You’re not going to the movies??!!

You’re not going to the movies??!! Remember when movie reviewers used to go on about the experience of being…

Writers Have the Best Shoes …

Writers Have the Best Shoes … I once went to hear Mary Karr interviewed by Calvin Trillin at the…

What Maxine Hong Kingston Calls a “longbook.”

What Maxine Hong Kingston Calls a “longbook.” Having just finished my novel, The Taste of Anise, which took me…

A Toothbrush, a Typewriter and a Revolver

RIP Claire Hollingworth, who died yesterday at 105. Am I searching for empowerment/strong women/examples of heroism/of female guts and power…

Artists Teach Us How to Live and Die

Artists are good at showing us how to think about death and dying. They extend their hands, stretching them far out into the unknown that awaits. We arrived at a…

Walt Whitman

I’M THINKING ABOUT WALT WHITMAN!  His drama. His emotion. His love of nature, of men and women, and honesty…boy…

American Voices

Memoir ~ vignettes ~ Growing Up Italian in the New Jersey Pine Barrens now available in the anthology:  Songs of…

(Sometimes) it’s a good thing when history repeats Itself ~ ~

The Pinelands Jetport:  A crazy plan in the 1960’s narrowly averted by citizen action ~ “Bridges to nowhere” crop up again and again…

About to buy an iPad, then I watched this–

Happy Birthday John Bartram! March 23, 1699 – September 22, 1777

That jolt of recognition! Whether through a nice sentence or a photograph, you are transported by a sudden, ineffable feeling that can…