I am in the waiting room of the Springfield, Vermont office of Dr. Richard Lane, absent-mindedly, slightly anxiously, working on a jigsaw puzzle (blue Victorian house, hanging flower baskets, edges almost complete). This is my first visit. I was referred by my regular eye doctor, because I needed minor outpatient surgery. I know it’s minor but jeez, it’s my eye, plus there… Read More
My father, the stripper’s press agent
After the Los Angeles funeral of my late father, Maurice Zolotow, a well-dressed, chic, trim woman came up to me and extended her hand. She had excellent posture, and her hair — a jet-black that looked neither harsh nor unnatural — was well-styled in a short, flattering, expensive cut. Her age was hard to guess (I figured out later that… Read More
Are you a real writer? The sure way to find out…
It's 9:24 a.m. I have to leave at 10:00 to drive a deeply depressed friend to her therapy appointment. I am in the middle of writing one of my long, thoughtful, typical essay-type posts, which my friend Ronni Lundy calls "blongs." I left it, and began writing this instead. I have a bowl of Irish oatmeal beside me, cooked with… Read More
a sound of wings unseen, inadvertent wisdom: a fathering day post
Walking yesterday, up near Frazier's sugar shack here in Vermont, I heard an animal rustle in the underbrush edging the woods by the gravel road. Though I stood stock-still and watched, I couldn't see what it was. Too large for a chipmunk or a squirrel, smaller by far than a deer, I was left only with the sudden sound of… Read More
Maurice Zolotow & Roman Polanski (with a side of absinthe)
Re: my father, Maurice Zolotow, and Roman Polanski… Y'all know I am given to writing long, thoughtful, wrestling-with-big-questions blog posts — what my friend and fellow cookbook writer / memoirist Ronni Lundy called "blongs" (as in "blog" plus "long"). But you can teach an old dragon new tricks. This is a quickie. Every time I hear the coverage about Polanski's… Read More
buffalo girl: adventures in children’s book writing & publishing/non-publishing, screwing up, & being inspired by one very fearless child
It's not quite a month now since I came back from Little Rock, Arkansas, where, among other things, I met the Buffalo Girl. I will probably never know her name, but I'll remember her for a long, long time. I went to Little Rock, this time, for several reasons. As y'all who read this blog regularly know, I now reside… Read More
PART ONE / the winning ways of a presumptive loser: Hillary’s remarkable acceptance speech
Late afternoon, Friday, June 27th, 2008. My partner and I were driving back to Vermont from Unity, New Hampshire. We were sunburned: we’d been outdoors from about ten to two, and neither of us had worn a hat or enough sunblock. We were damp: towards the end of that time, the skies had opened up, bursting very pregnant clouds into… Read More
me & my semi-famous aging mother: navigating love with fierce persistence
“Happy Mother’s Day,” we say, as if it were that simple. It usually isn’t. Complex, ambivalent, contradictory, with more layers than a baklava: that begins, barely, to describe the relationship my mother, Charlotte Zolotow, and I have with each other. That it has at last grown simpler and less ambivalent in the last couple of years, as she has entered… Read More