Daily Archives: June 11, 2026

2+ 2 = ? Do you really need to know math if you want to be a writer? and I salute ‘Call the Midwife’ by Jina Bacarr

I remember tossing my slide rule into my flower-papered trunk when I graduated… it was a good friend back in the day. Got me through mathematics in college and somehow it survived along with my paisley bell bottoms and Laguna Beach Indian bracelets. It wasn’t a magic wand, but it felt like one. You still had to understand math to make it work.

Fast forward to a newsstory I saw recently about how students entering university can’t do middle grade school math.

Mention a slide rule and they double blink.

Like you’re stuck in another century. Oops… I was.

But the message is clear. We need to get our students to fall in love with math again. It starts with reading. Taking the time to become so absorbed in a book or math project you can’t put it down. I talk books whenever I can, my faves from childhood, Gothic romances I adored, thrillers and mysteries that made me think.

I wasn’t a math major, but I enjoyed the dance of watching numbers build the foundation for something amazing, it’s a story of a different color from writing a novel. But learning math taught me discipline, perserverence, trying different calculations, etc. The same traits you need to write.

I learned basic coding when I worked for a video game company. Again, basic math needed back then.

Logic and reasoning. Making your brain THINK.

So thank you to Sister Jovita at St Peter’s who created magic on her blackboard when I was in the sixth grade and instilled in me a love for math. Here she is from an old family film…

(The brief shot of a pretty girl at the end is my BFF Claire at St Peter’s.)

I’m grateful to my educators as I was growing up, mostly the good sisters from different orders (I attended too many schools to list here). Which is why I became such a big fan of the nuns at Nonnatus House. As I watched the finale on ‘Call the Midwife‘, I cried. The faith, confidence, never-giving-up attitude of the nuns has been an inspiration to me (I’ve never missed an episode since it started). It’s been a loving, brilliant trip ‘back to my Catholic school days’. I so loved the sisters at all the schools and convent I attended. They laid the groundwork for my writing career. I feel so fortunate to have studied under their tutelage.

I salute you… everyone involved with ‘Call the Midwife‘, and I can’t wait for the film and prequel in the works.

I may even dig out my slide rule… but I’ll skip the bell bottoms.

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Waiting for notes on Book 2 of Lia’s story — my Paris WW2 circus saga!!

Here is Book 1:

My latest Paris WW2 novel:
Check out: ‘The Stolen Children of War’ — Book 1 in Lia’s Story. I’m now writing Book 2 ‘Flight of the Stolen Children’.

A story told in Book 1 of this 2 book series about children hidden in plain sight in Occupied Paris 1943. In the circus.