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At the supermarket two weeks ago, I encountered a man. He’d knocked down a display. I couldn’t pass by with my wagon while he was picking it up. I said, “I’ll wait…it’s usually me that does that…” –very female. I am protecting his pride. He smiles. “You’re a good citizen,” I add. He says, “If you knock something over you pick it up.” A principle. A morality play. But we had connected...

When I was in kindergarten, at four years old because I had a January birthday, I met Donna Pukatch, who would become my best friend until I left Brooklyn, when my family moved to Queens. We were already bonded by the time of this recollection...

I saw one crimson maple leaf, very small, brilliant, on my driveway next to my mailbox. Last week! No! I cried. I don’t want to see you! I veiled my eyes against that gorgeous thing. It’s hard to accept that summer is waning. Everyone here feels it. People talk about it in dropped voices, low tones. It’s the bad news that supersedes the roiling of the world and its agonies...

The five of us, myself and the four writers who registered for the retreat, had dined together. We then drove to the place that would be home base for the next four days: The Lazy Pond Bed and Breakfast, in the town of Liberty, New York, where I live. Lazy Pond is just down my road, but the others had traveled from all over the country.

One of the first stories I wrote to submit to the children’s book market, and therefore, first, to the writers group, the one I’ve written about here, in these blog posts, was called, “A Long Way For Tinker.” “You can write,” one of the writers in the group told me after she’d read it. “But I don’t think this one will sell either.”

One of the things I love to paint in my long lineup Still Life paintings is a group of vintage cans I’ve accumulated—tobacco cans, powder cans, baking powder cans. I love the look of their graphics, their beautiful colors, and the way they remind me of another time: childhood...

Many years ago, my sister and I went on a house tour, a walking exploration of some of the great old houses in Oyster Bay, on Long Island, the peninsula that extends east from New York Harbor, sitting in the Great South Bay where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. The house tour was something I was less interested in than was my sister, but it was a way for us to spend time together...

The winter challenges me in this woods place where I live. Once the snows come, the fog—fogged in, iced in, or waiting for the plow to clear my driveway, the sander to free me—I am here, awaiting people I’ve come to depend on to free me. People who are so reliable they are like family. Gratitude becomes very clear to me in winter...

A semicolon has been used to punctuate complete thoughts within a sentence; it is somewhat arcane, I’ve thought, and been replaced by a period or an em dash (—). The above sentence could also be written this way:...

What words come to mind when I think of the Center? What words do I want to come to mind for others when they think of the Center? Creativity. Inspiration. Self-expression. The action verbs are create, inspire, express. That’s what I want our writers to be able to do, the action I want them to be able to take. I think that desire, which all Center teachers share, makes us different.