregon or being pale on a tropical island during our prep period at the […]

For me, on deck circles is another way of saying lists, of saying things to do or write about later. If you have these lists, you’re never completely stuck, and you never have to start from scratch. I plan to write about these things soon:

Jimmy Carter, E.B. White, William Stafford, Yogi Berra, educated decisions, singing, […]

This is the soft opening of the blog category: APPRECIATION

This category will end up being explanations of things I like and why. It is similar to what the blog 1000awesomethings.com was all about, or stufffwhitepeoplelike.com, or many other projects like this. My primary goal here is to show my writing process (see: LIST.STAR.TALK.WRITE.) and choose […]