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Dr. Rick, Can You Help Me? I’m Becoming My Mother
Aunt Peach used to tell me I was Daddy’s girl. When I was a child, she reminded me often that I looked like my father. “It’s good luck for a little girl to look like her daddy,” she said. At the very least, I suppose, it suggested that her mother had stayed on the straight-and-narrow,… Read more
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Why Writers Should Meditate
Dear writer: In a few moments, I’m going to ask you to close your eyes. Sometimes, the best way to be successful at doing something is to not do it for a while. Imagine you’re tackling a persnickety home maintenance task, for instance. You’re trying to fix a dishwasher that refuses to wash or figure out why… Read more
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After I Retired, I Hit a ‘Reminisence Bump’ in the Road
Shortly after I retired, I started to smell my mother in my house. Her signature scent-mix of Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew and Suave hairspray hung subtly on the air as if she had just passed through my living room. Though she has been dead for 10 years, I had the sensation that she had just… Read more
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If Empathy Can Be Taught, It Should Be
The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.~Hannah Arendt Close your eyes. I imagine myself saying those words to my college writing students. After giving them an assignment and reminding them of the importance of planning and pre-writing in the composition… Read more
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What Ina Garten Doesn’t Understand about a Writer’s Audience Awareness
I love her Company Pot Roast recipe. Her cocktails are delectable. And her desserts — well, her Outrageous Brownies alone should earn her a standing ovation. On her Food Network show, The Barefoot Contessa, her casual, conversational instructions for preparing dishes that are both simple and elegant delight her many fans. And her repeated declarations of… Read more
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Retired Women: Snow Us In, But Don’t Count Us Out
January’s selection was Celeste Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere. As I read it, I anticipated what some of our book group members might say about the story. When women in a book group get to know each other through the texts they read, their reactions sometimes become predictable. Eloise, a former concert cellist, might identify with… Read more
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
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