Last weekend I went to Tahoe for a Belden family wedding. It takes me some time to realize I have not been in Northern California, on my own, since 1991, with the exception of three days after Mom died, in 2014. It takes me longer to note that I have let go or walked away … Continue reading What Happens in Tahoe, Stays in Tahoe
writing
The Fire and Home, Take 2
It was about 4:30 PM on Tuesday, January 7, 2025 when a news alert flashed across my screen in Pennsylvania announcing fires threatening the town where we once lived, in southern California. Our first home. To know anything about me is to know how much home means to me. It is a quest, within and … Continue reading The Fire and Home, Take 2
Valentining
It seems right and fitting to write on Valentine’s Day from New Hope, a town where I celebrated Valentines in 1991—dinner at Hotel du Village—two weeks after getting engaged, senior year in college. If you’ve followed my story at all, you already know this lifetime vow lasted twenty years. After that, many years passed during … Continue reading Valentining
On Writing, Writers and the Written
We are not idealized wild things.We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away,failed by our very complication,so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves.As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at … Continue reading On Writing, Writers and the Written
In Service
In the nation’s serviceIn the service of all nationsIn the service of humanity* In the The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion wrote about the passing of her husband, John Gregory Dunne ’54. Both writers, her sentences are charged with grief and with their shared wordsmithery. I have several scenes etched permanently in my memory: … Continue reading In Service
Dear Reader
"Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us."Meister Eckhart Dear Reader, You may have saved my life. I will explain. But first, a story. When I was in grammar school, I used to take piano lessons and … Continue reading Dear Reader
Where I End & She Begins 