So, the death toll after the Italian earthquake is well over 1000. I saw this in one news article:In a letter to the archbishop of L’Aquila, the Vatican secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone, wrote that Pope Benedict XVI was praying “for the victims, in particular for...

Strange, the news came a few days ago about Sylvia Plath's son committing suicide. Today, the Writer's Almanac reports this (My notes in blue):It was on this day in 1941 that the novelist Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the river Ouse, near her country home in...

My car--the good old Durango--is STILL in West Virginia. It might get fixed by Monday, and we can go get it next weekend. Good thing the people I dealt with in Princeton, W. V. were so nice. Otherwise, it would have been an entire nightmare trip home from N. Carolina....

On Thursday, I visited KIPP Pride High and Gaston College Prep in Gaston, North Carolina. What an amazing day. The students had wonderful questions about Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged. We had good discussions every class period.The most amazing thing was our last...

I'm in sunny North Carolina where the skies are blue and the temp has been in the seventies since I've arrived.I'm also a brunette. Jesus. Nikki and Josh's girlfriend Emily had consorted in a decision to do a "hair intervention" on me! Hilarious? Sad, too. So Nikki...