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Learning Lee Ann MFA

Book reviews and personal baggage

July 7, 2023

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…

Learning Lee Ann MFA

So what’s your book about?

May 1, 2023

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.…

Learning Lee Ann MFA

4,500 words

January 17, 2023

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…

Learning Lee Ann MFA

A Drexel Dragon at 66

September 6, 2022

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…

Learning Lee Ann mycorona spirituality

Music, Methodists and Mojo

September 10, 2021

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…

Learning Lee Ann mycorona

Of Pilgrims and Indian fighters

January 19, 2021

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?…

Learning Lee Ann spirituality

As the Creed crumbles . . .

September 17, 2020

I am taking a sabbatical from Christianity. And I think Jesus will understand. There are many reasons, and I am not proselytizing you to join me. The bottom line is I believe the net effect of Christianity over the course of history, including American history, is negative. Even evil. Not just the Crusades and the Inquisition. More recent history: Manifest Destiny and genocide. Slavery and Jim Crow. Hatred…

Health and fitness Learning Lee Ann

Paddling to an epiphany

August 30, 2020

The yellow house on shore stayed in the same spot, and I had been watching it for what seemed like an eternity as I struggled to reach Tower Beach on Rehoboth Bay. The swells on open water were rougher than I had ever faced. The dark clouds were threatening and the wind blew right at us. The shore never seemed to be getting any closer. At that point,…

Learning Lee Ann mycorona

A pandemic guide to reading

June 15, 2020
books2020

At the beginning of 2020, pre-pandemic, I set a reading goal in Goodreads of 20 books. That may not sound like a lot, but if you read with moving lips like I do – constantly referring to maps and Googling people and events – it is a respectable aspiration. At the beginning of June, according to Goodreads, I was “three books ahead of schedule.” I decided June would…

Both of us Learning Lee Ann mycorona

Fine-feathered Zen

May 13, 2020

Certain determined creatures don’t know there is a pandemic out there. They flit around in the understory or perch on tree limbs, foraging and pecking and standing out in their fine yellow, blue and red plumage. They trill and squawk and sing cheerily. When they are feeling magnanimous, they will sit patiently while I set up my tripod and focus my long lens on them. I have always…

Both of us Learning Travel

Quebec: Quelle surprise!

October 23, 2019

NOTE: Please see a portfolio of our Quebec photos. Part One of three parts At 6:30 a.m., we heard a rustling at our hotel door. Was someone trying to break in? Tentatively, we peered out. Hanging on the door was a wicker picnic basket. It was breakfast! Croissants, patisseries, yogurt, glass bottles of orange juice, cheese, and fruit. Amazed, I went down to the lounge of the Hotel…