Today in History, We Lost a Giant: Vincent van Gogh
Today in history we lost one of the greatest artists the world has ever known: Vincent Willem van Gogh died on July 29, 1890. He was a Dutch Post-Impressionistic painter who produced most of his 2,000+ paintings in the final decade of his life. He became known for landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and self-portraits. In […]
Our 250th Anniversary, and an Immigration Story
We are a nation of immigrants. We should never forget that. In the summer of 1976, I was 18 years old and had just finished my first year of college at the University of North Dakota. During that summer, I spent a few weeks with my family in Seattle. My sister Lois’ favorite place to […]
Leila, with a Better Ending
I’m going to deviate from releasing chapters of my latest book to tell a story. It’s the story of a cat that I’ve been carrying a lot of guilt over for the past 8 years. Many of you know that while I was living in Rockport, I initiated my own TNR program in my neighborhood, […]
Hackers, Scammers, and Identity Thieves, Oh My!
Help! I’m being attacked from all directions! March was a bad month for feeling secure in my digital life, and one where I had to really stay on my toes. Within a matter of 10 days, these things happened: A book marketer contacted me about promoting my book, and this time I was tempted to take the […]
Losing Our Friends: More Often Than Not, We Suffer in Silence
I recently became a subscriber to The Atlantic, and they sent out an email with links to eight of their most popular articles from their archives. One caught my eye: “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” written in 2022 by Jennifer Senior. It’s subtitled “The older we get, the more we need our friends—and […]
Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History
by Philippa Gregory, 2024 Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History—Unveiling the Untold Stories of Women Who Shaped England from 1066 to Modern Times is a history of women, yes, but specifically the history of women in Great Britain. One that we in the United States largely inherited in the form of attitudes, culture, […]
Gluten for Punishment: Just Desserts for the Heartbroken, Lovesick, and Jilted
by Julie Seyler, 2025 Gluten for Punishment is a hybrid memoir/cookbook written by long-time baking blogger (https://twobittart.com) and trained chef Julie Seyler. This Gen-Xer took her real-life stories of dating disasters in the modern world and turned it into a memoir. Sometimes funny, sometimes exasperating, she chronicles five main relationships that start out mostly from […]
