Halloween was scary this year. First of all, my coworker Linda brought Kitty Litter cake in to work, and I had to watch people eat it. I don’t care how many tasty ingredients it includes, the idea of Scoop and Snack just makes me gag. But apparently crisis line counselors are made of stronger stuff. When staff found out my level of discomfort, they ( Read more... )

The economy blows, but can you blow off the economy?  Unfortunately not.  I'm looking for Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed behind the counter at the Bailey Savings & Loan, lending away their honeymoon, but Frank Capra isn't directing this film.

This morning I woke to MPR tellinng me the Asian markets had gone down ten percent while I slept.  But those ( Read more... )

There is a passage in George Eliot’s Middlemarch about the patterns created by the flame of a candle against scratched glass. The image has one meaning in the context of the novel, but in my memory it has aligned itself with other truths:

Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all ( Read more... )

I don’t have a lot of experience speaking Truth to Power, but I know about the power of lies. I was six years old when I told my first. And because the universe has an amazing sense of reciprocity, I immediately got a lie back in return. 
I can follow a trail of lies like breadcrumbs, back to that day. 
I am sitting on a red plastic chair at the gray ( Read more... )

Aidan’s summer booklist is self-assigned. Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, Ken  Wilbur’s A Sociable God, the Epic of Gilgamesh, a thick history of China. And Chuck Palahniuk. This is the guy who wrote Fight Club, the film version of which has become something of a cult classic.

“You wouldn’t like him,” he assures me. “The guy’s brilliant, and ( Read more... )

Aidan the rising sophomore is home for the summer, after having 4-pointed his freshman year at Augsburg. Like Maggie, he has decided that living in one place makes more sense now that he’s in college. He stops in at his dad’s frequently, but my house is base camp. I am glad of the opportunity to know better what is going on in his life.

The first ( Read more... )

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.  Anthony Trollope, Autobiography.

Anthony Trollope - one of my favorite Victorian novelists, both in terms of the quality of his work and the character of his life - knew what he was talking about. He paid a servant £5 a year extra to wake him up at 5:00 a.m. with a cup of coffee. He ( Read more... )

Summer often brings me back to my writing. I’m not quite sure why. It may be the memories of childhood that associate that season with having all the time in the world, and remind me of what is important to my health and well being that I have neglected over the winter. Something rebels in summer, insists on slowing down, and paying attention. Last ( Read more... )

Ghana, situated as it is next to the Cote d’Ivoire, was once the Gold Coast colony. Its top two exports continue to be gold and diamonds. The entire country of Ghana is 92,000 square miles. Minnesota is 87,316 square miles. The Prime Meridian goes through Ghana, which had Maggie a little uncertain as to what day it would be there when she arrived ( Read more... )

 
On February 4, I got up at 3:30 in the morning and put my firstborn on a plane to London, where she was going to spend a week in a hostel with her roommate Stephanie before boarding a flight for Accra, Ghana, for her semester abroad at the University of Legon. This was not an easy thing for a mother to do. I am, of course, immensely proud of her:  ( Read more... )