When the tide recedes, great shards of frozen fjord shatter against the shore. The ocean leaves them there as it pulls back from the land, and they pile up in a jagged ruin that stretches all around the bay at Flekkefjord. When the sun is blazing and the tide is moving at its fastest, you... Continue Reading →
Writing Outside Our Own Identities: Representation, Research, Sensitivity Reading, and Justice–#AuthorToolboxBlogHop
This post is part of the monthly Author Toolbox Blog Hop. Check out other Hop participants' posts to learn about more aspects of writing craft and business, the third Wednesday of each month except for November and December. If we are writers who care about social justice, we have to interrogate our work. How do... Continue Reading →
Scattered thoughts: irony, AI, conflict, and more signs of spring
Earlier this week, earth crossed the equinox. Days in the northern hemisphere are longer than the nights now. Here in Norway, the sea change between winter and summer is always so dramatic, and around the equinox daylight change is the fastest. We're headed into sun and light. We've had a smattering of beautiful clear days... Continue Reading →
Spring Signs, and Supporting a Student from Gaza
The school where I teach in Norway is part of the United World College movement. There are eighteen UWC schools around the world, united by a common mission, to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. In these last seven years, I've been lucky to get... Continue Reading →
A bit in my own world
Since coming home from the ski trip with students, I've had some time on my own. Students have been taking part in a Red Cross first aid course, followed by a Model United Nations simulation. I'm alone at home too because my husband is traveling, and so I've had a different kind of week--away from... Continue Reading →
Quick ski post
Saturday morning, I boarded a bus. With fifty students and several colleagues, we headed north to Stryn, where we will be cross country skiing for the next four days. Some students have been skiing their whole lives, and others had never seen snow before this year. This annual tradition is always something I look forward... Continue Reading →
Getting the text right, or moving forward
For the first six years I was teaching here in Norway, one of my primary roles was Learning Support, which is a role we don't quite have in the US--in a US context, learning support is special education work with students who have specific, documented learning differences, coupled with what we would call in the... Continue Reading →
Rethinking Writing Goals for 2024
Hello 2024! Time goes so quickly--it feels like less than a year has gone by since I posted a reflection about my 2022 writing goals. Looking back now, it appears I never actually made a post about my 2023 writing goals, but they were essentially a repeat of those from 2022. It feels like a... Continue Reading →
Norway to Billings… and Covid
Since my last post two weeks ago, we finished term, we packed, we journeyed down to Bergen and over the ocean, eight time zones across to Billings, Montana, visiting my husband's parents. Travel went smoothly, but after a few days here, I began running a fever. I tested positive for Covid-19. For the last few... Continue Reading →
A couple quick winter photos
With the end of term on Wednesday of this week, I have been busy with grading assignments and writing reports. I still have quite a lot to do. I'll keep it a short post today. I'll just share a bit of the winter that has now arrived. I grew up in Minnesota, where there is... Continue Reading →
“To Say in Words What Cannot Be Said in Words”
A tension has been on my mind for a while, between the stories we tell in fiction and the question of meaning. It was on my mind in September 2020, then again two years later, December 2022. It seems that perhaps every year in autumn I find myself thinking about this theme. Here I am... Continue Reading →
Late fall changes
Two weeks ago, I missed making a post. I was hurrying that weekend to revise the essay I had written in the nature writing workshop I took part in last summer. I was reworking scenes and consulting academic articles on the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. I was reading aloud in a whisper to... Continue Reading →