Off the Shelf– Take a look at your bookcase. If you had enough free time, which book would be the first one you’d like to reread? Why?

A few days ago, I finished “Wayfaring Stranger,” the latest, greatest book by James Lee Burke, one of my top five favorite authors. It was a good read. Maybe a great read. It made me hunger for more of that special JLB magic.

So there I am, looking through my bookshelves and I realize I have every hardcover edition of the past 20 years of James Lee Burke, many of them signed by the hand of the Master.

I’d like to reread at least a few of them, maybe start the Dave Robicheaux series from the beginning. Read them in hardcover and paper and sniff the ink, feel the binding give just  a little. It would be a trip back to…

We named our little sailboat Gwaihir, the wind lord. Really, she was a wind lady. Her name was pretentious for such a tiny boat, but I thought her name would be lucky. She was a 16-foot Soling. She had a centerboard and drew only 16-inches with the board up. I told people Gwaihir could sail on a wet hankie.

When my husband had time and felt frisky, we took Gwaihir out through Sloop Channel and Jones inlet into the ocean. The ocean is so huge and Gwaihir was never meant to sail the seas.

Even a 3-foot roller looks like a tsunami when you’re on the deck of a tiny sloop. My then-husband was a madman on the water. He would sail through thunder squalls because he liked a challenge. His father had been equally insane, so I guess he came by it honestly.

As for me, I piloted her through the salt marshes and canals off Long Island. She was perfect…

A BOOKISH CHOICE – A literary-minded witch offers you a choice. With a flick of her wand, you can become an obscure novelist whose work will be admired and studied by a select few for decades (phooey on that!) or a popular author whose books give pleasure to millions (definitely). Which do you choose? (Is this a serious question?)

Was I ever young enough to think money doesn’t matter? If I ever said anything that silly, I apologize. To anyone to whom I may have expressed such arrant nonsense, I must have been on drugs. They warned us about the brown acid.

You can always write some (or many) good books if you have a publisher and an audience. If your books sell well, you don’t have to write drivel. There’s nothing to prevent you from being a best-selling author and a fine writer. I can think of a bunch of authors who succeed at both.

Great writing…

Today on our way to swimming lessons, my oldest granddaughter said, “Grammy, the man who was Genii [in Aladdin] died. Was it age, or was he sick?” As I tried to explain that he had a disease called depression that made him so terribly sad that he killed himself, she was shocked and horrified. “How could anybody be that sad, Grammy?” she asked.

I don’t think my answer helped her very much. Trying to describe such overwhelming sadness and despair to a bright and shiny eight-year-old was very hard. The fact that I couldn’t just wrap her in cotton balls and protect her from needing to know such things was even harder. I told her that I hoped neither she nor her little sister would ever have anything make them feel so sad that they thought they could no longer live. She said, “Believe me, I know that killing myself…

Since first hearing the news at this afternoon’s PTA meeting that Robin Williams had been found dead, possibly by suicide, I have been trying to figure out why his death has been such a blow to me personally. Most often when a celebrity dies I feel awful for his/her family, but am not affected too much myself. But Robin Williams was different. And his death hurts right here.

Starting with the delightfully ridiculous Mork from Ork of “Mork and Mindy”, showing us in “Mrs. Doubtfire” how far a father would go to be with the children he loved, to breaking our hearts in “The Bird Cage”, Robin Williams has delighted us, outraged us, and made us think. (One of my favorite tee-shirts is the one I put on this morning for a church project. It has the Episcopal Church shield on the front, and on the back is his…

“When I was growing up, we had always had dogs.  But my wife insisted on cats, and I was instantly converted.  What can I say? I’ve never seen a cat do a stupid thing.” – Lloyd Alexander, Fantasy Writer.

When talking to friends about furry matters, it seems that there are two different camps – those who are either crazy for cats or dotty about dogs. From the former group, we hear statements like:  Dogs are not for me.  They bark, roll in mud, dig holes and are just so needy.  And when it comes to the faults of felines you may hear something along these lines:  They chase birds, harass any little creature that moves and take delight in scratching the Laura Ashley lounge suite to shreds. Then there are those pet lovers who embrace the balance of yin and yang and generously…

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