The opening sequence of Nicole Holofcener’s “Please Give” is a laugh-out-loud montage that rings poignantly true to any woman (and that’s most of us over fifty) who dutifully does the annual torturing of the breast otherwise known as a mammogram. To a backdrop of the Roches singing “No Shoes,” breasts in all sizes, all shapes [...]

 . . . I go for a walk. The lure of mid-afternoon autumn light – even more gold and crisp through the filter of magnificent white clouds – is all I need.  Or so it would seem. I settle my eyes on the clouds, anything but diminished by the sweep of cliché  (cotton the queen [...]

A favorite quote of mine – Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away – has me somehow thinking about the ways in which we measure success. Yesterday marked Labor Day, a licensed refrain from what we do day in/day out. Labor, with [...]

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 [...]

There’s a woman who lives down the road from me, a hearty soul who ran the family business, a septic-tank service, until Alzheimer’s put the brakes on some of her organizational skills.  I’d see her on the road walking one dog or another (she has two), a stick in hand to keep at bay any [...]

Sometimes (maybe more often than I might admit) the universe does give you the perk you need just when you need it. On the very day I posted my thoughts on finishing a novel, Ashley Barron, a rapid-rising, gracious presence in the world of self-published, indie writers, delivered a virtual bouquet of roses to my [...]

There are so many ways to say something has come to an end, each with its own nuance. Kaput. Conclude. Terminate. C’est fini. C’est bien fini. No más. Finale, grand or otherwise. The end of a war is always a good thing, the end of a life dependent on the circumstances. Coming to the end of [...]

I learned recently that the moon wobbles. Observing a simulation of that rocking motion – libration, it’s called – via a NASA app on my iPad is a cheap thrill indeed. Connecting this mottled image in my hand with the glorious, full orb in the sky tonight is a stretch . . . .and yet. [...]

I’m sitting on my deck, birds flitting here and there, a tiny fawn at the heels of her mother in the grassy patch along my driveway, bicycles instead of school buses on the road. All of which I take note of only in passing, the real concentration saved for the book in my lap. Summer [...]

Sometimes visiting blogs is like a game of connect the dots: one link leads to another, one blog stops you in your tracks — the lure of the subject, the way the blogger spins words, the photos and/or graphics artfully positioned.  Often it’s that very blog that stops you in your tracks that leads you [...]