Starting to get crazy busy. I’m at the top of the rollercoaster about to head down. I start teaching at two schools next week and am already teaching at one that started last week. And i’m writing a book. I’m scared. I’m exhilarated. Last night after teaching and then a three hour meeting I came [...]

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I’m so ready for my Winter Break that all I can think of is clichés. Last night were my last two classes. Now just a bit of grading and i’m home free. And, i’ve got so many things I need and want to blog about: My Christmas Wishlist My Winter Break Reads The Things I [...]

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Van Johnson has died (this has been a bad week for classic movie stars!). He was 92. Van Johnson was often described as having “affable charm and boyish good looks.” He was especially good in the MGM musicals of the 1940s, though as a dramatic actor he was often underrated. Here’s Van (and June Allyson–a [...]

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Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know. The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity whiich you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as a necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging [...]

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F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a letter dated July 29, 1940 once said about Hollywood: Isn’t Hollywood a dump—in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement. (from notablequotes.com) cranky much? Well, I don’t think [...]

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I’m trying to blog more regularly– even if it’s just short snippets. And, you may notice that in the blog i’m trying to focus on writing (and my writing) more often– in the hopes that it will spur me on to finish this draft of my book. Not that I won’t still muse about T-shirts [...]

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Last night had another great Creative Nonfiction class. Can I just say how much I love teaching a night class like this? Eager, enthusiastic students who love to talk about the readings. And last night’s reading were a doozy: 1. A short profile of Lily Koppel’s book The Red Leather Diary, about how, in 2002 [...]

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So the other wonderful thing that happened as a result of being the guest speaker last week in my friend Sydney’s Creative Writing class was that I was introduced to two incredible new (for me) writers: Lidia Yuknavitch and Stanton Michaels These are two writers whose names have been on my radar but who, for [...]

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What a great week. I’m loving the two classes i’m teaching: Advanced Composition and Creative Nonfiction (a workshop). In the comp class I focus on Media; we talk about politics, pop culture, movies/TV/music. This week we watched the documentary “The Bronze Screen: 100 Years of the Latino Image in Hollywood” and discussed stereotypes in media. [...]

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Dag! No time to really blog today– and I wanted to write about my experience yesterday as a special guest in my colleague, Sydney Brown’s Intro to Creative Writing class. I read a short-short creative nonfiction piece that I had published a couple of years ago and then answered questions from the class about it. [...]

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