If you’re walking around this time of year with a storm churning inside you, you’re not alone. The Holiday Season is a tempest between two minds: Candy canes, bright paper packages tied up with string, and love, versus the horrors that live just outside our door that we allow inside via television news (or that…
In keeping with the holiday season, let’s revisit Scrooge for a minute. Can we all agree that he had his best AHA! moments in the middle of the night? We’re no different from him—in this respect. And just like him, we need to pay attention to the AHA! moments that come in the dark of…
When I was a kid, my parents (who were of two different faiths) didn’t do the holidays the same year after year. Several times, they used ribbon to lead us to our gifts. Not every ribbon led to anything. But my sister and I kept going until we found our treasure. If only pursuing life…
We’re in the home stretch. The new year is just 31 sleeps away. It’s the time of year when we (just me?) are caught between “Oh wow! Hurry, hurry” and “I’ll just put this off until January 1.” This time of year makes me jittery with questions and reviews. Did I do what I said…
Writing involves a couple—probably more—stages of knowledge. First is the stage where a writer learns the elements of a story: The main character must be different at the end of the story from the way s/he was at the beginning. The MC has to learn something, gain or lose something, go through a life-changing event….
Have you ever noticed when traveling to some place new to you, how similar some of it is to where you came from or other places you’ve been? The world is vast. But it really is small. I haven’t traveled extensively or exotically. But many of the places I’ve been look very similar to other…
Who knew that writing was not for wallflowers? It seems like the ultimate role for someone who prefers not to be in the limelight. A writer sits behind a computer writing about other people and their foibles. No spotlight on the writer whatsoever. UNTIL… The writer types “the end.” Then the spotlights bang on, and…
November 2 marked six years since my sister, Tammy, died. Six years that went by in a blink. I can’t believe she’s been gone that long. I can’t believe I haven’t had a conversation with her or heard her voice or watched her putter around her house, playing with her dogs and her cats. I…
I just listened to Lou Reed’s “Halloween Parade” which inspired me to write this Halloween post. Reed wrote his song as a tribute to friends who were lost because of AIDS, using NYC’s annual Halloween parade as a backdrop. His parade had Alfred Hitchcock and Greta Garbo and Cinderella and friends of his I haven’t…
LITTLE PIECES OF HOPE—Happy-Making Things in a Difficult World by Todd Doughty is the most happy-making book I’ve picked up in a while. It is page after page—242 to be exact—of lists (who doesn’t love lists?) of happy-making things. Who knew there were so many hopeful, happy things? Some of them were unknown to me,…
