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Recent Posts
- Psaltery & Lyre’s New Site
- 123 Psaltery & Lyre: “Agricola Dreams of Flying” by J. Rose Lara
- 122 Psaltery & Lyre: “Communion: a love poem (a villanelle)” by Rachel Bollinger
- Book Review: Philip Metres’s Sand Opera
- 121 Psaltery & Lyre: Rachael Matthews, “Horsehead Nebula”
- Book Review: Monica Ong’s Silent Anatomies
- 120 Psaltery & Lyre: Rachael Matthews, “Return, pt. III” and “Gaia”
- Book Review: Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely
- Book Review: Matthea Harvey, If the Tabloids Are True What Are You?
- Book Review: LoterÃa Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives
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Tag Cloud
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Knit Together Archive
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Letters to My Polygamist Ancestors
Posted on July 27, 2011 | 15 CommentsBy Dayna Patterson ; Letters to My Polygamist Ancestors Dear Charles, What was it like to have three wives? It must have been confusing, especially since you chose women with rhyming names-Johannah, Susannah, and Hannah. Did you call them all Anna? Did you ever mix […] -
I, Heather Kathleen Olson Beal, Being of Sound Mind and Body
Posted on July 20, 2011 | 18 CommentsA few months ago, Brent and I finally managed to complete a task that has been on our to-do list for-gulp-14.5 years. We had a will drawn up (and other sad-ish documents like a power of attorney, a living will, etc.). Why 14.5 years? Our […] -
Modesty, Mormon-style
Posted on July 13, 2011 | 165 CommentsWe try not to rant here at Doves & Serpents. We try to discuss things we’re thinking about, exchange ideas, and ask questions. But I was pushed over the edge today when I read this little gem published in The Friend (a monthly magazine for […] -
Passing up Girls’ Night Out
Posted on July 6, 2011 | 6 CommentsI consider myself a friendly, outgoing person. I had a great group of girls I was friends with in high school. I like to think people find me easy to talk to and easy to get to know. I can easily kill a half hour […] -
‘Men’ in the Dock
Posted on June 22, 2011 | 14 CommentsThis is a post about men. This is a post about women. No wait, this is a post about ‘men’. This is a post about the relationships between women and men, ‘men’ and ‘women’: in a time of war. Of course, the work of feminism […] -
Mirror, Mirror, on the wall . . .
Posted on June 15, 2011 | 8 CommentsMy 14-year-old daughter recently said, “Mom, do you realize how many of your sentences begin with, ‘I just finished reading a book . . .’?” I paused for a moment, thinking about her question, and then realized-somewhat sheepishly-that she was right. So, in order to […] -
Kids, Bootleggers, and Diviners
Posted on June 8, 2011 | 7 CommentsI read a fair amount of young adult fiction-both as part of my job as a professor of secondary education and as a parent of two girls ages 11 and 14. I just finished reading Moon over Manifest, the 2011 Newbery Award winner, by Claire […] -
Teens and Social Media
Posted on June 1, 2011 | 9 CommentsI have a 14-year-old daughter, so I have many opportunities to think about teens, texting, and Facebook. We got her a cell phone between 6th and 7th grade. She had been claiming throughout 6th grade that she was the “only one” at school without a […] -
Sometimes it pays to be the squeaky wheel
Posted on May 25, 2011 | 15 CommentsMy son Stuart’s end-of-the-year dance recital was last Saturday night. He looked like a million bucks up there on stage and handled himself swimmingly when the dance moms and girls looked askance at him as one of only three boys in the dance studio. […] -
O me, of little Feyth
Posted on May 18, 2011 | 6 CommentsI’m drowning right now. I just finished up the hardest, most wholly unsatisfying and frustrating year of my career. Sure, I should be glad that I work in an air conditioned office (but instead, I’m grousing that I don’t have a window) and that I […] -
Parental Involvement: The Gold Standard
Posted on May 11, 2011 | 22 CommentsWe hold these truths to be self-evident-that all good parents are involved in their children’s education. They bring food (homemade . . . that goes without saying) to teacher appreciation breakfasts and lunches. They chaperone field trips. They watch very long spelling bees. They sit […] -
BUTT-erfly T-shirts for Mother’s Day
Posted on May 4, 2011 | 13 CommentsMy first child was born on January 5. The months between her birth and Mother’s Day were, um, let’s just say they were difficult. She cried all day long and into the night. We spent hours pacing the halls with her while she screamed, listening […] -
The Joys of Parenthood
Posted on April 27, 2011 | 33 CommentsWhy do we have such a hard time admitting to the realities of parenthood? This morning a dear friend of mine who has just given birth to her second baby posted a question on her Facebook page. She has another child who has just […] -
The Grass is Always Greener
Posted on April 13, 2011 | 12 CommentsI just got back from a fancy schmantzy conference for educational researchers in New Orleans. I submit proposals every year and hope to get one in-even though I know I’m out of my league. Whenever I’m lucky enough to get to go, I experience an […] -
An Unlikely Prayer of Thanksgiving
Posted on April 6, 2011 | 9 CommentsLast summer, Brent and Stuart went to get a haircut. While there, the stylist discovered that Stuart had lice (gasp!). We soon discovered that Marin also had it (double gasp!). Kennedy managed to escape unscathed. From my perspective growing up, it seemed like the only […] -
Fancy
Posted on March 30, 2011 | 15 CommentsThe willingness to spend tons of money and time grooming or getting surgery is born of a desire to control outcomes, to dictate the potentially unpredictable vicissitudes of desire and power associated with beauty in our culture. -
My Own (not-so-little-anymore) Dancing Boy
Posted on March 23, 2011 | 5 CommentsMy son Stuart turned 8 in February and was baptized as a member of our church last Sunday. (Children typically get baptized when they turn 8 in the Mormon church, so he has been looking forward this. It’s something of a rite of passage.) […] -
The Incredible Shrinking Woman
Posted on March 16, 2011 | 33 CommentsI never thought too much about whether I’d be a mother (see this post if you’d like). I thought about becoming a mother about as much as I think about breathing or blinking. So after I got married (at the absurd age of 19), the […] -
I’m a Public School Junkie
Posted on March 9, 2011 | 34 CommentsI’m a public school junkie and since this is Texas Public Schools Week (who knew?), I’m hopping up on my Public Schools Soapbox. My three siblings and I are all products of Texas public schools, which served us remarkably well-academically and socially. […] -
Heroic Aspirations, Gay Marriage, and the Mormon Church
Posted on February 23, 2011 | 73 CommentsThis guest post is written by Brent D. Beal, whose marriage to Heather Olson Beal is not at all threatened by the idea of same-sex marriage. My name is Brent Beal. I’ve been married for eighteen years. My wife and I have three […] -
In God we Trust
Posted on February 16, 2011 | 24 CommentsThis post is the fourth in a series of posts regarding religion, teenagers, and sexuality. You can see the rest of the posts here. One little snippet in Regnerus’s book (Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers) that has implications […] -
What do a burger, a rare steak, and a gift all have in common?
Posted on February 9, 2011 | 48 CommentsA couple years ago, I sat in a Relief Society lesson at church about modesty. According to the rumor mill, this lesson was necessitated by the fact that some women in our congregation were dressing immodestly, a most unfortunate reality that was making it difficult […] -
The Birds and the Bees, Mormon Style
Posted on February 2, 2011 | 31 CommentsDid you have a birds-and-the-bees talk when you were a kid? Mine occurred in fourth grade the night before they showed the puberty video at school. My dad came up to my room, pulled out a legal pad, drew a very simple drawing of . […] -
Forbidden Fruit
Posted on January 26, 2011 | 45 CommentsSo, I just finished reading an absolutely fascinating book called Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers by Mark Regnerus, a professor at University of Texas-Austin. The book focuses on how religiosity influences teenagers’ sexual attitudes and behaviors. (See the […] -
You can’t have two fun parents. That’s a carnival.
Posted on January 19, 2011 | 11 CommentsI love the show Modern Family. When it first started, I got some chain emails about how negative the show was and how we (Mormons?, “God-fearing people”?) should email ABC and tell them we were boycotting it and blah blah blah. Well, nothing piques my […] -
What are we aiming for?
Posted on January 5, 2011 | 9 CommentsHave you ever written a family mission statement? I’m not big on self-help books (with the exception of the mountain of parenting books I read when my kids were babies/toddlers/pre-schoolers). It’s not that I don’t think I need help because I do, of course. (That […] -
Ringing in the New Year
Posted on December 29, 2010 | 16 CommentsI’m kind of a New Year’s Eve Scrooge. I’ve never cared much for ringing in the new year with anything other than what I usually do. I don’t like to get dressed up and I don’t like black eyed peas. And I especially don’t like […] -
Christmas cards and family newsletters
Posted on December 22, 2010 | No CommentsThe following post was written by Sara W. on her personal blog two years ago. I read it then, loved it, and remembered it this year as I sat down to write our annual Christmas letter. So I asked her if we could […] -
Let My People Go
Posted on December 15, 2010 | 10 CommentsMy little Stuart has a bleeding heart. He is unusually quick, I think, to identify a person or an action as being unfair or unkind and to want to right the wrong (unless it’s one of his sisters, in the which case it’s revenge, no […] -
Celestial Attachment and Parenting
Posted on December 8, 2010 | 10 CommentsToday’s post is written by ‘Saint Maybe’, a fabulous writer. Enjoy! Buddhism teaches that the origin of suffering is attachment. That was part of the epiphany of the bodhi tree. Craving, grasping, clinging, and binding are all synonyms for this kind of attachment, with […] -
Holiday Road Trip Hell
Posted on December 1, 2010 | 5 CommentsWe’ve had a few discussions here at Doves & Serpents about fear. Mel wrote about the dangers of playing it safe, Matt wrote about the simultaneous worship and fear of self, Laurie talked about places that scare us, Andy wrote about a scary movie (The […] -
Home for the Holidays
Posted on November 24, 2010 | 8 Comments“Nobody means what they say on Thanksgiving, Mom. That’s what the holiday is all about. Torture.” – Claudia I know I’m not supposed to talk about movies on Knit Together. That’s Andy’s job over at Rogue Cinema. (Hopefully they don’t fire me . . .) […] -
“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to turn him gay?”
Posted on November 17, 2010 | 23 Comments“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to turn him gay?” I’ve been asked this question many times. The first few times, I was speechless (which pretty much never happens to me). After those first few times, my canned response became: “Well . . . if […] -
Care to join me for guitar practice, anyone?
Posted on November 10, 2010 | 8 CommentsBut when you have three kids who all have to be in three different places at the same time, the babysitter plus me still doesn't cut it. I often attempt to do way more things in a short period of time than is humanly possible -
On living my confirmation
Posted on November 3, 2010 | 30 CommentsI took a course as a Ph.D. student called “Engendering Curriculum History.” I was 30-something, had three kids (ages 0, 3, and 6), and fancied myself a good feminist (although also Mormon, which is an oxymoron to many-myself included). An article we read […] -
Fei Hua (Chinese for “wasted words”)
Posted on October 27, 2010 | 15 CommentsI got to my office one morning and this cartoon was taped to my door: I knew right away who had put it there. It was Co-worker A, a man who shares many of my parenting frustrations. We often trade eye rolls about […] -
Urban Camping Part II
Posted on October 20, 2010 | 13 CommentsMy husband had just offered me the deal of the century: one month, completely kid-free, so that I could focus all my attention and energy on writing my dissertation proposal. Of course I took him up on his offer ... -
Urban Camping Part I
Posted on October 13, 2010 | 34 CommentsMy husband and I have tried lots of different divisions of parental responsibilities over almost 14 years. When we started out, he was a student and I was a teacher, so I was the primary breadwinner. He was responsible for getting Kennedy (our […] -
Around the Dinner Table: What’s a family?
Posted on October 6, 2010 | 28 CommentsWhile digging through the pile of papers in my seven-year-old’s backpack, I came across a copy of a page from the district reading curriculum that includes the weekly spelling words and a couple of ‘Guiding Questions’ for parents to talk to their kids about at […] -
Knit Together
Posted on October 4, 2010 | 7 CommentsWhen my middle daughter (whom we affectionately call “Mother Earth” because she’s always carrying on about recycling, saving the planet, and endangered species) was about five, she came home from school-full of righteous indignation because she had learned that mother sea turtles swim ashore, lay […]