Two months ago I stopped writing this newsletter the same way I stop or start most things in my life. In a rage. In a flurry. In a moment. I was sitting at the kitchen island, the lights above the counter aggressive and loud, as I stared with crazed eyes at words on a screen. […]
I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now. So many of my friends and family uttered this phrase to me sometime throughout the day on December 8, 2020. How does it feel? The question poured in, over and over again. It’s a question I, myself, wanted to know for years. How does it feel to […]
Ursula Le Guin, who passed away two years ago, was a writer known for her science and speculative fiction. With a career spanning nearly sixty years, she produced more than twenty novels and one hundred short stories. During her career, she received eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and became the second woman honored as a Grand […]
When I was twenty-one and living in Madrid, the forty-one-year-old dentist I was ‘dating’ (the details of which I will not describe here because they are all in The Book of Moods and it would be better if my mother read them along with the rest of the world), once tried to show me a […]
[EXCERPT FROM ‘THE BOOK OF MOODS’] A few years ago a woman named Gina sent me a message on LinkedIn. I just love Words of Women, she wrote. I’m a lawyer at a big law firm and think I could help you if you ever wanted to expand into other things with the brand. […]
The other day, a memory popped into my mind. I was twelve and in the car on the way to tennis camp. Always a shy kid, when I arrived, my throat dropped into my chest when I noted all the kids huddled outside the courts. It was not so much the presence of the kids […]
If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a story about my friend Grace. Five years ago Grace moved from Connecticut to New York hoping to restart her life. High school had been rough for her. She had a back brace from scoliosis and social anxiety. On top of her genetic bad luck, her […]
A few days ago something strange happened. I guess it all started when Tom and Jane came to visit. The couple, whom Jay and I have known for a few years, were our first visitors to Philly. Two days before their arrival we’d bought fresh flowers, organic groceries, new guest towels. We were, all clichés […]