Jun 22I’ve Been Thinking About This Widow ThingSo let me write it out and see what happens. — It’s been just over three months since Ed died and I’m no closer to figuring out what’s next than I was the day it happened. …Grief3 min read
Jun 3The Depp-Heard Trial and What it Means in the Long RunHint: Ultimately nothing to the rest of us. I’m going to start this off with two caveats: One, I didn’t watch the entire Depp-Heard trial, only snippets. And two, I’ve never been the perpetrator or the victim of conjugal abuse. I have no skin in this game, so anything I…Johnny Depp3 min read
Apr 25My Greatest Writing Successes Come In My Dreams.So I might as well write about them. — I had a dream last night. A good dream. I dreamed I pulled out an old, unfinished manuscript and I loved what I was reading! It was so good! And it was already half finished! Then I was writing a query letter and everything I said in it was a…Writing5 min read
Apr 18The GOP Thrives on Propaganda. It Would Help if We Stopped Spreading It.It’s a fact that many of us get almost all of our news via the internet. It’s because the internet is invaluable when it comes to disseminating information on a minute by minute, blow by blow level, while, at the same time, it’s filled with more data, more history, more…Politics5 min read
Mar 25“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world”Mary Oliver — Mary Oliver’s poem ‘When Death Comes’ is her most famous for a reason: It resonates with everyone. It’s here: When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death…Life3 min read
Mar 19This is Not an ObituaryHe was too full of life for that. — On Wednesday, March 16 at 12:30 AM my husband, Ed, passed away peacefully. Our children and grandchildren were able to fly down to our winter digs in South Carolina, where we could all spend that fleeting time together. …Death3 min read
Feb 25Real People Live in Ukraine and Want to be FreeWhy is that so hard for Fox News and the American Right to understand? — In the 1980s, when I was still active in the vibrant writer’s community in and around Detroit, one of my close friends was a Ukrainian poet/activist who spent a good part of her time smuggling out and translating into English the works of dissident Ukrainian poets living under Soviet rule. …Politics7 min read
Feb 7What Is a Newsletter, Anyway?And how is it different from a blog? — NOTE: This is a version of a piece I published at Substack this morning and thought it could apply here at Medium, too. We’re all getting into newsletters, so maybe now’s the time to talk about what readers expect when they open their inboxes and find ours there. I would…Newsletter7 min read
Feb 4As I Ramble OnYou need to know it’s going to be okay. (Feel better now?) — I’m not at my home in the north woods and I think that’s my problem. I think better there. …Humor5 min read
Jan 27Here We Go with That Age Thing Again.‘Elderly’ Justice Breyer is hanging it up. So who’s next? And why aren’t they? — There’s a whole bunch of hoo-haw going on out there about the aged needing to have the good sense to stop pretending they can still do the job when they would be doing us all a favor if they just shuffled off into the twilight and found a nice hobby. …Ageism6 min read
