Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

After this past week, I needed something to restore my hope for the future. This afternoon, I found it. I have a new hero, too - Dr. Serena McCalla of Jericho High School on Long Island, champion science fair coach. That's my brother's turf. I wonder if either he or my sister-in-law knows her. It's been quite a while now since I realized that I couldn't do anything about the mess our country is in right now, and that my attention and my energies would be of more use if I focused them on my books. Recent events have only confirmed that belief, and now the election is just a few weeks away. But it's been really hard to tear my attention away from the unending disaster that's been unfolding. Things being as bad as you thought they'd be, and then some, is hard not to think about. Fortunately, there's this little documentary called Science Fair . It follows a group of students as they qualify for and then participate in the 2017 The Internatio...

Wow, I went the entire month of August without writing a blog post. I thought about writing one a number of times, but it never came together. One of the big reasons why not, though, is that the subject most on my mind didn't make sense. Why write a blog post about why you weren't writing blog posts? Yet here I am, doing pretty much that. It's been a terrific summer for my writing. For some other things, too, but my writing has gotten into a rhythm I've rarely seen since I had to go back to the day-job world. Talking to my publisher at the California Homeschool Conference back in June, hearing how excited they are about the Math Biography series I'm doing, made me even more fired up about writing it. Talking to people at the Satellites & Education Conference in July encouraged me even more. This is an enormous project, the biggest one I've ever taken on, and I don't want to leave it sitting around. It means too much to me. At the same tim...