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August 16, 2015
I Get Anxious
My husband says I’m a delicate flower, and while, yeah, that’s true, it’s not all that’s true. I have anxiety. I have PTSD. I have issues. This is not a case of disease-or-malady-of-the-week, a la celiac wannabees, or whatever Madison Avenue tells us this month is wrong with us (You need oat bran! You need Vitamin E! You need aloe!). I really, really get anxious. I take a little pill each morning which cuts out the crazy part of anxiety…
Posted in My World and Welcome to It, random, tea, work, writing | By Julia
August 9, 2015
Writing as Though I Had Wings
I’ve come to that cross-road in a writer’s life where she has to choose between writing what she wants and writing what earns her bread. It might even be one of those modern five-way stoplights where several roads merge and one must decide whether to turn gently to the right, to join the path ahead, or — most alarming of all — veer to the left and go against the traffic, hoping for a break in the rush to slip…
Posted in authors, Books, family, History, quotables, random, research, slavery, Travel, work, writing | By Julia
August 3, 2015
Virgin No More (Book Review, Part 2)
I just finished reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. I read Go Set a Watchman when it first came out last month, and read it before reading the beloved old favorite. And despite all the drama, histrionics and harrumphing by TKAM’s defenders of the holy tract and the way things have always been, I must say, I don’t see the issue. Atticus Finch is a racist. How is that shocking? Small-town Alabama, in the Great…
Posted in authors, Books, Reading, reviews, work, writing | By Julia
July 6, 2015
Do Not Disturb: Am Writing.
Don’t try and stop me. I have writing to do. I’m writing while I fold laundry and wash dishes. I’m writing while I sit by my husband’s bed awaiting his back surgery. I’m writing while I drive home late at night. I’m writing when I get up at 3 a.m. to let the cat in. Or out. I’m writing when it looks like I’m reading. Or spacing out. Or chopping vegetables. Because, for me, writing doesn’t look like writing until the…
Posted in authors, Books, Catching Up, novel, poetry, Uncategorized, work, writing | By Julia
June 21, 2015
Fishing for stories
I spent Saturday digging through old newspapers to see what frolics my great-grandmother was up to as president of the Daughters of the Confederacy in Portland, Oregon, 100 years ago. Let’s just say there plenty of genteel hijinks that involved white women doing the Virginia Reel, reading nostalgic poetry in “slave dialect” and guest speakers telling “many clever darky stories.” Can you tell I died a little bit inside when I read that? I did a lot of family research…
Posted in Catching Up, family, research, slavery, The Doris Diaries, work | By Julia