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Over the years three boys in my Junior English classes argued in their research papers that nuclear power was the cheap, non-polluting, and safe alternative to fossil fuels. They were blissfully unaware that radiation is deadly. They did not want to hear about it. When one boy asked an engineer via email whether there were…
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We wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Alone or with friends or family. With or without turkey. With or without. There is always something missing. In childhood that was whatever the parents were allowed to do that we, at seven and four, believed we were missing. As adults there is the glossy image in magazines and…
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On Tuesday, I “won” the National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) challenge by completing fifty thousand words. It needs at least twenty or thirty thousand more words, but I have identified the arc of the story, my two main characters in their parallel experiences, a structure that imposes both tension and order, and some sort of…
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My blog is loaded with mistakes. Misspelled and missing words, usually. I figure most of them out and correct them eventually. Some slide right by for months or forever. Sometimes I might blame auto-correct, but more often it’s just my lousy typing. I was reading a personal essay in a literary magazine. The piece has…
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“A man has been arrested after antisemitic abuse was directed towards Jewish children on the London Underground. … Wearing a cap and hoody, the man is seen in the video threatening a man off-camera after he tries to intervene before a woman in a hijab – Asma Shuweikh – confronts him.”—The Guardian The Muslim woman is…
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I have tried to stay away from making political comments here. (Readers “unfollow” every time I do.) But Prince Andrew. This is not about the disastrous interview on the BBC where the royal admitted to being “too honorable” but with no memory of abusing a child. I did not watch the interview. I cannot avoid…


