Since the U.S. election when somehow–impossibly, it had seemed–Donald Trump became president-elect, I have been vacillating between tears and panic. Subsequent events have proven many of our fears well-founded–the rise in hate […]
(By Riccardo Ghilardi photographer (own work) CC) Lisa saw my post processing the loss of author/activist/actor and General Feminist Badass Carrie Fisher yesterday, and asked me to share it here as […]
My last Christmas letter was written a few years ago. My daughter, a freshman in high school then, read my letter and then wrote a spoof letter. When she read hers to her big brothers they laughed and laughed. I realized that my own children, who once thought the letters were special, had matured enough to know the letters were ridiculous while I, who should have long since outgrown the need to write them as a way of making myself feel better about my life, was still taking them seriously.
I have four children, all adults in their twenties now, one about to turn thirty, one married, one getting married in January, and the other two in serious relationships with […]
There is the art of writing letters, and then there is the art of writing Christmas letters, which hardly anyone masters.  To write Christmas letters, a person will ideally have a highly-refined sense of how much […]
This is one of my visions for an ideal Christmas. It’s a short, happy confection, a dream apart from these dire times. I hope you take some time to imagine your ideal […]
A week ago*, I cut just over twelve inches of my long, curly locks off. It wasn’t the first time I’d cut off a drastic amount of hair. The first time I […]
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down. —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale In the wake of the 2016 U.S. election—I was going to write “the election,” which has […]
Kari O’Driscoll’s piece, “When Girls Make Noise,” at The Manifest-Station caught my attention when I was busy with something else, almost as if it interrupted. I loved the title, and the first line spoke […]
By Susan Lilley Lately I’ve been doing a lot of bragging on Facebook and Instagram about former students doing stellar things, like performing on Broadway or publishing in top-tier magazines. But the […]
The Gloria Sirens 