At a recent Notre Dame football game, I learned that before they run out onto the field, the players recite the Lord’s Prayer. They say it fast. It’s not like a congregational prayer in church. Nobody’s trudging carefully through this, articulating every word. This is more like a chant one might spit out before walking on hot coals, or jumping out of… View Post

Dear Naomi, Your mom told me that the two of you read the scene in Harry Potter when Dobby dies. “He dies in the last sentence of the chapter!” she told me, and then she said the two of you considered reading further with the hope you both could get over the sadness quickly. She decided against it. “We sat… View Post

Cleaning the library feels like a guilty pleasure these days. The hour before school begins, I’m supposed to be working on truancy, or going over lesson plans for my small groups: CVC words, dipgraphs, finding main ideas to short passages – stuff that’s necessary. The necessary is boring me to tears, so I turn a jazz station on YouTube and… View Post

Last month when we were at Notre Dame, Hadley and Harper found a grand old tree, that was perfect for sitting in. However, the first spot to heft oneself up was about four feet from the ground. Plus, the tree seemed to be balding – its bark chipped off and a smooth, white surface made it difficult, I assume, to… View Post

  The four of us are in the car, driving to Raleigh. We’ve taken a route in the hopes we’ll avoid a snowstorm in the mountains, and so far, it’s been successful. Long, but successful. We are literally driving over rivers and through the woods to get to Grandma’s house. We listened to The Golden Compass, and we stopped for Dairy… View Post