I blame, or credit, Carol Gaddy. She heard me reading poetry between sets of a bluegrass band at a now-defunct nightclub in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. If you are silly enough to attempt such a reading, you will find your poetry greatly improved by the endeavor. The feedback is like no other: if one single phrase isn’t smacking your audience upside… Read More
“These are words I’ve lived and written by; they have allowed me to find meaning and purpose in every age, stage, experience adventure and misadventure in life. Here, I do it again, focusing on our lives, mine and yours, as writers. I give some advice; I tell some stories.
"Thanks for the title, Maurice.”
RIDING IN THE CARRIAGE WITH MY DADDY
“Daddy,” I said admiringly, “You should run for president.” I was six. Sitting on the dirty clothes hamper in the bathroom, my back to the window, watching him shave late one afternoon. He stood, in his white boxers, facing the mirrored white medicine cabinet. At that time, he was a Broadway critic, and if he was going out to an… Read More
SAYING YES TO NOVEMBER; THANKFULNESS IN DARK TIMES
November, the month that begins with the syllable “No.” And this year, in 2016, the month when more than half of the Americans who voted woke up to discover the country in which they lived was not the one in which they thought they lived. What is there to say yes to in November, particularly this one? *** On the… Read More
THE YEAST THAT RAISES AMERICA
As the granddaughter of despised immigrants (Russian Jews) who worked their way up from nothing, doing factory leather piece-good work on New York’s Lower East Side, I have always felt that far from taking away jobs or anything else, newcomers energize America. For as long as I’ve understood what they, like most immigrants, endured to get here, I have also understood… Read More
WHICH MEMOIR DO I WRITE? WIND ROSE, REBIRTH & RECALL’S CANYON
My long out-of-print children’s book WIND ROSE just may be re-issued. Unlikely: outest of out chances, longest of long shots. Still, I needed to find a copy to send to the perhaps-publisher. I went to the shelf where I keep copies of books I’ve written in my (this is unbelievable to me) 47-year career as a professional freelance writer (my first… Read More
IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH
If there is nothing after this, I thought, right after I said it, this is enough. The “it” I’d heard myself say out loud was one word: “Heaven.” I don’t believe in heaven. I don’t not believe in heaven either, though I’m doubtful. I’d stepped out for a quick stretch-break from my laptop. I had an ostensible, wholly unnecessary task: carry recyclables to… Read More
A FOXGLOVE FLOWER FALLING REMINDS ME OF CHARLOTTE, AND WHY
It’s the softest sound in the world, and one only occasionally hears it: a flower falling. This morning, sitting in the right place, I heard it. A single foxglove blossom dropped from the arrangement I had placed on a table yesterday. It’s such a small sound, but it stayed with me all day. Until I finally asked myself, ” Why?”… Read More
Motherless Mother’s Day, Again
Last year, at the get-together after the memorial service for poet Miller Williams, his daughter, singer/songwriter/musician Lucinda Williams, said to me, “You know what’s strange? You know when I cried? I cried the day my father told me he was through writing poetry. That he could no longer do it. So far I haven’t cried at all since his actual death, but… Read More
WHAT LASTS: OF LAST VISITS, LAST TIMES, & LASTING LOVE
The car — I put gas in it yesterday — has only one small suitcase and two audiobooks. I packed lightly; it’ll only be an overnight. But my heart and mind are much more densely packed for this brief trip, to Sevierville, Tennessee. To see Hattie Mae. *** 1986. We used to say, of Dairy Hollow House, “It’s Eureka’s best inn,… Read More
SLIPPING: LIFE, DEATH AND THE GOD-BLESS-AMERICA CHICKENHOUSE
Because yesterday was going to be a very full day, rather than put off what I consider my daily must-do’s until later, I did them first thing in the morning. The must-do’s include a very brief practice that passes for meditation or devotions (it’s not exactly either, but that’s the closest summation). And, writing practice. And, the drinking of alkalized… Read More
THE SHADOW OF HER SMILE: LIFE, LOVE, OPACITY & 1965
“That’s not the name of the song!” my father, Maurice, would say, mock-irritated. “It’s ‘Theme from the Sandpiper’, ‘Theme from the Sandpiper’!” But Charlotte, my mother, would merely give her half-smile, inscrutable. Like almost everyone else, she called the song “The Shadow of Your Smile.” That’s a line from the lyrics. The most memorable line, the one which everyone who’s ever… Read More
Love is not comparative, except when it is
He would have been 60 yesterday, my late husband. But he didn’t even live to 50. In 2000, he went on his usual 3 times a week bicycle ride out towards Beaver Lake, turned at the Conoco station (which, because they used to rent canoes out there, he always referred to as the “Canoe-Co”) and headed home. Instead, he bicycled… Read More