Last week, I asked a retired friend how she planned to close out the summer.  She said she’d do what she always did, join friends at the annual play festival in Ashland, Oregon. Ashland is a quaint town in the middle of rural Oregon, dedicated to recreating Shakespeare’s Elizabet

If there is one area of expertise everyone feels they have, it’s in education.  All of us have been students in the classroom, right? We’ve all experienced good and bad teachers.  We know what we’d like to change.  But how to do it remains the question.  After Bill Clinton�

When I was in the 4th grade, I went from being a good student to being a dunce.  For some reason, I couldn’t master long division.  I fell to the bottom of the class in my teacher’s eyes and in my self-esteem.  The harder I tried, the more my frustration grew, ending in fear. 

Susan Stoner and I have been producing, Just Read it, a 10 minute YouTube book review series for over two years.  When I first proposed it, I doubted Susan or her cameraman husband, George, would be keen.  But they agreed to give it a try, and we’ve been having fun ever since.  W

Before the internet and Wikipedia, when I needed information, I dialed the reference librarian at my local library.  The materials I needed could be wide-ranging.  How to spell pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is one example.  Or, I might want to know the population of

A woman joined me at the retirement center where I sat drinking coffee and sighed.  “My doctor wants me to lose weight, but I don’t eat that much.  I skip breakfast, have a muffin mid-morning and only sit for a meal at dinner.  Still, I’m gaining weight.”  My companion suf

Before I took my seat on the county board of commissioners, my predecessor was famous for saying, “Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.” In my experience, he and Mark Twain, to whom the quote is attributed, were wrong  After a year of the budget cycle,  I no longer believed

While sitting with a guest for tea at the retirement center, a gentleman, to whom I’d never spoken, paused by our table.  “You’re the writer, aren’t you?”  As I strive to be one,  I nodded. “ Well, I wanted to tell you about the greatest opening to a novel I’ve ever r

Someone on Facebook asked the question, “What’s the one food you won’t eat.”  I replied, “animals.”  Soon, a few “likes” attached to my comment.  Some vegetarians were cheering me on.  Or, maybe they were folks who wanted eliminate meat from their diet but haven’

In his popular novel, The Overstory, Richard Powers creates a woman who devotes her life to the study of trees.  Her diligence rewards her.  She makes an astounding discovery.  Trees communicate with each other through the air.  Though her research is scrupulous, her male colleagu