Barbara Swander Miller
Honoring the journey in everyday life
Category: A Writer’s Life
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Even though I’ve never worn glittery tops with letters that flash my undeniable school pride, and Even though I loathe finding tiny flecks of glitter stuck to my otherwise plain shirt after opening my craft closet, and Even though I’ve been stuck in the filthy mire of the news and its portents of doom, haunting …
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Some Good; Some Not So It was only a week, but it seemed as if I’d been dozing, sneezing, coughing, and bingeing on historical dramas in print and video for forty days and forty nights. Like a baby with its days and nights mixed up, my sleep schedule didn’t help. I drifted in and out…
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Remember Emily Dickinson from your high school English classes? The one who heard a Fly buzz- when she died? The one who could not stop for Death, so he kindly stopped for her? What if she hadn’t been so eccentric, as teachers have painted her in countless classrooms? What if, instead, she’d been a gifted…
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A journey to redefine retirement How would you define “to do?” There’s nothing particularly hard about the question. Especially if you’re a “doer“ like me. It means to get things accomplished. To stay busy. To work. Since my early days in college when I worked thirty hours a week teaching kids and adults how to…
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After spending a year as a retired high school English teacher, I just returned to my former high school to participate in the commencement ceremony at the invitation of a graduating senior. It’s an honor to be asked and part of a lovely tradition that allows seniors to choose a staff member to hand them…
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In today’s classrooms My heart was warmed today. And it had nothing to do with the near-record heat and humidity in the Midwest. No, it was a group of teachers who warmed it: eleven elementary, secondary, and post graduate teachers gathered for this year’s Invitational Summer Institute (ISI), conducted by the Indiana Writing Project Teacher…
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It was beginning to seem like a game of tag… to find out as much as possible about my three times great aunt, Mary Jane Edwards who went South with her sister Lizzie– my three times great grandmother– to teach freedmen right after the Civil War. And it was filled with stops and starts, dashes, and…
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The closest I could come to the muumuu of my aging hippie friend was a Chambray dress hidden on the clearance rack at Walmart. Prefaded, loose and long. As I wriggled my arms inside its buttery fabric and let it fall over my head, it granted me instant permission to be free. Free from importance.…
