Category: Uncategorized

I never celebrated the holidays growing up, so I don't have the same childhood memories of Christmas and Santa, reindeer and caroling and all the other things generally linked to this time of year. When I think back about those years, I tend to remember moments of awkwardness, explaining to classmates why I didn't get … Continue reading Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

When the LEGO Movie 2 came out last year (Jesus, was it really only last year? I had to look that up), we saw it in the theaters, twice. Remember when that was a thing? It's a terrific movie, but the one moment that has really resonated with me is the song that comes on … Continue reading Maybe Aim For Not Bad

Back in 2016, when it looked like Donald Trump was going to win the Republican nomination, but before he drew an inside straight into the presidency, my partner Amy and I were talking about what the Republican party was doing to itself and how it didn't have to be this way. As I remember it, … Continue reading Donald Trump and David Duke

Name-changing is in the air. Streets are getting new names, university buildings are getting new names, and people are starting petitions to change the names of their cities, (and seriously, nothing needs to be named Plantation at this point, no matter when the city was founded). And on that note, I'd like to suggest another … Continue reading John Slidell, Loser

Last night, my left wrist hurt really badly. Sharp, searing pain through the joint, bad enough that I put down the project I was working on and started searching for connections between crochet and carpal tunnel syndrome and wrist braces. They've been hurting more or less for months now. I didn't want to stop crocheting. … Continue reading Writing and Crochet

A friend posted this on social media. I don't know who the original maker of the image is or I would credit/thank them for it. This is the one time of year I regularly miss south Louisiana, but maybe not for the reasons people who've never lived there would understand. Mardi Gras has this somewhat … Continue reading Coming up next

I can't even remember most of the year, and I don't really talk too much about personal stuff anywhere online anymore, but I do have two pieces of writing news to share here, both of which meant a lot to me personally. The first is that one of the poems from my collection A Witness in … Continue reading Year in Review?

This morning, I saw a person I follow on Twitter quote-retweet to this tweet from James Woods about being the victim of gun violence with his own story about how he'd been victimized and yet still didn't own or carry a gun. I was robbed at gunpoint in a New York subway in my twenties. … Continue reading Something Something Guns

The student union at Iowa State University is, as at many state universities, also a war memorial. It's in the name: Memorial Union. The main entrance is what is known as Gold Star Hall, and carved into the stone walls are the names of Iowa State students who were killed in the wars and other … Continue reading War Memorials

I ended my class a little early and hurried back to Des Moines today because I had to join my partner and her colleagues and students at Drake University in a show of solidarity against racism. I say "had to" because I considered it a moral obligation. I wish it weren't necessary. But some anonymous … Continue reading Confronting Racism