September is a beauty in my neck of the woods, which makes it a bit harder to get back into harness and return to work. The kids who live on my block head to school wearing t-shirts and shorts, with the sweatshirts their mothers press on them wrapped around their waists. I head out to…

I’m at the beach for the week. Not working on the novel,which has consumed my consciousness pretty much non-stop all summer. So it’s not easy putting on the brakes. I’m on an “enforced” time-out (enforcers being my writing-group partners, Amy Hoffman and Steve McCauley, to whom I am eternally grateful for everything.)And I know I…

For me, the morning begins with the newspapers, which arrive somewhere in the vicinity of my front door, every single day of the week. This fact brands me as a bit of an anachronism, and certainly a demographic cliché: middle-aged, middle-class, blahblahblah. According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People…

YEARS AGO, I made myself some of those print-your-own business cards. They were kind of flimsy and perforated around the edges, but I didn’t want to spend real money because I was so rarely asked for a card. Those homemade nameplates languished in my wallet until eventually they were too faded and grubby to hand…

This is an experiment in internetworking. I would like to enlist your help, suggestions, ideas for a project dear to my heart. Bert Seager and I have written REQUITED, a CD of songs, which is now available for you to hear and/or purchase. (Check the link in a previous posting or at my website homepage,…

I am often asked about favorite books or books that influenced me. This is one of them … A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf influenced me as a journalist and as a novelist in ways that continue to unfold. I’m pretty sure that I missed the humor on virtually every page when I…

1) Spring at last. In New England it’s revelatory to the point of ravishment. The dull, grey, dreariness has been replaced by little flowers and big flowering trees, very un-Yankee in their bright display. A new shade of green, young and fresh and tender, blushes the landscape. It makes the winter seem worth the wait.…

Ta-da! As of today, you can hear the beautiful voice of Rebecca Shrimpton singing my words set to the lovely music of Bert Seager. The title of the CD is REQUITED. As it says on the inside cover: Requited means “given in return,” “completed,” “made whole.” Requited is the word that best describes how I…

Jim and I visited Emilia in Costa Rica and had a Pura Vida time. Relaxed. I did not even turn my computer on for a solid seven days, which is some sort of record for me.The beaches were lovely, the food was simple and good, the heat (which I had been dreading) was bearable thanks…

It’s crazy. My brother called me to ask about poll results in Massachusetts.My mother is glued to the talk shows.Everyone I know is thinking and talking and donating and making phone calls. The most exciting election in my lifetime, for sure. I will be out of town tomorrow so I already mailed in my vote:…