Category: Uncategorized

  • Trusting The “Like” Heart

    Trusting The “Like” Heart

    I read or listen to hundreds of books every year.   My favorite topics include poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, history, sociology, and criminology.  I am Silver Sneakers status and figuring out how things work is very good for my aging brain because it gives my brain new information to attach to the old information.  I…

  • More Drugs vs. Help

    More Drugs vs. Help

    When I was in graduate school in Houston, I worked a summer at a busy upscale grocery store, and employees who worked on the floor were obligated to bag groceries in the checkout area whenever there was a shortage of baggers.  I saw the CEO standing behind a register bagging groceries when he was in…

  • The Art of the Re-draft

    The Art of the Re-draft

    I’m so damn lucky! I have worked with some pretty incredible human beings over the years, Professors from Hunter College, the CWP and the English Department of the University of Houston, and the Bennington Writing Seminars in Vermont. I was given some bad-ass notes on my writing from teachers over the years.  Here’s one that…

  • The Art of Getting Through the Holidays Including Newly Published Books

    The Art of Getting Through the Holidays Including Newly Published Books

    I read hundreds of books every year, and therefore my social media analytics are tracking authors of all kinds. Unfortunately, there is one book in particular that would make for a great discussion:  “Why is this memoir a good example of how NOT to write a book?”  I would be afraid to ask, “What do…

  • The Art of Hard Rock

    The Art of Hard Rock

    A couple of weeks ago we were traveling westward on Highway 70 from Hillsborough to Mebane, North Carolina, when Deep Purple hacked my husband’s Spotify account. Not one bit sorry, my husband kept his eyes on the road, hands firmly grasped on the steering wheel, and I watched a smile come over his face. Seated…

  • The Art of Fine Cookingware

    The Art of Fine Cookingware

    A husband by marriage once leaned in close and spoke in an almost whisper but not quite soft enough for everyone not to hear.   “You, buying these biscuits, really helped.”  He tilted his head as if he were saying, “You understand where I am going with this. Don’t you?” I did.  They were fresh, out…

  • The Art of Revenge

    The Art of Revenge

    I’m not sure if the correct response is we’ve been uninvited or excluded, but a family member is throwing a big deal, at a destination wedding nearby, and my husband and I found out we are not on the guest list through the RSVP function on The Knot. I got a tip and went to see…

  • The Art of Playing the Game

    The Art of Playing the Game

    For several seasons when I was a young person I worked as a waitress at a private Jewish country club in Hopkins, Minnesota: https://www.oakridgecountryclub.net/About_Us. Two shifts, sometimes three shifts a day.  On my first day the dining manager told me a member wanted to speak to me and he led me to a separate room,…

  • The Art of Purging

    The Art of Purging

    Kat Vellos, a queer writer, refers to our current social crisis as “post-pandemic platonic longing,” and I can’t recommend this book enough.  After hunkering down for so many years and witnessing so many toxic relationships and emotional car wrecks daily via television and social media, this kind of reaction would make perfect sense. (I’m trying…

  • The Art of Platonic

    The Art of Platonic

    Not counting our dearest and oldest friends, and our newbie dearest friends, my husband and I have a much wider circle of new relationships in our life these days.  Important and necessary professional acquaintances; new and blossoming professional relationships with potential to become friendship relationships; Zoom groupers and leaders of Zoom groups (in all the…