No, this blog entry isn’t a game of One-of-These-Things-Is-Not-Like-the-Others. Last week, I attended the Reading Artifacts Summer Institute at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Many thanks to all those who recommended, organized, and participated; I gained some amazing perspectives on the work I do as an aspiring historian. But…
Last Tuesday night, I read a book that made me think about rabbis.
Alternate title: a pretend essay on Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (Free Press, 2010) . “Pretend” because if a student handed in something like this to me and called it an “essay,” I would probably send it back, but this is a blog, so…
At the beginning of May, I got my hair cut short for the second time in my life.
(If you’re wondering about the title, Google it. I dare you.* In other news, HAPPY FATHER’S DAY and MY DAD IS AWESOME.) Once upon a time, there was a teenager named Sarah. She was part of a student Shakespeare-in-the-Park training program. Among other roles, one of the parts she played…
But first, happy belated birthday, Juliana, and happy early birthday, Tory! And many more for both of you! Item one: when I was a kid, we sometimes had a badminton net strung up at our cottage.
The fiction writer’s dilemma is this: you can’t improve without feedback from readers. But you can’t get feedback from readers without showing them things that definitely need improvement.
The time is out of joint. Or at least, you’d be forgiven for thinking so if you read my Facebook feed last Tuesday morning. My friends (and I, I should make clear) are mostly left-leaning. Many of us were pleased to see Jack Layton’s NDP form a historic majority of…
When presented with a neat set of categories, characters, or individuals that seem to parcel the world into four, it’s difficult not to want to place oneself in one: my element is Earth, I’m melancholic, I’d get Sorted into Hufflepuff, I’m Bea Arthur, I’m Miranda, I’m Ben Grimm, I’m Agravain,…