Diary of a Nation

09/01/2024

Tap here: https://open.substack.com/pub/diaryofanation?r=a703a&utm_medium=ios to subscribe to my Substack and read my dispatches from Hawaii 🌈 🌺 🏄‍♀️ 🦈 🚴 🏊🏼‍♂️ 🌋🍍

09/01/2024

Tap on link in bio to subscribe to my Substack and read my dispatches from Hawaii 🌈 🌺 🏄‍♀️ 🦈 🚴 🏊🏼‍♂️ 🌋🍍

25/12/2023

Three decades ago, I sketched 50 doves onto 50 cards and mailed them to family and friends. I pulled a cornflower-colored pencil from a zippered bag. I began to draw the profile of a dove on the blank, white folded card. I rifled through the bag a second time for a black pencil to form its beak and right eye. In cursive, I wrote “peace” underneath the bird. It was the first December after I had converted from Christianity to Judaism. I was wishing peace to others, but I wasn’t at peace myself.

Have you found peace? Tap on link in bio to access my latest essay on the subject.

25/12/2023

Have you found peace? Tap below to read my experience.

Three decades ago, I sketched 50 doves onto 50 cards and mailed them to family and friends. I pulled a cornflower-colored pencil from a zippered bag. I began to draw the profile of a dove on the blank, white folded card. I rifled through the bag a second time for a black pencil to form its beak and....

18/10/2023

I will always hold out hope for peace, though I know that justice is a prerequisite. Tap on link in bio for my latest essay: The Israel I Know.

17/10/2023

I will always hold out hope for peace, though I know that justice is a prerequisite. Tap below for my latest essay.

From a hotel bed in Arlington, Va., we read the news of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel. Around midday, we drove by the State Department, and I wondered how our nation’s foreign policy response would read. Before the attack, in Israel and worldwide, Jews had been celebrating Simchat Torah, ou...

02/10/2023

You can't spend a lifetime of money without a few regrets. Tap below for my latest essay.

When you roam the streets of Rome, you see the nasoni, the “big noses”. They’re the free, potable water fountains, and there are more than 2,000 across the city. Here in the U.S., people willingly pay for water. Some people go to great lengths to pay. They buy commercial-sized water dispensers...

07/09/2023

New Hampshire-based photographer Patrick Patterson documented the war in Ukraine. Below is a link to a photo essay of some of the people and scenes he described in my recent podcast episode. If you'd like to meet him in person, register via the library link to hear his presentation on September 28: https://amherstlibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/ukraine-crimes-against-peace-a-discussion-with-patrick-patterson/

New Hampshire-based photographer Patrick Patterson documents human rights and conflict. He’s a witness to a death row ex*****on, the war in Ukraine and immigrant migration in this country. This is a photo essay of some of the images that Patrick took of the Ukrainian people whose stories he told i...

28/08/2023

New Hampshire prides itself on the number of artists who create work here. Tap below to read my latest essay.

I live in a land among writers. It’s said that New Hampshire is home to more working authors per capita than any other state. E. E. Cummings, Elizabeth Yates, Dan Brown, Jodi Picoult, John Irving and Robert Frost all have ties to the Granite State. You can’t ski Temple Mountain any longer, but y...

11/08/2023

How's your summer going? Here's mine:

Scientists claim July will go down as the hottest month on record, which is a dead giveaway that not a damned one of them saw Margot Robbie’s crowdsurfing scene in Babylon when it was released in December. Artists are no less skilled than solar radiation at generating heat. Or perimenopausal women...

21/07/2023

Tap on this link to hear Patrick Patterson describe the children caught in the war in Ukraine. Follow here for updates to access my full interview with the New Hampshire-based photographer who has documented human rights and conflict.

19/07/2023

New Hampshire-based photographer Patrick Patterson documents human rights and conflict. He is a witness to a death row ex*****on, the war in Ukraine and immigrant migration in this country. Tap on this link to hear him describe the work of Rev. Carroll Pickett, a former death house chaplain in Huntsville, TX. Look for my full interview with Patterson later this month.

16/07/2023

Every four years, they return. They make grand promises, shake hands, submit to photos and ask for your vote. The leaders are here.

Political ephemera competes with paper clips, pens and old keys in my junk drawer. The campaign buttons, bumper stickers and the pair of peanut-shaped cufflinks from President Carter’s campaign remind me of the political significance of my zip code. In New Hampshire, you can’t avoid politics any...

10/07/2023

One of my former podcast guests thinks we need to earn merit badges.

Yup. We got a badge for that.

25/06/2023

Tap on link for an authentic Italian experience.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Twenty years pass. Your girls grow into adults, leave their hometown and take pictures of places you long to be. In the wake are two, middle-aged parents plus a rowdy, red poodle from the Amish hinterlands who’s bonded like Super Glue to your husband.

13/06/2023

A month late, but here’s my Mother’s Day essay.

Because I started my career as a journalist, I can’t help but think in holiday-themed stories. So, it is with Mother’s Day a month in the rear view mirror that I belatedly begin an essay on mothering. Earlier this week, I bought myself some flowers. Peonies are my favorite, and I look forward to...

31/05/2023

My latest essay looks back on the holiday weekend. Tap link in bio to access Substack.

17/05/2023

As a nurse practitioner, Karin Chen focuses on women’s health care. As a labor and delivery nurse, she has assisted children giving birth to children and women giving birth to babies they had to turn around and bury. Today, she practices in Lowell, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb. We discuss her career, her thoughts on the health care system and the path to healing personal pain. Listen wherever you enjoy podcasts or tap on link.

As a nurse practitioner, Karin Chen focuses on women’s health care. As a labor and delivery nurse, she has assisted children giving birth to children and women giving birth to babies they had to turn around and bury. Today, she practices in Lowell, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb. We discuss her ca...

25/04/2023

My favorite season is a month away. Where will you go this summer? Tap on link for a peek at my plans.

What are your summer plans? I’m flying to Tulsa to nail down once and for all the number of seconds that elapse between the time I step outside the airport and the time I start to wither in the city’s oppressive heat and humidity. Summer in Tulsa is a season-long wet T-shirt contest with no cash...

28/03/2023

You probably shouldn't take fashion advice from me, but if you insist, read this.

While you fret about inflation, automation and whether Alabama will win March Madness, here in the Granite State, we live a peaceful existence. Our biggest concern is predicting the day the lakes will ice out. Despite our cold waters and grungy snowbanks, the season did in fact turn to spring, and m...

22/02/2023

Ours is a state that typically only makes the national news when presidential candidates visit or Pamela Smart asks for a reduction of her life sentence or a granite ledge that resembles the chiseled face of the Marlboro Man collapses from a mountain. Tap on link below to read the rest of my latest essay on winter.

Ours is a state that typically only makes the national news when presidential candidates visit or Pamela Smart asks for a reduction of her life sentence or a granite ledge that resembles the chiseled face of the Marlboro Man collapses from a mountain. All of that is to say that we were overdue for s...

06/12/2022

Historical events and gifts ideas, all in one essay . . .

Boston and Halifax have been friends way longer than Taylor and Selena and a tad longer than my friend Kathy and me. A tradition that Kathy started sharing with me endures precisely because of the municipal Gemütlichkeit that arose in the wake of a horrible tragedy 105 years ago on the morning of D...

25/11/2022

Check out my latest essay to see additional content from my podcast interview with Ed Clifford, the musher turned ultra runner.

I was hauling ass down New Hampshire Highway 101 a couple of weekends ago, singing off-key to Lucinda Williams and Sturgill Simpson songs. It was a tropical Saturday in November in a state that should not be tropical in November. Along the drive, a band of rain from the remnants of Hurricane Nicole....

22/11/2022

Can you run a mile? How about 200 miles? Ed Clifford can. He's a second-generation musher who transitioned to ultra running at the age of 50. Earlier this month, he sat down for an interview with me outside the log cabin he and his partner Dawn are building in Raymond. Listen to our conversation wherever you enjoy podcasts or tap on link below. Photo credit: Bethany Hoyt Photography.

‎Show Diary of a Nation, Ep E33: Sled Dogs to Ultra Runs - Nov 22, 2022

01/11/2022

My first books were cruel German fairy tales. My current books explore psychology and spirituality. Read my latest essay to learn more.

Before there were comic books, there was Der Struwwelpeter. You pronounce it like “dare strudel Peter”, only you substitute two “W”s in place of the “D”, and it tastes nothing like a pastry. In other words, it sounds nothing like it reads. After Grimms' Fairy Tales

15/10/2022

High school, that gold mine of insecurities and selective memories. What do you remember from your school days? Tap Substack link below to read my experience at Owasso High School, replete with celebrity names and mullets.

The summer before 5th grade, my family moved to the suburb of Owasso, Oklahoma. Owasso is an Osage term that means “End of the Trail”. Present-day Oklahoma was one of the endpoints along the “Trail of Tears”, which specifically refers to the experience of the Cherokees but also to the collec...

09/10/2022

My latest essay explores a Tulsa strip mall that fell victim to vice. Tap on link below to access.

It sure sounded like “cinnamon” to the ears of a child. And boy, as a little girl, did I love cinnamon toast with butter for breakfast. But it wasn’t cinnamon. Sure, there was a dancer by that name there, but that’s where the innocence ended. It was a horseshoe-shaped collection of strip clu...