Seems to me that though there’s a lot of scrambling going on in these difficult economic days, in some sense the country is on hold. Lots of decisions, actions, expenditures have been delayed. (Yesterday a writer told me about her novel, which was close to sold in October. A well-known editor at a major house […] Read More

My friend Sabine was helping a mutual friend overhaul the inside of her house. They’d been hard at it all morning and then met me for lunch (I, who had merely been sitting at a computer.) Their dust-stirring industry was inspiring to hear about. Sabine had learned a lot of her techniques, she said, from […] Read More

My one meeting, some years ago, with my hero John Updike involved a very small bit of boldness, which turned out well in its modest way. It took place not long after my first novel Revelation had come out. I wrote about the incident at the time for a Research Triangle newspaper. I’m “the local […] Read More

Recently, in discussing the writer’s self-doubt in the comments with writer Greta, I speculated that even my hero the recently passed John Updike probably had such moments. In one of the tributes to Updike in The New Yorker since, I found proof of this. In a letter to novelist E.L. Doctorow, Updike wrote that as […] Read More

I’ve just come from my friend Laurel‘s 70th birthday brunch, held by the members of her Thursday afternoon writer’s class/group, which I have been a member of for 26 years. In advance of the day, we put together a small album in which we each had six pages to use as we wish to express […] Read More

Response to my Wednesday’s post about dealing with a Blue Cross coverage malfunction leads me to impassionedly say more. The ideas a couple of people expressed — which I welcome! — include the view that others are worse off, I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, and that I think about what Gandhi would do . […] Read More

So after my first efforts failed, I (boldly) talked with a Blue Cross rep by phone who kindly told me the name of a drugstore where I could get a vaccination that would be covered. The next day I went to the drugstore. They give the anti-shingles shots, but said my insurance wouldn’t cover it. […] Read More

Lately I’ve been feeling indomitable in the matter of solving the kinds of little problems that often I’m tempted to let sit a few days. Like dealing with getting an acknowledgment of purchase for an order I’d just cancelled. Or finding someone to give me a vaccination in the manner that my insurance company requires. […] Read More

Oboy. Health insurance Catch-22,000. Here’s what I emailed to my friend Angela Friday when this happened: “I ordered the $200 serum for the shingles vaccine after checking to see that it was covered. When I went to get it to take to my doc, the pharm. said they hadn’t covered it because it had to […] Read More

Major bold move of this weekend so far: I bought a new crossword puzzle book, having done all I could with the last one. The ones I currently go for are the New York Times easy-to-hard collections. I once threw away an unfinished one that was all Sunday Times crosswords. (Times puzzles are easiest on […] Read More