I felt lucky when they gave me back my coat at the end. Two hours earlier, I’d traded it for a numbered tag at the cloakroom of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Then I walked into the lives and deaths of my people. I walked by choice into what we call […]
A fellow writer just asked me whether I use AI to improve my writing productivity; if I do, what tips would I share with beginners, and if I don’t, what would help me get started? I sat with that for a bit. Then I chose Option 3: I don’t and I won’t and here’s why. […]
It started at my grandmother Rose’s burial. She and my Grampa Irving had been married for almost sixty-five years, so it wasn’t surprising when she lasted only two months in a world without him. The funeral was in late June. So it also wasn’t surprising to see a dragonfly flitting around on the warm breeze […]
So much joy here on Beach of My Heart. The fancy camera is giving me a whole new way to love this place… and to remember the beauty forever, because every year we know this is precious time that may never come again. Fear and loss are here too, always, the flipside of all the […]
My feelings about Harvard are complicated. But when I think about how I want my alma mater to conduct itself right now, that’s simple. I hope Harvard will spend down every damn penny of its endowed billions rather than let the Trump administration break them, if that’s what it takes. There is no rainier day […]
“To be alive right now is to have a moral injury.” That phrase keeps coming up for me on coffeewalks lately. Looping in my brain. Or maybe it’s my heart… or my soul, if such a thing exists? I think the phrase is mine, but the concept isn’t. Moral injury is the idea that we […]
SCENE: A few days ago. Low on sleep, feeling raw because I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t stop fretting about the safety of my loved ones, the future of our nation, Trump and Musk’s cruelty and casual incompetence and swaggering pleasure in power. Now I’m having lunch with a wise […]
“Can I ask you… if they come for me… where do you think they’ll take me?” This f*cking heartbreaking question. Today, from my wonderful beloved young trans friend, whose eyes are suddenly about to spill tears in the middle of a discussion that was about politics. But the political is very very personal these days, […]
This is not the post I was going to write today. It’s been a rough week, hasn’t it? Waking up every day to a renewed deluge of cruelties. Knowing this is only the beginning. This morning, it all hit me hard. Suddenly I was nearly crying on my coffeewalk. My brain started writing, like it […]
