My friend Carrie throws more parties in a year than the total number I attend in the same period. (She’s the same one who started an international music festival in Raleigh.) This afternoon I’m popping in at an affair in which she has long been a/the major sponsor: the 17th annual Boylan Heights Arts Walk. […] Read More

I was slow to go to see Julie and Julia. I’m not a cook. And the movie is, as you likely know, about a blogger named Julie who spends a year cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s grand-opus cookbook. But last night it was on at the $1.50 theatre, and Husband Bob (who is a […] Read More

I just wrote a perfectly nice post on this subject with lots of links, hit Publish, and the text disappeared totally, nowhere to be found. Here’s roughly what it said. The Dallas Morning News has a story today that says: Wanna feel rich? Give. The story cited the book I co-authored with Allan Luks: The […] Read More

I didn’t even blog during the second half of my week at Rancho La Puerta. That’s how engaged I was in what was going on right there. Now I’m back at my desk in Raleigh, reorienting. Feels a bit strange not to be spending the day in yoga clothes. More later. Add to del.icio.us - Stumble It! - Subscribe […] Read More

It’s midweek here in my term as novelist-in-residence in heaven (Rancho La Puerta spa in Tecate, Mexico)and I’ve had several bits of personal enlightenment. *A few months ago I posted about having a contrarian tendency, so often wanting to play the wrong card for a situation, taking some perverse delight in that. Sometime yesterday, I […] Read More

This morning I went to three exercise classes: one working out with a heavy bar, next circuit training, then an hour and a half of Iyengar yoga. This afternooon,as novelist-in-residence for the week at Rancho La Puerta spa in Tecate, Mexico, I taught my writing class. Teaching the class took more out of me than […] Read More

First full day at Rancho La Puerta in Mexico, the spa where I’m teaching writing this week. Yesterday after leaving leafy North Carolina in the morning, I was on a bus by early afternoon from the San Diego airport to the Mexican town of Tecate (yes, they make Tecate beer here) Suddenly in sun and […] Read More

A Hindu holy man, or sadhu, is usually identifiable by orange robes. Generally such people have left home to pursue an ascetic religious life, owning only what they carry. On the Ganges bank in Varanasi (setting of my novel Sister India), a holy man or two is sometimes available, for a few rupees, to look […] Read More

This rickshaw in Benares, or Varanasi, India, represents a variation on “Bloom Where You’re Planted.” The idea is: “Splash Color Wherever You Roll.” I like to go places where decoration shows up unexpectedly, where the ordinary objects and the unsung corners are turned into something wonderful. Add to del.icio.us - Stumble It! - Subscribe to this feed - Digg it Read More

This is the mosquito net on my bed in Benares, or Varanasi (where–did I mention?–I was doing research for my novel Sister India.) My first few nights there I didn’t have one of these, and so many tiny moths were darting around my room in the dark that I pulled the sheet over my head […] Read More