Durham is the most encouraging place I have ever lived. This is a city full of people who pull for each other, which is good because it’s also a city full of people with dreams and things they want to see happen. In our town of about a quarter of a million people we had…
sometime in the night I will be robbed of an hour of sleep in order that we might save daylight the thieves will leave nothing butthe promise the hour will be savedkept safely and returned in the fall still — what if this was the nightI was to sleep deep enough to wake truly rested…
A couple of nights ago, I posted what has come to be known as the Kony 2012 Video as my blog post. I learned of it through my eleventh graders. One of them was in a documentary studies class I taught last year in which we watched “Ghosts of Rwanda,” a Frontline piece looking at…
“The difference betweenjoy and despair,” she said,“has little to do with circumstances and everything to do withwhat you choose to see.” “You’re making that up,”he replied. She took his facebetween her handsand stared into his eyesas if they held galaxies.“I love you,” she said,“with all of my heart.” And he believed her. Peace,Milton
I don’t want you to read today. Watch instead. Then do something: Kony 2012. Peace,Milton
Twice, today, I got to feel like a teacher. My school is understaffed, which means I teach a couple of courses out of my area. OK, out of the six classes I teach (out of six periods of the day), four of them are not English. My schedule, this term, looks like this: Period One:…
One of the joys of teaching English is vocabulary study. Every week or two, I turn the page to a new list of words for my students – expunge, bequeath, cogent, supercilious – and then put them through the paces of the exercises that come in their books hoping that a few of the words…
Our former foster daughter came to Durham this weekend because she is hurting and needed to be cared for. The only words I can find tonight belong to Patty Griffin and her song, “When It Don’t Come Easy” because it is such a tangible description of what love is: “if you break down, I’ll drive…
saturday night at ben and jerry’sthey were the only ones in the placebeside the two behind the counterthey could be identified bythe flavors they had ordered:peanut and banana greek yogurtnew york super fudge chunkchocolate with sprinklesjimmy fallon’s late night snackbut that doesn’t tell the whole storythere’s also the flavor of painone lost her husband not…
My little school is imploding. I have much the same feeling as I did when I worked in my first restaurant which was a small tea house owned by a woman who had always wanted to own a restaurant, so she found an empty space, took out a second mortgage, spent a lot of money,…