So much of what they'd internalized about writing was performance for a grade/teacher/rubric that seeing writing as the ends in itself was very foreign. I don't think it has to be this way. The desire to communicate and be heard, to impress our views on the world and come to understand our own

A poem I just remembered:

This deserves an award for editing.

We found a colorized version of the beginning of The Wizard of Oz.

“Within a week she seemed back to normal. What I didn’t know was that measles can cause long-term complications. A child can seem fine while the virus slowly replicates in her brain, poised to exact a terrible toll years later…. Parents should know just how dangerous this disease is.”

I read this after reading an investigation on fraternity hazing in AL universities, and . . . How are they going to blame indoctrinating woke professors now? www.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

The FIFA Peace Prize presidency

Here is a new poem. Already revised, alas. But for what it’s worth: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202... Many thanks to Jeff Shotts and Kevin Young.

“Bill of Rights” by Alabama poet laureate Dr. Jacqueline Trimble:

They say "Write your senators," but what they don't understand is that some of us have senators who don't know how to read.

We have cleaned up the crime scene and blocked a local investigation and hidden the perpetrator and invaded the state and that is how you know that we are acting in good faith and that everything was the victim’s fault. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...

Where some people focus on pajamas at airports, others find this.

Renee Nicole Good was a creative writer, like me. Her poem "On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs" was chosen by a poet I used to teach with for an Academy of American Poets Prize. I often suggest my students submit their work for this prize. Real creative writers know we are all linked.

Every paragraph of this describes a situation that just gets more and more bonkers. Texas A&M is not a university. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

And may every day be another wonderful secret.

Multiple large natural experiments have documented Shingles vaccine is linked with ~20-25% reduced risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. A new report today adds to that and extends the to slowing the progression of dementia @cellcellpress.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Let my gravestone read "PUNCTUATION GOES INSIDE THE QUOTATION MARKS."

Heads, you lose. Tails, you lose.

The couple that destroys evidence together stays together? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/u...

This man is an extreme danger to our health. He’s severely restricting the Covid vaccine, is conducting a “study” on autism that will suit his anti-vax delusion, and now this. In this charade pretending to stop mass-death, he is going to unleash illnesses on us and cause mass death.

“She became fascinated with how human beings—especially those who didn’t have much power—could empower themselves and others and change the world.” What Octavia Butler’s early writings reveal about her trajectory as a literary icon.

Assignments: Villanelle Sestina Pantoum Prose-verse One sentence poem One act play Avoid erasure(too easy) Have fun. Repeat. Pass it on. #KeepTheWordsAlive Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

They are leading us to hell.

Yes. I am right. I am seeing how Chat GPT is ruining students critical thinking and writing skills in real time. It is not the future. It is a tool designed to render the populace helpless, to make people doubt their innate intelligence, and to foster overreliance on technology.

Pete Hesgeth — who wants to rename the Navy ship that honors Medgar Evers, a WWII veteran who landed on Omaha Beach — is using that same beach for a photo op in which he promises we will “never forget” the veterans there. What an unbelievable asshole.

Harvey Milk served in the Navy during the Korean War, but was discharged in 1955, not for any misconduct, but because he was gay. And now his name is being removed from a Navy vessel, once again not because of anything he did wrong, but because he was gay. It's the same hate from the same scum.

The numbing effect of this presidency’s outrages.

I don’t use electrical sockets because that’s what the man in my house does.

The comment period for this ends in 3 DAYS. Please leave a comment telling them EVERYONE should be able to get covid boosters. www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

THEY'RE EATING 30 BABY DOLLS. THEY'RE EATING 250 PENCILS.

While the president invited himself to my state and said “roll tide” this week, this is just of of many ways he’s harming us. www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/...

The cruelty is the point.

2/4. The entire practice of the Holocaust of the Jews involved zones of statelessness. It is easier to move people away from law than it is to remove law from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones.

#handsoff State Capitol Montgomery, AL

See, what I was thinking is that he is leading us into what is sure to be some risky macho shit that is sure to end with wreckage.

An unqualified rapist who ran on “no experience in this field” hands the job over to another unqualified person because this unqualified person with no gov’t experience does have billions instead. . .

Mississippi goddamn

Poem for all of us with snow days in the South today:

I made a short MLK Day playlist for the students in my civil rights class. I thought some of y'all might want something more uplifting for the holiday and the other thing taking place tomorrow #MLKDay open.spotify.com/playlist/6uY...

In 2014, I threw my husband a Twin Peaks-themed 40th birthday / New Year’s Eve party. The images from David Lynch’s imagination made it so fun to plan. It’s still the best party I’ve been to. And the David Lynch coffee we served is the best coffee I’ve ever had.

In the public domain today: The Sound and the Fury, A Room of One's Own, A Farewell to Arms, Singin‘ in the Rain, Ain‘t Misbehavin‘, the musical Hallelujah, the characters Popeye and Tintin...

It's out of copyright now -- Nella Larsen's "Passing." To celebrate, I put together a simple digital edition with web, TXT, PDF, and EPUB versions. Also wrote a brief intro. scalar.lehigh.edu/african-amer...

Yes, long live a culture of engineers that venerate Steve Urkel. Every time we have a nuclear disaster, a walkway collapse, or a levee fail, they’ll respond with “Did I do that?”