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What to do and how to live. 1. SMILING. As a very young girl I read in one of my mother’s magazines—Redbook?—that smiling was the secret to forming friendships. I was a lonely child, but I learned that lesson that most girls are taught from a magazine. Too many girl and women have been told…
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I lost my temper the other day. I used a couple of bad words in public. I have apologized, but the incident has troubled me since. In the past, I have managed to keep my cool under extremely trying circumstances, and to make reasoned responses to completely unreasonable, even deeply offensive people. Once in…
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I began writing fiction in 1990 when I was hired to teach English at Seaside High School. I believed myself wholly unqualified to teach English (and others have agreed), but I had taught art in an elite prep school for three years, picked up a Social Studies endorsement through exam, and substituted in the Seaside…
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My husband and I were talking about apologies last evening. We had been discussing boorish behavior revealed by the MeToo movement as contrasted by the genuinely criminal behavior of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. I can forgive the guy who makes a stupid joke or a failed pass. But what about the cases of men…
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My husband and I pick up trash along the shore, and in some magical-superstitious way, I believe removing plastic pays for my pleasure on our daily walks. Yesterday morning there was a seal resting onshore. She was alive but unwell, sick or injured. She would either live or die and nothing I could do would…
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The other day we saw five eagles all at once. Three were on the beach near the dead seal just up the beach, which has since then begun stinking. The seal. The other two eagles were in a snag about fifty yards back from the beach. I didn’t have my camera with me, so Gary…
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Mark Doty wrote: “Literature makes other people real to us. It invites us to notice differences but, even more so, points toward commonality.”
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