What tools do we use? One only.  It’s called attention.  – Charlotte Joko Beck                                                                     Monday, December 10th. A dreary morning, the sky [...]

Three Fortune cookies, still in their cellophane wrappers, sit in a bowl on the center island of my kitchen, remnants from last night’s take-out. If I wait for the right moment, I figure, one of them will beckon: crack me open, see what I have to offer. It’s not the taste of the cookie that [...]

In a recent New York Times essay re: the staying power of  (printed) books, Gillian Silverman reminds us of their inherent vitality. It was Thoreau, she says, who characterized the book as “the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed [...]

Years ago, as a single woman living in New York, I came home one night to a message on my answering machine, no mistaking my mother’s voice: “Close your windows, there’s something coming from Jersey.” Apparently some sulfurous vapor had been released into the atmosphere from, yes, New Jersey, and was headed straight to NYC. [...]