Today at the dog park, one of the topics discussed by us “8:30 regulars” included high school graduations. It is, after all, that time of year, for mortarboards and diplomas and college visits and looking forward. Some of the folks at the park have kids who are graduating in a […]
In last week’s 2nd Annual NerdCon: Stories convention, held at the Minneapolis Convention Center, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Sotto Voce: Finding Your Voice”. Many of the panelists talked about staying true to yourself, searching for your true voice, and the difficulty that sometimes arises when you find yourself […]
My daughter was looking over the syllabus from a college English class that she had just started, and she was distraught over the thought of having to make an in-class critique of another student’s writing. “I’m just not good at that sort of thing!” she despaired. I tried to allay […]
The 2016 World Science Fiction convention was held in Kansas City, Missouri this weekend during MidAmeriCon II, and was highlighted by the announcement of the winners of the 2016 Hugo Awards. The Hugo Awards are one of the most prestigious awards for fantasy, speculative and science fiction works, and winning […]
Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. ~William Shakespeare Although it can certainly be argued to the contrary, it seems that humans are the only creatures who use spoken language as opposed to creatures that “merely” communicate. And although human language has existed for ages, written language has been […]
I am an extremely lucky person. At times when I am feeling particularly magnanimous, I would even say that I am blessed. I live in an existence where I am surrounded by books. I own books, I can download books electronically, I have a library nearby where I can not […]
Did you like the weird and provocative British television series Black Mirror? (Of course you did!) Do you adore Neil Gaiman? (Of course you do!) Then you are going to be totally stoked to learn that four of Neil Gaiman’s stories are going to adapted for television, for real! (The […]
A Brief Look at Father Memoirs Stories that center on fathers have a distinct place in the memoir genre. For better or worse, fathers hold a place that intersects with the world and experience in a way far different from that of a mother’s. As in Jung’s archetypes, fathers are […]
We humans are so divergent in who we are, how we react and respond, in how our minds work and our ideas play out. It’s glorious. I’m not talking ideologies or dogma or beliefs or rationalizations. That’s not quite as glorious. I’m talking about how we relate to our private […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.