Happy Saint Patrick’s Day: The Indomitable Human Spirit
*That nun is a bottle opener. The Guinness is a saint. *Favorite Irish song: Paul Brady’s “Arthur McBride” (original recording) *Favorite kind of Guinness: from the tap, not too cold. From the can otherwise. *Favorite film: In the Name of the Father, In Bruge after that. 😏 *Favorite Irish food: Curry. 😏 *Favorite Irish literature:…
Preparing to Teach Online: Lights, Camera, Action.
The whole of academia is metamorphosing into a virtual classroom in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Many educators plan to use Zoom or Blackboard Collaborate. I am worried that the increased traffic on those platforms will be a problem. With that in mind, I plan to use YouTube, WordPress, and my already existent…
Paradigm Shift: The Year of COVID-19
Addendum: One particular reason that I plan to post course videos on YouTube is that it’s likely that online educational platforms won’t be able to handle the massive spike in activity.
Into the Everglades: Tomorrow’s Expedition, Birds, and Photography
Photo by Brian Kushner
Part II of Today’s Live Typecast.
Reporting live from the site of Broward College’s North Regional Library: Activity really picked up in today’s second half. We moved the tables a little closer to the foot traffic. (Not sure why they buried us in the archives. Conspiracies abound!) We asked one bookseller if she could move her sign over. The organizers of…
“It’s Your Write”: Writing and Typewriter Event at Broward College North Regional Library
There’s plenty to do this spring. This year’s wRites of Spring Literary Festival, organized by yours truly, will host visiting author Nicole Dennis-Benn, whose novels, Here Comes the Sun and Patsy, explore how Jamaican culture intersects with issues of class, color, gender, and sexuality. The title of the festival is “A Woman’s Voice: Class, Color,…
Upgrading the Office at School.
Have you ever watched one of those nature documentaries about colorful island birds that organize and reorganize their nests, looking for the perfect design of twig and leaf? They chirp, they flit, they bounce, and they gather until the nest becomes a Platonic form shining in an abstract firmament. Well, that’s me. I don’t seem…
Setbacks and New Strategies for a Time Travel Story
I have stumbled into one of the writing traps that I warn my students against: too much plot for a short story. As my story ideas progressed, it became more and more evident that I could not fit them into short-story form. It’s time to eliminate the excess. This wrong turn put me into a…
The Untimely Typewriter:Daily Writings Against the Tides of Distraction 