At this point, I’m old enough that I’ve had several moments in life when I’ve gotten to see the same event from new points of view and realized its greatness in whole new ways. I’ll give you two examples. When I was a little kid, I took ice skating lessons in Evanston, Illinois. Every Friday…
“Why”…Wednesdays
194. Why Try Again
[I took the photo above from sheknows.com.] Do you remember the first time you tried to sit up? To walk? To eat solid foods? To spell words? To draft a novel? To pass the bar exam? It’s likely that the first time you tried to sit up, you fell and that your first steps ended…
193. Why Seek Help
I screen-shot the above from an article in Psychology Today about asking for help. I like that in the image, it’s not clear if the person on the top also had help or if the person on the bottom couldn’t manage the climb alone, but it’s clear that the person above is helping. Over the…
192. Why Treating isn’t Cheating
The photo above is a screenshot of the Google image search I did for “treat.” I’m amused that (1) all are edible and (2) a couple pictures show dogs’ treats and the rest are human desserts. When I had the idea for this post, I wasn’t thinking only about food, but the message works nonetheless….
191. Why Diversify
When I did a Google image search for the word diversity, the top twelve images (above) all showed people with different color skin. I was thinking about the idea of diversity for a different reason. When I first got to Hotchkiss, twenty-five years ago, the school assigned my newlywed husband and me a couple of personal…
190. Why Quit Now
I took the screenshot above from the Wumo website, whose funny comics you might want to check out. One trope that comes up often in romance novels is the idea that two people are attracted to each other but see too many obstacles between themselves and a relationship. Their “cure” often involves going all-in to…
189. Why Romance 2.0
The image above comes from a Google image search for “the clinch cover.” I’m delighted to find that not every image shows a MF romance of two cisgender white people. If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you saw my post from February 17, 2021 in which I wrote five reasons I love…
188. Why No Tests
The image above comes from a site arguing against the PARCC test. While the article from 2015 is interesting, it has nothing to do with the kinds of tests I’m talking about today. I’ve been thinking about secret tests. For example, if I want to find out if someone will have my back, I might…
187. Why Embrace Childhood Snacks
Last month, I spent eight days in Salt Lake City, Utah reading students’ AP English Literature and Composition exams. The College Board runs the show and does a lot to keep the hundreds of AP readers productive, accurate, and on-task. We all get to work promptly at 8:00am, start lunch at 12:30pm, and leave for…
186. Why Names
I found this cool GIF of the most common assigned-girl-at-birth baby names on The Atlantic’s website. I was born in a year when the odds were pretty good that I’d become a Lisa, a Jennifer, or a Michelle. The Michelle part seems funny because I recently went to an event with two friends, both WAY younger…