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Is it me, or does January seem especially aggressive this year?

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For the last week we’ve been furiously scratching out or backspacing on 2024 and replacing it with 2025 in dismay that the century – the one we fretted so much about back in Y2K – is already a quarter gone. Yes, we know it’s a New Year, that the calendar page has flipped. The capitalistic evidence is everywhere with offers of gym memberships, weight loss programs, and tips for keeping those pesky resolutions. If we believe the hype, those of us who choose to ease slowly into the year are the outliers, while it seems everyone else is primed for success, progress, forward motion. New Year, New Me! Best Year Ever! My mother was a firm believer and practitioner of the seasons of the Nativity, beginning with lighting a new candle on the Advent wreath on each of the four Sundays before Christmas, and celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. Among other things, it was always the day my mom took down the Christmas decorations. Legend has it that Epiphany, also called Twelfth Night o...

Who Cares?

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A Thing About Writing That Turned Into Something Else Brenkee Photo/Pixabay Maybe you have foodie friends. You know, the ones who are hip to the new hot restaurants, the up-and-coming chefs, and the latest gourmet trends. Then there are the Swifties, who've recently added to their ranks thanks to the blossoming romance between a particular award-winning pop star and a certain tight end who happens to play for my favorite football team. *  Enter the “wordies.” We are the foodies and Swifties of the writing world. Some of us are journalists, others are poets, novelists, essayists, songwriters and more. We are the ones for whom words are craft. We get fixated on a random word for no apparent reason, examining it in the way I imagine a potter might do with a blob of clay. We are compelled to get our proverbial hands dirty, to squash that word and stretch it, to pound it flat only to gather it up, fold it over itself, knead it again, observe it from a variety of angles, then decide what...

Crushed in Connecticut

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For many of us, no holiday season is complete without viewing beloved Christmas movies. Some are old classics we grew up with, while others have become favorites more recently. Remember waiting for Rudolph the Rednosed-Reindeer to come on the family television? In a pre-VHS, pre-DVR, pre-streaming world, we only had one chance to see it. It was appointment TV, and the annual airing was a pivotal event, one that ushered in weeks of tree trimming, cookie baking, carol singing, and the anticipation of Christmas morning.  Our current rotation is an eclectic mix of the sentimental, musical, and farcical, generally culminating in our yearly viewing of the Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Despite knowing the plot and outcome and having memorized much of the dialogue, I look forward to the film each season. The opening titles and music awaken something both novel and familiar, nostalgia, but through the lens of one more year of life experiences, somehow bittersweet, like unwrapping t...

Pumpkintopia

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The Retail Conspiracy to Force Pumpkin Upon the Masses Trader Joe’s: Grab a cart wheel around the storied mart An ordinary day it seems --  fifty days from Halloween  Warm enough to break a sweat          It isn’t fall… Nope, not yet Matters not when one discerns          passels of pumpkins at every turn Pumpkin oatmeal, cookies, bars Pumpkin pretzels, purée in jars Pumpkin O’s  (with apostrophe!)          for breakfast with your pumpkin tea  Pumpkin pasta, pumpkin sauce (No pumpkin toothpaste?! No pumpkin floss?!) There’s pumpkin soap and pumpkin scrub, pumpkin lotion for after the tub   Pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread Midnight nosh ahead of bed Pumpkin butter, pumpkin beer Pumpkin cream cheese, just a schmear   Pumpkin heaven? Pumpkin hell? So much super squash to sell Pumpkin sizes, pumpkin hues Orange, green, white pumpkin views      Escape with paltry pumpkin...
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  Before COVID-19 made Zoom get-togethers  de rigueur,  I met one of my best friends in an online writers’ workshop. I’d cautioned my teenage daughter to be wary of online friendships when she’d first shown an interest in Facebook, but I had to backtrack on my warnings when “Samantha” came into my life. Despite our 10-year age gap and a geographic divide that spanned the continental United States, Samantha and I clicked right away as we shared our writing, swapped page critiques and championed each other’s work. Before long, we dove into deep, personal territory, exchanging confidences and commiserations along with dinner recipes and designer finds from Home Goods. Over the course of more than seven years, we cheered each other on through writing successes and family milestones like graduations and weddings. We bolstered each other through parental deaths, household moves and surgeries, shared celebrations and heartbreaks, vicarious travel and, well, life. How many times ...

"Las Meninas”

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After living a long time in the Nonfiction world, I'm happy to share my first published piece of Fiction! My very short story, "Las Meninas," is out and can be found at Persimmon Tree.   (To find it, scroll through Short Takes:  Resilience and Resistance.  Here's a taste...  Las Meninas by Mary Novaria Elizabeth would’ve walked the couple of kilometers from the Picasso Museum to La Rambla, but her feet were killing her and,  my God , the humidity! Sebastian had insisted she dress up, so she slid into the taxi wearing a navy shift and strappy Gucci heels that showed off her toned calves and demure, taupe pedicure. “It would reflect badly on me if you went out in one of your Bohemian get-ups,” he’d said. Not that she had any of those “get-ups” anymore. That was the old Elizabeth. Before Sebastian. Back when she was Lizzie, which he deemed unrefined. She’d been so taken with him. At fifty, he was still boyishly handsome and sophisticated-–bespoke suits and a c...

Meditation on Thanksgiving Pie

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Instead of the usual weekday routine, on the day before Thanksgiving, my morning reflections are inspired by the baking of pies. I creep downstairs to a quiet kitchen, put on the kettle for tea, and open the refrigerator to remove the pastry dough I made the evening before and carefully wrapped to chill overnight.  Before peeling and cutting the fruit, I reach for my phone and open the app for our local NPR station. The news is grim. Mass shooting. Again. This time in Virginia. Just days after the one at Club Q in Colorado. Guns, I think, are as American as apple pie. But pie shouldn’t be tainted by senseless murder.  I turn off the news and put on the new Taylor Swift. Nope. A podcast. Ugh. None of it is right. Restless, I lean into the quiet and let the silence speak as I pick up the paring knife and get to work on the apples.  Lime green gets all the attention, but the peel of a Granny Smith is a thing to behold, as bright and crisp to the eye as its flavor is to the p...