Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer

Three quick things.

1. THANK YOU

First things first: Thanks so much to everyone who commented and corresponded with me last week about both of the Birthright-related questions that I raised in that set of Midweek Notes. I value all of the input, and I’m happy to tell you that I was able to complete the survey and, as of Monday, sent it back to the web designer with your comments.

2. Newly Published Poem (more…)

Sunday Sentence

In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

This was before cellphones and laptops, and in the chalk-dusted eternity of a 42-minute class period, there was such a thrumming, adolescent need for stimulation that when I opened whatever book we were reading—all of them great, all of them chosen by teachers far more thoughtful and experienced than I—and began reading aloud, the stream of words was the only thing going, and many of the students couldn’t help themselves from slipping into that stream and letting it carry them along.

Source: Caitlin Flanagan, “They Had It Coming” (TheAtlantic.com)

Sunday Sentence

In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

It would be nice to live, for a while, in a country where girls are allowed to ride bikes and swim and where there are Baskin-Robbins everywhere.

Source: Kawsar Roshan, quoted in Danna Harman, “Afghan Robotics Team Sees a Different World,” The New York Times