I was eleven years old when I watched THE WAVE on ABC’s Afterschool Special. You may remember the short movie, which was based on The Third Wave experiment conducted by teacher Ron Jones at a Palo Alto’s Cubberley high school in 1967. The film left a strong impression on me, and I’ve thought about it many times over the years. I recently found it on YouTube (see below). While the video quality is poor, for anyone who remembers seeing it as a kid, it’s worth watching a few minutes for a trip down memory lane. I remember the film...
Blog Archives
Kayak Morning by Roger Rosenblatt, and other books on grief
I first came across the work of Roger Rosenblatt at a local bookstore, where the paperback of his memoir, Making Toast, was on display on the front table. When Rosenblatt’s 38-year-old daughter died suddenly of a heart defect no one knew she had, he and his wife Ginny moved in with their widowed son-in-law to care for their three small grandchildren. Making Toast is a beautiful and deeply painful book, shot through with the author’s raw grief. Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats, takes up where Making Toast left off. At the time of its writing,...
How to Purchase a Piano
We’ve decided it’s time to start our son in piano lessons. Of course, lessons mean practice–every day–which means we’ll be needing a piano. A piano becomes an integral part of the home, just like a beloved sofa or reading chair, so before you buy one, be sure to do your research. When I was growing up, we always had a piano in the living room. My mother would sit down and play almost every day, and my older sister, who, unlike me, had a knack for playing, spent countless hours practicing there. I was never very good at piano,...
Pure by Julianna Baggott
Pure, by Julianna Baggott A powerful post-apocalyptic novel by the author of more than a dozen books for children and adults. In the Dome live the Pures, persons who escaped the Detonations that destroyed most of Earth. Outside live the wretches, the ravaged survivors whose bodies fused with objects, animals, and each other during the blast. The wretches have been taught the the Dome watches over them benevolently, and that its residents will one day come to save them, while the Pures believe they survived because they are better, kinder, smarter human beings. Those on the outside, they are...
Best Apps for Writers
Hey, if you can’t imagine parting with your moleskin, I totally understand. But if you’re ready to take the leap from “don’t I look spiffy in my beret at the cafe” to “I actually wrote 1500 words today and I know where they are,” you might want to consider Notebooks. I came to Notebooks reluctantly after misplacing more physical notebooks than I care to count. Sometimes I think of all the novels I started, all the chapters lost somewhere in the labyrinthine cabinets and closets of my home, and I get very melancholy. So recently, I bought a stylus...
The international bestseller about one woman’s search for a missing child…
"Mesmerizing." ~Library Journal, starred review.
Stop dreaming, start writing!
