“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be Notorious.” Rumi Today I started teaching a class “Living Out Loud ” for the Transformative Language Arts Network . The first class addresses how fear and shame silence us. What do we fear when we consider sharing a…
My old high school is the home of the Vikings. Thousand Island High School is smack dab between Clayton, my hometown and Cape Vincent. My class was the first graduating class to leave Clayton Central School and go to TI High. This was a long time ago and I expected…
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” Henry David Thoreau The West Texas Hummingbird Feeder Cam is nestled in the mountains outside Fort Davis, Texas, at an elevation of over 6200 feet. This site hosts a total of 24 Perky Pet…
This is my friend Steffani Raff’s new book , The Ravenous Gown. It’s a beautifully written and thoughtful book about girls and beauty. I wish I had read this book when I was a girl. I wish my mother had read this book when she was a girl and…
It was 1965, the year of the aluminum Christmas tree and the revolving colored lights. Everything was changing in my hometown, Clayton, NY. We got a stop sign at the corner of James and Riverside Drive. My brothers wore their hair long and my sisters pinned up their skirts on…
My father, Carl Carpenter, was seventeen years old and a junior in St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Clayton, New York when he enrolled in the National Guard to “make a buck on a Saturday morning.” Every weekend he and a bunch of guys from Clayton hitchhiked to Armory Square…
It took my Aunt Marguerite several hours to realize my Uncle Eddard wasn’t dozing. He was dead. “Well, that man never did talk much,” she said in her own defense. I know you’re not suppose to laugh at funerals or at the bedsides of the dying but when my father’s…