How did this happen? How did 75 years go by so quickly? Wasn’t I just a Brownie? Sweet 16? Spending my college years protesting? Able to vote? Having babies? Dreading 50? Whoosh…
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The hummingbird arrived seemingly within minutes of my hanging the first plant on the front porch.
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“The purpose of Torah,” he says, “Is to encourage us and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
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This did not mean anything to me until Farah explained that Anna Jarvis was the woman who helped create Mother’s Day.
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My friends Linda and Giora sent me this picture of a rainbow the other day. I was busy on a Zoom meeting and had totally missed it.
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The first act of Terrance Blanchard’s opera, Champion, ends with the aria “What is a man?” sung by the boxer Emile Griffith, a closeted gay man.
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I expected it would offer me the perfect incentive in the form of some new book recommendations.
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What I still can’t understand is the depravity of human beings, the “acts of hideous brutality” they have shown themselves capable of throughout the ages. And I fear that this is not history, but our current reality
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Posthumous edits to works by famous authors like Agatha Christie and Roald Dahl have made the news recently.
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It seems that the majority of novels I have been reading lately have been visions of a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world.
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I am going home next week. This is the time for making lists and feeling like I am in two places at once, and therefore nowhere. It’s stressful and bittersweet.
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Last week I wrote that I wasn’t sure if I had put off writing because I was ill or because I had to write a difficult scene. I now know it was a little of both.
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By Sunday morning I had tested positive for COVID. So I spent five days in my room, getting meals delivered to the door.
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Anna Quindlen’s latest book, Write for Your Life, is a paean to the lost art of personal writing. After the “democratization” of writing, says Quindlen, “Writing was a kind of handshake or embrace: Hello, I see you, I want to know and understand you. I want to understand myself.”
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I decided to “investigate” more carefully. Even if the landscape didn’t change, I could see and hear it differently.
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“We need awareness,” she said, “And artists create stomach rumblings and goosebumps.”
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Many years ago, I was talking to a student from Bosnia who had fled the war at home.
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This year, the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires is participating in the national campaign, Shine a Light on Antisemitism, Dispel the Darkness. Its goal is to “champion the message that one small light can dispel darkness and hatred.”
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