No, I do not weep at the world. I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. -Zora Neale Hurston ("How it Feels to Be Colored Me")Yesterday, in tiny Newark, Delaware, I stood amongst my fellow brothers and sisters and marched, not just for women, but for a whole range of issues: LGBTQ rights, the Affordable…
Time is slipping away from me, running through my fingers like sand while I...do what? Clean floors, wash clothes, make dinner, wash up, go shopping, play with the children in the play areas, bring them home, undress them, bathe them, look after them until it is bedtime, tuck them in, hang some clothes to dry,…
Every year, when fall rolls around, I get stars in my eyes, thinking about how wonderful it would be to make apple and quince jelly, applesauce, quince paste (or membrillo, as it is often called) and all kinds of fall-inspired desserts, from apple squares to salted caramel apple pie. Then, when the reality sets in,…
When I was still at the office, every day, around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, my coworker would inevitably ask me what I was making for dinner that night. It didn't matter what I told her--pasta, eggs, rice--she would sigh and say: "You're such a grownup." I would laugh and ask her if she…
"Don't discourage me. In my job I have to paste one fact to another with words, and in the end everything has to seem coherent even if it's not.""But if the coherence isn't there, why pretend? "To create order." -Elena Ferrante (The Story of the Lost Child) It's hard to believe now as life again…
If you live and cook the same way your grandmother did, you’ll probably never open a cookbook. Cookbooks, and everything they symbolize, are for people who don’t live the way their grandparents did...Once upon a time, food was about where you came from. Now, for many of us, it is about where we want to…
"Each of us narrates our life as it suits us." -Elena Ferrante (Those who Leave and Those who Stay)A little more than two months ago, for Labor Day weekend, the Greek, Elektra and I took a weekend trip to Carmel and Big Sur. Although it will sound incredibly hyperbolic, the trip was ten shades of…
As much as I've tried, it's been hard to sit down and find the time to write lately. Work has continued to be a little bit crazy, but the good news is that not only are we about to file the motion that has required me to go to the office for the past three…
"Ifemelu, can I just say how happy I am that you're not an academic? Have you heard his friends talk? Nothing is just what it is. Everything has to mean something else. It's ridiculous...A good education isn't the same thing as making the whole damn world something to be explained! Even Shan makes fun of…
The morning that has passed seems far away as the afternoon advances, as the afternoon connects with the afternoon of yesterday of yesterday and of the day before, a repetition that must have a beginning somewhere but now is lost. -William Trevor ("A Day")I've been feeling surprisingly happy these last few weeks. I say surprisingly…
Dining with Dostoevsky 