We Are Kindling Schist because in U.S. education, "it was always burning." Read. Comment. Submit.

Family Quartet I: The Ring

Family Quartet I: The Ring

For my father’s family “There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility.” —Mark Twain It was a gently chiseled curve of white gold, a barely measurable arc at its slightest, circling to the other side where the simple floral setting embraced the expertly angled diamond and its tiny attendants. The […]

Family Quartet II: The Heron

Family Quartet II: The Heron

To my mother and her family (and especially to Lisa) ”You can refute Hegel, but not the Saint or the Song of Sixpence.” —W.B. Yeats They didn’t much look at each other or talk about it when it happened. It could have happened to anyone, after all: the visibility in the back of those newer […]

Family Quartet III: Sometimes We Are Right

Family Quartet III: Sometimes We Are Right

  For Milo and Eleanor and Avi: Into the New “We think so then/ We thought so still.”—Edward Lear “May we stride into that morass, senses left, dreams fevered, and underpants brightly colored.” —G. L., 12/31/2015, personal text Most of us agree we lived the most intensely in our first hundred years. We thought we knew, […]

Family Quartet IV: Midsummer

Family Quartet IV: Midsummer

To David, Gabriel, and Amelia, and to the young woman I once was   Emily […] Do human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute? Stage Manager No. Pause The saints and poets, maybe —they do some.” —Thornton Wilder, Our Town   She drifted a little back into a dream, something about […]

Family Quartet: Gratitude

Family Quartet: Gratitude

These stories are dedicated to my dear family, past, present, and future. Our families more than anyone shape us, and I am forever grateful that mine are who they are. However, our friends help us realize who we are and who our families are and give us sustenance in ways families can’t. So I am […]

Family Quartet I: The Ring

For my father’s family “There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility.” —Mark Twain It was a gently chiseled curve of white gold, a barely measurable arc at its slightest, circling to the other side where the simple floral setting embraced the expertly angled diamond and its tiny attendants. The […]

Family Quartet II: The Heron

To my mother and her family (and especially to Lisa) ”You can refute Hegel, but not the Saint or the Song of Sixpence.” —W.B. Yeats They didn’t much look at each other or talk about it when it happened. It could have happened to anyone, after all: the visibility in the back of those newer […]

Family Quartet III: Sometimes We Are Right

  For Milo and Eleanor and Avi: Into the New “We think so then/ We thought so still.”—Edward Lear “May we stride into that morass, senses left, dreams fevered, and underpants brightly colored.” —G. L., 12/31/2015, personal text Most of us agree we lived the most intensely in our first hundred years. We thought we knew, […]

Family Quartet IV: Midsummer

To David, Gabriel, and Amelia, and to the young woman I once was   Emily […] Do human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute? Stage Manager No. Pause The saints and poets, maybe —they do some.” —Thornton Wilder, Our Town   She drifted a little back into a dream, something about […]

Family Quartet: Gratitude

These stories are dedicated to my dear family, past, present, and future. Our families more than anyone shape us, and I am forever grateful that mine are who they are. However, our friends help us realize who we are and who our families are and give us sustenance in ways families can’t. So I am […]

ANGER’S PLACE by Your Co-Editors

Debbie:  When you and I first began We Are Kindling Schist, my primary motivation was anger. I was angry at what I was facing at the school where I worked at the time, and I was trying to make sense of it all, to decipher how this professional anger reflected other events in my life, […]