Entries by Bethany

A Poem by Margaret Riordan

I’m pleased to introduce a poem by my friend Margaret Riordan, Celtic Bard. Dignity When your heart is broken in the palace, grab your knapsack and pack lightly. A blanket, a few pairs of loose trousers, a couple of long tunics, Something for your head to protect it from the heat Then join the next […]

Bad Habits vs. Good

During the first week of my Creative Nonfiction class, I spend a lot of time asking students where they might find themselves writing and under what circumstances. In a notebook or on a laptop? Do they listen to music? Do they need a cup of coffee? A glass of scotch? A cigarette? Complete silence? Prefer to write in noisy […]

10 Possibilities

A pleasant trip this week to Chehalis to see my mom, no student papers to grade (yet), my corrected manuscript of SPARROW to return to Writers & Books (in the mail as of 3:30), a productive morning in the potting shed, and sunshine conspired to make me feel buoyant by this afternoon. Friday, sitting in my EvCC […]

Permission Granted

This afternoon, in preparation for our first meeting of Writing Lab this quarter, I browsed my bookshelves and found Fingerpainting on the Moon by Peter Levitt. This book contains one of my all time favorite quotations (which I’ve shared more than once, but here it is again): “This is joy — the kind that comes from expressing […]