The Birthday of a Lost Friend
Today is the birthday of a former friend. Some dates are seared into my memory, and this is one of them. Perhaps because this friendship reached the furthest back in time. We became friends when I was twelve and she was fourteen. Our friendship broke apart twenty-five years later when I had my third child, and she didn't approve of [...]
Writing Exericse: A Startling Sound
Have you ever been startled by a sound you had never heard before? Stopped in your tracks, wondering what the hell was going on? Felice Benuzzi's unique adventure memoir No Picnic on Mount Kenya, which I read with my StoryStudio workshop last month, had me wondering just that. It's the story of the hare-brained plan Benuzzi and two of [...]
Three Years of Morning Pages
I was sure it had been four years since I adopted the habit of writing Morning Pages, but one of the benefits of blogging is that it does provide a log of what I've been up to. Each year, I celebrated my Morning Pages anniversary, and thus it turns out that it's been only three years. It really seems much [...]
Building Update
It's been way too long since I've shared an update of our building project, the barn with built-in apartment on our country property in Indiana. This is partly due to lots of days spent at the construction site. When I return home, I'm too tired to work on a blog post, and my other days are crammed with running the [...]
The Power of Keeping a Promise to Yourself – Visiting the Greek Monasteries of Marsaba and St. George in the Judean Hills
St. George's Monastery, Wadi Qelt Always, always, I have wanted to see the Greek Orthodox monasteries of Marsaba and St. George, built into the cliffs of the Judean Hills. But on all of my trips to Israel so far, it was either too hot (the desert wadis are not places to visit in the summer), or too dangerous (political unrest), [...]
When a Friend Dies
Today I found out by happenstance, via Facebook, that a friend of mine passed away. We weren't close friends or I would have known that her battle with cancer had taken a turn for the worse. She lived in L.A. and I live in Chicago. Nevertheless, Mimi was a fixed entity in my life. We had plans together for when [...]