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Writers and Books
Most of my life I have spent studying books, writing about books, selling books and for the past 8 months researching and writing my own blog. Books and the culture of art, photography, music and writing are more than passions for me – they are indeed my way of life. Rather than do a summary of my resume I will give you some highlights of what I have done. I have had a variety of demanding positions in New York, New York in publishing sales and management as well as Baltimore, Maryland in museum store management and marketing. Marilynne Robinson said when she turned 70 years old she felt no…
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Close by the cathedral
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A Few Christmas Memories
I find myself looking back this Advent to remember traditions my parents and my siblings shared. Many of them are simple, but they give me deep joy and peace at how wondrous it is to be present during this season. One of our traditions was to go out to a farm and pick a beautiful live Christmas tree. It had a large root ball and was quite heavy. The hole where it would be planted was already dug and prepared. For me today this is a symbol of hope. We are not cut down during Advent, but rather planted to grow again in Spring. There is much to look forward…
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Ubi Caritas: where charity and love are, God is there
Ola Gjeilo, the pianist in this piece, is also the composer of the work which is played and sung below. He is Swedish and it was written in 2011. You will recognize that the Trinity Choir has sung this piece several times under the direction of our most recent choir masters. The words are: Where charity and love are, God is there The love of Christ has gathered us together. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Let us revere and love the living God. And from a sincere heart let us love one another. Amen. We know that we do not have to be together in the same…
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For everything there is a season…
Every beginning has an ending and every ending has a beginning. At the beginning of this blog, I was a faithful writer penning short blog every other week for nine years. Some pieces were better than others, but all were given a quick edit by my dear friend, Sally. She was the first reader and she encouraged me to keep writing even when I didn’t find many readers. She liked the short pieces and the photographs that accompanied them. This accompanying photograph is not mine. It is a photograph of Virginia Woolf’s writing desk. I studied the works of Virginia Woolf and wrote my M.A. thesis at Brown University. What…
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Entrust your pain to the community
A few months ago, I read this essay called: “Two Lessons learned from this Ancient Piece that Changed My Life” written by Sharon Brous who is a Rabbi. This is an excerpt from The New York Times. “A somewhat obscure text called the Mishnah, which is a very old Jewish legal document has been my unlikely teacher and guide for the past many years, and my north star. The Mishnah gave hope to all in need as they circled the Temple of Jerusalem. For those in pain, they would turn to the left and the ones giving care and compassion would turn to the right. They would meet in the…
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Life changes in the instant.
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity. by Joan Didion, “The Year of Magical Thinking.” I am still asking myself– even after almost a year since Sally died–why we never talk about death until it is in front of us. I think some of the truth lies in Joan’s short phrase–uncertainty, fear and perhaps not wanting self-pity. We have no idea when our time is and we are afraid to talk to others about what it looks like when we experience it closely. You can sit with a dying friend the whole day…
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I shall not cease from exploration
7 years ago I began this blog. I first started writing pieces while living in Brooklyn. I worked with a web designer who taught me how to put everything together. During this time, Gregory, my son, moved to his own apartment in Brooklyn. Soon both Sally and I retired. She moved to Cincinnati. I moved to Asbury Park. It was both exciting and sad. But once Sally and I moved, we talked everyday. It was our way of keeping the connection and the friendship. My intention for writing was to find a story with emotional resonance for me and write about it. Then I would marry this short piece with…
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An Olive Tree grows in New Jersey
Have you ever watched something die and then come back to life again? It does often happen in nature when we see. My niece gave me a small, beautiful, olive tree as a gift and it flourished for a while. At some point the moisture and gloomy weather of New Jersey was too much. It died. I never thought it would grow again. After living outside in its beautiful olive pot, I was ready to plant a perennial in the pot. I looked closer. There in the center of the pot between two large round-shaped stones was a small olive bud. It has been outside in the cold and wet…
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A Season for Everything…
Thinking back to last winter, I remember chasing two great blue herons everyday. They waded in the water, and skated on thin ice. Each day I was happy to go outside at the warmest part of the day to discover what new trick they had created. This year is different. There is only one heron and when I do get out between the cold and the rain, I can’t find him. What has changed? If we begin to follow birds and animals carefully, we will see that they have a vital life of their own. They are not the same every day. Jane Goodall said this and she has lived…
