About the author
Eyes from the Ashes
Photography is a powerful tool. How many people take pictures every day, hoping to capture bits of life as it happens? People treasure photos as access points to their memories. Most of us did not experience World War II concentration camps, yet we can have knowledge of them, both intellectual and visual. Our most referenced sources of knowing are historical records, written and oral histories, and powerful pictur...
Arts Education and Technology Rock Our World
Yearly benchmarks and assessments saturate the current educational climate. We set expectations; we test; we measure. The results determine what we—students, educators, administrators, government overseers and parents—declare good, or not good, in education. Through this, the community conditions itself to view annual test scores as the indicator of a school's failure or success. There are gains to be made fr...
Real Life in Mumbai: Behind the Beautiful Forevers
If I want to make an argument, a cogent argument, what do I need? A position. Data. Facts and figures. Hard evidence, to speak to the head. Soft evidence, to affect the heart. I will assemble these things and build a fortress around my position. I will state my case. I will strive to convince and persuade, eliminating that which does not support my point, polishing that which does. This type of rhetoric floods our...
It's Opera Season
Before attending the opera, I held an optimistic view. I could like opera. After all, I ain’t Laura of Flatbush. I met baseline criteria: Likes classical music. Enjoys Shakespeare. Does not fear foreign languages. Enjoys getting dolled up. I thought of myself as an unshaped mass of opera-loving potential. Thus mentally armed, I attended the opera. The experience brought me into a new self-awareness: I...
From The Outside In
I grew up in a 968 square foot house. I would not call it designed. It seemed haphazard, a shelter, with newsprint for insulation. Rumors swirled: did the prior owner share the house with a pony? We couldn’t imagine it; where would a pony fit? With five people in three bedrooms, even a mouse would have to fight for space. The lack of space might have crushed some women, but that house served as an inspiration ...
Apple Orchard's and Hemingway's Cottage
The true artist works alone, many say, and who am I to argue? Famous men from President Kennedy to Steve Wozniak spoke of this, as did Ernest Hemingway when he accepted the Nobel Prize: “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For...
Obligation, Like Mercy
Some author quoted or misquoted on the internet claimed that no true writer needs to be told to write. This makes me feel like crap. I would like to say that I have been very busy, that my kids keep me running, that my other work overwhelms me, but there are no excuses. I have not put the words to the page, I have not written. It is not writer’s block, it is a drought, a writer’s desert, and I found myself on ...
