Taken from Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Kindness”: Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been […]
Father’s Day
It’s Dan’s first Father’s Day. We are celebrating. It’s funny, though. We used to hate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, because it was as though in order to be human you had to be a parent (at least at our age). We actually had someone ask us once, “Do you have children?” to which we […]
The Chicken or the Egg?
I had a lovely dinner with my Books & Culture editor John Wilson and his wife on Saturday evening. Wendy made the most fantastic meal–a delicious soup from Simply in Season (which reminded me to pull it out of my cookbook cupboard when I returned home!), the most savory fish-and-caper-over-rice meal, with a delicious side […]
Historical Novels
I’m back. This weekend I attended the Historical Novel Society Conference in Schaumberg, Illinois, to give a talk assigned to me: “Biblical Fiction: Is It An Oxymoron?” Which I said a wholehearted “no” to, in so many words. As I’ve stated before, in my mind and heart, I wrote Eve as literary fiction. This was […]