I hear you

This early morning I’m catching up with Mark Brown, who appears on the web as Brillig01, and his blog Cuddle Ugly, an allusion to one of my all-time favorite poems, Kissing the Ugly, which he has recently republished online.
His mission statement, from Poetry & The Struggle to be Heard:
I’m a dangerous man. I value poetry. [...]

Color me cynical – or is that jaded?

After Sherry Chandler’s fabulous post on irony this morning, I’ve been contemplating a comment I got on a critique from my instructor at Wildacres earlier this month.  The passage in question:
“Where you find food, you find drummers.  Where you find drummers, you find pop-tarts.  Take drummers and pop-tarts, toss in a few shots of ouzo, [...]

A character I couldn’t have created

Seen at the Post Office:
A nun in full length habit, wimple and sneakers, with a cell phone holster on her rope belt, getting out of a white minivan, carrying a paper shopping bag from Macy’s.

Home again

After a wonderful two weeks in North Carolina, I’m back home and trying to re-acclimate to the Real World.  It was absolute heaven — no cell phone, no cooking, cleaning or responsibilities other than to sit in a rocking chair and write.
And write I did, for 8 hours a day.  I rewrote the first third [...]

On vacation

I’m taking off tonight for an intensive 2 week writers’ workshop in the North Carolina mountains. It’s going to be a true retreat, with no tv, radio, or cell phone to break the mood. I will, however, have access to satellite internet. But I need this time to focus on my novel and hopefully [...]

There is no happy ending

I spent a decade unsuccessfully attempting to write salable historical romance.  After 4 completed novels, I gave up.  My problem?  I couldn’t do interpersonal conflict.  Characters tormented by internal conflicts?  No problem.  Conflict between the protags and the bad guy?  No problem.  But between hero and heroine, who were supposed to love each other?  It [...]

Psych of Gender, Final Paper

I only got a 95 on this.  He said it was more a social analysis than a psychological one.  He’s right.  I don’t really get the difference.  I wish I had a chance to do it over.
Discrimination As A Pathway to Violence in Enforcing Gender Norms
Angie Zapata, 18, Greeley, Colorado. Duanna Johnson, 43, Memphis, Tennessee. [...]

Psych of Gender week 7 paper 1

Psychology of Gender
Gender Outlaw, Part II
To read Gender Outlaw, one would think that Kate Bornstein has spent most of her life in a vacuum, elementally alone and only occasionally brushing against the world of another. In addressing the reactions of people in her life to her transition, what to me is as interesting as [...]

Psych of Gender Week 7 paper 2

Psych of Gender
Gender Observation and Imagination, 7-2
For my gender observation exercise I sat in a coffee shop in downtown Spokane which is frequented heavily by young adults ages 14 to 30. I found that gender differences were more exaggerated with this age group than with older adults and therefore more interesting.
One of the biggest [...]

Psych of Gender week 6 paper

Psych of Gender Assignment 6-1
Gender Outlaw: on men, women, and the rest of us by Kate Bornstein
When Kate was a small boy, she had a chair in a dark corner of the basement that she pretended was her gender change machine. She could sit in it, become a girl, and imagine great adventures for [...]

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