Eric Colburn
@etherealcolburn
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Teacher, reader, writer, father, partner...
Cambridge, MA
Joined July 2017
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My wife just said, “The Newburyport/Rockport commuter line should have a stop in Somerville at Sullivan Square,” and I looked it up and of course there’s a report from
@TransitMatters
that makes a lot of great suggestions including that one. We could have such a great system!
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SO many bicycles on the streets of Cambridge this morning! I usually commute much earlier and don’t see the full spectacle. It is AMAZING. I feel lucky to live here, and very grateful to all the advocates (
@cambbikesafety
etc.) and city councilors who have made this happen.
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Went for a walk in Belmont and saw a tree eating a sign:
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Happy to see the new bike lanes sketched out on Washington street this morning!
@BlineTransport
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Forgot to mention that I was happy to have a poem published recently in
@GreenInkPoetry
’s lovely “Bud and Branch” collection:
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Visited my mom and stepfather’s house and found
@borisdralyuk
’s My Hollywood on the coffee table and kept re-reading this amazing poem. I’m feeling a bit like this these days:
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We're doing a bike bus next Wednesday, for Walk/Roll to School Day! Thanks to
@CoachBalto
for inspiration and advice!
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Glad to see
@OlufemiOTaiwo
quoting Grace Lee Boggs’s “Living for Change”—I loved that book, which I think I stumbled on in a used bookstore years ago, and I’ve never seen it cited anywhere else until now. (Taiwo’s book is good too!)
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This is wild: to increase infant mortality by 1.7% all it took was *one* single dirty diesel VW per 1,000 cars. Cars are terrible for human health, and extra-dirty cars are extra-terrible. Let's build more transit, and build more housing in the walkable parts of our cities!
Forthcoming in REStud:
"The Impact of Car Pollution on Infant and Child Health: Evidence from Emissions Cheating" by Diane Alexander & Hannes Schwandt
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Blurry bc I was on my bike, but here’s another doofus driving along in the fully protected Brattle St bike lane.
@cambikelanes
#carsinbikelanes
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I love it that governors of big western rural states are preaching the gospel of urbanism. Now if only the folks in my little eastern urban neighborhood could realize that with a little more density we could be like Paris, or Amsterdam—*and* lower our housing costs!
“We built cities all over America that are designed for automobiles and not designed for people... Our housing costs are high, in part because of the way that we've designed our cities."
-
@GovDougBurgum
North Dakota comments during the
@NatlGovsAssoc
winter meetings
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Video of this morning’s
#bikebus
. Thanks to
@CoachBalto
for inspiration. Looks like we may do this every Wednesday morning…
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Finally got
@BorisDralyuk
’s My Hollywood, and it’s great. Big-hearted, charming, beautifully American, it makes me feel even I could love LA.
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Overcame my Bostonian’s prejudice against LA and ordered
@BorisDralyuk
’s My Hollywood bc the poems I’ve read from it are excellent. Mentioned this to my stepfather and he said, “Oh I really like that book!” How did *he* hear about it? Found it in an Airbnb in Oakland!
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@gr8__awakening
@Suv2015
The overwhelming majority of the teachers I know would, like me, quit if they had to do remote long term. I love teaching, I love kids, I love the classroom, but remote school was terrible and I hope never to do it again.
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Eddie, the security guy at work, came up to me last week, agitated, and said, “You have to get more people to bike! The traffic’s insane, and more bikers would get cars off the road!” We had a nice talk about how more protection for bikes in South Brookline would help!
“A 5-mile [drive] takes me close to 45 minutes some days, and even more than that.”
That’s a 20- 30 min bike ride.
We need to enable people to safely choose biking for short trips. Getting some cars off the road has an exponential impact on congestion.
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@berkie1
I love it! Wood-frame multifamilies are often so beautiful. Here are a few I love on Prospect Hill on Somerville:
Prospect Hill in Somerville has some really cool old wood-frame apartment buildings. They make sixplexes look unambitious and boring.
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Got home from work to the new THINK journal, which has great stuff in it from Dan Campion,
@MyersBurt
, and others—including me! Here’s one of mine, about acceptance:
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Victor Hugo’s poem about going to his daughter’s grave is more dramatic and heavily accented, but to my ear this Fred Cogswell sonnet, from Pearls (h/t
@BurlHorniachek
) is a worthy successor to “Demain, dès l’aube”. I don’t love the title, but from line 3 it is pretty amazing:
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@mattyglesias
One of the big problems is that in education, the null hypothesis is usually true:
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Here’s a forgotten poem by Constance Carrier,
@ForgottenGPoems
, from Carrier’s 1954 book The Middle Voice (first book to win a Lamont Prize, I think),:
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I have a poem in the winter issue of The Orchards poetry journal: (scroll to page 43 for my poem—or check it out below)
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@cinemachagrin
@jarjoh
OTOH it’s true that one of my favorite things about my daily bike commute is that I never have to bother to “work out” unless I actually feel like it, and my mood is a million times better. I kinda can’t believe people go sit on exercise bikes at a gym—I’m way too lazy for that.
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Climate reparations?! Wow, I thought it would never happen. (Seems like good news but gotta see what
@OlufemiOTaiwo
thinks…)
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I have a poem about my son’s accident in Appalachia, which I’ve read for decades now; my copy arrived just before Father’s Day. I’m thankful to be in a wonderful journal along with wonderful poets, writers and outdoorspeople, and I’m thankful my wonderful son continues to heal.
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This is way more convincing to me than experts touting ambiguous scientific papers. I am personally very eager to bring all students back as soon as possible.
EXCELLENT article, the likes of which we need more of...
Not only because it shows yet another school succeeding with 3-ft distancing (a HS!).
Largely because it centers a union leader’s reassuring words for other teachers about reopening. 🙌🏽
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Glad to see this decision, and I like to think the
@BostonSBWU
rally at the NLRB office helped shine light on Starbucks’s illegal actions.
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Here’s a poem of mine from the new issue of THINK journal. Not a dramatic monologue,
@PoetsonThursday
, but it is a meditation on other people’s voices and a particular kind of alienation:
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My amazing daughter got a big award tonight from the Cambridge Club for her work on climate education. I’m very proud of her.
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@baduhennatweets
@AutonomousHoag
@berkie1
I ride my bike 6 miles across town to work and 6 miles back throughout the winter and several of my colleagues do as well. We are not heroic young daredevils either, but boring middle aged teachers. It’s not to everybody’s taste, but it isn’t particularly hard.
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@DinosGonatas
@cden4
I gave my mom an ebike and she uses it literally every day and says “It changed my life.”
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I've tried translating a couple
#Baudelaire
poems. Here's a
#sonnet
(maybe about evil,
@PoetsonThursday
?):
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Great to see the amazing
@mattapanviv
in my classroom and talk about how BHS can encourage even more kids to get here via safe biking and walking!
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My students tell me Brookline needs an AHO.
NEW
@BostonGlobe
: Newly Discovered Mountain Lion Habitat in Brookline Could Spell Trouble for Affordable Housing.
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Had a great first Brookline
#bikebus
and maybe made a couple of new converts. Hoping to do this every Wednesday morning from the Heath SChool to BHS. Thanks to
@BlineSafeRoutes
@HeathSchoolPTO
#SRTS
@mattapanviv
@jac_emily
etc.!
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Enjoyed this poem/song from Poochigian’s “American Divine”:
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@Lhyzz
@jdcmedlock
@JGoku18
No, the US has more people per area. (Norway population density = 15/Sq km ; US population density = 36/Sq km.) The real answer probably has to do with the built environment, how hard/easy it is to get around without a car. High gas prices also encourage different practices.
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Draft double ovillejo, because
@BAD_ACID_LABS
and
@PoetsonThursday
were talking about them recently and I heard a truck beeping outside my classroom window. (Royal “we” including my wife is kind of a joke, since she advises against using “we” in poems 🤪)
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@elianayjohnson
@ewarren
@CAndersonMO
in April when she was 4 mos pregnant she was OKed by the school board; in June, at 6 mos (ie visible) she “resigned”. Her story, that the principal fired her when she was visibly pregnant, is absolutely not contradicted by the article. The principal could have asked her to leave!
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@Suv2015
The teachers who are leery about returning to school amid a COVID wave (not me or most teachers I know) are *extremely* cautious in their personal life. I personally am pretty cautious (no restaurants!) but I love in person school and never want to go remote again.
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Amazing that electric bikes/trikes are saving us more oil than electric cars. *Everyone* should get an electric bike (or cargo bike!) and replace lots and lots of car trips!
Yes the oil market is tight. Now imagine it if demand were structurally higher by 1.5 million barrels per day.
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This feels weird: biking into Davis Square from the West, you see a “Yield to Peds” sign, implying biking is okay. Then as you are about to roll onto Holland St, you learn you are verboten. Hm.
@SomervilleInfr1
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I'll be pleased to see my poem about the past in print:
delighted to reveal the cover for our next issue, ‘reminiscence!’ the issue will be published online and available in print this coming sunday, the 21 april. featuring work from an incredible lineup of exceptionally talented poets, this collection is not one to miss ♥️
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Bookmail:
@BenMyersPoet
’s most recent book () is worth buying just for the great dad band poem below, but there is a ton of excellent work in here.
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I’m glad I put on my union shirt and went to the rally this AM to support the Starbucks workers union—justice is on their side, and the NLRB should see it. Good to see my friend Jen and
@raulspeaks
there as well.
@BostonSBWU
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@ForgottenGPoems
@PeterVertacnik
The weekend’s rented house furnished a Larkin collected, and I reread this wonderful poem that I had mostly forgotten (I was interested to notice that it was in the supposedly impossible form, unrhymed tetrameter —though it’s true it is essentially trochaic…).
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The bike paths in Cambridge I rode on this morning were pretty great—mostly snow and ice free—with one exception: the contraflow lane on James St, which was blocked at the Mason end.
@cambikelanes
@CambridgeDPW
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Got a poem accepted today. Unfortunately also got a rejection—and the accepted poem is only 2 lines long. But I am celebrating anyway! Woohoo!
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Very happy our son made it home from Europe for Christmas—has to wear dark glasses bc of his concussion, but that just makes him look more suavely continental…
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I feel a little shy about sharing my anxieties publicly, but I guess that’s what poems are for. Here’s a sonnet of mine in The Orchards Poetry Journal—the summer issue is available at . Technically speaking, I like the octet…
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I'm pumped to see my poem in print (in the wonderful new issue of
@madrigalpress
: ). The poem, "Basketball Days," is mostly about the game, but also about past and present, and the way expected and unexpected sounds collide:
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At the Danish national gallery, I have discovered an artist no doubt everybody else already knows: L.A. Ring. He’s very, very good.
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Went into
@Primsbookshop
to grab a copy of Normal People bc my daughter wanted to reread it and asked the bookseller for the best contemporary Irish novelist I’d never heard of. He sold me Donal Ryan’s 2nd novel, and it is indeed excellent:
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I rode it yesterday in pouring rain, and there were LOTS of people on it. There is a huge latent demand for great paths like this. I can now bike from my neighborhood to Lechmere entirely off-street in 15 minutes--and from there it's a hop to Charlestown, the North End, etc.
The Green Line Extension Community Path has been open for less than 24 hours but was already getting plenty of use Saturday.
Read more on the new connection to the MBTA:
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@JustPlaneNews
@LewishamCouncil
@LouiseKrupski
@damienegan
@annamoore83
What a photo! I wrote a sonnet last summer about the losing a tree on my own street:
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Today's draft
#sonnet
,
@PoetsonThursday
, has many of its elements in place but hasn't yet figured out how to assemble them into a smoothly running mechanism:
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I like how community garden plots here in the Netherlands really are like little dachas. That’s my dream for my own community garden plot back home, but I only have an umbrella, table and chairs. The community garden we biked by here in Haarlem had scores of cabins like this:
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I’m in Ireland for the first time, so I opened up an anthology of Irish poems at the Airbnb. Most of the poems I didn’t know well didn’t do much for me, but this Louis MacNeice one is good:
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We picked our daughter up from her last gymnastics practice of high school, from the gym she started going to when she was 8. For us it was a sentimental moment. For her: “Why are both here? And why’d you come inside instead of waiting in the car?”
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Garden plot/dacha is producing a lot of kale and still some lettuce, and promising a ton of tomatoes…
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Pleased to have a breezy poem in the new Brookline Greenzine about the Somerville Community Path—especially since the Community Path Extension is finally open.
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@berkie1
@andrewnbrinker
@BostonGlobe
That is dumb, but also it would be even better to build upward in town centers.
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Have been too busy trying furiously to learn Spanish to write many poems, but I did scribble one out this week. So here’s another corny draft love
#sonnet
,
@PoetsonThursday
. Side note: I like the spanish word for corny: “cursi”!
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@berkie1
@StreetsblogMASS
Wisdom from the one person at the meeting who actually rides the bus!
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This is doable. I ride my bike to BHS every day, and my 77 yo mom, car-free on Corey Hill, loves her electric bike.
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Happy to have poems in The Orchards Poetry Journal, along with poets including
@JThom7248
,
@KrisakLen
and
@DeborahJShore
. The issue can be found at . Here’s my poem about how we can’t repeat the past (“But of course you can,” he says, waving arms wildly):
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Pleased to have a poem and photo in the Brookline Greenzine--along with a lot of good work by much younger people!()
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@harv056
@paulmromer
@mattyglesias
*Obviously* teachers were the primary opponent—they were the people directly at risk. I’m a teacher and I’m okay with going back, but I see my colleagues’ reluctance in the context of everybody else’s reluctance: the only difference is that we have unions and so some power.
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I'm thrilled to have a poem up at
@EkstasisMag
. As a winter bike commuter, I love the photo that accompanies it--and I am fond, too, of the poem, which is more biblical and allusive than my usual stuff. Check it out here:
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@shankman
@OlufemiOTaiwo
@MayorWu
@BostonGlobe
Following in the fooststeps of Brookline MA, where I am proud that my students were among those pushing for it years ago!
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My amazing daughter and her amazing friend and colleague presenting to teachers at the MTA Climate Action Network’s conference today at UMass Lowell:
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Marilyn Hacker’s excellent “Calligraphies” includes a lovely sonnet sequence remembering a wonderful poet, Marie Ponsot (Marie was generous with young poets, and I remember Marie coming over after our son was born and being very sweet with him, as she was with us). Here’s Hacker:
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Prospect Hill in Somerville has some really cool old wood-frame apartment buildings. They make sixplexes look unambitious and boring.
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@natwexler
@ClassroomWonder
I love the emphasis on lots of reading as a way to build vocab, and the suggestion to focus on one topic is interesting; I think I learned a lot of words as a kid by reading Hardy Boys books, which had a surprising # of hard words but embedded them in formulaic stories/content.
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#Browsing
at the excellent Perelandra Bookshop in Fort Collins, I ended up buying some other books, but I did like this poem (from Elaine Equi’s book, Click and Clone):
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Back in the US, buying
@jasonguriel
’s latest at
@booksmithtweets
, looking forward to a great summer read.
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In my youth, I read everything John Ashbery wrote. Like everyone else, I loved his poem, "Soonest Mended." Today's draft
#sonnet
is a meditation on a phrase from that poem.
@PoetsonThursday
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Never thought I’d hear my 1st Springsteen concert in a park in Denmark: what sounds like a *really* loud bar band revs into “Prove it all night.” The singer seems raspy but ok… Then we turn into the street and it’s a stadium. We stood there for a few songs: “Out in the Street”…
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My friend Stephen just moved into an amazing old hacienda-style 12-plex in Arlington. It has an awesome courtyard. We should make more like this!
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Hiking in Europe yesterday, my son fell, broke four ribs. Drs inserted a tube to drain blood from his lungs. He was in the ICU. Today he is out of the ICU, and his mom is flying over tmrw. I’m grateful to the docs and his friends. 🙏 (Here’s how I know he is feeling better :)
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Books shelved, chairs up, the classroom is ready for summer!
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Some of us will bike in from Heath to BHS again next Wednesday morning—join us, and help prove that the Heath school is actually in Brookline!
What a great way to start the day! Thank you
@etherealcolburn
for organizing this awesome
#bikebus
from
@HeathSchoolPTO
to
@brooklinehigh
#irolled2022
#MASRTS
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@berkie1
That’s part of it. But I sometimes think the bigger problem is the reluctance to allow tall buildings next to transit. Most of the land area around Coolidge corner, Porter square, Davis square, etc. is covered with 1-story buildings.
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How to revise formal poems? I wrote a fun poem last night that I really like but think I could maybe improve... I’d like to take a workshop on revising formal poems from someone like
@BorisDralyuk
or
@amjuster
!
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Last Friday,
@PoetsonThursday
, I had my students write a holiday poem; if they shared it with the class, they got a piece of candy. It was surprisingly successful and fun. In between helping kids, I wrote a couple of light pieces. Here's one (Ms. Z is my co-teacher):
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@milleridriss
For anyone with less than 150k/year household income, Ivies cost less than state schools. My kid goes to Yale and pays less than my low-income students pay to go to UMass. *That* is unfair, but the sticker price of ivies is really misleading. Only rich folks pay it.
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I'm somehow--thankfully!--feeling more at peace in my technophobia than I was when I wrote this, but I'm still happy to see my poem, "Alter Ego", in the excellent new issue of Blue Unicorn:
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Philip Larkin, 100 today, was my favorite poet when I was a teenager. I still love his outrageous virtuosity, his roomy stanzas, his dyspepsia—but also his shorter, sweeter poems, like “First Sight”, or this one:
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