Recently I was paging through an old journal and found my notes from a 2008 lecture on Marquez's great novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, given by Gregory Rabassa at the University of Wisconsin. I was there with my AP English Literature students, who were studying the novel.Though not lately,…

First published through my Water's Edge Press newsletterLast week was Banned Books Week, an annual event coordinated by the American Library Association. When I taught high school English, I was eager to engage my students. We made displays, discussed the issues, and I hope, understood in the end how lucky…

They are ubiquitous in Southern Arizona--hummingbirds. So are the various types of hummingbird feeders that people hang from their patios to attract the birds for a closer look. There is something special about these birds--their tiny size, the whirr of their vibrating wings, the way they can hover in air--makes…

I recently sent a poem I wrote while in Tucson (our first year as snowbirds) to a dear friend and mentor. I told him I had a collection of Tucson poems going. As a world traveler himself, as well as an esteemed poet, he said, "You can write, traveling?" My…