Tonight I’m getting ready for my annual writing retreat and thinking about how the ribbon twists and weaves and goes round and round. I had the thrilldom of reading these words from LeAnn Clark (the Kansas teacher on the left in this picture) to the North Dakota family that gave the money to plant these books in an Ethiopian school:
Every time I spend a few days at home in Lawrence, I miss Jonathan and Hiwot and Ellemae and Noh. Last month, I got to see them (and Lanie) in their new home. It was sweet to roast marshmallows on the deck and watch Ellemae and a friend build a house for butterflies on the
I come from a family of travelers. Oh, they didn’t start out that way. My dad, who grew up a skinny boy picking vegetables on the neighbors’ farms, thought he might live in eastern Oregon his whole life and never see the capital city of Oregon. But World War II took the five Kurtz boys
They create schools and teach in schools–schools in the middle of cities and in villages and under trees…schools that nurture imagination and creativity and thinking…schools that care for and about people’s minds and bodies and spirits…schools that are places of reading and thinking and beauty. They also GO to school and take it seriously and ask questions
In Pittsburgh, my family and I took ourselves over to the National Aviary in the park near my daughter’s apartment. You didn’t know America had a national aviary? Well, it does. And it has eagles and parrots and birds I never knew were in this world. I’ve written before about how I didn’t have my
I’ve been known to say to writing students in the Vermont College MFA program, Life is chaos; fiction isn’t. Fiction is pattern and plan. The pattern can’t be an obvious, clunky one, but stories live and breathe by cause-and-effect, action-and-reaction, repeating elements that echo and resonate deep in our minds and hearts. But is life chaos?
I’ve mentioned my big AH-HAH as I was doing research for the Lanie books and stopped to chat with a gardner near Mount Auburn cemetery, where Jim McCoy was taking me to see favorite Boston birding spots. Native flowers feed native insects feed native birds. AH-HAH. My follow-up reading and thinking led me smack into monarch butterflies. AH-HAH!
Oh boy. I can’t help it. I am in love. I’ve never shared a product link before, but I can’t help but think about all the birders out there who told me they’re thrilled to get the girls they care about engaged in birding. No matter what kind of dolls hang around those girls’ houses, don’t you think those
All the boys in this picture from Kurtz camping trips past are young men, now. (My brother Chris–the one on the bottom of the pile–is forever young.) But the family gatherings haven’t stopped…and neither has the camping. I’m just home from a trip to Portland where I spent a week of companionship with my mom, while my
When I was a girl in Ethiopia, I didn’t visit parks or playgrounds. (It makes me sad, now, when I’m in Addis Ababa to notice how few public, safe spaces there are for children to play.) In Maji, there wasn’t even one store, let alone a mall or movie theater. But when my sisters and I wanted
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