It was the day of the Grandma War. We (me, my daughter, and her three kids) are in Grand Junction, Colorado for a few days and I am living the grandma dream. Well not exactly. Let’s face it, driving along with three small children in the car is not everyone’s idea of fun. My daughter’s […]
Adjective: Picaresque: 1. relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero. Noun: Picaresque novel: A novel relating the story of such a character. The picaresque is not a new thing. Famous novels in this vein include Tom Jones, Huckleberry Finn, and, the granddaddy of
I’ve got fear of being alone. But it’s not like the fear of being alone I had when I was a young woman, when I worried someone was going to break into the house and kill me. It’s more like a social fear. This is what I mean. I don’t like seeing myself as a
Actually, it’s not necessarily a Chinese proverb about wealth per se. It’s a quote that I found long ago in a poem in the Tao te Ching. This is a book of philosophical poetry, 2000 years old, translated from Chinese. My husband gave this book to me the year we met, along with Candide, by
First of all some brief details on traveling Trail Ridge Road: What: A 48-mile long route along the tops of the Rocky Mountains, crossing the Continental Divide, and allowing serene and amazing views of the tundra ecosystem, the mountain sky, and snowy cirques. (Cirques are those bowls near the mountain peaks that catch snow and
Boxer from White Lines and His Bad Relationship: Just Say No? It’s hard to say no to a bad relationship. We’ve all got FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out. It’s hard to deal with. If you leave your relationship, you’ll be outside. Alone on Friday night. No one to pick you up if you run out
So my son came to me the other day. “You’ve gotta watch this,” he said. Apparently this Dr. Squatch soap is all the rage with the young men set. Apparently the brand has enjoyed a 400 percent growth in revenue, arguably because of their approachable YouTube advertising. Watching the video, I developed the following mini-essay
I don’t often read books about Being a Writer. Because you know I’m above all that, ha ha ha. At least I used to think I was. But Bird by Bird is famous among writers, a book that everyone at writer’s group has heard of. Of course I didn’t rush out to read it. Because
Book review: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I loved this book, which is strange when you realize that the subject itself is dark: it concerns the sudden death of Didion’s husband, John Dunne, after nearly 40 years of marriage. Despite the tragic subject matter, reading it became, for me, not a guilty
Science doesn’t have an answer for that is the favorite saying of the day. My mom is reading ENLIGHTENMENT NOW by Steven Pinker. “This is the book that explains everything,” she said. “I heard about it from your little brother.” I read up on this in the Guardian: With some deft intellectual moves, [Pinker] manages
