Tag: life

  • Dangerous Liaisons

    I taught the novel Dangerous Liaisons for many years with great success, and I watched the movie version with my undergrads in class.  In their final essays, they told me, in ingenious ways, why the book’s topic, cruelty, had to be well written with care, and how setting the novel in a different time period worked…

  • ON RE-FRIENDING

    It’s no big surprise that healthy people in their later years want to and know how to make new friends.  It took me a long time to figure out that setting boundaries for some friends, including family, and getting busy with a group of other newer friends focused on helping others was the key to…

  • PATIENCE

    PATIENCE

    My cab broadsided another cab in an intersection, and my face slammed into the plexiglas divider, my nose broke, and my mouth was severely cut on the coin cup. When the ambulence arrived, the police told my cab driver to hold my purse and stand over there. When I was extracted from the cab, he…

  • TEACHING POETRY

    TEACHING POETRY

    My students are SO bright!  They noticed and identified every subversive, poetic image in these lyrics by Sly & The Family Stone.   That’s why teaching poetry is so important. I hand out a packet of poems and lyrics, and my students have a full day or two to mark it up, circle, and underline whatever…

  • FORGETTING IT’S A MAN’S WORLD

    FORGETTING IT’S A MAN’S WORLD

    Sometimes, I forget what a f*&ked up, paranoid, white, straight man’s world my husband deals with most days, mostly because I am way too busy dealing with the f*@ked up world most women have to deal with.   My husband’s a teacher and a lifelong public servant, so his time is spent writing lectures, grading papers,…

  • THE BIG HOT POTATO: OPIOIDS

    THE BIG HOT POTATO: OPIOIDS

    I had oral surgery many years ago by an excellent crack squad army of professional surgeons.  The lead doctor, a first-generation American-born citizen, was very proud of his family of immigrants who moved to Raleigh many years ago.  Perhaps you have been in this situation: the point, before the surgery, when the doctor explains how…

  • ROLLER SKATING AND WHEN IT’S TIME TO QUIT

    This morning, I saw an aerial shot of Columbus Circle, which reminded me of our first time living in Manhattan in the 1990s. In traffic, I used to roller skate from our West Side apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, weaving between cars and running red lights, all the way to Central Park, skate the entire big…