Authenticity, authority, credibility, credentials. Have we forgotten that these are essential ingredients in establishing expertise?
Isn’t it the month for a Mad Girl’s Love Song?
A little something different for a Spring weekend, whatever the weather? Sylvia Plath’s Mad Girl’s Love Song is one of my favorite poems from my teenage years. Recently, something reminded me of the words, “I think I made you up inside my head,” and I found myself searching out this classic example of the villanelle […]
Variations on House Jazz for a Lazy Sunday
One. The ginger cat, posing like a sphinx on the gray front stoop, fives and tens stuffed in the glass vase on Mary Jo’s mantel, Michael Royal’s thin fingers on the clean white keys, folding chairs in the red kitchen, in the green salon, on the sloping screen porch, night’s emerging heat, its low music, […]
The Morning View After a Win
“It’s all about the glasses,” he said. I shot him a glance. He grinned. “How can you type without looking?” I just smiled. And kept typing. Like a little Cheshire cat with a cup of coffee by the bed. “If you pass me my glasses I can see what you’re doing.” “I’m not sure I […]
Statements On a March Day, Like Any Other
Statements of belief, free form.
What Ruffles Your Feathers?
Dirty laundry. Bouts of bitching. Ruffled feathers.
Tiger Spit
So where do you stand when it comes to the great Tiger Divide? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, there are numerous news items addressing Tiger Woods’ most recent indiscretion – spitting on the green in Sunday’s PGA tournament. Many golfers – and onlookers – took offense at the act, sizing it up […]
Play Nice
What do we say to our kids when they’re bickering over nothing, but seemingly unable to stop? What do we say when they are stubborn, squawking, and convinced they are right, endlessly fuming at each other? What do we say on the playground, in the classroom, around the kitchen table, in the back seat of […]
Cheesy
Fromage. Isn’t that a fabulous word? It’s the delicious, elongated “aaaah” in the second syllable that adds to the yum factor. So. Have you enjoyed any fromage lately? And yes. It is French for cheese. Last night I caught The Truth About Cats and Dogs on cable, in which there is an amusing scene where […]
Letters, Writ Small, for Nathalie Sarraute
Nathalie Sarraute was one of the initiators of the nouveaux romans genre of novel-writing, a style that shuns the use of traditional narrative techniques, such as plot structure, characters, and setting. Instead, Sarraute and other practitioners of the “new novel” focus on presenting precise, objective narratives that are often episodic in nature and call upon […]