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Month: July 2014

Beach Exuberance

Tomorrow, we go to the beach. I am, as Alan Greenspan used to say, irrationally exuberant. We’ve been going to this beach since I was in the eleventh grade. That’s a long time. My daddy introduced us to the beach—he vacationed nearby when he was a kid. The beach, for me, was emblematic of a new state of being that began in junior...

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Spinning Plates, or The Writing Life

Thank you to my friend and neighbor Susan Cushman for tagging me at Pen and Palette to answer some questions about my writing. If you don’t follow Susan’s blog, go take a look. Susan blogs regularly on writing, mental health, and faith; her post on Shrinking the Monsters discusses her own writing process. Susan is a wonderful supporter of the...

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Grandparent Love

We sat on the flat rock by the shore of Lake Pontchartrain dropping pebbles into the water-filled crevice of the rock while we watched the red ball of the sun drop swiftly—it’s disappearing as we watch!—into the blue clouds, rounded as mountains. As Tom and I said our goodbyes, Aubrey said, “I had fun dropping pebbles into the pond...

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The Ramones and Me

I didn’t run with a crowd that liked the Ramones. I didn’t run with much of a crowd at all. During that period of my life, I was on my own emotionally, completing my schooling, being very functional in my choices. Not so for my music. Inside those idiosyncratic choices there lived the Ramones. I heard it and I loved it. “I...

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I’m Bogged and I Know It

It’s hard to live in a place where you know you’re failing. When I first started writing, all my writing teachers gushed over my work. Rare voice, they said. True gift, they opined. Literary journals I admired–like the Chicago Review—sent me notes saying, we’re not taking this piece but we know we’re going to be reading about you in the future....

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