Circles Of Gratitude

The Thinking Behind World of Words By Martha M. Daas, Ph.D As the Director of the Spanish Program at Old Dominion University, I have been approached time and again by parents who were interested in having their children learn Spanish.

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Favorite People: Gordon Bradley By: Angela Blue Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever. -Cormac McCarthy, The Road

This quote by itself could be taken different ways. It could mean that a person should be leery of the

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Born Free – Sold Out By Bob Chorush In August 2003, 7 elephants captured in the wild in Swaziland were shipped to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, part of the San Diego Zoo. The three elephants in the San Diego Zoo at that time were shipped to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago

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The Grail By Alicia Dekker
“You came to tell me I’ve gotten fat, haven’t you?” He leaned back in his chair across from her and her pomegranate margarita, hands behind his head in that easy way of his. He tilted his head a bit and smiled a tight-lipped ironic, or was it rueful, smile.

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Tom on Hear-Say

The Week: The Light Rail

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Archived Articles

Tuesday, 26 January 2010 13:04

View from the TReehouse: An Educational Priority

By Tom Robotham

Foreign Languages Whenever I take stock of my life to date, I can’t help feeling a tinge of regret. I wish, for example, that I had taken music more seriously when I was younger; and I wish I had become fluent in a foreign language or two. Like most public school students, I had some exposure—in my case, two years of Spanish in high school and two years of French in college—but it was too little too late. Today, I know only a smattering of each language.

Wednesday, 20 January 2010 18:36

Journalism at a Crossroads

By John-Henry Doucette

Last month, Veer Magazine ran in its news pages a story proclaiming that the Norfolk gift shop Texture “is unlike any other.” The article also included a quote that referred warmly to the shop’s “family of coworkers.” What the article failed to mention is that the writer is a member of that family.

The website AltDaily quickly picked up on the transgression: “(T)his is what we call in the journalism world a conflict of interest,” wrote AltDaily co-editor/publisher Jesse Scaccia in a long commentary that questioned Veer

I Am Blue Woman, Hear Me Roar

By Leona Baker

Anyone who has seen Avatar is likely to rave about the film’s breathtaking and wildly inventive visuals. I practically had to pick my jaw up off the floor as I walked out of the IMAX theater at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton. I

Wednesday, 06 January 2010 12:59

Music: Best Albums of 2009

By Jim Morrison

Here's one listener's list of favorite discs from 2009. It’s unusually narrow this year, with Americana dominating. It must be the times we're facing.

New Fiction: Concessions

By John-Henry Doucette

Lydia faced the door at La Ragazza Aglio on College Hill. She saw the girl in the black dress walk into the restaurant. The boy who followed wore blue jeans and a red rugby shirt. Lydia watched them over Ty’s hairless head, buried in a menu though the food was ordered.

“Oh dear,” Lydia said. “This won’t do.”

“Reconsidering eggplant?” Ty asked.

Rules of the Game: Reflections on Poetry

By Rick Hite

Let me ramble a bit about poems and poetry.

Robert Frost said it well in 1959: “I don’t want a poem that I can tell was written toward a good ending—one sentence. That’s trickery.” He also said “free verse is anywhere you want to be between . . . prose and verse.”

So much that I see today calling itself poetry is the stuff of Frost’s two statements. These “poems” are often little more than prose with the tabs set so far in on both sides as to make them appear to the eye as lines of verse instead of the sentences they really are. They are very free indeed, except for their tab restrictions, and seem often to lead to a “kicker” at the end.

Wednesday, 25 November 2009 16:23

Circles of Gratitude

By Tom Robotham

Creek near Bennington, Vermont Several years ago, I published a list of people, places and things for which I was thankful. A number of people later told me that it inspired them to draw up their own lists. A local high school teacher even had her class do it as an assignment, and I ended up publishing their lists a few weeks after the holidays.