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Month: November 2020

Politics on Rana Station

Politics on Rana Station

In last week’s post I promised to talk about politics on Rana Station this week. As I said in that post, I built the Station’s system on ideas garnered from decades of teaching, studying history, and observing our contemporary society. Those experiences inspired the guiding question, What kind of environment would allow ALL of my students to reach their full potential? I’ve spent most of my career teaching both urban and rural students from lower-income areas. I knew our current…

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Politics in Science Fiction

Politics in Science Fiction

By Jan S. Gephardt Do you read science fiction as an escape? If you hoped the politics would die down after the election, and now you just want to get away from it all in a sci-fi world, I’ll try to break this gently. Politics in science fiction is pretty much baked-in. No romance, no adventure story, no mystery, and no historical drama can completely evade society or politics, even when it’s not the focus. But most of these are…

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Our veterans haven’t failed us. But have we failed them?

Our veterans haven’t failed us. But have we failed them?

By Jan S. Gephardt Every Veterans Day, as a nation we’re supposed to pause. We’re supposed remember the many ways that veterans have never failed to serve our nation, when we called on them. But, especially on this Veterans Day, I worry: have we failed them? Personal connections I’ve never served in the armed forces, but service members and veterans have had a place in my heart for a long time. G.’s and my father is a World War II…

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The Universe Gives Me a Cat

The Universe Gives Me a Cat

By G. S. Norwood Sometimes the Universe gives me a cat. I write urban fantasy, so I’m fairly open to the idea of magical energies at play in our mundane world. Still, I had no intention of adopting a cat in October of 2019. When my oldest cat, Scrap, died that July, I was comfortable with the idea of being reduced to a two-cat household. “If the Universe gives me a cat, I’ll have another cat. But I’m not going…

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