Can you picture your long-ago bedroom when you were about twelve years old? Here’s mine: A single bed over which my mother had very helpfully affixed a reading lamp (thank you, Mama!). A desk for doing homework. Two small bookcases brimming with my favorite books, perhaps fifty or sixty, all of which I’d read at [...]
INTRODUCING: My brand new book and audio-book, A November Visit. I hope you enjoy this introduction, a small taster of the feast of "Novemberish" delights awaiting you in the book. Thank you for taking it in!
When I was in high school, I fell in love with the writing of Annie Dillard. I’d never read anything like her before, this combination of poetic prose and personal narrative imbued with the fervent nature-love of Thoreau and the spiritual depth and yearning of a medieval mystic. I studied her books and saw in [...]
Last year I read a lot of books I loved and I wanted to share the list with you in case there is one or two you might want to investigate yourself. I keep a reading log (which turns out to be an alternative sort of diary - a diary of interests and whims, side-journeys [...]
Read: it’s your civic duty. I have never before felt this more clearly or more urgently. All summer I’ve been teaching students about the necessity of reading critically and evaluating sources with greater awareness and discernment. This is a new idea for many students and I’m aware that it can strike them as [...]
Teaching is really the best game in town if you ask me because it stimulates learning - by which I mean, my own! I faced an interesting challenge this morning and meeting it was fun and fascinating. One of my students asked me to translate a tale collected over Christmas 1930 by the Irish writer [...]
It's so much fun to set things up for yourself in the way that feels the best. Not in the way others advise, even if their advice is well-intentioned. Not in the way that "it's always been done." Not in the "smart way to do it." Instead: in the way that feels like pleasure/relief/homecoming/yes, please: [...]
The right tools for the job give us wings. They are collaborators, conspirators, co-authors and co-creators. With use, with long relationship, they become ensouled. They become more than the sum of their materials and parts. They become friends. This is true of musical instruments, brushes and paints, recording equipment, ballet shoes, and garden trowels. It's [...]
Hello, friends! Today I want to tell you about my latest book, "How to Get Gigs You Love: Money, Fun, and Opportunity for the Solo Performer." It's a soup-to-nuts guide for getting gigs you love and rocking them once you get 'em! (It is gleefully inexpensive: $4.99. Here's a link in case you want to [...]
Who knew? Doing some e-research tonight, by sheer chance I came across an Irish scholar's review of an essay I wrote years ago for a festschrift for my wonderful mentor, Professor Patrick K. Ford. Professor Ford's "hound love" inspired me to write about dogs in the Finn tales (plus I've always said I'm part-dog [...]
