Part 1, Part 2   I like to imagine Mr. Gray grading our essays in the evenings in his bachelor pad over a bowl of Top Ramen. Of course he had a pad; this was the 70’s and he was a bachelor. They all had pads. I imagine him laughing over mine. I imagine him laughing so hard that he had to stop and clean up the Top Ramen that he inadvertently snorted though his nose. Thirty plus years has brought me not only a great deal of retrospect, but also a softening of the edges and a greater understanding of human nature. I don’t think he was really Mr. Haw. He was just Mr. Haugh, doing a job that, perhaps, no one else wanted to do. Clearly he was stiff and strict and “by the book,” but these days I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps he was… [Read More]

Part 1 Part 3 Mr. Haugh was someone with authority over everyone, liked by no one. He was a large man, as wide as he was tall. And he was quite tall. Which made him quite wide. He had fleshy hands, droopy jowls, was mostly bald, and extremely out of shape. The poor man probably hated his job and was at high risk of cardiac arrest but we didn’t think about those things in the 9th grade. We were just scared of him. He was usually scowling except for times like now, when he looked down at us past his ample nose with a grim self satisfied smirk as he turned the key in the detention hall lock. We were incarcerated. No innocence until proven guilt. Never mind that we had been caught red-handed. Never mind that the school janitor was probably, at that very moment, mopping up bucketfuls of water… [Read More]

Note: This post is a repeat of one I did on my original blog. If you have read it, thank you for still being here! I did some minor editing but the original content is pretty much intact. I do have new material in the works, but I felt that this one (and a few others that I’ll sprinkle in here and there) deserve a place on my “new and improved” blog.  Part 2, Part 3   Some thirty five years ago I was in 9th grade and Mr. Gray was my English teacher. He had a passion for the written word and imparted that to his students. Thus began my love affair with writing. The fact that I was also in love with the young and handsome Mr. Gray had nothing to do with it. Really. It didn’t. Well…maybe the the tiniest bit at the time, but I must… [Read More]

“Why Cat Feet Studio?” When I was in school I loved English; loved it with a passion! By contrast, I hated math; hated it down to the marrow of my bones. When I reached high school that hate turned to utter loathing of vilest description. This, however, is not the point. The point is that I loved anything having to do with words and when my freshman English teacher, Mr. Gray, introduced us to Fog by Carl Sandburg I fell in love. With the poem. I was already in love with Mr. Gray but that’s not the point either. You can read the poem here. You also need to know that several years later, after I was married (not to Mr. Gray, thankfully, because that would have just been weird) my husband and I began to keep cats and I officially became a ‘cat person.’… [Read More]