Why are some saved and some lost? Once a month most months,I make the roundtrip drive from Westminster West,Vermont to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York (where I spend a week with my 97-year-old mother, Charlotte Zolotow). Leave Vermont, cross Massachusetts, cross Connecticut, reach New York. And then reverse it. Exit after exit, I read the names of the towns and have my… Read More
uncovering: a yak, a six-year-old, and some witches walk into a post…
…that particular morning, that little girl in Atlanta did have a question. A real question, and, as I have said, she asked it with solemnity and gravitas. Her manner made me wonder later if she, literal as all children are, had perhaps been puzzling over it for weeks, as I remember puzzling over why “witches” were in the Pledge of Allegiance. (“And to the Republic, for witches stand…”)
“Do you believe,” that little girl asked me, “that it’s true that you really can’t judge a book by its cover?”
elegy for a tomatillo … and Steve Jobs
We planned to go for a walk at twilight tonight, David and I, but when we stepped outside the dusk was chillier than we'd anticipated. "I wonder if I should go check the forecast," he said. "Yeah, you should," I said, "because if it's going to get below freezing we probably need to do some harvesting." He went back inside,… Read More
in which I thank my plucky stars, though not without regret
The way my father always told it, as it turns out, was better. "On his ninetieth birthday, the late Maurice Chevalier …" my father, himself the late Maurice Zolotow, would begin, relishing the telling so much he almost gave off sparks of pleasure, " …was asked how it felt to be 90. 'Marvelous!' he replied, in that suave, beautiful, wry,… Read More
“fixing to” … and a message via indigo bunting
The original inventers of twittering have been coming and going from the feeder all day today. Whenever I look out, from the bathroom window upstairs or the french doors in the kitchen downstairs, different visitors are at the cafe. Finches yellow as canaries, finches as reddish-purple as if they'd bathed in grape juice. Sparrows, in tweedy brown-gray-black-white. Black-caped chicadees. Grosbeaks,… Read More
Part Two, at last! “the rare hare of hope” bounds back in: with guest appearances by Letterman, Aunt Dot, Chou-Chou, Joseph Campbell, Konrad Stanislavski & Sir Francis
I began writing these words on Easter Sunday, as Christians celebrated the triumphant arc of their spiritual year, when Christ rises from death. But resurrection itself belongs to everyone, regardless of belief, or non-belief. Here in much of America, Easter-time coincides with the year's resurrection. The alarm clock set by the spin and wobble of this particular planet on which… Read More
dreaming, as two decades join: “rare hare of hope,” part one
My unconscious, in the dreams it chooses to deliver to me, seems to view my conscious mind as a kindergartner. When it gives me the information that it's decided I need, it does so in very simple terms. Simple, but strange. Like the dream I had two nights ago, just before one decade ended and another began. And, though simple… Read More
Redecoration, Part One: Aunt Dot contemplates the living room of the future
"I suppose you'll live here one day?" Aunt Dot said. A statement; a question. She gave a quick, birdlike glance at me, then looked away. Waiting, I naturally assumed, for an answer. But how could I answer when I wasn't sure what the question was? She was sitting, that night, on the wooden chair with the woven seat, near the… Read More
letting an invitation become personally seismic: how I began to grow up
Greetings, dear blog-readers! May 1, 2009, is the one-year anniversary of "nothing is wasted on the writer", and I thank you, thank you for your generous responses. I'm working on an anniversary post: it also happens to be the one-year anniversary of when I stopped using credit cards, as well as the general time of year I begin getting in… Read More
Part 2: love/ let sleeping cats tell the truth
Here in Vermont, there is a moment of exquisiteness in the turning of each year. It only lasts for a few late summer days, days still warm and sun-filled, the outdoors still richly greened with only a few colored leaves, garden still producing. Yet in this charged moment, there's the slightest breath of fall. These days, close to earthly perfection,… Read More
“50 year old shoulder”
If I want to eat anything else, I have 15 minutes in which to do it. No solid food after midnight. When I hurt my left shoulder about a decade ago, some now-forgotten person said to me, "Rotator cuff, probably. Rotator cuffs just wear out. You know what they call it in Chinese medicine? 'Fifty year-old shoulder.'" Since I was… Read More
several big “O”s (including, but not limited to, October and Obama)
It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. It is October in Vermont. It is an election year (and what an election). It is the month of the year that was Ned’s last full month on earth. The best: the transition of the leaves from verdant to plush flame, fuchsia, gold, ochre, orange, salmon, a hundred… Read More
