Welcome to my site…
After earning my MFA in creative writing, I began a career in writing and publishing. I’ve been an editor and writer for reference book and education publishers, including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Scholastic Press, and National Geographic Learning. I’ve written professional profiles and articles for MIT and Radcliffe, as well as graphic novelizations of Greek myths.
On this site I offer observations and links to things I’m reading, hearing, and seeing, as well as to what I’m cooking! as I work on a novel set in Cornwall and London in the 1930s. Current tagline: A house with a history. A woman with a future. Two nations on the brink.
I hope you’ll join me here from time to time, Please comment on my posts!
What I’m Reading
These Walls Between Us
As a white woman with a long-standing interest in understanding race and racism in the United States, I have read many books that examine the structures of racial inequality in the United States and beyond. Books such as The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee, The Color of...
The Museum of Innocence
The narrator of this novel, Kemal Basmaci, presents this story of a destructive love affair as though he is giving the reader a tour of a private museum that he has constructed from the detritus of the affair--cigarette butts, maps, movie posters and stills, household...
Maxine Kumin: Prolific Poet, Feisty Feminist
Maxine Kumin (1925–2014) seems to be little known today, but she won major awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and many honorary degrees. Kumin served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (a position now known as Poet...
What I’m Seeing and Hearing
Moby Dick in under 3 1/2 hours!
An astonishing, delightful, and moving adaptation of Moby Dick kept me fascinated for nearly three and a half hours at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA the other night. The set and props range from the elegant to the primitive. Having read the novel...
Sorry to Bother You–but you need to see this movie.
So I FINALLY got to see Sorry to Bother You. I tried a while ago and it was sold out the night I went, but I wish I'd made it so I could go again. This is a brilliant film and if you haven't seen it yet and still can, you should. It's a remarkable combination of...
Trump at Kennedy Center Honors?
The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. The Merchant...
What I’m Cooking
@medfordfarmmkt @wholefoods in medford. Rosie is a great teacher! An inspiring class. Sprouting into Spring: Cooking and Gardening Class
Sprouting into Spring: Cooking and Gardening Class. I plan to try the Vietnamese spring rolls (amazingly simple!), growing lettuce and greens on my porch, sprouting beans and seeds in jars, and the bonus feature! preserved lemon!
Making this for a charades party.
I substituted Powell & Mahoney's Old Ballycastle Ginger Cocktail Mixer for the rum just because I didn't have any rum. Marie-Hélène's Apple Cake Recipe | Epicurious.com.
What I’m Thinking
A Change of Sex
November 20 is Transgender Day of Remembrance, and that has gotten me thinking about the great reporter and historian Jan Morris. Morris will have died exactly one year ago on November 20, 2020, at the age of 94. Morris was not murdered in a hate crime, unlike those...
The Pleasure of Reading While Waiting
I spent a lovely morning sitting on a hard red bench in room filled with the smell of tires at Costco. It wasn't the bench or the smell that made the morning lovely, but the fact that I had brought along the October issue of Harper's magazine to read while I waited....
To Travel or Not
I am looking forward to a trip to Istanbul, planned for mid-October 2021. And yet we wonder whether travel means exposure to the Delta variant or other variants that might be even more pernicious. A recent episode of NPR's 1A discussed this issue, and one caller...
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