About
Warning: This blog is not a toy. To avoid danger of intellectual expansion, keep this blog away from babies and children and the kind of adults who whine, “Stop it! This is hard!” when their political campaign tactics are critiqued by their own allies. Do not use this blog in cribs, beds, carriages, play pens, or near the electronic devices of those who believe shrieking on talk radio programs provides a fair and balanced contribution to civic discourse.
I am your friendly neighborhood Humanist/Bright/Freethinker. I cherish imagination and absurdity, reality and rationality and skepticism, I smite applying magical and supernatural thinking in any realm other than fiction, and I think blasphemy is a victimless crime. Although I write professionally for both children and adults, this blog is for the grups. Vulgarities across a wide spectrum of grammatical categories will occasionally transfer from my mind to my keyboard, always in good humor (mine, if not yours). Read this blog for entertainment, and at your own f***ing risk.
:-}
Jun 21, 2013 @ 06:55:26
Oh, no!! It’s Friday morning and I got up and made my coffee and sat down at my computer and there’s no new blog post!!! I miss it . . . it’s definitely become part of my Friday morning ritual. Hope everything is okay in your world, Robyn!
Jun 21, 2013 @ 07:13:48
Oh, you sweetie! Never fear, I am here…but the blog today will be teeny…and late.
Nov 26, 2014 @ 17:21:50
A friend just guided me to your blog, and I discovered that you read Diane Keaton’s memoirs for the Santa Ana references. I hope then that I am not out of line in suggesting that you would probably appreciate my first book _Each Thing We Know Is Changed Because We Know It, and Other Poems_ (Ahsahta Press of Boise State University, 1994). Greenleaf Street is named for my mother’s family (especially for my great-great-grandfather Eli who was the town’s first doctor). Although I never attended either Willard of SAHS, both my parents graduated from those schools. The poems in that book very much reflect Santa Ana through the years.
Nov 27, 2014 @ 09:17:58
I admire both your chutzpah and the book’s title! What can I say; you had me at the Santa Ana references. I ordered a copy of the book from Ahsahta Press. Thanks, Kevin, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Jul 18, 2015 @ 15:17:03
Ms Parnell, the comments are closed but I wanted to post to your blog about my dad, Ted Clucas. Going through his things I ran across a letter he wrote to my cousin, part of which you and particularly Janis might find interesting.
August 29. 1997
Dear Amy,
Your letter about the encounter with a former student was a pleasure to receive. I don’t intend to drop that in a waste basket. Thank you very much.
I remember Janis, and I remember the Clucas Massage Parlor. There was a list of members posted in the editorial office adjacent to the journalism classroom, together with a list of personal nicknames–all fictitious, I hope. Oh, I do hope so.
Your description of her as surly shows that she did take something out of my class. One of my favorite memories is of a morning when a roomful of usually capable students seemed particularly dense, and I was letting them know so at considerable length when a girl interrupted me. “You’re grouchy, Mr. Clucas,” she said, “but we love you anyway.”
Jul 18, 2015 @ 17:11:27
I love this note! Thank you so, so much, Ms. Cory, for sharing this. My condolences on the loss of your father. We (his former students, if I may be so bold to speak for them) did love him, “anyway” and always.