First the note of impatience in the father’s voice as he cautions his son to slow the grocery cart down in the dogfood aisle. The maybe seven-year-old looks just like his dad in a tee-shirt and shorts, but he moves with an awkward, unfocused gait.

“Nolan!” the dad shouts. “Stop right there and look at me. Look at Dad. Nolan!” Too late—bang!  Staring down at his flip-flops, Nolan has bumped his empty cart into mine. No damage done, but…

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A gorgeous clothing catalogue showed up in my mailbox yesterday--a twenty page fashion spread shot on location in Vietnam. A model draped in gauzy fabric stretched her legs in front of a backdrop of smoky mountains, bearded trees, and glittering rivers. In contrast, frenzied city shots showed the same lanky blonde on a scooter, her arms wrapped around the waist of a much smaller man, sneaking past a traffic bottleneck.  Past vs. present. I thought,…

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Nov. 6, 2011, NYC Marathon Runner David Finland Had One Goal: To Finish Strong

 

The way we see it, Sunday’s New York City Marathon couldn't have gone any better for runner #21871.                   

 

As always with this young man, there were some surprises along the way. Early on, my 24-year old autistic son David suddenly threw it into high gear and "ditched" his Team Achilles guide at Mile 5, leaving behind his phone, ID, and Metro pass somewhere…

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MSTFNSH.

At first it was a mystery to me, but that’s what the vanity license plate reads in the middle of the eight bumper stickers on the back of my autistic adult son’s little Toyota.  He’s 24 and he’s been driving himself to work for nearly two years now, pulling trash at county parks for minimum wage.  There’ve been two tickets for going ten miles over the speed limit, but other than a broken rearview mirror and the unexplained yellow paint on the side of his gray car, no…

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Glad to hear my friends in Montpelier, VT, are mucking out their gardens and getting back their power. What a rare and wonderful  community of writers. I wish them well in the Green State!

Wrapping up an intense week here at the PG Writers Conference in Montpelier, Vermont , with writers and poets who've come together from all over the U.S. It's been a productive week spent "pressing down hard" on nonfiction with author Richard McCann (Mother of Sorrows, The Ghost Letters).

 

Ida Eisenhower was the mother of seven sons.  Her boy Dwight was Number Three in the line-up.  But Ida was proud of each of her sons—the banker, the lawyer, the general, the druggist, the engineer, the journalist, and the college president.  There is a wonderful story that whenever Mrs. Eisenhower was asked, “How is your son?” she would reply without a trace of irony, “Which one?”

 

This story hits home with me because I am the mother of three sons and I have just…

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Thanks New York City, for lighting it up blue in honor of National Autism Awareness month!

-Glen @ …

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Capital Kudos to Ananda Leeke for hosting the DC She Writes birthday party Tuesday night at Teaism. The vibes were so strong among the attendees, I think we would have been drawn to each other even without the sign on the door inviting us downstairs. As writer Mary Tabor put it, "My heart filled." Along with Mary and Ananda's work, be on the lookout for the refreshing and surprising Shawna Kenney's books. We'll definitely be hearing more from each of these savvy writers. Can't wait to do it… Continue

It's 97 degrees here in metropolitan Washington today and I want my library back. I want to walk through the quiet rows of tall shelves, drawn in by the cool anticipation of opening up a book to a first sentence that's magical enough to stop me in my tracks. Maybe even entice me to slink down right there, cross-legged on the floor, to read on for an hour or so. Whether you come in to cadge the free wi-fi, check the bulletin board for local goings-on, or entertain your three- year-old with the… Continue

My editor-friend and I were catching up over a lunch of beer and mussels. “So what have you been up to lately?” he asked.

“Oh, not too much,” I said, rewinding the hot blur of August in Washington. “My kid and I spent most of the summer riding the Metro.”

“Where to?”

“Well, just riding around. You know—here, there.”

“Have you ever considered writing about this?”

“Hah!” I had to laugh. “Who’d be interested in reading about a 21-year-old autistic kid learning to ride the… Continue