I NEVER BELIEVED IN SANTA CLAUS. NOT EVEN AS A KID, FOR REASONS I’LL MAKE CLEAR. BUT THE JURY IS STILL OUT ON ANGELS. If you want an inspirational, heartwarming story about Christmas, look elsewhere. I grew up the child of adamantly non-practicing Jews, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, then predominantly Irish-, Polish-, and Italian-Catholic. My mother, Charlotte Zolotow, used to… Read More
“CLOUDS IN MY COFFEE.” I’M SURE I DIDN’T HAVE TO SAY ANY MORE THAN THAT TO FIND YOU SINGING CARLY SIMON’S, “YOU’RE SO VAIN.” THE STORY OF HOW THAT SONG GOT WRITTEN IS HOW EVERYTHING GETS WRITTEN. Remember “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon? There’s an apocryphal story about it. Decades ago Simon was flying across country to New York… Read More
Low-key, high-energy, challenging and gentle, Tuesdays with Crescent is a 10-week, once-a-week small writing group. It takes place on ten consecutive Tuesday evenings, in real time (6:30 pm to 8:30 pm Central). You may attend from anywhere, online, via Zoom, or physically (in Fayetteville, Arkansas). Participation is limited to 12. In just ten sessions, you will shift from anxiety to… Read More
A PERSON HAS A LIFE, WITH A DEFINITE AND IRREFUTABLE BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END. BUT, WITH A BOOK IT’S NOT SO CLEAR. I spent a recent Sunday, improbably, working on an introduction to the forthcoming Chinese edition of a children’s book entitled Sleepy Book. Written in 1956 or ’57 and published in 1958, its author is Charlotte Zolotow, my late… Read More
SOMETIMES YOU JUST DON’T KNOW HOW IT’S GOING TO COME OUT. OR EVEN IF IT WILL. BUT IF YOU HANG IN THERE ANYWAY, TRANSFORMATION IS POSSIBLE. IN FACT, IT MIGHT BE ON ITS WAY TO YOU RIGHT NOW, HERE’S WHAT MY EDGY, ALCOHOLIC, WRITER FATHER – WHO LATER SOBERED UP – TAUGHT ME ABOUT THIS. About three years ago, a… Read More
Last week, in Louisville, Kentucky, I noticed a nice-looking — okay, cute — somewhat formally dressed man, seated alone across the aisle from me on the bus. He was youngish (I’m 64, so a shocking number of people now look youngish to me). He seemed a little jittery, not quite at ease. This was the last night of the 39th Annual Conference… Read More
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
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
…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?”
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
I used to be an innkeeper. I used to be a daughter with a living father. I am neither of these things now. Yet both reside within me. Both come into my present life at unexpected times. They did today, a moist, misty day, one in which I felt slightly out-of-sorts. Perhaps this very out-of-sortness is what brought to the… Read More
I sometimes tell my writing students “Start out with a clear purpose, but be willing for that to change in the course of writing. ” Well, case in point. In this post, sparked by an e e cummings quote, I set out to explore the idea of how one becomes lovable… and wound up writing, mostly, about a dead cat…. Read More
