It Takes a Poem; Living with poetry’s power
I went to grade school at St. Francis of Assisi, a Pepto Bismol-colored concrete building in the humid flatlands of South Florida. When I was in third grade, Sister Margaret Anina announced a poetry contest. I don’t remember that we were studying poetry or had learned much about it. Poetry back then was another unknown enterprise, and I had not learned to fear it. I just remember the contest. We were to choose a color and write a poem. I went for green and composed a three-stanza, singsongy bit of twaddle. It was my nine-year-old masterpiece....
read moreThat teacher; A love letter to Mrs. Permenter
It’s a Thursday afternoon, halfway through the school year. My 11th and 12th graders file in for English class. “Are we reading today, Ms. Kelly?” Tyler asks as he holds up his copy of “The Lovely Bones.” We are, I tell him. The room hushes. The students open their books and lower their heads. One by one, we circle the room; each reads a few paragraphs aloud. We make a soft chorus of papery whispers as we turn the pages in concert. They are quiet and engrossed. Their fidgety adolescent behavior is silenced by the world they hold in their...
read moreWaiting for snow; Momentarily quieting all the noise
I spent the first 18 years of my life living in South Florida where I spoke the language of sand, intuited the rhythms of the ocean, and trafficked in seashells. All this worked just fine for the wallpaper of my young life until this time of year rolled around. I wanted snow. Christmas television shows featured well-groomed people in coats delighted by falling snowflakes. Holiday cards showcased sleighs and earnest carolers in mittens or fireplaces blazing at warp factor 10. There was Frosty and the Abominable Snowman (who was scary on the...
read moreSoul train; Lighting the path
November 2, 1999. It is late afternoon when I board the train from Bratislava to Budapest. I’ve taken this three-hour train ride down the spine of Eastern Europe every Wednesday for the past two months, as I commute from my home in the Slovak capital city to the Hungarian capital city to teach. My coat stays on as I slide into an empty car. The seats are torn; the curtains are thickened with dust. Cryptic graffiti splays across the walls, and the car smells like a Goodwill store. The winter skies outside appear tufted with scouring pads....
read moreAll the way home; Signs of life from across the world
It’s 2001, and I live in Slovakia, an overlookable country with a language light on vowels. I’ve been here in Bratislava, the capital city, long enough to decode the essentials and enjoy the superficial mastery that bleeds into a muted smugness peculiar to ex-pats. But I’ve not been here long enough for social fluency. Instead I know just enough to be humbled by all I will never decipher. I teach journalism in this freshly minted country. My students are the Gen Y of post-Communist Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia,...
read moreRain now and then; Memories of furious water
Late August in Flagstaff. Outside it rains cold, fat and purposeful drops. I’m inside, and reminded by NPR about the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew. In a shimmering flash I am back in Miami Beach, back in Florida, back enfolded in the landscape that forged me. The water and salt. The crippling humidity and hot weather mania. A tribe of beloveds remains there, a tribe that includes my mother and two brothers. It still feels like home to me. And so does Flagstaff. Standing in my apartment at 7,000 feet in this little mountain town...
read moreHalf a world away; Communicating with the outer reaches
My father died unexpectedly when I was 26 years old. My parents divorced when I was in high school; my mother remarried and moved to New Zealand. On the day of my father’s death, my brothers and sister and I tearfully converged at his two-bedroom home to divvy up his meager worldly possessions: thousands of tools, books and some dour artwork that used to hang in my grandfather’s house. The only thing I wanted was Dad’s oversized world atlas. For me, it was the holy book. In the 1970s, when I fancied myself a tragically misunderstood teenager,...
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