Ulysses  Please don’t think I’m an insufferable literary snob if I tell you I’ve read Ulysses several times.   But in fact I have,  and I think it’s indeed a masterpiece,  and not at all as hard to read and understand as you may have been led to believe.  (See My Love Affair with James Joyce)… Read More

How did I happen to read that book?  I don’t remember anyone giving it to me or seeing it in the house, so most likely it was in a school library, maybe thoughtfully displayed by a librarian, or maybe just calling to me from a shelf. In any case it was not like anything I had read and it spoke powerfully to my own adolescent yearning to make sense of existence. Read More

You ever meet someone who brags about not reading? Like, it’s some kind of badge of honor? “Yeah I haven’t touched a book since I finished coloring in those dinosaur pictures at school. Turns out, crayons are all the education you really need!” Reading is not some punishment for getting bad grades, it’s a portal… Read More

Fear of the Other I’m a white woman who for years worked in a public high school in New York’s inner city –  in fact in the infamous south Bronx of Fort Apache fame. I usually carpooled to work with fellow teachers  but at times took the subway from my upper east-side Manhattan neighborhood .  As… Read More

Fears, Phobias & FOMO Fears? Hmmm. Phobias? Double Hmmm. I’ve scanned through the decades of my life and come up short.  Discrete memories of discomfort are vivid, but they remain in their specific time and space, like my discomfort riding at over night camp.  To be sure I have dislikes, like severe turbulence, but fortunately… Read More

Every morning, I check my bed and body for ticks. Read More

I still have a pang in my gut crossing any border, even when it should be benign.  Anything could happen in that liminal area. Read More

  Alright, settle down everyone, I am here to dismantle the dramatics of our everyday anxieties. We all have fears, that much is a given. From the perfectly reasonable (stepping off a skyscraper) to the downright debilitating (spontaneous human combustion, a fear of mine, I haven’t slept well with since I first dreamed about it… Read More

Not all kids, or adults for that matter, love dogs. Can’t there be a few dog-free public spaces where a young girl can ride her bike or play or simply take a walk and feel safe? Read More

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. And the one that mother gives you, doesn’t do anything at all…. Go ask Alice, when she’s 10 feet tall. (Jefferson Airplane)   Music to every boomers’ ears. But, which side of the great divide did you settle into? Alas, are your memories enshrined… Read More