The day you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived: the publication of my sixth novel, STILL LIFE, about a young artist whose creative energy and love life go sideways when his estranged father tracks him down. The best way to get your hands on this book (and extra copies for your friends and family) is to order STILL LIFE right here. I hope you like STILL LIFE, will write a review on Amazon...
Not only did my beloved Buffalo Bills suffer yet another brutal and heartbreaking playoff loss, but they followed it with what I believe is a major organizational blunder. Fans of the team saw how controversial officiating calls led directly to this gritty team losing to the Denver Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs. Sure, the team made many mistakes of their own, turning the ball...
You know when friends send you links and say you have to read this or watch that, and maybe sometimes you do? Well, a writer friend sent me a link to British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2017 acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature. I wasted no time watching it from beginning to end, forty-nine minutes. Ishiguro is one of my favorite writers. I’ve read all eight of his novels and his one...
Like all types of sonnets, a Petrarchan sonnet is fourteen lines. It is sometimes called an Italian sonnet, and it has a specific rhyming pattern and two distinct halves. The first half is an octet (eight lines); the second half is a sestet (six lines). The octet establishes an initial idea, problem, or emotional state, and the sestet responds to it. The liminal space between the first and second...
That Spotify Wrapped is a real eye-opener. I found out my listening age is 73! Spotify called me an old soul, although I’ve probably been one since I was born. So I happen to like Gimme Shelter, I like Lay Lady Lay, and Blind Faith and Neil Young. I like the soul songs of Dione Warwick and Gladys Knight. But I also listen to a fair amount of alt-country and hip-hop. So says Spotify Wrapped...
Dots have always fascinated Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who continues to create art at the age of ninety-six. As a child, she experienced hallucinations where dots often appeared, and soon she began making art with polka dots. She said the use of dots was a way to confront and gain control over the terrifying hallucinations. What better way to deal with trauma than through art? Kusama also sees...
Julia Klein is a Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist (RDN). She has written previous guest posts for this blog. This one is an update to a perennial favorite that can help you navigate the stress associated with food and the holidays. The holidays are often described as joyful and abundant, yet for many people, they also bring increased anxiety around food, comments about dieting, and pressure...
I’ve been shoveling snow every winter since I can remember, except for the years I lived in California. In seventh and eighth grades, in my snowy hometown of Buffalo, I shoveled our narrow driveway and front walk, and then I shoveled the driveway for my elderly next-door neighbors, at fifty cents a pop. During Buffalo’s snowy winters, that kind of income added up. When my family moved to a bigger...
My regular doc I see annually is old school and old country. Until a few years ago, he operated a solo private practice as an internist, although to survive in the U.S. healthcare dystopia, he’s now been swallowed up by a larger health network, as has almost every other physician and medical practice. But he still manages to run his practice as if he’s from another era. When I was first...
I haven’t written a blog post in some time. I’ve been on the road without my laptop for the first time. Now I’m back at my desk. I don’t have a reputation as an avid traveler, nor have I ever been a travel writer, but I just returned from Peru with Harriet and Owen, and I’m processing my impressions. One thousand years ago, Peru was the center of Incan culture, specifically the city of Cusco...
I had yesterday’s “No Kings” protest on my calendar for weeks, knowing I would attend. I told myself the day might prove to be a turning point for our country: that any incited violence would cause Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would serve as the final nail in the coffin destroying whatever democratic norms and free speech we have remaining; or it would prove to be a peaceful...
We’ve all pressed the reset button to restart a device or system that is unresponsive or malfunctioning. It’s a go-to fix for a multitude of issues. I’ve gotten better at resetting myself when I start to malfunction. When anxious or emotionally drained or feeling lost, I’ve learned to pause, step back, and intentionally return to a clearer, more balanced version of myself, more prepared to handle...
In this dark moment in our country’s history, stained by a corrupt administration that lies to, threatens, extorts, and punishes its own people, that cleaves divisions among us, that celebrates bigotry and cruelty, that instead of serving people it cuts services to people in need—within this anxious moment, there is still sublimebeauty, there is October. Is the difference only that one is human...
A police cruiser pulled up and stopped at our corner today. My heart began to race. I wondered if I should run out the back door and jump the fence and disappear into the ravine. I thought maybe the police officer had come to arrest me. That’s because I’m against fascism, and the authoritarian fascist president of our country just declared Antifa (short for anti-fascist) a “Domestic Terrorist...
I was talking with a friend of my own vintage, who said all of the big decisions in life are over for us. He was referring to the decisions we make as we lift the anchor on our childhoods and begin charting our course as adults. We made our decision about education years ago—whether to attend college and what to study. We’ve chosen career paths (we’re both writers). We’ve decided who to marry...
