If you’ve ever sobbed your way through Charlotte’s Web, you are familiar with the tender mind of E.B. White. Heartfelt children’s author, gifted New Yorker editor, and co-author of a definitive volume on writing style, ol’ E.B. is sadly underappreciated for his greatest accomplishment. E.B. White is Extra Bonus catlike.
Catching me in the throttling throes of grief, a well meaning person once said, “well, I hope you’re a little less sad each day.” I told her that I earnestly hoped the same. But you know and I know that’s not how sorrow works.
All too easily, we can find ourselves following the white rabbit down into a warren of wallowing, worry, and woe. Not exactly wonderful. Not unreasonable or unseasonable, given the current times. But, also not the whole story. There’s always something fabulous and fun. There is always joy to be found, and come what may… THE […]
Place your hand on your heart. Place your heart on the line. Find your place in the great symphony of things, and tell me: do you have it all once-and-for-all-ed up? Flash…does not.
The world is weeping. Our brothers and sisters are shuddering in subways, crawling across borders, bearing their children and their grandparents and their ragged animals on their backs. Are we supposed to bask in jolly cat happenings at such a time as this?
A long time ago, I was supposed to write a short story about a person whom we’ll call Bean and a very small, magic closet. The closet’s magic was in the manner of Mary Poppins’ carpet bag – seemingly bottomless and home to more items than can be imagined, far more than its size would […]
We think we need a guarantee. What we get is a friend and a new morning. And then we get to do it all over again.
Not everything that happens is good. Loss lurches across all of our borders. Stores continue selling high-waisted jeans. Mumford and Sons refuses to make new music. Diagnoses drag us through canyons of mud. But everything that happens has the prefix “Professor,” if only we’ll show up for class.
My husband calls me “Sarge.” Actually, that’s a fairly big improvement over likening me to a certain short-statured, exiled 19th century French emperor.
I do not regret to inform you that things are not getting worse. I repeat: the situation is not deteriorating rapidly. Kids these days are not kidnapping all that is good and right. All of us kids are going to be alright.