Dusting off this blog to talk about communication, conflict resolution, and teaching. Pardon the sneezes. My last year of law school I took a settlement and negotiation course one semester and a mediation course the next. This summer I took a 40 hour skills mediation course. I want to share a few really useful concepts …
Domino’s Pizza has a commercial that runs between innings on MLB.com’s “Gameday.” (I would be interested to know if it runs on television at all too, or if the audience is just us people who like to follow a baseball game while we are working and can’t have a radio or TV on.) At first …
I should have been working on my WIP, but instead I wrote this. It speaks for itself: STARSHIP COOTIES We were losing the war with the Bugs, so as soon as I turned sixteen I signed up to fight. The recruiter told me that after three months of boot camp, I’d be in …
Well, it’s Valentine’s Day and everyone’s thinking about looooove. So here’s my self-promoting post on why MOTH AND SPARK is a feminist love story. It’s possible to write a novel where gender stereotypes are flipped, and I didn’t do that; in fact, the societal structure of the book replicates patriarchal norms. So at a quick …
My husband and I were discussing the gloomy possibility of another Bush vs. Clinton campaign, the outcome of which would mean the presidency was held by a member of those two families from 1988-2020, with an 8 year intermission by Obama. This is undemocratic, in opposition to everything intended in Article II of the Constitution, …
Aaaaaaand – the latest round of blogger issues leads me to throw on my attorney hat and expound upon the First Amendment, because that’s what always gets thrown around when there is disagreement on the Internet. Here’s the context: This week began with the blogger who ran “Requires Hate” being uncloaked as Benjanun Sriduangkaew, who has …
My son and his friends used to play a variation of freeze tag where an extra variable was the “hot lava”; if you stepped on the playlot woodchips, you “fell into hot lava” and were frozen until someone could untag you. This was in addition to the chance of being frozen in the ordinary …
I am finally weighing in on the Amazon/Hachette dispute. For those people who may not know, the basic issue is that Amazon is unhappy with the (lack of) money it makes on the sale of Hachette titles, and is refusing to accept pre-orders on Hachette forthcoming titles, while also delaying shipment on existing titles by …
Last night I went to the bookstore and came home with 4 books by Cormac McCarthy and 2 by Hilary Mantel. The Mantel books and No Country For Old Men I have already read but decided I needed to own them, though I have no idea where they will live in my overflowing book pile. …
I don’t usually write about political or social issues, but the shootings last Friday night won’t leave me alone. I think the worst part of it for me is that I am no longer surprised, shocked, or even outraged by such events; they have become something that happens, like thunderstorms or earthquakes. I have accepted …