I want to remember this, and so I write it down.



Ted spoke today.  Ted doesn't often speak, but when he does, I listen.  Ted is eighty-seven years old, a former chemistry professor--he and I have taught in the same classrooms--and an emigre who as a young boy was lucky enough to escape Hitler's…

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In Boone, North Carolina, a three-mile track of narrow asphalt and iron bridges creek-hops and rolls past meadows, sports fields, the ruin of an old dam and the pale blue tanks of a sewage plant.  Start at the Armory, and you'll come first to the Equestrian Field.  It was empty as a Roman arena yesterday when I and my husband and our two dogs strolled by, its grass perfect, untouched, an oval platter.  The fence was freshly stained and smelled like biology class.  Joggers went around it, not… Continue

I learned a new word this week: to "wallfish" is to bury or conceal wires behind a wall by means of creating a hole in it, and then hooking or fishing the wires up through it.  It's a mechanism for hiding what's messy, or for trapping what's live and dangerous in a safe place.  I have Andrew to thank for my new word.  He came to my house this week to install cable television in a room where wires and plugs had been lying around scattered like kelp with teeth.  The first technician who'd come to… Continue

Dear Friends, I thought you all might get a kick out of this: PopEater (AOL's pop culture site) yesterday published my story "How Dancing With The Stars Almost Ruined My Marriage" to coincide with… Continue