Over many years, I've become something of an "essay whisperer," helping kids write that all-important and much-dreaded college application essay. Sometimes parents ask me how I got their extremely writing-averse kid to actually write and even to feel excited about it. Here's how: I pay attention to their ideas. I ask lots of questions and [...]
Seeking a bookmark this morning I came across a small envelope I made out of paper purchased years ago in Venice. Inside I discovered a tiny piece of Lokta paper completely filled with a list of things I love: color * my eyes * cats * green places * trees * sunlight * sunsets [...]
The second proverb in the series, this one a meditation on our blessed inter-dependence. It unpacks its meaning and its opportunity in a couple important ways and to my mind, it has never felt truer. Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine. People live in each other's shadows. As one beloved Irish teacher used [...]
Yesterday, a student asked me to write a letter of recommendation for her application to Harvard. At the end of her note, she asked for "constructive feedback" on how she could grow. This is my reply to her request, and I'm sharing it in hopes that it might reach the eyes of other high school [...]
Read: it’s your civic duty. I have never before felt this more clearly or more urgently. All summer I’ve been teaching students about the necessity of reading critically and evaluating sources with greater awareness and discernment. This is a new idea for many students and I’m aware that it can strike them as [...]
Teaching is really the best game in town if you ask me because it stimulates learning - by which I mean, my own! I faced an interesting challenge this morning and meeting it was fun and fascinating. One of my students asked me to translate a tale collected over Christmas 1930 by the Irish writer [...]
Hello, friends! Here is the second video in my new series, "Creative Hurts and How to Heal Them." This one is all about that scary bugbear, CRITICISM. How do we handle it? Is there such a thing as "good" criticism? How do we put it in perspective? I also share my own story of receiving [...]
Have you ever been rejected from a festival, gig, journal, or contest - and then felt the burn and sting of that "no"? I sure have. I've just made a video with four strategies that help me deal with the rejection that is part and parcel of being an artist in the world. Happens to [...]
You've gotta play to win! This is just as true of music and poetry and art and love as it is of the lottery. And the good news is that we're a lot more likely to actually WIN in those games because the odds are always in our favor. Ask, try, submit, propose, invite, query, [...]
The right tools for the job give us wings. They are collaborators, conspirators, co-authors and co-creators. With use, with long relationship, they become ensouled. They become more than the sum of their materials and parts. They become friends. This is true of musical instruments, brushes and paints, recording equipment, ballet shoes, and garden trowels. It's [...]
