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I’ve imagined a gun in my classroom.  Maybe held by the depressed student, or by the belligerent one who thinks I have graded him unfairly. Because I teach freshman writing, and students write their own stories in my class, I know better than other professors just how unstable freshmen are. Read More

I just hobbled to my desk, hugging two crutches under my left arm so I could carry a mug of hot tea in my right hand.  I broke tiny bones in my foot and this is what I am reduced to. Fifteen years ago I badly sprained my ankle… Read More

My playwright great great grandfather whose portrait hangs above my desk. Shall I commission a portrait? Who am I?  The Queen of England?   Meeting Mia, what she said.  I loved seeing her process, and it was fun. Meet my great great grandfather, Charles Gayler, a successful and… Read More

I have to stop writing about the nursing home. People don’t want to read about them. Do they? I can’t promise this will be my last story from the nursing home,  but I can’t resist. I have been visiting my aunt in a spacious, sunny, clean, pleasant, friendly place… Read More

My friends Kit and Julian Caplan were married for 64 years. Kit died a few weeks ago, and today was the memorial service. I couldn’t stop the tears when I embraced Julian, who is a prince of a man if there ever was one. The people who remembered Kit… Read More

Louis Begley had a lovely essay in the New York Times yesterday, on page 5 of the Sunday Review if you’re attached to the hard copy of the Times, called “Old Love” if you’re digital. He begins by remembering when he was 39 and wondering whether his beloved would still look beautiful to him when… Read More

Discovery Channel is doing a program in collaboration with the Kinsey Institute about the sexual habits of Americans. What REALLY goes on in America’s bedrooms? My husband and I are representing the 70-year-old contingent, and went across the river to a hotel in lower Manhattan where a “studio” had… Read More

The abortion decision of a religiously conservative woman is not simple.  This is a decision she will never be able to take back, so she will want to get it right.  For a woman raised in the uncompromisingly anti-abortion atmosphere of conservative Christianity and Catholicism, the number… Read More

My husband and I were meandering up scenic Route 1, soaking up the shoreline and coastal hills of California, when we saw a sign Dillon Beach and decided to drive there.  It was quite a long way, out of cell phone contact. The first thing we saw was… Read More