Spit and Spaghetti #2 - or - Would you read this?

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Spit and Spaghetti #2 – or – Would you read this?

A few recent pitches …

The Synthesis of Hyacinths and Biscuits: Finding Poems in the Seasons

Carl Sandburg describes poetry as the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. Naomi Shihab Nye finds poems in life’s reinvention. Poems are artistic structures—metaphor, simile, grammar, meter, rhyme, and more. Seasons are both structure and reinvention. Seasons are life’s reinvention by past, present, and future definitions. The call for submissions asks us to think about seasons differently at this moment. The call also suggests reflecting on the intersection of seasons and celebrations. This essay will consider seasons as reinvention, explore the relationship between seasons and poetry, and celebrate seasons’ beauty, complexity, and strength through poetry.

What I Learn from Watching Peaches Grow

There is a small peach orchard in the park by my house. Every year, I watch the trees bear fruit. Spring begins, and leaves emerge. Blossoms slowly and unapologetically form. From blossoms, fuzzy teardrop fruit appears. Peaches grow on sacred limbs. The Emergence call for submissions asks us to reflect on the seasons at this moment. I immediately think of the peaches when I think of the seasons. Every year, I watch and learn. Every year, it all happens differently and a bit the same. This essay will examine the concepts of time, reverence, and vigilance, discuss the value of paying attention, and offer lessons learned from the orchard.

Intelligence Redefined, Again

As a Ph.D. student many years ago, I studied the concept of intelligence. I looked at intelligence through the lens of artists, psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, and others. The big ideas of axiology (the philosophical study of value), ontology (the philosophical study of being), and epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) immediately take me back to a time and place where intelligence was broadly defined and understood. From that space — a space big enough for awe, invention, creation, growth, home, and the undefined — defining intelligence becomes a different question. This essay will analyze definitions of intelligence from across disciplines, reflect on intelligence as fundamental to life itself, and build a working, inclusive, living definition of intelligence.

Thanks for reading about my freelance journey. Wide-awakeness is fundamentally about sharing ourselves and our journey with the world. Subscribe and share with us.