(Photo: Star and I today. Her 1996 college graduation dinner was memorable.) A graduation poses challenges for the multi-wedded. I’ve been married three times, odd for a spirituality columnist to admit, but guess what? I’m an optimist. Experience decrees that when breaking bread with exes, stay positive. Star, my daughter, graduated from college in 1996, […]
[Photo: At EBWW conference, Suzette with Gina Barreca, author and professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut. Suzette is wearing the “tribal mask” for loud, smart, funny women. Thanks for the gift, Gina!) A smart, competent female writer stood up to share her thoughts. “I’m sorry to take up the time…I’m […]
I’ll never understand people who marry on Valentine’s Day. Years ago, my daughter wouldn’t listen because traipsing down a red carpet in white lace is a princess story in ultimate romance. But like Cinderella, it’s missing a shoe. Succeeding Valentine anniversaries limp along, loaded with hidden emotional and financial costs. This is fair warning against […]
I had my first Christmas in prison. No, not as an inmate. In 1998 I was a Bible study volunteer at Webster Correctional Institution, a low security prison for men in Cheshire, CT (since closed). That year we threw a Christmas party for the 9 inmates in our group. However, word got around and 50 […]
The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, Turkey is the size of four soccer fields, a shopper’s Nirvana packed to its mosaic rafters with pashminas, pottery, exotic lanterns, evil eye keychains, and rugs, rugs, rugs. Every day about 250,000 shoppers teem through its corridors and tunnels. While there, the lack of female salespeople surprised me. The beginnings […]