ALL Our Lives Should be a Circle!
But a recent article I read in National Geographic confirmed the alarming amount of garbage filling the world. Everything we use –footwear, clothes, plastic goods, metal and machinery, and food– its all still with us, in various stages of disgusting decomposition. The figures documenting this waste are astounding.
WINGS UP! Teachers in Westfield, MA Cultivate Budding Writers
Eighty enthusiastic students peppered me with questions about the writing process last week. They were third graders at the Munger Hill Elementary School in Westfield Mass. Teacher Deb Chouinard coordinated an author visit with the rest of the third grade teaching team and I was the lucky author.
Editing is complete!
Flirtation Walk, the first book in the three book series Journey of Cornelia Rose finally completed the editing phase!
I’ll Be Right There
I can’t even count the number of times I have said, “Just a minute, I’ll be right there,” to my kids. Embroiled in the minutia required to keep a family fed, clothed and running, I often missed some of the fun, or at least, joined it already in progress. Eventually, it became a habit — I would be so busy getting everything prepared, packing, figuring out logistics, and then once we got arrived, worrying about when we had to leave and how we were getting home, that I forgot to make time to enjoy the event.
BABY IT’S BAD OUT THERE!
The #MeToo movement has successfully gotten the winter song Baby It’s Cold Outside banned from play on many radio stations around the country. How ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ Went From Parlor Act to Problematic. I am agast. Not that I don’t applaud the group for using this song as a discussion starter to show the messages deeply engrained in our culture that promote sexual aggression. But really, this is another case of a ‘one issue’ group forcing a modern cause célèbre on a song written decades ago that merely reflected acceptable mores of a different time.
Retroactive Censure
In June the American Library Association (ALA) renamed the Laura Ingalls Wilder Children’s Book Series Award. This honor was taken away from Mrs. Wilder because her memoirs honestly and accurately depict the fear and distrust between the Western Pioneers and the Indigenous People — from the settler’s point of view. I don’t want this issue to fade from view after its 15 minutes of fame! This retroactive censorship strips the praise and esteem given to an author with little formal education who suffered through extreme deprivation and yet still managed to publish a well written, popular children’s book series.