Every morning I brush my teeth, brew coffee, turn on the computer, check my email and click on the Breast Cancer site to make a free donation to make mammograms available for those who cannot afford them. It is a tiny gesture in solidarity with the women I know (and all the ones I don’t) who have battled this disease. Usually, I do this more-or-less thoughtlessly.
But this past week, my morning ritual became an act of mourning. Last Sunday night, I paid a condolence call to the family of a 57-year-old woman who succumbed to breast cancer.
As my husband and I drove to the house, I knew it was going to be a very sad shiva service (shiva, which means seven, refers to the week of mourning observed by Jews – a time of reflection, sadness, remembrance, and communal support.)
Joyce was a long-time member of my synagogue, and while I didn’t know her very well, we had many mutual friends who were deeply saddened by her loss. Even closer to home, my daughter, Emilia, was friends with Joyce’s two girls growing up, and she had called me to talk about her memories of Joyce and of being in her home.
It was an untimely death, which inevitably holds up a fairly frightening mirror to a 58-year old like me. But I was touched and even gladdened as I looked around the very full room and saw so many young faces – friends and relatives there to comfort Joyce’s daughters, who are both in their 20s. Had Emilia been in town, she would have been there, too.
I’ve been to many shiva gatherings over the years, nearly all for older if not elderly parents – including my father. Those who gathered for condolence, in solidarity and community, were all of my generation or older.
And now our kids are adults: beautiful, compassionate, and wise enough to know how important it is to show up for one another. And that is what makes human life possible.
The season is changing. Sad as I am for Joyce’s death and her family's grief, I honor the gifts she gave and left behind. Including this lesson to me.
Here is the website: http://www.thebreastcancersite.com
You know what to do.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The Art & Commerce of the Blog, Part 2
I'm not sure why I didn't stop writing when my reading circle stopped growing beyond 12 people. Maybe it is because blogging is inherently valuable to me. The responsibility of it makes me notice the details of my experiences and feelings. I live life more fully because I blog.
This was one of the comments on my last blog entry. Thank you so much to "PrincessMax" for this.
Her sentiment rings true. Someone famously said, "I don't know what I think until I write it down." As a newspaper/magazine columnist, the pressure to produce something fit to be printed on a weekly basis made me pay attention to the world around me in ways I would have never done otherwise. Crassly put, I was searching for column fodder. But it turned into a mindfulness practice, too, keeping me alert to the pleasures and pains of my life, my community, my world.
Sounds like naval-gazing, but it's not. At least not if you take the time and do the work to shape your experience and reach for insight.
Blog on.
This was one of the comments on my last blog entry. Thank you so much to "PrincessMax" for this.
Her sentiment rings true. Someone famously said, "I don't know what I think until I write it down." As a newspaper/magazine columnist, the pressure to produce something fit to be printed on a weekly basis made me pay attention to the world around me in ways I would have never done otherwise. Crassly put, I was searching for column fodder. But it turned into a mindfulness practice, too, keeping me alert to the pleasures and pains of my life, my community, my world.
Sounds like naval-gazing, but it's not. At least not if you take the time and do the work to shape your experience and reach for insight.
Blog on.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
The art and commerce of the blog
There was a great story in today's New York Times about blogs and our fantasies for them. The dream of bloggers everywhere is that we will become well-known, if not famous, thanks to the effortless publication that is the blog. That we will be discovered, be invited to produce books for mass markets, make a living if not a fortune from these postings.
Turns out that most of us blog in obscurity, read mostly by family and friends, our efforts blooming unseen in the vasty darkness of the 'net. And once we discover this fact, we give up. According to the Time, "In a 2008 study, Technorati estimated that since 2002, 133 million blogs were started. Of those, only 7.4 million have been updated in the last 120 days. The rest are essentially abandoned."
I think people stop blogging because no one writes back. No one cares. It's too sad.
But having written for newspaper and magazines, I'm sort of used to that deafening silence. Sure, I hoped that more people would post comments if only because it's so easy to do. No paper. No postage.
But the experience of print is instructive. If I received a single letter to a column published in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (in the days when it was read by millions rather than tens of dozens of New Englanders)I was thrilled. If one person was moved to pick up a pen, that meant there were others who thought about doing the same. After all, I am just as guilty as the next browser of not taking the 60 seconds to thank a favorite author, applaud a great singer, or say hey to fellow bloggers, whose words I follow. (Yes,that's you, Dr. Paley.)
Turns out that most of us blog in obscurity, read mostly by family and friends, our efforts blooming unseen in the vasty darkness of the 'net. And once we discover this fact, we give up. According to the Time, "In a 2008 study, Technorati estimated that since 2002, 133 million blogs were started. Of those, only 7.4 million have been updated in the last 120 days. The rest are essentially abandoned."
I think people stop blogging because no one writes back. No one cares. It's too sad.
But having written for newspaper and magazines, I'm sort of used to that deafening silence. Sure, I hoped that more people would post comments if only because it's so easy to do. No paper. No postage.
But the experience of print is instructive. If I received a single letter to a column published in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (in the days when it was read by millions rather than tens of dozens of New Englanders)I was thrilled. If one person was moved to pick up a pen, that meant there were others who thought about doing the same. After all, I am just as guilty as the next browser of not taking the 60 seconds to thank a favorite author, applaud a great singer, or say hey to fellow bloggers, whose words I follow. (Yes,that's you, Dr. Paley.)
Monday, June 1, 2009
Sitemeter Report
Several weeks ago, I wrote about my addiction to checking the location of readers who stop by this blog. That confession prompted more comments than any other posting so far.
So I thought perhaps you'd like to know from whence come some of your far-flung brethren and (more likely) sister-en.
States heard from in the past month or so: Georgia, Washington, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, Louisiana, Alaska, New York, North Carolina.
And from abroad: Ireland, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Spain, Panama, Holland, Scotland.
Small world.
So I thought perhaps you'd like to know from whence come some of your far-flung brethren and (more likely) sister-en.
States heard from in the past month or so: Georgia, Washington, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, Louisiana, Alaska, New York, North Carolina.
And from abroad: Ireland, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Spain, Panama, Holland, Scotland.
Small world.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
I think that I shall never see
This is what's going on in my backyard, and believe me, I'm a terrible photographer.
Around the block there is a dogwood abloom in pink flowers, rising from a bed of spiky purple perennials.
The lilacs are out to seduce, and the perfume is staggering.
All I want to do is sit in my backyard and look at this tree.
Can you blame me?
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
The manuscript
It's baaack!
The title and cover image have been finalized. The book tour is shaping up. A photographer has been hired to make me look ... creative? mysterious? authorial?
But the galleys are back with me, which means the book itself isn't quite finished and I get to make changes to the manuscript of DAY AFTER NIGHT. I'm looking for typos, of course. I have found a few, which means there have to be more that I'm not seeing. But the truth is, it's hard for me to see the book at all.
"Manuscript dysmorphia" is the clinical term for my condition. The diagnosis was coined and delivered by one of my writing clinicians, Stephen McCauley. This is a condition not unlike body dysmorphia, in which the patient has an extremely distorted view of him/herself, or in this case, her book.
I'm working steadily, 20-30 pages a day to meet my deadline. That's all I can sit still for. I'm changing a word here, a phrase there, checking for internal consistency. Thanks to the "word search" function, I can hack away at my worst excesses of repetitive language syndrome. ("Of course" is a problem for me.)
But please, don't ask me how I feel about it. Is it brilliant? Does it suck? Manuscript dysmorphia strikes again!
The title and cover image have been finalized. The book tour is shaping up. A photographer has been hired to make me look ... creative? mysterious? authorial?
But the galleys are back with me, which means the book itself isn't quite finished and I get to make changes to the manuscript of DAY AFTER NIGHT. I'm looking for typos, of course. I have found a few, which means there have to be more that I'm not seeing. But the truth is, it's hard for me to see the book at all.
"Manuscript dysmorphia" is the clinical term for my condition. The diagnosis was coined and delivered by one of my writing clinicians, Stephen McCauley. This is a condition not unlike body dysmorphia, in which the patient has an extremely distorted view of him/herself, or in this case, her book.
I'm working steadily, 20-30 pages a day to meet my deadline. That's all I can sit still for. I'm changing a word here, a phrase there, checking for internal consistency. Thanks to the "word search" function, I can hack away at my worst excesses of repetitive language syndrome. ("Of course" is a problem for me.)
But please, don't ask me how I feel about it. Is it brilliant? Does it suck? Manuscript dysmorphia strikes again!
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Good Ship
I write fiction that celebrates the power of friendship. Although my novels are very different from one another in form, style, and setting, that is the one constant.
In my collection of essays, "Pitching My Tent: On Marriage, Motherhood, Friendship, and Other Leaps of Faith" the subtitle elevates friendship to the level of family. And whenever I speak about the way that popular culture denigrates women's friendships (mean girls, frenemies, bitchy bosses) and say, "That's what sells, I suppose. But the nasty exceptions miss the most important point: women friends keep each other sane!" The audience smiles and nods a collective head.
So it's nice to see that as of today, the most forwarded article in the New York Times details the health benefits of friendship -- especially among women. The article, "What Are Friends For?" ran in the Science section, and reports the obvious: Friendships are good for you. (The second half of that headline: "A Longer Life.")
Mostly, the story focuses on women's friendships and a book called "The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a 40-year Friendship." But it also included citations from a few scientific studies that show reduced rates of heart disease and even head colds among those who tend to their buddies. And then there's this:
Last year, researchers studied 34 students at the University of Virginia, taking them to the base of a steep hill and fitting them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the exercise, while others were alone.
The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.
Pass it on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/health/21well.html?em
In my collection of essays, "Pitching My Tent: On Marriage, Motherhood, Friendship, and Other Leaps of Faith" the subtitle elevates friendship to the level of family. And whenever I speak about the way that popular culture denigrates women's friendships (mean girls, frenemies, bitchy bosses) and say, "That's what sells, I suppose. But the nasty exceptions miss the most important point: women friends keep each other sane!" The audience smiles and nods a collective head.
So it's nice to see that as of today, the most forwarded article in the New York Times details the health benefits of friendship -- especially among women. The article, "What Are Friends For?" ran in the Science section, and reports the obvious: Friendships are good for you. (The second half of that headline: "A Longer Life.")
Mostly, the story focuses on women's friendships and a book called "The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a 40-year Friendship." But it also included citations from a few scientific studies that show reduced rates of heart disease and even head colds among those who tend to their buddies. And then there's this:
Last year, researchers studied 34 students at the University of Virginia, taking them to the base of a steep hill and fitting them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the exercise, while others were alone.
The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.
Pass it on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/health/21well.html?em
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