Here’s another theory I have for which I have done no research. Food tastes better than it used to. Not a huge revelation, of course. People value food that is locally grown, organic, or heirloom/heritage. Cooking shows have turned the whole world into knowing gourmands, debating the ratio of salt and fat in every dish. …
Seashells are disappearing from the seashore. They have been for years. People have collected them almost out of existence. It’s true that mollusks are always making new ones, but it’s very rare to find shells the size we saw when I was a kid. Meanwhile, hundreds of seashells languish in lamps and jars, or glued …
Last month, in one of those little sidebar articles in The Atlantic, I came across an intriguing idea: That midlife needs to be treated as a distinct developmental period in a person’s life, much the way adolescence is. Historically, there was no such thing as The Teen Years. Children abruptly became adults, accruing responsibilities of …
I keep a big piece of white paper on my office wall called The Big To Do List where I track steps towards project goals that I have. I have had one up for about a month and says “*JUNE 30 DEADLINE” after the title. After that, there’s a box with some 2018 writing goals …
I am a die-hard New Year’s resolution-maker. Every January (on the first business day of the year to be exact), I review my resolutions from the prior year and make some new ones. I didn’t make very many this year, so I’ve been thinking about making a couple of new ones. But first, I thought …
My father knew that Lorin and I objected to spending time in Fort Wayne with him and Steven, and shared our disinterest in another trip to Albany to visit his parents. He decided he would take us on a real vacation, and arranged for us to go to Myrtle Beach with his friend Sister Mary …
I’ve watched with interest the reaction to the young Utah woman who wore a red cheongsam to her prom. For those of you who haven’t heard about this, the young white-appearing woman wore a Chinese-style dress that she bought at a thrift store to her prom, and posted pictures on Instagram, drawing the ire of …
Last night, I had the good fortune to join my sister and two of my closest friends at event called A Conversation with Michelle Obama. Michelle talked about how to be our authentic selves; the power of our stories and how we need to share those stories to expand the space for women and people …
There comes a time in every writing project (or other creative effort) when most people feel the need to share their work. As I mentioned in this post, you can share too early. It’s also possible, but less likely, that you can share too late. So when is the right time? For some work, like …
While I was writing my blog post about memoirs as therapy, I googled the topic, hoping to find a relevant article I’d recently read. Instead, the first item in the search results was an interview in the Los Angeles Review of Books with an ex-boyfriend of mine, who, unbeknownst to me, had published his memoir …