The My Writing Process Blog Tour (#MyWritingProcess on Twitter) has been doing the rounds on the internet lately.  Participating writers of all genres, backgrounds, and tastes have to answer the same four deceptively simple questions about how they approach the endlessly fascinating and diverse process of writing.  I heard about it from Edith Hope ( Read more... )

Do you ever have thematic days?  Like, there's a piece on the radio in the morning about shrimp and then someone posts a shrimp recipe on Facebook and the lady in front of you at the fish shop (yes, we have a dedicated fish shop, Joon's, on the corner of 98th and Amsterdam) is buying shrimp?  In Chateau Riverside, we call this phenomenon a "plate o ( Read more... )

We're in Washington at the extremely charming Morrison-Clarke Hotel, recovering from a day spent among the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood--or at least that part of it represented at extensive and beautifully curated show currently at the National Gallery.  I've been familiar with many (though not by any means all) of these images ever since I ( Read more... )

We went to services today.  We don't have a regular synagogue we go to, partly because we don't live a regular life, partly because we hate to commit, partly because the places where Ellen feels socially comfortable are a little too high-octane for my Hebrew-less, unconverted state.  Come the High Holidays, if we (for "we" in this context, read " ( Read more... )

I've lost a lot of friends in my life, many of them in the 80's, when AIDS swept through the gay communities of Provincetown (where I was spending summers) and Boston like a tsunami.  I've gone to funerals and heard elegies, and the thing that I remember about many of them is the number of times I heard some variation on the words "I loved him/her ( Read more... )

Diana Wynne Jones is gone.

I met her a couple of times (most memorably in Minneapolis, at an early Fourth Street, where she was very kind to me), but mostly I knew her through her books.  Her imagination was unconfined, her characters particular and living, her voice unmistakable.  Archer's Goon has given his name (and his purpose) to a loose ( Read more... )

I have a lot of catching up to do. Which I will attack in bits and pieces, based on my paper journal (I'm so glad I keep a paper journal) and my pictures and wandering into Ellen's study from time to time to ask the name of the place where we saw all the cool flowers and weren't there two steam engines? And where was that slate works we didn't ( Read more... )

Two weekends. Two weddings, one in Massachusetts, one in Virginia. One couple in their early 20's, one in their late 40's. One was Quaker-form, with contra dancing afterwards. One was Conservative Jewish, with Israeli dancing. Both were smallish, as weddings go. Both were simple. Both were very lovely and moving ( Read more... )