Jun 8, 2014 Teaching and Learning
A must-read for all — teachers, parents, students, neighbors without children, everyone in this country. Clear, cogent, concise arguments to use against this unfortunate trend where public dollars are being funneled into charter schools.
Jun 7, 2014 Teaching and Learning
I wrote an ENTIRE post about my Lazy Saturday — and it vanished, when I hit “Publish.”
WordPress — I am DISPLEASED with you.
Now, I’m feeling too lazy to recreate what I wrote.
Bah!
Jun 5, 2014 Teaching and Learning
I want to take the plunge into full-time writing.
I really do.
I wish I could quit my “day-job” and get to work on a bunch of stories.
I think I’m scared, though.
I’m too … not sure what to call my writing.
Whatever it is, I’m that thing that will never sell.
I wrote strange songs too.
I guess I’m strange.
I wish I weren’t.
Wish I could write potboilers and sit back and watch the money roll in.
Wish I knew how to promote myself. I don’t have the single-minded ego that that requires.
Perhaps, I could get someone to coach me through it.
That’s it. I should try that.
Thanks for reading (if you read this, that is!) — I appreciate any responses.
Tags: a wish, quitting? day-job versus life-job, writing as a full-time job
May 28, 2014 Original Short Stories, Teaching and Learning
PHOTO PROMPT
Copyright –Jennifer Pendergast
Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for creating Friday Fictioneers and posting a photo-prompt every Wednesday! I LOVE these prompts, and have only recently been contributing to this site. I love this site, because the Friday Fictioneers community is so supportive! I look forward to Wednesdays with an eagerness these days that I didn’t used to have — Wednesday used to be the doldrums of my week in general. Now, it’s the high point. Thanks, also to this week photographer, Jennier Pendergast for this lovely picture!
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I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
(From Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
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My story begins below:
The Arch Beckons
©May 28th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
I gave it the old college try. Pored over tomes. Huddled in dark corners of libraries. Studied for days in artificial light, while outside, the world darkened, and then glowed bright again.
One day, it dawned on me. I had to leave.
Leaving is hard.
Armed with an F in Literature, Latin and in Comparative Linguistics, I packed my bags, called home, left my stepfather a terse message, “Am leaving. Am done. Don’t look for me. Thanks for nothing.”
The scars from him were nothing to what I’d acquired in the Sanctum of Learning.
The Sirens called. I heeded them.
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Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Original Short Story, Alfred, Arches, Dropout, Flash Fiction, Lord Tennyson, Sirens, The Old College Try, Ulysses
May 22, 2014 Teaching and Learning
So, what’s going on is this: Too many people, too much work, too little time.
Is THIS what we signed on to do when we were born?
Wish we’d been given more options.
I guess we’ll have to MAKE those options happen.
May 21, 2014 Teaching and Learning
It was like this:
There was a maiden who lived long ago in a land far from any we know. She was beautiful, with raven-black tresses, surrounding a perfectly formed face with flashing eyes filled with fire and mystery, with a hint of sadness buried in their depths, ruby-red lips, exquisite, shell-like ears, and an elegant neck. Beautiful she was, but it was her sweet, kind nature that brought her goodwill and gentle treatment by all the world.
Her name was Mina.
MIna’s family kept one fact secret: She had become deaf with the first seven years of her life. They had perfected the art of communicating with her by signs and signals, and teaching her to read lips. Since she had already known how to speak and how she should sound before she had gone deaf, she had a strange, child-like, lilting tone to her utterance.
Now,eighteen years old and stone-deaf, she led a silent life, surrounded by the love of her sister and mother and father, who protected her and never told the world about her plight.
For in that town, to be deaf was to bring misfortune. All the deaf people had been banished into the mountains, where they met their death sooner than later.
Long ago, the townspeople had decided that all physical disabilities were to be nipped in the bud, and those with major ones to be banished to inhospitable terrains, while those with minor ones were sterilized and not allowed to bear children.
All the people in town marvelled at her beauty, and spoke of her mysterious air of quiet sorrow. Because
The boy liked the girl and paid court to her.
He wooed her with songs and poems, and wrote her long, impassioned letters.
May 20, 2014 Teaching and Learning
… who are you?
You seem to be an email-only follower of my blog, but since I have no idea who you might be (known or unknown, since there’s no WordPress identity), I’m curious.
Have we met, Benyardim?
Send me an email and let me know.
Love,
Dreamer of Dreams