Square Peg, Round Hole: Who Loses?

I should be tearing my clothes in mourning and gnashing my teeth in torment:  my son, a junior in high school, is failing English.  Failing badly–or maybe failing superbly.  At this writing, his average is like most adults’ ages, a 30-something.  Instead of crying from the rooftops, though, I am going to bat for him [...]

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A Real Teacher…

If you say that with the same breathless enthusiasm Nicole Kidman uses when saying, “…a real actress” in Moulin Rouge, you’ll have the right spin.  I’ve had the opportunity to sub for a friend an entire week; my gig runs through this Friday.  What have I learned from the experience?
I now know:
–that ten-year-olds are inexhaustible [...]

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Success vs. Winning

I ran into one of the successful mothers at my daughter’s school the other day; I gauge her to be successful because she is employed full time, likes her job, her kids, and her husband, has a college degree and dresses well.  She is also thinner, younger, and prettier than me.  She asked me how [...]

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Just Say No.

What’s so bad about failure?  According to the NY Times,  “ailing banks need another $75 billion”–or what?  They will close, their remaining assets will float along, be snapped up by someone else, and life will go on.  I am not mathematical, political, or pragmatic.  I maintain a naive outlook because I like to write stories [...]

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Settings

He sat in the cubicle, surrounded by diamond-stamped metal walls that resisted graffitti and germs.  The deep thrumming of the engines tickled the plates of his skull.  He leaned his head against the wall and the ship’s noises melded with the sounds inside his mind, blood pulse to revolution, inhalations to ship’s exhaust.  He could be [...]

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