I was walking down a concourse in the Philly airport when I looked up to see the Famous Writer staring down at me. Actually at first glance I was sure I was looking at the British actor, Bill Nighy. But it was not. It was him, a well-known literary writer who had moved to Maine…

After a recent trip to a southern city where no one wears fleece, I took a moment to reflect upon my Maine mud season couture. (This involved a certain amount of sighing.) Things have gone downhill since I worked in public relations at a Boston hospital, when I dressed up every day. Now I work…

Here in central Maine, the world has come down to bone. The songbirds are gone and crows, which poet Mary Oliver terms “the deep muscle of the world,” have taken over my street. The landscape seems empty; the ground, a carpet of desiccated leaves. One longs for the blanketing stillness of snow. The world, dark…

My father was dead and I did not miss him. —Joe Queenan When I say I’m writing a book about my Irish American family (the reason I’ve transitioned to occasional guest posts for Good Letters), I receive reading suggestions. First on the list is usually Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, which, alas, I found unreadable. “Why?”…

Until I get to the middle of the process—it’s horrific. It’s like I don’t know what I’m doing but I know how to do it, and it’s very strange. —Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, on the artistic process As I’ve noted before, I often struggle with writing, as I labor with the new life I’ve undertaken…

“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it.” —Simone Weil For most of my adult life, I’ve been resistant to allegiance—to people, to places. The latter may seem strange, since I’ve lived in northern New England on and off since 1972. In many ways, Maine’s iron…

My second favorite movie (my first is Gone with the Wind, which is embarrassing, but my tastes run to the lowbrow/popular) is The Third Miracle, a 1999 film starring Ed Harris. Its opening scene occurs during World War II, in an Eastern European country whose geography has been drawn and redrawn by the “will of…

When did I stop feeling sure, feeling safe And start wondering why, wondering why Is this a dream, am I here, where are you What’s in back of the sky? From “Valley of the Dolls,” Nurse Jackie’s theme song “Showtime’s comedies…have the whole God-Is-Dead thing down to a science,” posits a June 7 Newsday review…

I find creative writing difficult. This is in contrast to my professional writing as a consultant, which I find, after twenty five years, relatively straightforward: if you’ve written one foundation report or federal grant, you’ve pretty much written them all. But real writing, as I think of it—including this blog—is another story. While I normally…

Recently, I attended an “Eco-Christianity” class at an area congregation. It was not for me. The minister who led it was well-intentioned, trying to bring the sacred alive. A dozen or so of us attended the first meeting—a couple who ran an organic farm, an elderly woman, a therapist. It was cold in the spartan…