What I’ve Learned from El Salvador by Maria Vazquez-Smith
since August 2011 1. I learned that life is unpredictable and cannot be controlled. 2. I learned that there is a wide, visible gap between life in the United States and life in the many…
Category: Friends
Dear “Hermana Ann” by Maria Vazquez-Smith
Maria is taking a class with me based on The Book of Mev. One of the weekly themes was Direct Address, and Maria wrote the following and gave me permission to share it. Dear “Hermana…
Share the Wealth with Carolina and Christina: A Glimpse into Two Cubana-Americana’s Stories
Carolina Dominguez from Miami and Christina Arrom from Chicago, are Cubana-Americanas who were influenced by the stories of their parents, but especially their grandparents’ lives in Cuba. After Carolina served with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps…
Share the Wealth with Rhodi Celaj and Kestrel Smoot: Fernweh!
Fernweh (Noun) Wanderlust means the desire to travel. Fernweh elevates that urge to a need; The opposite of homesickness. I was once told that one of the most valuable things people can do in life…
Share the Wealth with Nicole McLaughlin: How Medical School Has Made Me Healthier – Wellness, Unity and Gratitude
Nicole is a second year medical student at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, a medical program well-known for its curricular changes and focus on wellness that serve to improve students’ mental health during their…
One Thing Leads to Another
Z studied with meIn a Social Justice class fall 2007 I learned that semesterHow much Z loved poetry They kept a notebook of new wordsThey’d come across and then make the words a part of…
Commonplace Books
From the Be in Love with Yr Life class, Annie Kratzmeyer was telling me about the commonplace notebooks she fills. Here’s a page of one of mine. What Emerson kept, and what he recommended enthusiastically…
The Good News of Inspiration from Rereading Lindsey Trout Hughes’s Letters and Poems
In the last year and a half, I have benefited enormously from exchanges with Lindsey, who lives in Brooklyn.
A Briiliant Bit of Victor Hugo
My friend Andrew Wimmer has taken on a translation of Hugo’s Les Misérables. He shared the following in this morning’s email… “If it had not rained on the night of June 17, 1815, the future…
Coming Soon: Share the Wealth with Laura Lapinski: The Films of Wes Anderson
Laura Lapinski, a graduate student in psychology at SIUE, is doing her Share the Wealth on film director Wes Anderson on Sunday 8 October. For those interested in joining us, here’s some background from Laura……