Tag: storytelling

  • Instagram: Testing Testing 1-2-3

    Instagram: Testing Testing 1-2-3

    So I’m about to embark on a fun summer project. Michelle and I have four kids, and throughout their childhoods I told them stories. Now, they’re all grown up and huge, and until they start giving me some grandkids, and since it’s summer (which means I can’t tell stories to my students), I figured, why…

  • The Surgical Tool Known as Instagram

    The Surgical Tool Known as Instagram

    Here’s a little preview I made. I guess that’s what you’d call it, though it’s not for a movie. I’m tossing it out on Instagram to get folks to check out my mother’s essays here on TWB. Marketing. That’s what I’m doing. Thing is, I don’t have anything to sell. I’m using Instagram as a…

  • Ode to Instagram

    Ode to Instagram

    I stayed away from the thing for a long time. To me, it was just another waste of entire days, something that got in the way of reading poetry or having coffee with a real human being across the table. And, it is, or it can be. But, that’s a question of self-discipline. I stayed…

  • How To Tell Your Kid There’s No Santa Clause

    How To Tell Your Kid There’s No Santa Clause

    One Christmas long ago my Appalachian father, Ralph, took his revolver, climbed on the roof, shot once into the woods, came back in and said, “Sorry folks, but looks like old Santa just committed suicide.” It was a real hoot. The whole family got it. I was a kid, but didn’t believe in Santa Claus…

  • My Rat

    My Rat

    I was at war with a rat for four months. It was a losing battle; nearly every morning for sixteen weeks, we woke to half-eaten bananas and apples, their skins punctured a hundred times with pin-sized incisors and the flesh eaten out. The rat liked symmetry: the hole was a perfect O. He burrowed into…