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 […]

When I think about talking to strangers, I think of two coffee shop conversations. One included a private rap concert, the other was an impassioned description of building designs with an aspiring architect.

He asked if he could show me something. I said, “Sure.” And this is when the private rap concert in the Cornelius […]

I have students who have pet bobcats, who love celery, who adore brushing their teeth, who like to get in car wrecks. I have students who won’t eat hot dogs, and students who will eat crickets. I have students who have two colored eyes, and students who own two goats – one that faints, and […]

Am I ready?

I just drove into town as four log trucks rolled out.

I have my slide rule, gold pan, blank canvas, International Pathfinder 8000 8-Band Radio, and my baseball bat. I’m as ready as I get.

Read in the New York Times Book Review yesterday that Nicholson Baker just wrote a (nearly 800 […]