Spring flowers have bloomed in the Happy Valley, and we just celebrated Pride here in the lesbian capital of America. I do love our bohemian small-town paradise, mostly, but one aspect of granola-mom culture that I could do without is the suspicion toward Western medicine, particularly mental-health drugs like antidepressants and ADHD treatments. I was
May Links Roundup: Happiness Comes in a Pill Read More »
Happy Spring, friends! I have tempted fate this morning by putting away the Young Master’s snow pants, which means that Western Massachusetts will probably be hit by an unseasonable blizzard soon. Flowers and songbirds are still in short supply in our chilly region, but I’ve got a nice crop of links for you this month.
April Links Roundup: Gaslighting and Magic Read More »
Just as today we debate “separating the art from the artist” when an influential creator’s bad behavior comes to light, the early Christians were split over the standards for mediating their own sacred inspiration. A purist breakaway group in North Africa in the fourth century contended that clergy had to be morally blameless, or else
March Links Roundup: Sacred Arts, Imperfect Mediators Read More »
As a good queer aesthete, I don’t place much weight on “the natural” as a prescriptive concept, but I still love a quirky story about nonhuman creatures who defy our narrow social categories. This rare gynandromorph cardinal flips the bird at binary ideas of gender, as reported at the blog Towleroad: “Half-Male, Half-Female Cardinal Goes
February Links Roundup: Birds Do It, Trees Do It Read More »
Happy Advent and Hanukkah to my readers! This year, to honor my ancestors and the victims of anti-Semitic violence in Pittsburgh (and elsewhere), I’ve begun lighting Hanukkah candles again. As I did at his age, the Young Master loves the ritual of selecting the colors for each night, and seeing the little flames cheer up
December Links Roundup: We’ve Always Been Here Read More »
The theme for November is “I hope I can fit everything interesting I’ve read this month into one post”. But you could say that these links loosely gather around the idea of clearly facing our alternatives and taking a stand. This heightened resolve reflects the mood of the country, where progressives seem to be waking
November Links Roundup: Whose Side Are You On Read More »
New York City and Harvard: competitive, glamorous, heartbreaking environments that together formed the landscape of my youth. In college, I used to brag ironically, “I’m miserable in the most prestigious place in the world!” Then as now, I took some satisfaction from the fact that I’d never have to wonder “what if”. I had been
Inner Rings and Structureless Cliques Read More »
October…my favorite season. The days turn cold and dark, the leaves change color, and Mr. Tech Support and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary. I am filled with an unusual sense of wellbeing because I sold three copies of my story collection at a Straw Dog Writers Guild reading last night and now
October Links Roundup: Mx. Personality Read More »
Ahh…September. The days grow colder, my brain wakes up, the Young Master begins first grade (!!). Time to get back to drafting the Endless Sequel. If, like me, you write slowly, perhaps you’ve heard that self-critical voice in your head. The one that says the book really IS taking a thousand years to get to
September Links Roundup: Manspread Your Novel Read More »
If the Trinity blows your mind, hang on for this new article from Scientific American, which posits that multiple personalities may be the key to the “hard problem of consciousness”, i.e. how the capacity for subjective experience can arise from purely physical processes. Computer engineer and philosopher Bernardo Kastrup, psychotherapist and historian Adam Crabtree, and
Could We Be God’s Alternate Personalities? Read More »