Search results for: melissa rhoades
Cozy up to slow reading this winter
November 27, 2018By Melissa Rhoades One specific morning in fourth grade still stands out in my memory. I arrived early to class, sat at my desk, and opened a novel I was midway through. I don’t remember now what book it was, but I do remember becoming completely engrossed, sinking into the world on the page. Which […]
Banning books silences stories: Reading a banned book celebrates your intellectual freedom
September 18, 2018by Melissa Rhoades Banned Books Week is September 23–29 this year. Did you know that at least 23 of the 100 books on PBS’s 2018 Great American Read book list have been banned or threatened with a ban in the United States? That means almost one-fourth of America’s “most loved” novels (as determined by popular […]
Road trip! The quintessential American vacation
July 3, 2018by Melissa Rhoades Have you heard of Horatio Nelson Jackson? This under-celebrated trailblazer was the first person to drive an automobile across the U.S. In 1903, ten years before Ford Motor Company began mass producing cars, Jackson left San Francisco in a two-cylinder Winton with a mechanic as his travel companion and a $50 bet […]
Bicentennial of a Monster’s Birth
April 17, 2018By Melissa Rhoades On January 1, 1818, the debut novel of a 20-year-old woman was anonymously published in London. Within five years, a second edition was released and a play based on the book premiered. The novel and its spin-offs remained a hit, and in 1910, Edison Studios created the first movie based on Mary […]
St. Pancras Station sparks imaginations
February 13, 2018By Melissa Rhoades What do filmmaker Christopher Nolan, the Spice Girls, and science-fiction author Douglas Adams have in common? They all found artistic inspiration in a building long considered an eyesore—a building I fell in love with at first sight. Ever since borrowing books about castles as a grade schooler, I’ve been fascinated with buildings—how […]
Job seekers: Get an advantage with WorkSource Spokane
November 28, 2017by Melissa Rhoades At the end of 2015, right after Christmas, the entire department where I worked at a local company was laid off—not the happiest New Year’s surprise. The change was big and sudden, and one I hadn’t planned for. After over a decade at the same company, I didn’t know how the job-search […]
Sgt. Pepper is 50: How an album revolutionized popular music
August 31, 2017by Melissa Rhoades According to Rolling Stone‘s definitive list: 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band stands as “the most important rock & roll album ever made.” When I fell in love with the album as a preteen in the early 1980s, I had no clue […]
