In a class I’m currently teaching, a woman, now retired from the military, told me she wanted to be a pilot. Rules back then prohibited women from going to flight school. Thank goodness those rules have changed, but it made me think of how often we set up our own...
Lately I’ve stumbled into several large, messy setbacks, and because of the circumstances I’ve felt completely justified in missing some deadlines and deciding to revisit some of my goals. I even spent a small amount of time wallowing in self-pity. Then I read...
When I was a teenager, I used to have what was referred to back then as bunking parties. My friends brought blankets or sleeping bags and dumped them on my concrete basement floor. Then we played games, ate endlessly, and somewhere around midnight we would put on our...
Apparently I asked all the wrong questions. Is there air conditioning? Does the flap completely close to keep out bugs? Is it true that the men’s and women’s bathrooms here are partitioned only by vines? It was all very weird and different–sleeping in a teepee...
I was working in Midtown on 9/11, and as I was walking back to my apartment amid sirens, smoke and the roar of fighter planes overhead—a strange thing happened. New Yorkers started talking to each other. We were all in shock, no one’s cell phone worked, and so we...
