RAE’S READS

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This year (2025) finds me with 53 years of teaching “under my belt.” I have taught all levels from pre-K “(library lady” or “book lady”–volunteer) to juniors, seniors, and graduate students enrolled in my Advanced Writing class at the university where I have just completed 34 years. My first paying teaching job was junior high, and I spent 13 years with ages 12-13, the “difficult years.” I had some of the “funnest” experiences with this age group. When I was no longer the “young, fun teacher,” I taught in an elementary school setting before sixth graders went on to junior high, teaching language arts blocs, an assignment that was a “dream-fit” for me. After completing graduate school in my 40s, I went on to community college, then university teaching. This past fall I accepted a part-time teaching job at Apogee Gulf Coast Schools in its first year at the Alvin campus. After my Better Half died n 2022, I achieved a lifelong dream: opening a bookstore of my own, Rae’s Reads. A year later, I sold the house we had lived in for 47 years and moved into the bookstore. My goal is to circulate and repurpose books. Just as teaching is “in my blood,” so is a passion for reading, writing, libraries, and everything bookish. This blog will be open to anyone who loves books, promotes literacy and wants to “come out and play.”

BOGMAS 2021, Day 14

Thanks to ny young blogging friend, Shaunessa for the meme above.

For Christmas in 2018, my dear friend, Susan, gave me a journal titled “One Question a Day: A Five Year Journal. It has turned out to be my second favorite Christmas present ever (The first is a “Snarky Cat” quilt she gave me last Christmas.) The journal is promoted as “a personal time capsule of questions and answers.” Each day, a question is posed, and one writes a response to it and dates it. I am in the fourth (next to the last) year of writing in it.

The beauty of it is, one can look back over the years and see how her/his answers have changed from year to year. For example, today, December 14th, the question is, “What is your favorite building?” In 2018, I answered, “the Ida something old Public Library in Houston, where I used to go when we were first married in 1964. In 2019, it was, “The Alvin Public Library; and in 2020, the journal reads, “The Strand Bookstore” in New York City. This was a place I had planned to visit and see for the first time in a March, 2020, girlfriend’s trip to NYC that ended up cancelled by Covid. This year, I wrote, “The New York City Public Library” because I took a virtual tour of it in March 2021 as part of my “pretend” trip to NYC I took via my blog (Thanks to those of you who went along with me, powerful women readers!) Who know what wonderful building it will be in 2022, the final year of the journal? I hope to spend the day in Houston a few times in the coming year, so perhaps it will be the Houston Museum of Fine Arts or the Museum of Natural History, or perhaps, I’ll wax nostalgic and think back to the Astrodome, the eighth wonder of the world, the world’s first indoor stadium, or the old River Oaks movie theater in Houston, who knows?

Looking ahead to Christmas…

Christmas always makes me feel like this!

…in 2018 the question for December 25th was, “What is the best gift you’ve received? That year, I simply wrote , “Salvation,” and wrote the same thing the next year. Last year, 2020, I listed both Susan’s quilt and the built-in book shelves My Better Half and I gave each other. This year, there are already two contenders (yes! I opened them early…with permission). We shall see…

For sure, this five year journal which prompts one to answer one simple question a day is one of the best presents I’ve been given. Thank you, Susan.

Thanks, Evan for the sign off.

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One response to “BOGMAS 2021, Day 14”

  1. Carla Avatar
    Carla

    What a wonderful journal, I like that idea. Boy, how my likes, priorities and feelings have changed over the last five years.

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