Browsing category blogging

alphaville. and icicles on coal.


My grandmother tells me I look like my mother. And when I put on her old flannel shirt circa 1975… She laughs, “It’s enough to confuse anyone!” Pity I didn’t get the washboard abs she liked to sport, even at six months pregnant (I do not lie), or her Nefertiti neck. But I did get

speaking of faith. the novelist as god.


It’s the great sweep of time that allows us to make sense of our lives and the lives of people. I subscribed to American Public Media’s newsletter “Speaking of Faith” several months ago, but never got around to reading or listening to any of it until tonight. After a few minutes I started taking notes

prednisone and the linda blair effect


Me: Did you ever have any side effects when you were on Prednisone? Mom: I wanted to tear my head off to stop it spinning around backwards. Every day. Is that what you mean? Me: Uhm…yeah. I’ve felt like handing these out this week. But I don’t have enough to go around. Prednisone is a

john updike. dead at 76.


It’s 2:00 a.m. I’m downstairs. In the dark. In my husband’s pajamas. Microwaving milk. Most of you will be able to pull an image from that. But unless you’re a genuine, long suffering, insomniac, you won’t really appreciate the moment or how it felt or how very much it resembled a Charlie Kaufman adaptation. And

never let me go. speculative fact??


In Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro does such a brilliant job with first person narration – realistic, casual, conversationalist – that he completely lulls the reader into a false sense of something. Not security, necessarily, but something. And that false sense of something is more telling than the story itself. It’s Ishiguru’s genius. His

barrak hussein obama. and the lincoln bible.


“Mr Obama swore his oath of allegiance on the same Bible used by Abraham Lincoln at his inauguration in 1861, held by the new First Lady Michelle Obama.” Apropos, I watched the inauguration in a pirate’s patch today. Now I’m getting ready to watch SAY ANYTHING…in the same patch.

oryx, crake and crumpets


Dear Flynn, I agree. It is a mite on the impolite side to turn down a generosity like sausage. Also, if you grew up in West Virginia in the 80s, you’re kinda like a war baby. Rations and all. Force of habit. I ate a crooked crumpet smothered in full fat maple syrup last night

the notebook…yes, that one.


We’re making plans to visit my grandparents. Sooner rather than later. Until last year I traveled to the States twice a year, each Spring and Summer, to spend a month with them at their home in Iaeger, West Virginia. Racked up air miles like nobody’s business and went to bed feeling not-so-bad that I missed

sick and tired and prufrock


I’m getting so tired of sick. I know. I moan. But I’m not accustomed to not hearing and not tasting and not being able to push my body to run and jump and stay awake for more than six hours at a stretch. It’s only temporary and SO VERY SILLY of me to complain but

epictetus


You are a soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus use to say. In any case remember that in a very brief time both you and he will be dead, and shortly after not even your names will be left. – My Man Marcus (Aurelius)