Free in the New Year
What if there was no penalty for being who you are, and no prize either? If you didn’t have to worry about being judged, shunned, made fun of…what would you allow yourself to do? How would you act? What choices could you make? And what if there was no pressure to do...
The Daily Mentor on She Writes
This week, I have the privilege to be the Guest Editor for She Writes, a virtual community, workplace, and emerging marketplace for women who write, with over 15,000 active members from all 50 states and more than 30 countries. It gives me a chance to bring together...
Love is the Revolution
"You have such gifts, that are important...For a long time our minds have told us that maybe we are imagining things, that it's crazy to live according to what you want to give...This isn't crazy...This is how to live." This video is perfect. Check out the...
One year
Today is the day I must choose different words. To leave "my mother just passed away" behind and embrace "my mother died one year ago." It is something of a shock. It is sudden. Yet, there it is. A new year. This is the two of us, when she was the age that I am now. I...
The Pen Fall Literary Tasting
Come join me at Westbeth for an evening of readings, conversation and cocktails. With Henry Chang, Hal Foster, Michael Greenberg, Lev Grossman, Kevin Holohan, Sabina Murray, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Stephen Stark, and other special guests What should you be reading this...
No Demands
The genius of the Occupy Wall Street movement is its lack of demands. Not just because there cannot be one person who speaks, or one set of needs. Yes, consensus is good. But the minute something is asked for, we will be told it can't be done. We give up our power...
Words become us. Occupying our words.
On my calendar next week: Go to Zuccotti Park when Jan Clausen is there. On Cara Hoffman's blog today Jan writes: A. I'm at Zuccotti Park, where I go every day, wearing a sign that says BECA-- USE THEY'RE TRYING TO DRIVE OUR PLANET OFF A CLIFF. Cold rain is blowing...
Blast from the Past
Here is an interview I did with Rachel Glass for Evergreen Radio/WTBBL in Seattle last year, before the motherhood explosion, when the conversation was really about Japan and the atomic bomb and writing. It's quite interesting to go back in time. When Rachel and I...
A Radical Act
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” ― Muriel Rukeyser Twenty years ago, Anita Hill sat in front of a Senate hearing and told her truth at the intersection of race and gender. She was publically pilloried by a...
Second half
Part Two of The Open Mind interview with Cecilia Skidmore is now on line. Download and listen to both here.