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Last Waltz (10.05.11) 6 Oct 2011 | 02:16 pm
Actually, it’s the last MFA in a Box weekly blog. Waltz sounds better than blog. In fact blog joins frack and spam as slightly obscene words that I might have enjoyed using as verbs in junior high s...
Another Graduation Speech (09.27.11) 28 Sep 2011 | 03:59 pm
Audience is everything. That’s what I’ve told my writing students. In the best tradition of gnomic utterances, I was cleaving to the truth in all senses of the word. Content counts for something. Te...
Graduation Speech (09.19.11) 20 Sep 2011 | 01:00 pm
I began my teaching career at a small start-up school in Sun Valley, Idaho. I ended up wearing a lot of hats there, eventually teaching 7th, 8th, 9th,10th, 11th, and 12th grade English, and being the ...
The Shape of Things to Come (09.13.11) 14 Sep 2011 | 03:34 pm
My title this week is taken from H.G. Wells’ 1933 novel, which purported to be a chronicle of world history from 1933 to 2106. Wells got some things right, notably submarine-based ballistic missiles a...
Cleaning Out the Files (09.06.11) 7 Sep 2011 | 04:53 pm
Some years ago Julie and I sold one of the two houses we owned and moved into the smaller house of the two. We went from having three thousand square feet of space for our stuff to having less than a...
The End of the Blog As We Know It (08.29.11) 30 Aug 2011 | 04:59 pm
When Mike O’Mary, my esteemed publisher and eternal friend, asked me to write a blog to accompany the first year of MFA in a Box, it was easy enough to say, “Sure. Why not?” Over the past forty-seven...
Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Literal Kit Bag (08.22.11) 23 Aug 2011 | 04:27 pm
Julie and I spent three days in the Sawtooth Mountains last week, and while the trip wasn’t a Pilgrim’s Progress, it had moments where we were tempted toward allegory. We got lost in a swamp when I i...
On Not Going to a Reunion (08.15.11) 16 Aug 2011 | 04:59 am
It’s been reunion week at my old high school. The class of 1971 invited the classes on either side of them to join them for their 40th, and though I was going to show up, when the time came I decided...
Kids These Days (08.08.11) 9 Aug 2011 | 01:00 pm
I’ve been talking to people who supervise young people, and many of them complain about a lack of initiative and a sense of entitlement in their charges. Some of them go so far as to suggest that the...
Writing and the Unconscious (08.01.11) 2 Aug 2011 | 04:59 am
I spent many years as a college professor and advisor, and one of the bigger parts of my job was talking to students who lined up outside my office door. I’d look up from a stack of composition paper...
