Be a Camellia

Last month, my oldest friend Kathryn said goodbye to her mother. It was a hard goodbye after weeks of hospitals, frustration, and medical shortcomings, and Kathryn and her father will be dealing with the raw scar of pain for a very long time. Andrea Hickman White was an honest to goodness force of nature. She was married for more than fifty years to her high school sweetheart, Ken. She loved her...
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2017 Reading List

Earlier this month, I got into a testy professional conversation with an online colleague who was bemoaning how colleges/universities are no longer permitted to teach the dead white guy literary canon because diversity, or something equally stupid. It pissed me off. Not only is that claim patently untrue, but it also denigrates the many brilliant writers who don’t happen to be white males...
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Sunday Soundtrack: “Cherish”

Today’s tune is “Cherish,” one of my favorite classic Madonna tunes from her late ’80s album Like a Prayer. It has an effortless bounce and an absolutely adorable video. Madonna recently won the Woman of the Year award from Billboard magazine, and she had some great things to say about being a woman I’d like to share: “As women, we have to start appreciating...
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Shoot Me Now

So I had to get head shots. Let me just say that the idea of head shots appeals to me about as much as a root canal, since most of the time I look at pictures of myself and wonder how long that puffer fish has been stealing from my closet. Seriously, ugh. But a book is coming out and I have to be serious about the writing and promo and although Mr. Man is wonderful and fabulous, it’s not...
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Feeling Like a 900-Year-Old Woman

As a good friend of mine says, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. In my case, that means I went from what I thought was really impressive heartburn (something totally normal for teacher types with too much to do and too little time to do it in) to an inflamed gall bladder. There’s nothing like “gall bladder surgery” to make you feel like a 900-year-old woman. Seriously,...
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