Category Archives: Books

On First Looking Into Milford’s Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Posted on 03/18/2017 by

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. –Edna … Continue reading →

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Book fan, Barack Obama

Posted on 01/25/2017 by

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them (Joseph Brodsky) Regardless of your political views, our former president, Barack Obama, was a phenomenal book fan. How he found time for his passion baffles me, given … Continue reading →

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Teach me to measure all my days

Posted on 12/11/2016 by

Another year, now one of many for me, is about to pass. Life flows incessantly forward. More than ever, I’m thankful for every moment in the present, wanting to indulge, pamper, and exhaust it for its sensory fullness, or like … Continue reading →

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Open the door and come right in….

Posted on 11/06/2016 by

Mindfulness is everywhere these days. I was at our local Kroger store yesterday, sampling its magazine section and, sure enough, there were two mindfulness magazines. Go to Whole Foods, it’s the same. Mindfulness has taken off in the medical community … Continue reading →

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Leap Frogging

Posted on 10/02/2016 by

I continue to read Shinzen Young (The Science of Enlightenment), and always with the thrill of discovery. No one, and I mean no one, has opened up the insides of mindfulness meditation more for me. You know you’re keeping good … Continue reading →

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Live Longer Now

Posted on 09/27/2016 by

It’s funny how your mind takes vast jumps, transcending time and space, hurling you into the past or thrusting you into the future. It’s happening to me now. I remember sitting in my sixth grade class in Florida, fascinated with … Continue reading →

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On Reading Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch

Posted on 09/07/2016 by

All of us have a favorite book we wouldn’t mind reading again. For me, it’s David Copperfield, simply because I identify with much of what happens in it. The same holds true for Rebecca Mead in her bibliomemoir, My Life … Continue reading →

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Revisiting George Eliot’s Middlemarch

Posted on 08/17/2016 by

Just finished reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch a few minutes ago. I actually had read it in grad school, but since that was several decades back, much of it had become a tabula rasa for me in rereading it. What got … Continue reading →

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Memorial Day: “Neither shall they learn war any more”

Posted on 05/29/2016 by

Tomorrow once again commemorates Memorial Day, when we fittingly honor those who forfeited their lives for our country. I think of the Civil War with its estimated 600,000 deaths and World War II with another calamitous toll of 400,000. And … Continue reading →

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Before Surgery Reading: Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small

Posted on 05/22/2016 by

I’ve always loved animals. I can’t say where it comes from, but maybe it’s in the genes. Both my nieces exhibit the same trait. Currently, I’ve been reading James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small. If you’re old enough, you … Continue reading →

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