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A student wrote to me the other day to thank me for assigning Mountains Beyond Mountains when she was junior in my class. The young woman is in her third year of medical school and credits Tracy Kidder’s true story of Dr. Paul Farmer for inspiring her ambition. It was not the only nonfiction I…
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I have spent two days trying to get online with WordPress. Yesterday the site told me that I did not exist—not my password or email. Yet here I am. I have no idea what happened. Am I back? Fingers crossed. Yesterday I finished seaming three woven panels together. The yarn up above is on its…
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There was fog and some low clouds in the coast when we went out just after 6 this morning. We walked north, as we usually do, picking up trash and hoping for beach glass. I found three pieces in three colors, but my husband had no such luck and thought he would be skunked again.…
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Dr. Salk developed the polio vaccine. My title is a line from Four Weddings and a Funeral, otherwise notable for the use of an elegy by W. H. Auden, listed as “Funeral Blues” but also known as “Stop All the Clocks.” It is a poem of friendship and devotion and love. But I mean to…
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“Never turn your back on the ocean,” we were warned as children. Most people think of the “front” of their home as the side facing the street. What we call the front faces the Pacific Ocean. It is a beautiful view. The hummingbird above—can you see her?—she has her back to me. I was fifty…
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A writer friend of mine who has taught in an MFA program for several years reported that not one of her students had become a “successful” writer by publishing a book. I shared that among students from the two years of my MFA program, only a handful had published books. Of those, most were poets…
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We paid off our mortgage on Tuesday. We asked for a payout balance and had the bank wire the funds. The trick is that we will still be putting the money into the bank to cover insurance and taxes. It feels good even so. As I type, my husband is realizing a long-term goal. He…
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It is not a “victimless crime.” One of our neighbors takes her dog to British Columbia right after Canada Day until after the 4th. Other people drug their pets in order to spare their nerves. My husband and I do that too. We would happily have left the country, but we are afraid to leave…
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FIGHTING HATE // TEACHING TOLERANCE // SEEKING JUSTICE JUNE 30, 2018 Weekend Read // Issue 86 Fred Korematsu was 23 when he defied the order sending him to an internment camp. He was one of 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Americans detained by the federal government under Executive Order 9066. He fought his case all the…
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