The Goal of True Education
Monday, January 21st, 2013 Posted in Current Events | No Comments »I don't think it matters if you are working or not. If the mail comes or it doesn't. This is a day when, in your own time, you try to step back, reflect a moment, and appreciate Martin Luther King. I've ...
Here Comes the Sun: Flashmob in Madrid Unemployment Office
Wednesday, January 16th, 2013 Posted in Current Events, Fun Clips, Music, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »Know this: Unemployment in Spain is at 26 percent. The country, and its people, are going through a very tough time. High taxes, plunging salaries, confusion, bitterness, anger, fear, desperation -- with record numbers applying for jobless benefits. So one recent ...
How I Feel These Days
Monday, December 17th, 2012 Posted in Current Events | No Comments »[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGIY5Vyj4YM] "All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a human being . . . My life has value!'"
In Praise of Farmers’ Markets
Friday, November 2nd, 2012 Posted in Current Events, Family, Readings | No Comments »It's that time of year when our local, weekly farmers' market moves indoors and, obviously, the product changes. These markets really are a summertime thing. I'll be sad to see the empty parking lot on Saturdays outside the middle school ...
One Thing I Did for Banned Books Week
Friday, October 5th, 2012 Posted in Current Events, Fun Clips | No Comments »Back in September, the Macmillan Children's Publishing Group invited me to participate in "something special" that they had cooked up for Banned Books Week (September 30 - October 6). Essentially, I was one of several authors invited to place three copies ...
Summer Hiatus: This Is How I Want Writing to Feel
Tuesday, August 14th, 2012 Posted in Current Events, the writing process | No Comments »I should have written this post a month ago. My apologies for that, dear dwindling Nation of Readers. I'm taking a break this summer. Have been, actually. The honest truth: I have this nagging sense that it's a net-positive (hee-hee, clever that) ...
Ray Bradbury: A Stopped Watch, A Loss, An End, A Darkness
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012 Posted in Current Events, Interviews & Appreciations | No Comments »“Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All ...
Rex Babin, Political Cartoonist (1962 - 2012): An Old Friend Remembered
Sunday, April 1st, 2012 Posted in Around the Web, Current Events | No Comments »Rex Babin lived a block away from me in the early 90's, back when we both resided in Center Square, Albany. I was new to Albany, with a wife and (soon, in 1993) a young child. Rex was a single ...
Stay Home, Please. Don’t Celebrate Children’s Book Day at “Sunnyside” in Tarrytown, NY, 9/25
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011 Posted in Around the Web, Current Events, Happenings | 6 Comments »Just stay home. Please. Find something else to do. Each year I do this event, which features more than 60 amazing children's book authors and illustrators, and it's always such a disappointment. For starters, check out some of the people who'll be ...