A few updates

Well, three weeks ago I finished “A Wreath on Sam’s Grave,” my sonnet wreath that I’ve worked on for months. When I began, inspired by A Wreath for Emmett Till, I had no idea just how much work actually went into the completion of the project. I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy -……

Seeing Something for the First Time

 One of the sources I’ve been using during my research is a book entitled On Looking, by Alexandra Horowitz. In it, Ms. Horowitz goes on “lookings” with several experts of different fields (“expert” being a broad term; they can be anyone from a Ph.D. to a bright-eyed child) in order to learn new ways to look at……

Following a Scholarly Lead

One of the topics that came up in my talk with Dr. Aikins regarded a study about the effectiveness of video games – Tetris in particular – when used as treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Though he was not familiar with this particular study, he did see the benefit of thought suppression offered by……

Brainstorming

I’ve got a thousand directions in which I can go for the end product with my PTSD research. I know what I want the final product to be, form-wise: a heroic crown of sonnets. That hasn’t changed. But there are so many angles, so many variables, so many different paths to take. This is a……

Wounded Warriors

Sam Thacker was my friend. At 22, she had already served a tour in Iraq and been discharged from the U.S. Army. A month before her 23rd birthday, Sam died in a car crash in North Philly. She was in a neighborhood where no one who is up to any kind of good goes.   She sideswiped……