About the Blog
Inspired by Annie Proulx’s novel The Shipping News, “The Schooling News”, is a once weekly deep dive into the school board issues impacting our community.
“What we fear we often rage against.”
In 1993, Annie Proulx’s novel The Shipping News was published and won the Pulitzer Prize. It tells the story of a newly widowed man who has never known any luck or much love, who moves to Newfoundland with his aunt and two young children. There he finds a home. He writes for the local newspaper and because he’s a good listener and sensitive writer, he is awarded his own column: “The Shipping News.” His name is Quoyle and we learn at the very end of the book, when he has established himself as a beloved member of the community.
“We’re all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.”
Like Proulx’s character, C.B. Quoyle is a writer, a family person, someone who came from elsewhere and chose this area as their own many years ago. C.B. Quoyle cares deeply for this adopted community and hopes to shine a light on it: the worthy and the unworthy, the sincere and the cynical, the joining and the dividing.
“A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction.”
Perhaps this column, like the fictional Quoyle’s, can show this beautiful community what is best in it and how we might move forward with strong schools, nurtured children, and united purpose.
Quotes by Annie Proulx, The Shipping News.