Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. -Talmud As I write this, my friends and neighbors are celebrating the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and beginning a period of self-examination. This process includes asking forgiveness for those wrongs, and meditating on ways to continue Tikun Olam, the work of repairing the world, by attending to their own spiritual needs and the needs of others in the new year. Even though I am not Jewish, I find that…

I’ve just finished reading Jane Smiley’s masterful 2010 novel, Private Life. It is the story of an ordinary Missouri woman’s life that begins with her first memory in 1883 and ends on the California coast in 1942. I was particularly interested in it because it encompassed the America my grandparents grew up in, in Kansas, Minnesota and Colorado, a period of time I’ve always wanted to know more about.  Novels can provide what history books leave out, the “felt experience” of a time, the customs and mores and textures of a life now gone, yet one that is not really so far from us. One of the …

Work is how we spend the coin of our lives. I was busy, laboring to get things done before we went on our three-day trip to a wedding in D.C.  I needed to go to the cleaners, to physical therapy, to get my hair cut and also to the Post Office, to send off the fruits of my labor.  At physical therapy, I was attended, as always, by a wonderful, caring therapist. Even though it was an ungodly early morning hour, he was kind, relaxed and engaging. I huffed and puffed through my routine and was rewarded with hot pads and electrical stimulation to relax my back. Each of us could have regarded the …

I sometimes think I was born in the wrong century. When I watch mannered BBC drawing-room dramas featuring Victorians in which women are “at home” or “receiving” on certain days, at certain times (Mrs. Lawton is receiving after 4 pm), I think, that’s the way to live!  One could have one’s private life, uninterrupted, and then present one’s public self to the world, and never the twain shall meet.  No getting caught with your hair in a frizz or your face pasty and pale from too late a night.  Also, I like the uninterrupted part—no wonder those Victorians could read (and write) 800 page novels…

When the world is too much with me—the news of the world in particular, with the dire economic outlook, the benighted and downright self-serving politicians who seem to have lost any moral compass they might have had, the social Darwinism that plays itself out in the pious robes of fiscal conservatism, and the apparent indifference to all of the above that is reflected in the majority of the media—I go to the flea market. At the flea market, the basic exchange of cash for goods, the exchange of stories, and the bargaining bring me down to earth.  Here is an economy I can understand, not The …

I always read the obituaries. I guess that’s what truly marks a person as being middle-aged, when you no longer believe in your own mortality, and like so much else in life, you check in and see how others have run the race. And just as in life, there are those who seem to have done more, been more, than others. Lucien Freud died this week, and I found myself fascinated with the articles about this iconoclastic painter who eschewed artistic trends and hewed to his own vision. Amy Winehouse’s obit was equally fascinating—and sadder—the brief, bright flame of a young woman both tremendously …

To Facebook or not to Facebook, that is the question. I was interested to read in the (print media) New York Times recently, a little blurb about a study which showed that people who used Facebook were, on average, more socially well-adjusted than their non-Facebooking peers. What a relief. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Facebook primarily by my daughter, Hannah, who lives in Washington, DC. She pointed out that because I wasn’t on Facebook, she had to upload and email me all her photos separately. Realizing how selfish I was, not to mention being a Luddite, and nudged …

Who is the stranger? What do we owe the stranger in our midst?  Maybe some of you have seen groups of Asian families wearing colorful embroidered clothing around town lately and wondered who these folks were. I know I did when they showed up at our church. Like so many things in life, I barely noticed them until I was personally involved.  And I was only personally involved because my son, Adam, who had gotten to know two of the boys, volunteered our family as a liaison family. (Notice, I didn’t volunteer….)  So before I knew it, I was getting myself an education. If you’ve seen “Rambo,” …

This past Thursday Legion Pool opened, and summer vacation 2011 was officially launched. Some people have family beach houses, or mountain cabins that they return to year after year, but for me, my carefree family summer memories circle around Legion Pool.  My father took a job at UGA in the art department in 1968. We drove down from Columbus, Ohio, to Athens, my parents and four, soon to be five, siblings, in a blue Chevy station wagon. My mother, quickly figuring out that the summer was long and hot (this was before air conditioning was ubiquitous), was determined that we would learn to …

“Any small thing can save you…” writes Mark Doty in his beautiful poem “Ararat.”  I first saw this poem on the refrigerator of my friend Susie, and it has become one of my favorites.  In the poem, a boy finds a golden egg on Easter Sunday. The enchantment of the egg and the memory of it nurture him through a difficult childhood: “Because the golden egg gleamed/in my basket once, though my childhood /became an immense sheet of darkening water,/I was Noah, and I was his ark,/ and there were two of every animal inside me.”   I found the line “Any small thing can save you” going through my head …

I wrote in my journal last Thursday: “We are spared, blessed.  The air is crisp and cool, sunlight imprinting the patterns of oak leaves on the roof.  The birds are raucous, cardinals and fat robins and chickadees going about their business as if nothing had happened last night.”  I thought I didn’t live in fear, but I am terrified of tornadoes….after a swimming accident resulted in ten vertebral fractures, I got back in the ocean.  I got on a horse in Mexico not long after my back brace came off. I have never minded exploring a new city or country on foot  I’ve lived in the inner city of …

For the last ten years, cancer patients, their caregivers and families have been participating in a writing workshop dedicated to facilitating healing at the Loran Smith Center for Cancer Support. Initiated by Mona Taylor, the arts programming at the Loran Smith Center has included drama, music, art and writing. These programs are based on the premise that given the tools of an art form and the protected space to create art, people who are in crisis can express their feelings.  It is this expression of emotions that allows people to move on or move out of a stuck place. Indeed, the Latin root…

Soul Food  Last week, I found myself tearing down the Atlanta Highway at 6 pm looking for a monk’s costume. My son Adam was presenting his project on torture in Elizabethan times the next day as a dead and tortured 16th c. priest. The black cape I had made during his infatuation with the Anime figure Naruto, it became clear, was not going to fit the bill.   Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a marquee in front a church. It read “It is well with my soul.” I looked out at the golden afternoon, and turned the words over, repeating them out loud. Yes, I thought, it is well with my …

You just can’t beat the police blotter for tragic comedy.  Also, a reality check.  Not long ago, I read about the “Good Samaritan” here in Athens. He stopped to help a woman whose car had lost power because of a loose battery cable.  The man fixed the cable, then pulled a knife on the woman and robbed her of about $600.  “The woman described him as a slim white male who was about 40 years old, with a scruffy gray beard…..(he)wore a camouflage hat with a curved bill and a Confederate flag on it.”  Nice of him to fix the cable first.  Evidently, he is still at large.  Next to that item was …

The other day, my 8 year-old neighbor, Olivia, was skipping out in her front yard with a friend.  I had just driven up. As I got out of the car, I called to her and asked how her dance recital had gone. Beaming, she said she gotten an award.  “Well, I bet you were just great,” I told her.  “Yes, I was,” she said without a hint of self-consciousness, and went skipping off. I had to smile to myself over that wonderful naturalness, her emphatic “I was,” then her ability to move on to the next enjoyable adventure in her yard, which I think involved finding a beetle.   That morning, I had read an …