This morning, over pain a la ancienne and strong coffee with cream, I read a striking passage in a book of essays by Wendell Berry. I turned it over in my head a few times — it seemed right, and timely, working as I am right now full-time on launching a new project. Here it [...]

This weekend was Open Studios in North Adams. Hundreds of artists, writers, and craftspeople invited us in to see their work and process. There are a few huge, converted warehouses here, so almost everyone can live and work in their own same gorgeous, open space. It was an inspiration.
Papermaking artist Cynthia Lewis had some of [...]

I clipped this poem out of the New Yorker weeks ago. I don’t do that too often. It’s been hanging on my fridge, but I took it down today. I’m taking everything down, packing, putting things away. It’s a paean, a little melancholy, but a celebration nonetheless. It’s hard to read now that I’m leaving, [...]

While cleaning out my grandmother’s house last summer, I found this excellent book, The Little Book of Famous Insults.

It was published in 1964 by the Peter Pauper Press, and features sixty pages of zingers uttered by obscure figures from world history (drawing heavily on the apparently not-yet-cliched utterances of one Oscar Wilde), plus some really [...]