A Broken Place

Reverie’s shoes dug into a long, thin ribbon of sand behind the Orion Caribbean Suites, San Juan. The sound of the waves crashing against the breakers, and the majestic striations of color that painted her little stretch of beach made it worth the extra work of running through the sand. Reverie had never been a […]

Speaking the Truth in Love

I used to work in politics, and I loved it. I loved the exchange of ideas. I loved being able to write tell-all articles about candidates at election time. I loved everything but get-out-the-vote phone calls. (This was in the days before robo-calls.) But today, politics is about anything but love. It’s sheer hatred, and […]

5 Things You Won’t Hear in a Courtroom

It’s NaNoWriMo, which means I’m one of the overly confident people who plan to write an entire novel in one month. But the weather has cooled, there’s Dutch Apple Cake in the oven, and I have a few things I want to say before I go back to said novel. As part of my undergraduate […]

Looking for an Easier Life?

An eleven-year-old girl named Helen Greiner watched the movie “Star Wars” and decided she’d like to invent a robot that cleaned, much like C-3PO. Now we have a little marvel called Roomba (and many similar vacuums) that will removed the dust and crumbs from our floor at the touch of a button. In the show […]

Life In The United States

If you look at the headlines, it appears that America is literally at war with each other. I understand that the media thinks they need to sensationalize everything to sell papers, but everything is not about politics and people are honestly more concerned about their family than the evils of Washington DC. I had the […]

No Second Place–an excerpt and the story behind the story

The Excerpt: Rita palmed the sweat out of her eyes and pushed her wheelchair down the court as fast as she could. Her teammate passed the basketball, and she lined up for the shot. Easy, breezy, she told herself. I’ve made this one a thousand times. Crash! The chair hit hers and Rita let the […]

Learning To Walk

I once met a man named David with Cerebral Palsy. His mom had been the whole world to him. She carried him everywhere, fed him and loved him. One day, David’s mom died, and he became a bitter, angry person for several years. Not only did he want to die, but he decided that God […]

You May Not Know This About the Olympics

Many people watch their favorite events as the Summer Olympics unfolds. What you may not know, is that after the regular games, there are elite athletes who compete in the Paralympic games. They are every bit the creme de la creme of athletes, but they have disabilities. For example, the blind swimmers have an auditory […]

Take One For the Team

Middle school teachers are a rare breed. We enjoy adolescents. We want to teach children who are at the most confusing and significant point in their childhood. We also are fiercely competitive though many of us have never won any awards for athletic greatness. This past weekend my school fielded two softball teams in a […]

I’m Waiting for a Visit from the FBI

Can you tell I’m proud of my Irish heritage? And that I have really great friends? I am and I do.