Here is a little rundown on the DIY clay wedging board. Today I made a pair! These additions to my home studio allow me to hand build when I’m away from Peterson’s Art Center. Hopefully they will keep the mess to a minimum. Before beginning this project for yourself I recommend you familiarize yourself with […]
DIY Clay Wedging Board. Read More »
When I was young(It’s alright—No one thinks they’ll enjoy a poem that begins this way)I anticipated snow, feet deep Halloween to Easter. Trudging those depths was a test of fortitude.No parent to rescue youTo fetch you from schoolOr in any way interfere with the challenge Of growing up Utahn in the 70s. It wasn’t thought
Historian Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee recounts the genocide that made the United States possible. It is not so much a novel as it is a chronological inventory of the brutal viciousness the Manifest Destiny doctrine emboldened as the US expanded. The book saw 21 editions in its first three years and
Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Read More »
I pulled the 1960s Golden Library of Knowledge on Mathematics off a shelf at the Green Gypsy Thrift Shop because I wanted a bird’s-eye view of the subject. Surely, a survey written for 8-year-olds would present an uncluttered picture. And it did—until I came upon its conclusion. According to the pronoun allocations appearing here and
Imagine Mathematics Without Pronouns Read More »
Alexandra Bergson, the protagonist of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, is a father’s daughter, programmed at his deathbed to continue his work and secure the family and their estate. Alexandra is bold, pragmatic, driven and willing—an empty vessel. She accepts of course, and in just 16 years accomplishes his vision, single-mindedly and single-handedly increasing the land for herself and
Cather’s O Pioneers! (O Fathers’ Daughters!) Read More »
On its surface, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is an immigrant’s tale. Beneath, the plot details the ways fathers’ and husbands’ violent indifference and indifferent violence subjugates wives and daughters—turns them into property, not people. The men in this novel cajole, coerce, corral, and at times beat women into marriage, endless child-bearing,
A Reflection on Juliet Grames’s The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna Read More »
The first time I read Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game I was eight years old. Let’s see—that would put us around 1981. This murder mystery features an ensemble of characters, everyone with a part to play, but what I remembered then and enjoyed most this time (older and wiser) were the two sisters: The eldest
Normal possibilities: Remembering Raskin’s The Westing Game Read More »
There is a passage in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees that set my hair on end. She describes a town, like any 1950’s town in South Carolina. A town that, with a few contemporary substitutions could describe many towns across the US today. Those comfortable with the prevailing power structure of the
No, but I might hide: Thoughts on Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees Read More »
When I in doubt, back when I was a child of faith, I prayed to God—white-haired, father-figured and slim-Santa like—to take a personal interest in my problems and intervene in my favor. As a maid, after the father-figure faded, I forwarded my quandaries as to which way to go, which decision to make, which road
A Rainbow in my Room Read More »
I attended a panel discussion on “The Status of Black Women in Utah” several months ago with the sincere intention of listening and learning. I knew I had missed something important when I got home. Everyone on the panel and in the room seemed to be calling out to be heard, including myself. I wondered
Hearing Not Listening Read More »
