Time to Stretch: My New Beginning Rank
Some folks may be wondering how my retirement schedule is going. After hearing so many stories, positive and negative, regarding retirement, and knowing people who promptly returned to work, I also wondered what it might be like for me. The key for me was to plan. This is not always so easy, but it has worked well for me. I cut back. Early on, I went from five days a week to four. After a few years, I went from four days to three, and I stayed there for several years. The next step was not to take any new patients. This was the most difficult, and I did take on a couple of people because I liked them and was curious about them. But because I worked psychoanalytically, beginners usually started at two to three times a week. This can result in many working hours....
A Few of the Wonderful Places Writing Takes Me: My Upcoming Book Talk with Anna Ornstein in Boston
This past Monday, Martin Luther King Day, my publicist, Carolyn Flynn, initiated a dialogue for me with Dr. Anna Ornstein. The connection came about through a conversation that Carolyn had with my publisher, IP Books, which suggested that I think about presenting and reading with Anna. She was not completely unknown to me through psychoanalysis and her publications on trauma, but I had no idea of the amount she has written. And I did not know about her book, My Mother’s Eyes: Holocaust Memories of a Young Girl, a collection of stories she read to her children over many years of Passover seders. Because I have read so much Holocaust writing, I was certain that I had read her book, but when I went to my Holocaust shelves, the book was not there. IP Books kindly...
DACA Dad: What If…?
My father did not become a citizen until he was an adult. He fled the Russian pogroms to create a better life. Gratitude can shape some pretty good citizens. My sister is now an activist and works for the rights of immigrants. I am so proud of her. I did most of my activism during the 1960s and 1970s, although I do sign many petitions and support special candidates and causes. We were on the phone chatting last week, when she said something that really made me sad. When I researched our father’s papers for Myopia, a memoir, it was the first time I realized that my father did not become a citizen until he was an adult. What the reason could be for this is only speculation. I am sure that they were too busy surviving to consider this issue. They had no money and...
Authors (Girls) Just Want to Have Fun
In November, Dr. Lynn Miller and I were at the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards with our spouses and our matching gold pants, fitting to celebrate this first book awards banquet for me (but not for Lynn). Her novel, The Day After Death, had been a finalist in the LAMBDA awards. My novel, What Survives, had been short-listed for the Santa Fe Writers Project. Both of us learned we were finalists in the NM/AZ awards, but on that night, we didn’t win. I was not unhappy with this, because What Survives, published in 2016, was my first novel. Being shortlisted and then a finalist is no small feat for me. And so, I am hardly a sore loser, especially since the legendary John Nichols, best-known as author of The Milagro Beanfield War, was the winner in my category for The...
Pleasant Encounters: A Great Book Club Session on What Survives
Due to the persistence of a neighbor I had never really met, Ruth Ives (front left in purple), I was invited to a “meet the author” at the Placitas Library book club’s meetings. It was Ruth’s turn to select a book, and I had just met Geri Verble at the Hoot Gallery (see her fabulous jewelry there) where she purchased my novel, What Survives. Geri told Ruth that if she chose my book, I lived right in the neighborhood and probably would agree to come to answer questions. What a smart and lovely group of women! I enjoyed this event immensely. And I did get to meet and speak with Ruth at my Bookworks’ reading for my newest book, Myopia, a memoir, in October. Book Clubs, like most other clubs, can be as stimulating as they can be dull. This one is stellar....
Reading at Bookworks on Oct. 15: A Gift
October 15 was a great reading experience for me upon the Albuquerque debut of Myopia a memoir, where I read chapters from the book, including “An Awfully Hard Man to Kill” and “Lemon Meringue Pie in the Land of Keretaria.” (See photos from the event here.) The audience engaged in some invigorating questions, which is one reason I say Bookworks is a fabulous venue for writers and readers alike. The staff is intelligent, welcoming and supportive, and there is a warm and interested audience. Sadly, so many independent bookstores have vanished. If we wish to keep Bookworks alive and well, we will have to get off our computers and into our cars and actually purchase some books there! They need us as much as we need them. Of course, I want to...
Prizes, Patriotism and Peace
Random Thoughts On Acceptance And Change The first prize I ever won for writing anything was in elementary school. The American flag was the topic. Innocent, and far beyond my immature imaginings, I wrote about what I thought were my father’s feelings for the American flag. As a Russian refugee, his patriotism was both sincere and strong. And even though I won the first prize, my father dismissed the whole event by saying I was too young to write about anything. In many ways, of course, he was absolutely right (but I did have to start somewhere). The next thing I knew, people around me were burning that same flag and wearing it as clothing. Although I didn’t burn flags, or even wear any, for that matter, I did protest and I marched. Civil rights and the...
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