From an early age, I knew I wanted to teach. I adored my second-grade teacher. Her name was Gladys Louden. She was warm and kind and read out loud to us every day. My favorite was The Boxcar Children, and I attribute much of my lifelong love of reading to Miss Louden. I wanted to…
Do you ever have weeks where a bunch of little things go wrong and somehow, it feels overwhelmingly distracting and frustrating? Well, I had one of those weeks recently. My PayPal account was hacked, and suddenly, I was sending out hundreds of invoices for hundreds of dollars to folks I’d never heard of. It took…
My older son got to attend the Democratic Convention, and I got to watch it for four nights on television. We had fun yesterday on the phone comparing notes on what we saw, heard, and felt. To say we were both inspired is the understatement of the year. The attendees looked like America—a rich tapestry…
For the past two years, I’ve been working with a gifted teenager on her writing at the Louisville Academy of Fine Arts. She’s currently writing a novel, and the quality of her work excites me. Our weekly sessions include reviewing her pages, as well as discussing craft articles and talking about writing-related challenges. I often…