In Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Tom Robbins poses the question about San Francisco, why, when mother nature keeps destroying your city do you insist on rebuilding it? I’ll tell you why. It’s because despite the earthquakes, San Francisco is prime real estate. It’s gorgeous, and prosperous.
But what about New Orleans? Mother nature sends the […]

San Francisco is a prime destination spot. In the 1800s, people came for the promise of gold, adventure, prosperity. In Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune, Eliza travels to California in search of love and finds herself among people from all over the world, all in search of fortune. And in this bustling, changing place, she […]

I was talking to my teen-aged nephew Alex about how we both remember the answers to tests by visualizing the place where we read them in the book. I know a lot of people are like that, but I think there’s something genetic about the way we both do it. Alex’s father doesn’t really think […]

One of my dearest friends shared her copy of Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar with me a few years ago, knowing how I was consumed with thoughts of trees and memories of past lives.
Walker’s character Lissie takes us on a journey through history and pre-history. Her memory is long, for “Lissie means ‘the […]

About fifteen years ago I was helping my mother chop down a magnolia tree in her back yard. The poor tree was crammed into this tiny space between the house and the concrete deck surrounding a swimming pool. It was a mercy killing as much as it was a defense of the pool and the […]

Once upon a time, when I thought I wanted to be an English literature teacher, I would wake up in the middle of the night with ideas about my lesson plans. Wouldn’t it be cool, for instance, to have the students compare a book with its screen adaptation?
High school students are notorious for watching the […]

I’m not one of those people who weighs her answers before she speaks. I know there are people like that, but I’m just not one of them. I could never be a lawyer, for instance.
I’m what you might call a blurter. You know that scene in Austin Powers where he’s thawing out and can’t help […]

Yeah, I know Christmas season is over. Oftentimes, when we think of the Baby Jesus, we think of peace on earth, with the hopefulness that such a thing could somehow be possible. Everyone looking up at the same star, this same beam of light in the sky, leading us to this pure gift from God.
Two […]

Psychologists will tell you that eating disorders are more about control than anything else. It happens a lot to young women who have little to no control over their lives. The food they ingest is something they think they can control. They abuse themselves because they can.
You also see a lot of young women who […]

Poor Bigger Thomas in Native Son was so disconnected, no control over his own life, a poor black man living in a rich white man’s world. Since ancient times, people have been committing atrocities when it’s the only thing they can do to grasp some semblence of control over their own lives.
My favorite such story […]