Archive for July 2011
The Forgotten Places: Our Shrinking Rural Areas
An Associated Press news article reports this morning that the rural United States now holds only 16% of the population. In 1910, the year my mother was born, 72% of the population lived in rural areas. It’s no surprise to me that more and more of us live in cities, but one sentence in this…
Read MoreOne Part of Me and Another Part of Me: Deepening the Important Moments in Memoir
Last week, I spent five days teaching a creative nonfiction workshop for ten high school students who were participating in our Young Writers Workshop at Ohio State University. Twenty-eight rising juniors and seniors from Columbus City Schools gathered for a week-long immersion into the study of creative writing. This is a residential program that allows…
Read MoreBREAK THE SKIN at the Richland County Fair
My special correspondent in Southeastern Illinois offers up a report from this year’s Richland County Fair in Olney. The traditional foods are back: funnel cakes, lemon shake-ups, corn dogs, cotton candy, salt water taffy, pork burgers, etc. My correspondent reports that the 4-H Club’s lemon shakeups were the best from all the stands offering that…
Read MoreRainy Day Chatter
It’s a stormy day here in Columbus, Ohio. One of those days that starts out hot and humid and then by mid-afternoon the skies darken and for a time everything goes still. Solar landscape lights come on in people’s flowerbeds, the clouds deepen, the scent of the rain to come is just a whiff in…
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