Today is Halloween, which means you are no doubt getting ready for a party or filling your bowl with candy for the trick-or-treaters or, if you are the parent of a teenager, like me, cleaning your house before his/her friends arrive to mess it up again. Though I don’t know your plans, there is one...
Author: Teresa Funke
Have You Dreamed a Dream Lately?
You know the clip on YouTube featuring Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent? I’m sure you do. It has over 177 million views, and I think at least 50 of those are mine. This is my go-to video, the one I watch anytime I want a pick-me-up or I feel...
The Folly of Failure
What if failure didn’t exist? No, I’m serious. What if it’s just a word someone invented because he was feeling down about his work and the word stuck. It’s not hard to imagine a time when this word didn’t exist. There was a time when none of the words we use today existed. But at...
You Can’t Say That Word!
A couple of weeks ago, the sitcom Black-ish tackled a subject I’d been hoping they would address, the n-word. If you haven’t seen Black-ish, it’s a clever, funny, heartfelt take on a modern African-American family navigating the tricky waters of diversity. It quite often brings up important conversations, including this one . . . when...
The Brilliance of Illness
It’s hard to be brilliant when you are sick. Remember when you were a kid and became ill, and your mother made a bed on the couch, turned on your favorite cartoons, made you chicken soup and told you everything was going to be better soon? Is it wrong that right now I wish I...
A Penny for Your Words
The Authors Guild recently released the results of their study on author incomes. They polled their nearly 1,700 members, most of whom are full-time or part-time authors. The results showed that 56% of respondents earn below the poverty level of $11,670 per year. And the medium income for authors has dropped 24% since 2009. They...
29,000 Words
I’ve written just over 29,000 words on this blog since I started it a year and a half ago. That’s the same number as you’ll find in my Home-Front Heroes children’s books! I’ve written 83 posts, each ranging between 300 and 450 words, in about the same amount of time it takes me to research,...
Who Will Tell the Refugees’ Stories?
When I was in college, I befriended a girl whose family members were refugees from Laos. She went by the name of Jenny because her teachers had deemed her real name too hard to pronounce. I learned it, though, and called her by that. I can still remember how to say it, though I can’t...
You Gotta Know the Rules to Break ‘Em
Last week I put up a post, “The Foibles of Self-exploration,” knowing full well that I was using the word “foible” incorrectly. It refers to a minor weakness in a person’s character, and cannot, therefore, apply to a practice. I knew some of my word-loving friends might call me on it, and one of them...
The Foibles of Self-exploration
“Self-exploration is my favorite hobby,” my new friend said. And I nodded vigorously, glad to have found a kindred spirit. In the past year, though, I’ve been trying to make some life decisions and finding that all of this personal study has left me a bit confused. Is it the Leo in me that makes...