As a novelist who hopes to be published someday, I no longer write reviews that are critical. If I can’t muster four or five stars, I just skip writing the review on Goodreads. These writers are published. I am not. By the way, a four-star review from me is still very good. Since I first made it through Green Eggs and Ham, sitting at a Kaufmann’s lunch counter…
People ask me this question all the time. The first person who asked it turned out to be a New York book editor. It was the first night of our MFA residency at Drexel University, and I could not coherently answer her question. Once I realized to whom I had babbled, I spent the evening beating myself up and not enjoying the Mexican buffet with my fellow students.…
April may be the cruelest month, according to T.S. Eliot. But January is definitely the longest. It’s a wintry, gray, wet slog. How do you make it even longer? Sign up for Dry January. I experienced a pretty “wet” December; we had some gatherings with neighbors, and I drank much more wine than usual. I also discovered the Maker’s Mark Old Fashioned while on vacation in Nashville. All…
When I wake up, I think about 4,500 words. When I am working out. When I am watching TV. When I am eating a meal, which is usually contemporaneous with watching TV. They don’t write themselves, you know. As the week goes on, I add up the cumulative number of words written. Am I ahead? Behind? Right on schedule? Because on Saturday, I have to upload 4,500 words…
Part 1 of an occasional series. At 66, I don’t have any major regrets. The closest thing to an Official Major Regret is never writing that novel percolating inside me. And now I am about to at least write it, as a graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts program at Drexel University. Graduate school at my age is probably noteworthy enough to blog about. No creative…
The two great-grandkids, 9 and 6, had a wonderful time. I have to get that out of the way. As a mature adult, I realize that 85% of this trip was about the kids having a wonderful time. And they did. Did I mention that? They did not, however, know what was going on behind the scenes at the Happiest Place on Earth. So here is where I…
We are going to Walt Disney World in Orlando in February 2022. I thought I better start sharing my experiences helping to plan this trip. In the year 2000, Sue and I took the grandkids – Shelby and Ryan – to Walt Disney World. Yes, there was a spreadsheet involved, but all in all it was a simpler time. Sue acted mostly as sherpa holding on to our…
Throughout the pandemic, we have observed a range of behaviors from people our age. I know a grandma just recently recovered from breast cancer who flies out west to visit loved ones and travels regularly with her significant other. Another couple who regularly entertain the unvaccinated grandkids and have taken multiple Road Scholar trips. An urban couple who have remained in virtual lockdown the entire time — no…
Music – so-called Christian “praise” music at that – is turning out to be a spiritual lifeline of sorts these days. I did not see that one coming. About a year ago, I announced a break from Christianity, the institution. Over that period, we attended our church a handful of times under COVID conditions – outdoors, with masks, and no singing until that brief respite in July. It…
My family is fragmented, and the most immediate members of it are and were broken in many ways. My father, and his father, were scoundrels at best . . . I won’t go into what they were at worst. At any rate, dysfunction caused me to not care, rather belligerently, about my family roots. When I saw people gleefully discovering their history on Ancestry.com, I scoffed. Who cares?…
Last night we attended a Christmas Eve service with 9,200 people we didn’t know. But they weren’t really strangers. It was the Washington National Cathedral’s Christmas Eve Eucharist, and it unfolded with pipe organ preludes, youthful choristers, and a procession complete with bishop, Cathedral dean, and vergers. There was the goosebump-inducing descant of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” There were enough people present in the Cathedral – although…