Fringe Elements

I’m not a Kennedy groupie. Before I started reading all these articles about Senator Ted and his accomplishments, I thought of him the same way I think of PETA: I agree with the agenda, but the reputation get my eyes rolling… why do they always have to look like such wackos? Then again, the extremists at PETA, while […]

The Sound of One Man Waiting

I think when people say, “I want to be beautiful, and I want to be in love,” they are actually saying, “I want to be listened to.”

March to April

In March, I went to the computer to subscribe to the New Yorker, and found out one of my students had been shot. He was dead. I was having another one of my seizures of certainty that I could not be an educated person, a writer, a worthwhile human being, without subscribing to the New […]

Worth Blushing For

Although I technically teach English and writing, every year I also end up teaching sex ed. Every year students ask me such terrifying questions as, “I heard this guy jerked off on his back porch, and then a girl in her backyard across the street with her legs open got pregnant. Is that true?” or “Why […]