Category: philosophy

• July 15, 2022

  The Last Witness

  There is a poem I love called The Last Uncle by Linda Pastan. It captures the feeling I had when my own last uncle died. My mother’s brother John was the last person I knew who had witnessed the Great Depression and WWII. Everyone who knew me as a child had now left the planet. […]
• February 14, 2022

  Code Blue Valentine

  One day last week, I drove a friend to her doctor’s appointment. The temperature on my car thermometer read 42 in the garage and dropped ten degrees before I was even out of our street. Going up the highway, the numbers went down…32, 28, 20, 19. Stopping at the library to drop off two books, […]
• March 19, 2021

  Fishing at Spring Time

  When my son was three, we took him to a park with a stream, where we planned to teach him to fish. His little fist gripped a blue Mickey Mouse fishing rod as his older brother, his father and I led him down a small hill from the parking lot, carefully picking our way among […]
• January 1, 2020

  When Hope is Hard to Find

  The title is a quote from one of my favorite hymns, written in 1976 by Carolyn McDade, called “Come Sing a Song With Me.” When she taught the song at a women’s state prison in Framingham, Massachusetts, she said she had to stop singing herself and listen to the women’s voices. “That song needs context—‘I’ll […]
• November 1, 2019

  Letting Go of Happy

  The other day, I said to my husband, half-joking, “I’m going to be happy before I die, if it kills me!” For as long as I can remember, there’s been a little bit of sadness sitting in the back of my heart. I wanted it to go away. I read lots of self-help books and […]
• August 1, 2019

  Note It, Name It

  “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…” begins the song from Porgy and Bess. Easy for some, right? In my lucky life, summer really is an easy time, even more so now that I don’t have a regular job. I am more in touch with the seasons because I am not preoccupied with earning a living. […]
• December 29, 2018

  2019- Ready or Not!

  As the old year ends, I feel an urge to finish what I started, as if I need a clean slate to begin 2019. And then I laugh. As if that’s ever going to happen. Just last month, I stopped reading a book I hated. It was for my book club. Which I’m dropping out […]
• June 27, 2018

  The Comfort of Words

  I read today that Joyce Carol Oates describes sitting down at her writing desk as “low dread.” Hmmm. Just how I see America today: “low dread.”  What new horror will our president and his enablers bring upon us? Crying children torn from their parents, closing the door on immigrants because of their country’s majority religion, […]
• February 24, 2018

  The Space Between Stories

  I’ve heard that writers write to make sense of the world. That’s certainly been true for me. And yet, the world seems to have become even less understandable over my lifetime. Aren’t we supposed to become wiser with age? What is the reason for the interpersonal division in our country? We seem to be on […]
• January 24, 2018

  The Not To Do List

  Image by Pexels.com It’s the end of January, and according to businessinsider.com, 80% of New Year’s resolutions have been broken. I’m no longer a “business insider,” if I ever was, having left the corporate world 27 years ago, nor did I make any New Year’s resolutions. But like most people, I have lists of things […]
• December 28, 2017

  The In Between Time

  This is the week in the year when I feel most in-between.  Thanksgiving and Christmas are over and a New Year waits in the wings. I feel like the director of a play in which I hold back the actors for just another moment. Not yet, it’s not quite time, we’re not ready, please wait. […]
• November 24, 2017

  Bits of Christmas Light

  My Jewish friend once said he felt left out at Christmas, that the sparkling lights on the trees and buildings “are not for me.” A teacher we both knew told him about the pagan origins of the festivals of light celebrated around the world at the darkest time of the year. “The lights can be […]
• April 5, 2017

  When Things Were Not So Different

  We’ve been through tough times before. The world is like that.
• November 20, 2015

  Your Attention, Please

  Feeling rattled? Pay attention to the good.
• August 23, 2013

  Rest When You Are Weary

  Today I’m back from a week in the mountains, where I wrote for 2 or 3 hours every day, went on long hikes and read. A retreat I had planned all summer, hoping to finish revising the novel I’ve been working on for years. What happened with the writing: I found plot holes and plugged […]
• April 30, 2012

  Books That Get Us Through

  I’ll be blogging, from time to time, about the books that got me through some of the rough stuff of life. Here’s the first one: Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature by Kathleen Dean MooreMy rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews What books and authors do you hold on to when your […]