Feet and the maiden
Some years I am so weighted down and distracted by my workaday life that I have a hard time locating some authentic, profound feelings of gratitude around the holidays. This year, the news helped me locate some of these sentiments. Happy Thanksgiving, readers. As I slipped on my shoes and left the house the other […]
The Unpleasant Pensieve
This morning as I was having breakfast down in the yellow and blue kitchen here at Ragdale House, a place that calms me like an idealized version of the kitchen in my childhood home in Wisconsin, I had a conversation with the Ragdale housekeeper, R. In a mixture of English and Spanish, I learned that […]
Some Places Where I Used To Live
(Yes, the title is a lame reference to the Gotye song of last year, Somebody That I Used to Know.) This year I’ve had the opportunity to visit two cities where I used to live. Last month I visited Boston when I attended the AWP conference. And right now I’m at an artists’ residency just […]
The Designated Celebrant: Confessions of a Holiday Hater
December 18, 2012: It’s a week before Christmas. Since we’re a mixed religion family and Hanukkah has passed, my kids have opened most of their holiday booty from my husband and me and the rest of the family. I tried to remain neutral about the holidays, waiting with no fixed expectations for joy, peace, wonder, […]
(Poverty) is like a box of chocolates
When I was in the grocery store last week, I saw these fancy chocolates. They are delicious, as I know from personal experience. But I could not bring myself to buy any, even “just for guests” or “for the kids,” two of my usual excuses for buying extraneous treats. The taste of these candies is […]
Unorthodox review. Or, thank g-d for Deborah Feldman’s voice.
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman My rating: 5 of 5 stars I wish I could give this book more stars. It’s a very unusual memoir, compelling not just because of the subject matter — the lifelong process of losing faith in the closed religious community the author was raised […]
Finding Grateful
I feel a very unusual sensation — if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude. -Benjamin Disraeli When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around. -Willie Nelson According to some of my Facebook friends, November is an unofficial month of gratitude, where each day a participating person is supposed […]
A brief history of racism
Last week, the Associated Press and other news outlets reported that racial attitudes have gotten worse, not better, since the United States elected its first African American president four years ago in 2008. Those who admitted to having anti-African American feelings rose from 48% in 2008 to 51% in 2012. If the researchers included implicit […]
Book learning for girls
Last week a 14-year-old Pakistani girl named Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban. Her crimes, labeled “activism” by the monsters who tried to kill her and her female classmates, appears to be attending school and encouraging other girls to become educated. This week, in my home state of Wisconsin, a man […]
The Three Amigos (Ghosts of Christmas Past)
Way back in August 2012, I posted a link here to a Tumblr that no longer exists for the book Dancing at the Shame Prom. Here is the post. It’s about one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. (There were others. TK.) December 25, 1986 I was 17 years old and had […]
