Category Archives: sleep

Some news and a promise

I almost literally crawled under a rock toward the end of the year, in an effort to finally get this book completed. I can now report honestly that it’s almost there. (For a cheat sheet on its ultimate shape, check out my draft introduction at the book’s own site.) Some  bits and pieces from aroundContinue reading “Some news and a promise”

the Mount Airy thing with feathers

As Woody Allen said many years ago:”How wrong Emily Dickinson was. Hope is not the thing with feathers. The thing with feathers is my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.” What hope has is claws. If you told the girl from that Times article that she would soon be living inContinue reading “the Mount Airy thing with feathers”

not the way I wanted into the Times

Because people keep asking:  yes, that’s me.  I’d volunteered to talk to Joyce Wadler mostly hoping for some free publicity to Women’s Voices for Change.org, not realizing that my  little joke about the commercial made me quotable enough to be the lede of the story. For the record: she mistook my monthly net pay fromContinue reading “not the way I wanted into the Times”

poetry friday a day early

cause that’s how it feels sometimes. The Author to her Book Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth did’st by my side remain, Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad expos’d to public view, Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge, Where errorsContinue reading “poetry friday a day early”

six years on, we are all conscientious objectors

A month or so since I posted and I’m still speechless. More soon, I promise. Meanwhile, there are all sorts of important things to say on the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, but for now I think I’ll just let a poet say it, again. In 2003 I quoted Yeats, but now let’sContinue reading “six years on, we are all conscientious objectors”

paralyzed by constant motion

Those who know me best know one of the reasons I’ve not posted in a week: this new gig I’ve taken on, on top of everything else, is making my already-overcrowded brain call out: APPROACHING MAXIMUM CAPACITY — even as it brings me back to my starting point as a NY journalist. Now, before movingContinue reading “paralyzed by constant motion”

and so it begins.

I may not have the luxury of time that some of my role models had, three years on a dissertation and THEN two years to make it sing (yes, Mr. Moser, yes, Mr. Joseph, I mean you). But by June 30, 2008, all these important and compelling stories, from William Bowser to Ricky Clousing, have to coalesce into a document that speaks to people. Which means, given my penchant for UGLY first drafts, I have to get serious.