Required Reading. I came across this story a few weeks ago. It’s quiet and heartbreaking and powerful. “Winter of Departures” by Susanna Kwan. Recently, at a neighbor’s memorial, I saw a young man in uniform press a button inside the barrel of his bugle, his white gloves bright against the polished yellow metal, before bringing the instrument to his lips and filling the cemetery with the sound of “Taps.” During the minute the song played, the muscles in his cheeks and neck did not move. No one else seemed to notice it was a recording. Another man in uniform presented the family with a flag folded into a soft-cornered triangle…

Required Reading. I am in the midst of one of those weeks that is low on sleep, high on coffee and worries and tears. When life gets like this I start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I should have chosen to be someone else, some other version of myself. This piece somehow understands that. Hallie Cantor’s “Types of Women I Could Be, But Am Not“. I could be a woman who works at a cozy coffee shop where the baked goods are actually good. My warm smile would offer my customers a tiny emotional oasis from the bustling “rat race” of their regular lives. I would have only a…

Required Reading. I think everyone who loves books has specific authors that they return to over and over again. And I think that each of these authors is returned to for a very specific set of reasons. I return to Rebecca Lee frequently, most often to her short stories, though this is perhaps a feature of my lack of time than of an particular preference for her short stories over her novels. And I turn to her frequently because she is one of a handful of writers who writes supremely, darkly, complicated-ly real characters. This is the story “Bobcat” from her collection Bobcat and Other Stories, a collection that I picked…

If you know me at all, then you know that this project is right up my alley. I am an avid fan of ballet. It is such a beautiful, powerful, emotionally compelling art form. I am also a serious fan of Degas’s famous ballet works. So the second I heard that Misty Copeland recreated Degas’s most famous ballet works, I had to know more. The images are compelling, and the article accompanying them here is interesting. Check it out here. (Photo: Ken Browar & Deborah Ory, from this Harpers Bazaar article)

Things That Might Go Wrong John Steffler   I was trained to be cautious: my father always there two steps ahead of my every move: “If you hold it like that it’ll slip…. Now what are you going to do with it?… I saw a guy try that once and it tore off his arm.”   But I go beyond such rote-learned caution. I am creatively cautious, exquisitely sensitive to things that might go wrong.   Quicker than any computer my mind scoots down dozens of possible turns events might take, spotting the dangers, clucking warnings automatically as a hen.   Now, lying in bed, I listen as my young daughter goes to…