Trading Blizzards For Blossoms

It’s cherry blossom time in Washington, D.C., and many visitors will descend upon the city to see the famed annual unfolding of pink and white petals. I live in nearby Annapolis, and though it’s my first year here, I know that the prolific opening of these blooms means that all of us can rejoice. Springtime…

Read More

Beyond The Here And Now Of Myself

If, as I said in my last newsletter, writers’ lives are ruled by solitude and self-discipline, how then do we go about bringing light into the rooms of the mind where creativity comes to life? After all, we follow our calling for some reason. What compels us to face down our computers every day, and…

Read More

Cooking It Forward

How do you express your love? Some people rely on a Valentine’s dinner, or reveal their feelings with a supportive word and a tender embrace. Others show their affection by cooking a meal for those they care about. I am, unabashedly, one of the latter. During my childhood, love was often overshadowed by my mother’s…

Read More

Holiday Thanks Times Ten

Last week, my son emailed me with thanks and joy when he read my last newsletter and learned of my plan to visit him in New York City, as his “big present in a small package” for this coming Christmas. (Well, I guess his gift won’t be a surprise after all, no matter how cleverly…

Read More

Stripping Down

It’s October 11th and Yom Kippur is almost here. I’m writing this just about one week before you will be reading it. I’m at my kitchen table, typing, thinking, wondering–maybe making a little prayer. It’s three o’clock, and in a few hours, at sundown, millions of Jewish men, women and children all around the world will…

Read More

Magical Scraps Of Inspiration

“What do you think about this?” my mother asks, handing over a sheet of manila paper, its lines of type covered with the markings of a black, felt-tip pen. “I rewrote it again this morning.” I’ve just come home from junior high school and we’re sitting her study. She’s been working on this poem all…

Read More

Tea For Two

Recently, I was asked to do a Q & A for another writer’s blog, and one of the questions was very thought-provoking. “If there was one person, dead or alive, that you could spend an afternoon with, who would it be and why?” I considered my answer with care. All of my initial responses seemed…

Read More

Let Your Own Sun Shine

Look back over 2015 and what do you see? A string of experiences and dilemmas to which you responded, reacted, or resolved. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. The “worse” is what helps us formulate our “New Year’s Resolutions.” I do it just about every year: when I was sixteen, I resolved…

Read More