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The Overstory: A Brief Book Review
I just finished reading The Overstory by Richard Powers. Let me tell you about it. Let me tell you how it helped. I’d been reading a lot of non-fiction for a larger writing project; bell hooks on teaching and community building; Gloria Ansaldúa’s Borderlands; Martin Luther King’s Where Do We Go from Here?; Audre Lorde’s…
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Traveling
” A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.” These are the words of a tree in Richard Powers’ beautiful novel, The Overstory. The story reveals how trees communicate with us and create community, supporting each other wherever they are planted. It’s a story that is giving me hope in these days of COVID-19…
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A Case for Generosity in a Selfish Time
This August I spent four days in Nashville, Tennessee taking a class through the Lilly School of Philanthropy where I was introduced to a new study out of Notre Dame called the Science of Generosity Initiative and the book written from the research called “The Paradox of Generosity: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose.” The…
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How I more than doubled the books I read as a busy, working mom
I love to read, always have. But after I became Mom to my two beautiful kids, I mourned the loss of my reading time. I’ve tried to convince my husband to read with me at night, side by side on the couch after the kids have gone to bed (so romantic!) But he reads during…
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Prison Book Club
Fifteen minutes into our discussion of Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III, Harold raises his hand. We were in the cleanest, air conditioned classroom of the prison’s vocational building, but the fan was blowing directly above Harold’s head. “Would anybody mind if we shut this fan off?” Shutting the fan off would definitely warm…
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Jesus’ Ascension and Max the Dog
It’s been TOO long since I’ve posted on my blog. One of my summer goals, along with getting back to meditating, is to start posting again. So stay tuned…. I have been writing a lot, though, working on my first book and I have three Living by the Word articles out now in the Christian…
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Only undefeated because we have gone on trying
I dreamed about Brett Kavanaugh the night after he was confirmed as our newest Supreme Court Justice and President Trump apologized to him on behalf of us all. My dream was vivid in detail. Judge Kavanaugh had grown his hair long and was sitting, open-robed, among the other justices, smoking a cigarette, a large gold…
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Knowing
In her poem “Tablets IV”, Dunya Mikhail writes: The homeless are not afraid to miss something. What passes through their eyes is how the clouds pass over the rushing cars, the way pigeons miss some of the seeds on the road and move away. Yet only they know what it means to have a home…
Teri McDowell Ott 