It was weird. Rick, my former PhD advisor and an established scholar, quit academia and was running a shop. I forget what he sold. He welcomed me with open arms, chatted with me briefly, and walked away. He had another customer to serve. Just as I turned around, my eyes met with Henrietta, my college…
Category: Another World Within
Shakespeare Authorship Question
On the face of it, Who wrote the plays of “Shakespeare”? is not an interesting question. The answer is “Shakespeare.” People will make objections and say “what if?” or “isn’t it true that…?” But these are easily answered. I used to get asked this question quite a lot. Comes with the territory of working towards…
Disability and Queerness: Celebrate the Whole Person
Talking through Issues with my Writing Community I rely on my writing community a lot. For inspiration. Support. Feedback. They’re an important part of my life, and not just as a writer. So recently, when I was talking to Adam (mentor, 2 Rules of Writing co-founder, good friend) I mentioned that I’d been having a…
Real Answers (Sunday Summary)
It’s the first Sunday of Pride Month. There are parades and celebrations taking place in many places. Philadelphia is holding their big Pride celebration this weekend, with a parade, festival and other events. And yet they’re the latest city to be dealing with a mass shooting, too, after fourteen people were shot last night on…
Pride on the Calendar! (Caturday Questions)
Part of what brings us together as humans is that we celebrate anniversaries. Cats, of course, have no patience for keeping a calendar. To this day, Big Cat has no idea why every year on June first (Big Cat does NOT know that it’s June first) his Human-Mom serves up a big platter of rainbow…
My PhD Advisor (A Good Teacher is Hard to Find: 3)
Page is hard to write about. Despite working with her for over 4 years, she remains a mystery to me. She was my PhD supervisor, and we had a bumpy start. To be fair, I was partly responsible for that bumpy start because I didn’t know what I was getting into when I applied to do…
Uvalde School Shooting: One Parent’s Perspective
I don’t want to write this piece. And you might be asking: “Why not write something else?” Because I have to write this piece. I’m in such a white-hot rage that I can’t think of anything else to do. So there will be frayed edges and loose ends and subjects I pick up and drop….
Real Questions (Sunday Summary)
This has been a difficult week. There’s been so much for us to be sad about, to be angry about, to be frustrated by. We are so familiar with this cycle. An act of violence. A flood of emotions like shock, horror, outrage and grief. A series of platitudes and mock-action. Then a return to…
Mysteries (Caturday Questions)
It was just one of those mysteries. A classic whodunit. Human-Mom emerged from the bedroom to find what appeared to be a cat-turd on the floor. She rounded up the usual suspects. But who could have been responsible? Well, it depends what kind of mystery you’re writing. Big Cat, Little Cat We were the Mysteries…
“The Good Parts”: The Real Sex Ed
There has been a lot of discussion of limiting children’s access to sex ed. But that may not be possible. Sex ed is all around us. The most you can limit is your engagement with their education. And why would you want to limit that? My First Sex Ed Classroom: A Slumber Party In first…