Words are important to me. It’s part of my love of communication, mostly magnified by my ever-increasing commitment to writing. Writing and editing have demonstrated up-close and personal how crucial the right word is, and how words have the power to convey certain feelings, carry with them an aura of mood that is more precise… Continue Reading
Author Archives: Sidney Stark
Something the Social Worker Said…
Stamina; courage; there are so many words whose meanings I know, until I start to think about them three dimensionally. Then I find there’s much more to them than I ever realized. And just when I need them most, they float around in a taunting limbo. Language astronauts in a weightless environment, they won’t let… Continue Reading
Birthday Girl in a Boy’s Suit
How lucky Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are to have each other. One character uniquely different from the other, and possibly because of that difference, they enjoy a level of intimacy few friends find. As a child, I wondered if it was because they were boys. I also knew Mark Twain would have been, and… Continue Reading
The Mind’s Eye
‘Time marches on…’ my teacher would declare expansively, as if it was a revelation never shared before. ‘…so what have you done with yours?’ Experience taught me to expect that addendum, but seldom how to answer satisfactorily. Often caught staring out the window, it wasn’t hard to figure out I’d been daydreaming again. Escaping into… Continue Reading
For What or Whom Do We Write?
Yes I know; the phrase we writers so often ponder isn’t quite the one of this blog post’s title. The preposition we expect is ‘for’, not ‘of’, but that’s the whole point of this post. Yet again on second thought, ‘for whom do we write?’ is also appropriate to the question at hand. The answer,… Continue Reading
Adaptation
Most people jump to thoughts of Charles Darwin the minute they hear the word, ‘adaptation’; perhaps not the seven-year-old Darwin of the portrait to the left, but the father of the theory of evolution, nonetheless. One and the same, Darwin was already studying natural history, as this portrait of him clutching his beloved plant confirms.… Continue Reading