This weeks’ Friday Five is a rather to-the-point inquiry by Melissa: “Who are your top 5 fictional crushes?” So, I’m thinking about this and I realize something: it’s been a rare occasion when I have had a “crush” on a girl in a book. Girls in movies, girls in TV series, my goodness yes, but not girls in books. That’s not very common at all. So I shall include TV and film in this when formulating my answer. But now another thought occurs to me: there is another way of reading this question. Reading it strictly, grammatically, the adjective “fictional” …

There’s one more teacher I forgot to mention in the last Friday Five answer, who had a big influence on me, and that was Tim Lilburn. He’s a Canadian poet with whom I had the priviledge of studying, as well as just an all-around cool guy. He’s very together, frightfully smart and dauntingly well-read. And his poetry is, to me, somehow deeply fragile and absolutely beautiful. Sometimes I long to read his book To The River again, but alas I don’t have my copy here. Tim was always a respectful, generous teacher. He was, in a sense that really does …

This week Sir Adam of Lipscomb asked: Going through some old papers my parents brought from their house last week, I found several notes to my parents from teachers I’d had growing up. I got to thinking about the legions of teachers I had for the first 21 years of my life, and wondered: Who were the 5 that had the greatest impact on me as a ppererson, for good or ill? Because of the places I grew up, and my education experience, I find that I had many more horrible teachers than good ones. But there were some who …

Thus Spake Mojave66: Hey, thank you for letting me into this wonderful group. I really love y’alls blogs. My apologies for the lateness– I’ve been scrambling at odd hours to try to get into San Francisco’s City Hall to marry my partner of 12 years. It’s been an amazing, profound experience– such an outpouring of love and support from damn near everybody in our city. Florists have been dropping off free roses, there are offers of discounted hotel rooms, people passing around food and honking and waving their support. So this week’s question is inspired by all this: what are …

This week’s F5 question is from Roganda of The Weather and Everyone’s Health. I think. So Valentine’s Day is coming up, and my impulse to be timely has overcome my dislike of mush, so today’s question concerns love. “Love is omni-inclusive, progressively exquisite, understanding and tender and compassionately attuned to other than self.”—R. Buckminster Fuller. What are five ways that people in your life (any relation: child, parent, spiritual advisor, friend, etc. etc.) have demonstrated through their actions that they love you–whether they meant to or not? (bonus points for interesting, unusual, unexpected or especially subtle examples). As some people …