“You get the sense that it’s possible simply to go through life noticing things and writing them down and that this is OK, it’s worth doing. That the seemingly insignificant things that most of us spend our days noticing are really significant, have meaning, and tell us something.” ~Joan Didion Back in my teaching days, […]
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It has always been the field at the bottom of our neighborhood, the backyard of the community pool. Earliest memory finds us there with baby William at his first Easter, eight months old and unable to walk and sitting in the sand that is the volleyball court. We were late for the egg hunt, but […]
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Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. I started in earnest on a new book today. It wasn’t one I’ve been meaning to write. For some time now, the list of what I’ve been meaning […]
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I feel as if I’ve done a lot of traveling lately. It’s that time of year, right? Summer vacation. We’re gone, we’re here, we’re gone again. Definitely not complaining. I love to travel. But lately it’s got me thinking about how I pack. Like most people (everyone?), I’m guessing I have the normal categories: clothes, […]
Read moreHere’s to imagination, and the world of fiction that can be so good at inspiring it. Here’s to the first novel ever read to me– before the Little House books, before Lewis’ Narnia. Here’s to a book about rejects all in polite society: a pig, a rat, a spider. Here’s to an unflinching look at […]
Read moreI’ve always loved reading aloud to my children. I began, in fact, when William was still in utero (yes, I was one of those mothers), but took it up in earnest when he was newborn and we were alone in the house together for hours at a time. Rather than watch mind-numbing television during those […]
Read moreFull swing– that’s where we are now. I’m just returned from Parent Night, and the school year is four weeks old. It feels like normal, feels like the way it’s always been. I don’t remember (for now) sleeping in on weekday mornings and having long days to putter around the house. We’re used to it; […]
Read more(Wednesday) This day was no more difficult than any other day. Nor was it easier. It was fine. And full. And, as ever, productive. Some days are heavier than others, yes? I would say it’s atmospheric, but the humidity hasn’t kicked in yet, and the skies today were mostly clear. Maybe it’s atmospheric in another […]
Read moreThoughts of writing come less and less frequently these days. This is not surprising, I suppose, with All The Rest that is going on. I don’t expect to do much writing in the school year. But with that lack a fear comes, I think– a fear not unfamiliar and not un-overcome in the past, not […]
Read moreOne of the Best Last Lines Ever: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
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