Category Reading
Vacation Reading
In May, we went on vacation to Yachats, Oregon. At night, I realized I’d left my novel in my daughter’s bedroom, so I looked through the bookshelf in the house we were renting. I came across a collection of short stories published in 1969. I read the Ray Bradbury story in it called “The Other […]
Kahlil Gibran
When I lived in Washington, DC, I sometimes needed a break from the pace of the city. On those days, I would walk northwest on Massachusetts Avenue, from Dupont Circle to the National Cathedral. Along the way, I’d stop and sit at the Kahlil Gibran memorial, set just off the street. This little-visited sanctuary is […]
Autumn Poetry
William Stafford is one of my favorite poets. Like other writers I love, he infuses the ordinary with a sense of the eternal. Both of the following poems by William Stafford can be found online at the William Stafford Archives. This website is a wonderful resource – you can find electronic copies of the Stafford’s […]
“You think your pain…”
I’ve been trying to think of a way to explain my absence from the blog for the past month, without going into specifics that I’m not comfortable sharing. This morning, while reading a book on reading instruction (Nancy Atwell’s The Reading Zone), I came across a quote that I wanted to share to get myself […]
Symbols
While discussing The Outsiders with my class, I asked the students what they thought it meant when the dying character Johnny tells his best friend Ponyboy to “stay gold.” Students said things like stay good, stay true to yourself, don’t get tough, don’t change. Then, one boy raised his hand. “I think all of those are […]
Ah Sunflower!
My freshman year of college, I took a general survey course of English literature. First semester, we went over Beowulf and Chaucer and that sort of thing, through the Renaissance. In the second semester, we got to the Romantics. When I was assigned Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, I naturally assumed the poem “Ah […]
