I grew up as a homeschool kid in New Jersey, under the wings of two very conservative Evangelical Christians. For 18 years, I had a singular primary social context for how the world worked, and how I interacted with others. The idea of a “friend” or “best friend” was not often discussed, because we were all “brothers” and “sisters” based…
Lately, I have thought a lot about people and community. Last week I finished a nine week course on local history docent training. The thing that struck me the most throughout our lessons and tours was this theme: the history we share, the connection we make between archaeological artifacts and our diverse tour audiences, is not education but provocation. This comes from…
I like definitions. When my curiosity about something in the world is sparked, and I seek to understand it, I am always looking for definitions, whether they come from a dictionary, Wikipedia, social constructs, or language. When I sought to understand my place in society and in the world as a 21st century white woman with voting rights, able to…
by C. E. Poley We often find ourselves struggling to define how we feel both inside our selves and outside. We struggle to find methods that express our thoughts and emotions, such as writing, painting, making music, mathematics, astronomy, and countless other things humans do. It is not easy to express the self with clarity. We are told every day by American…
By C. E. Poley One of the things you discover during National Novel Writing Month (which I have sometimes participated in since 2008) is what kind of a writer you are. What I mean by that is, you discover all kinds of things about the ways that you like to write. For example, what your methods are, what your personal physical…