Recent Blogs
Post Comments: 0
Upon moving to Boston, I figured I’d have to give up one of my favorite activities—that of participating in the Fischgaard Short Film Project, a 48-hour film competition in Aberdeen, South Dakota. We’d done it the last two years, making films at our farmhouse, then driving three hours north to deliver the DVDs at the Capitol Cinema in Aberdeen. This year it wasn’t reasonable to participate. Even if we flew back to South Dakota, we wouldn’t have the equipment—we’d moved our desktop computer to Boston, the only one we owned powerful enough to edit high-def video clips into a 3- to 7-minute film.
However, when the announcement appeared on Facebook a few weeks ago, I threw reason out the window. I worked through the scenario and checked my frequent flyer balance. If I wrote the screenplay Friday night like usual, shot in Boston late Friday night/Saturday day, and edited the video all night, I could make an 8:00 flight and be in Aberdeen by 2:25 pm—well ahead of the 4:00 deadline for turning in the DVDs. I asked Ray if I was crazy, he said “yes”, and I cashed in the miles to buy the ticket. [More]
Post Comments: 0
On Monday night, I’m attending William Martin’s discussion on his latest novel The Lincoln Letter with the South Boston Historical Society, and I can’t remember being more giddy about hearing an author speak. Since moving to Boston in February, I’ve rediscovered Martin’s books and they’ve framed for me a rich initiation/re-education into Boston, New England, and American history. All that while taking me on a roller coaster ride packed with all of the thrills of a well-told action adventure story. [More]
Post Comments: 0
It’s been a month and a half now since I moved to Boston, and I’ve been gradually growing to love it. There’s much to love, of course—Boston’s a fabulous city—but I’ve noticed it creeping up on me over the last few weeks as I’ve become familiar with its distinctive neighborhoods, smells, and sounds. However, I feel like I became a Bostonian yesterday. [More]
Post Comments: 0
I’m sitting in the Atrium of Lesley University in Cambridge, just north of Harvard, writing with five other people tonight. They’re all seriously young—in their twenties—and I’ve probably spent too much time wondering what they’re thinking about me being part of their group. No doubt they haven’t given my presence that much thought at all. They’re busy typing on their laptops. One’s trying to finish a chapter of her novella. Another is putting the finishing touches on a book she’s planning to self-publish this Friday. The girl across from me is skipping between two science fiction novels she’s writing at the same time. The guy to my left is attempting to write a fantasy scene, and the last guy said he’s just doing research, which he’s doing on his smartphone. [More]
Post Comments: 0
Four weeks ago we flew to Boston—for Ray to start a new job and for me to find an apartment—and tomorrow we fly back to South Dakota to load up a U-Haul with just enough stuff to furnish it. I’m happy to say that we found a place—a penthouse loft in downtown Boston complete with a rooftop deck—but it wasn’t without some agony along the way. [More]
Post Comments: 0
My eyes popped open at 3am this morning, and I spent the next four hours agonizing over how to convince a potential landlady to upgrade the 90’s-era kitchen in her condo overlooking Boston Harbor. I laid there replaying and reviewing the statistics of every apartment I’d walked through since moving to Boston a week and a half ago.
Except for a two-day blizzard break—thank you, Winter Storm Nemo—I’ve been house hunting every day. My legs and brain are weary, but it’s been an apt introduction to Boston and its neighborhoods. When not actively touring an apartment, I’ve trod the streets of potential ‘hoods, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in each one, asking myself important questions like: Where is the nearest Trader Joe’s and/or Whole Foods? [More]
Post Comments: 0
It’s January, and I’m back in my hometown of Canton, Ohio, for my grandmother’s funeral. She died a few days ago on New Year’s Eve (and next week’s blog will be in her honor), but today I’m thinking about my other grandmother, Daisy Becker, who passed away ten years ago today at 88 years old. It doesn’t seem that long ago, and Canton, Ohio, doesn’t seem that different: gentle, steady rain falls just outside the window of my mother’s house, washing away the piles of snow that pummeled us a week ago. The rain and gray skies paint an appropriately melancholy backdrop as I sit here reflecting on the fact that both of my grandmothers are now gone. [More]
Post Comments: 0
Ray’s at the wheel, and I wonder if he’s selling me into slavery. A few months ago, he said to reserve this weekend, September 14-16, to be in San Francisco. Don’t ask any questions, he’d said.
Why all the secrecy? I wondered. Why the surprise? It seemed fairly obvious that it must be for my 50th birthday coming up on September 27th. [More]
September 27-30
Aberdeen, SD
Post Comments: 0
Five years ago this September I received the best birthday present ever: an all-expense-paid weekend in Aberdeen, South Dakota, to attend the South Dakota Film Festival. A few weeks earlier, Ray had heard an advertisement for it on public radio and thought it might something interesting to do. Back then, I wouldn’t have considered us ‘film people’. Our favorite date night was Ray’s homemade pizza and Netflix, but that hardly qualified us as film buffs. ‘Film Festival’ conjured up flickers of Cannes, movie stars on red carpets. We had no clue of what one actually did at one, though.
The short answer, of course, is that you watch movies at film festivals. Lots of movies. [More]
Post Comments: 0
I wrote this piece ten years ago in the wake of 9/11 as my sister prepared to be sent to the Middle East.
--------------------------------------
I met Tyler for the first time when he was four months old. My sister, a fulltime Air National Guard member, was attending a conference in San Antonio and couldn’t bear to leave her new baby behind. She flew our mother with her to be Tyler’s nanny for the week, and I flew from my home in Phoenix to spend a few days with them in Texas and meet my new nephew. [More]
Post Comments: 0
I woke up at 5:30, but forced myself to stay in bed another hour. Under the guise of ‘meditating’, I went through a complete It’s a Wonderful Life dream sequence, laying there in self-pity, bemoaning my life of no fun.
Last night while eating gelato in the park, the conversation had turned to learning Italian. I hadn’t done a good job of language preparation for this trip. I’d taken enough Italian in the past to get by—and getting by was what I was doing in Rome. What was the point of learning more? [More]
Post Comments: 0
The other passengers file onto the plane, and for the first time in a week, I relax. We’re on our way to Rome for the fifth time in ten years, embarking on a biannual house swap with Ray’s cousin and her family. The sweet deal is that we get to live in their apartment in Rome while they live in our farmhouse in South Dakota. [More]
Post Comments: 0
Ray and I never intended to get married. For twelve years, we felt that our commitment to each other had nothing to do with the government. It wasn’t necessary to have a document to certify that we meant to spend our lives together. You’ve heard the story. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell? Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O’Neal? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt?
This all changed for me, however, during Memorial Day weekend of 2002. We’d visited the graves of Ray’s family members, and as I read tombstone after tombstone it hit me that I wanted to be buried with Ray some day, but that I wanted us to have the same name on the marker. I didn’t want to be remembered as the old lady who’d shacked up with him for all those years. [More]
Post Comments: 0
I couldn’t help giggling last night, looking forward to the next day’s adventure: driving to Los Angeles to visit my friend Beth, my cohort in crime in graduate school. We’d spent three summers together at UC Santa Barbara earning our masters’ in French, and I couldn’t imagine a better apartment-mate and friend with whom to share such an ordeal. That’s us in the picture below with all the bottles. We studied very hard—Beth more than I did, I’m afraid—but we managed to throw a party or two. This photo’s from the last of our now-famous chocolate tasting bashes.
I giggled, too, about the last-minute decision to go south on Highway 1 instead of Interstate 5, even though it would certainly take more time. I-5 is the straightforward choice between Silicon Valley and LA—an easy six hours—and while I wouldn’t call it boring, nothing compares to the legendary stretch of winding asphalt on the 1, barely clinging to the cliffs overhanging the Pacific far below. The whole way isn’t that perilous, but enough of it is to make it a truly excellent driving experience. [More]
Post Comments: 0
While we stood in the security line at San Francisco International Airport, the lady behind us laughed to the lady ahead of us: “Gotta protect the hat!” She held up her bulky, octagon-shaped carry-on: “The most important thing!” The two laughed, chattered about the upcoming weekend, and it registered: the Kentucky Derby is always the same weekend as the Berkshire Hathaway meeting in Omaha—where we were headed. We wouldn't need fancy hats in Omaha, just our ears open, ready to glean every bit of enlightenment that the "Oracle of Omaha" would drop. [More]
Post Comments: 0
Last week, rainy weather in San Francisco kept Delta 1505 on the ground for three extra hours in Minneapolis, and my husband and I found ourselves once more walking “the loop” in Lindbergh terminal to kill time and to get some exercise between flights. As we passed the same newsstands, bars, and boutiques over and over, we complained about politics, fantasized about a world that didn’t always market to us, and tossed around ideas for films and books that we’d never have time to create. Rife with snazzy gadget stores, pyramids of high-end carry-on luggage, and designer scents wafting out of duty-free shops, airports tend to bring out our more materialistic leanings, so the chat migrated to our investments and the futility of the stock market casino. Somehow Ray worked “You’ve been ‘Taken to Task’” into the conversation—the tagline from Aaron Task’s video series on The Daily Ticker. My airport mall delirium dissolved into hysterical giggles over this play on Task’s name—I hadn’t heard it before—and I wondered what might be a clever wordplay on my own name. [More]