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With Apologies to Nancy Pelosi

January 23, 2019 in Age Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Country Matters, Feminist Matters

I hugged my permakitten. I ate a huge burger while poring over Susan Cheever’s excellent biography of Louisa May Alcott. I fumed over the cost of tampons. I planned the Oscar TV show we’re taping next week. Four worthy organizations and one uninsured ill acquaintance canvassed me for cash. I learned I officially qualified for Medicaid. I had 3,245 obsessive thoughts about how much I hate the GOP and Valdetrump. I cried about all the kids in the terrorist camps, everyone not getting paid in the wake of the shutdown, how much I miss my last lover. I cooked some salmon and greens and watched last night’s This Is Us. I hugged my permakitten again. I am a 48-year-old woman in America on January 23, 2019.

Love Lost, Love Laureate: Noel Visitations

December 25, 2018 in Age Matters, Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Queer Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I woke thinking about Donald Hall, who died last June at the age of 89 after living a very fine life as a poet and a New Englander. There are details of his biography that make me wince, especially his string of very, very young girlfriends. That string included his second wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, who was decades his junior and whom he met while she was still his student.

Though it’s unmodern to think so, Goddess is not always concerned with such details, and in this case Jane and Donald’s love helped them develop as humans and writers. He was wildly proud of his wife’s artistic development, which outstripped his before she succumbed to a voracious cancer a few weeks shy of her 48th birthday. Continue Reading →

December’s Bittersweet Magic

December 22, 2018 in Age Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Essays, Music Matters, Spirit Matters

This time of year is always bittersweet for me. When I was a girl, unspoken battles raged between my Episcopalian mother and Jewish father over how much Christmas was going to make it into our house. Since then, I’ve felt guilty if I’ve leaned too far into the pageantry, deprived of magic if I haven’t.

It got more complicated as the years passed and I grew more devoutly alone–do you really get a tree just for yourself? Drag out the ornaments you’ve quietly collected over the years? Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy