Jessie Hayden’s classroom can get loud.   Very loud. Her teaching style doesn’t require students to sit up straight, face the board and remain quiet.  Relaxed and approachable, she doesn’t mind if students put their feet up and chill. In Jessie’s English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom at Georgia Perimeter College, every student brings his/her…

Rivaling the crisp new leaves flapping in the spring breeze, their noisy excuses were abundant. “Revisions take so long and winter was so short, and that’s my best time to write.” “I can’t focus on writing with a stuffy head. The pollen was the worst!“ “All that rain made me blue. . .” “And now…

For the first time in this modern technological age, my computer cracked up.  No ‘black screen of death.’  No smoke spiraled from the keyboard as ominous pipe organ music played.  No oozing blood like the stairs in “The Amityville Horror.”  Simply refusing to boot up was dramatic enough.  However, after several failed attempts and forced…

Nature sprouts. People go outside their homes, put on shorts, take off shirts, dig in dirt, jump in water, and feel gleeful in the renewed warmth. After being cooped up, personal media shifts to in-person.  They look over fences, tender a wave, and greet on the street.  Maybe, just maybe, after their sequestration by winter…

“When I get really stressed, about to boil over, I head toward my closet.” Totally serious and willing to share, my friend, a woman I’d known since our teenage years, went on. “You’ve seen my closet, right?  You saw the chair?” Nope, just a big walk-in closet in a big house seriously packed with lots…