Posts by Heather

Introduction 1.1—Blogging a Book

Posted by Heather on Dec 24, 2013 in Introduction | 4 comments

Welcome to my grand experiment!

My book on Cognitive Anchoring will be built like a blog but it will read like a book. I’ll be posting twice a week until the thing is done. Each post will be a piece of a whole chapter so it should be easy to read—short chunks.

Because, honestly, who among us has tons of time for reading these days?

Introduction 1.2—Where It All Began

Posted by Heather on Dec 31, 2013 in Introduction | 4 comments

From 1996 to 2003 I taught high school English at a marvelous little school in lower Manhattan. The staff was extraordinary. The students were (mostly) motivated, interested, and—best of all—interesting.

It was the perfect place to work and teach and marvel at how wonderful kids are.

Until a few guys tried to drop a building on us.

Introduction 1.3—How it Grew

Posted by Heather on Jan 3, 2014 in Introduction | 6 comments

So.

The three girls asked to be taught how to knit. As I recall at least one if not all knew how to crochet. All were motivated and bright and sweet… and we were all in the throes of our own versions of PTSD.

I told the girls to give me a couple of days to gather supplies and then I’d have them meet me at lunch and I could teach them. Shortly there were 45 girls and boys learning to knit and crochet. Our counselor—a better knitter than I—helped teach, too. In desperate need of yarn and needles I wrote to anyone I could think of for help. We received boxes from SoHo Publishing (Vogue Knitting’s parent company), Patternworks, Elizabeth Eakins, local shops, and I’m sure my memory is failing now because I know other companies sent us yarn (Time Warner sent the teacher’s roller bags FULL of supplies—I still have that bag).

Chapter 1.1—It Mattered Before

Posted by Heather on Jan 7, 2014 in Chapter 1, Chapters | 2 comments

Sometime after 9/11 and our experiences at my high school, I started to hear rumblings from school counselors, therapists, occupational therapists, and—when I moved to Tucson, AZ—nurses.*  The rumblings I heard went like this: oh, we used to teach that stuff, but that went out of vogue in the 80s.

Le sigh…

Of course, these rumblings were only coming from professionals *of a certain age* (ahem) and that, sadly, seemed to translate to: no one listens to them any more.

Which is a shame—because they know what you know.

Chapter 1.2—It Still Matters

Posted by Heather on Jan 10, 2014 in Chapter 1, Chapters | 4 comments

I hear knitters and non-knitters alike like saying lots of things about knitting—ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous: