![]() |
Why Are My Closest Friends Gay Men?, February 19th, 2025 Categories: Women Tagged: LGBTQ Yes, I have excellent women friends... but there is something in the companionship of my two closest gay men friends that offers something different. |
![]() |
It’s Coming!, February 16th, 2025 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: Mary Oliver How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories I look on the eighteen short stories in How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories as a miracle I will never entirely understand—or need to—but here's a stab at it. |
![]() |
I’m Proud!, February 12th, 2025 Categories: Writing Tagged: I've changed and the site has changed since I started it in 2002. |
![]() |
The Medial Woman, February 9th, 2025 Categories: Politics Tagged: I propose to counter panic with specific remedies, for panic only hands more power to the oppressor. |
![]() |
The Uses of Armor, February 5th, 2025 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: The world seems to require us to protect ourselves now, and maybe always. |
![]() |
Some Miracles, February 2nd, 2025 Categories: Writing Tagged: Cara Romero William Bingham Iovenko I’ve been blessed often in my life but seldom as fully as in this past week. |
![]() |
Live Wires, January 29th, 2025 Categories: Politics Tagged: As the tide of misogamy sweeps toward us, I'm noticing—as perhaps some of you have—that women are falling silent. |
![]() |
The Nature of Evil, January 26th, 2025 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump In the last few days, I've had to face the fact that now, if for the first time, Evil is operating in our world. |
![]() |
Sometimes I Feel Discouraged, January 22nd, 2025 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: Martin Luther King Jr. Native American Boarding Schools We cannot afford to be discouraged for long. Above all, we cannot afford to be afraid. |
![]() |
Cures for the Blues, January 19th, 2025 Categories: Writing Tagged: Singing Poetry Mary Oliver We've been told by many authorities to get outside and walk... another surefire cure for the blues is poetry... And then there's the power in singing, anytime, anywhere with any kind of voice. |
![]() |
The Slow and Painful Process of Change, January 15th, 2025 Categories: Women, Theater Tagged: LGBTQ New York City Radcliffe The Women's Project Feminism Jefferson Davis Bear An article in a recent New Yorker reminded me of how unable to change I was as a college student in the late 1950s when the old rules were breaking all around me. |
![]() |
Nigerian Leaper, January 12th, 2025 Categories: My Family, Politics Tagged: Jimmy Carter Wherever you are as you read this, however disturbed and disheartened by the condition of our country, remember the Nigerian Leaper. |
![]() |
Moving Along Into 2025, January 8th, 2025 Categories: Writing Tagged: Taken by the Shawnee How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories Perhaps this great success of Shawnee is what all writers finally achieve—this is my sixteenth published book—but I doubt if it's that alone. |
![]() |
A Bomb Upon the Ceiling, December 29th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: 12 Favorites of 2024 Emily Dicknson I often turn to Emily Dickinson's poems in troubled times. Friday I came across one of her more startling aphorisms.. |
![]() |
I Hear America Singing, December 24th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: Emily Dicknson Walt Whitman Singing I just learned that today 91 million Americans are singing: in choral groups, choirs, schools, singalongs and all kinds of informal gatherings, many more than participate in other forms of the arts. |
![]() |
On the Cusp, December 22nd, 2024 Categories: My Family Tagged: Christmas My excitement leading up to Christmas Day was so powerful it hurt, and I dimly felt that I was excited in a way that couldn't be easily resolved. |
![]() |
Feeding the Birds, December 18th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: 12 Favorites of 2024 Feeding the birds that remain has become my passion. |
![]() |
Being Ladies, December 15th, 2024 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Drew Gilpin Faust The Civil War As we again face a form of invasion, of lies and distortions, not soldiers, will we again be crippled by our adherence to older forms of "correct behavior"? |
![]() |
Wonderful Women, December 10th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: Just when the first real cold hits and I face another winter here in the mountains, I'm rejoicing in the company I keep with wonderful women. |
![]() |
Owning the Land, December 7th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm 12 Favorites of 2024 Even before I decided, years ago, to put the 420 acres of blessed open space into conservation easements, I felt the wild fields and thin woods had long since belonged to the creatures that have always lived there. |
![]() |
Weather Houses, December 4th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: As I approach my 88th birthday next month, I'm amazed at the long life of my feelings and opinions. |
![]() |
Learning to Love Traveling, December 1st, 2024 Categories: Travel Tagged: Mary Oliver Amtrak When I have to travel... I'm uncomfortable, discombobulated, homesick. But since I do have to travel about four times a year, I want to teach myself how to do it with less discomfort. |
![]() |
Moving On, November 27th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories So many possible scenarios! So much fascinating reading! |
![]() |
The New McCarthyism, November 24th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump 2024 Election As we struggle for balance in the maelstrom of public events, it may be helpful to remember that we have been through this before in the period seventy years ago called McCarthyism for its creator, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. |
![]() |
We Shall Overcome, November 20th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Civil Rights Movement 2024 Election We have been through hard times, politically, often before, although many are probably too young to have witnessed Vietnam or the McCarthy period, when it also seemed as though Democracy was at stake. |
![]() |
Beware the Bogeyman, November 17th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump 2024 Election The bogeyman is a mythical creature, used to frighten children. It can take many forms. One form may be a loud, big, tumultuous man. |
![]() |
Truth and Reconciliation, November 12th, 2024 Categories: Politics, Writing Tagged: Donald Trump 2024 Election So how do we move forward? |
![]() |
My Mother’s Nightgown, November 10th, 2024 Categories: My Family, Politics Tagged: Mary Caperton Bingham Donald Trump Men 2024 Election Wednesday as we were reeling from the aftereffects of the election, my dear sister Eleanor sent me a care package. |
![]() |
The Lost Cause Rises Again, November 6th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: The Lost Cause Donald Trump Kamala Harris 2024 Election Early yesterday evening as I was watching the election coverage, I saw it on the screen: the solid South, the mass of red states in the Southeast that told me too clearly who our next president is going to be. |
![]() |
Loving Change, October 30th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky, Art Tagged: Louisville Roxanne Swentzell Rather than descending into crankiness, I decided on my last trip away from home to give it a try. So here goes... |
![]() |
The Secret in the Persimmon Seed, October 27th, 2024 Categories: My Family, Kentucky Tagged: Louisville I remember my father, at the end of a long family trip to Europe, exclaiming with delight as we drove home: "Still the most beautiful place in the world!" |
![]() |
Tell Me About Despair, October 23rd, 2024 Categories: Women, Kentucky Tagged: Mary Oliver One of the poems that means most to me is Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese." I remember when I first read it, years ago, I felt moved and inspired—and then wondered, "How does she dare?" The message remains revolutionary. |
![]() |
Home Sweet Home, October 20th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Radcliffe Harvard As I prepared on Friday to head back to Kentucky for a short visit, I was reflecting on the meaning of home. |
![]() |
The Eye of the Needle, October 16th, 2024 Categories: Women, Philanthropy, Religion Tagged: Episcopal Church I sometimes think I go to church to hear what I don't want to hear. After all what would be the use of hearing reinforcements of my rock-hard opinions? |
![]() |
Dear Dr. Spock, October 13th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: La Leche League We didn’t and we don’t obey our instincts; we’ve been trained to ignore them over the millennium. |
![]() |
A Dangerous Woman, October 6th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: Los Angeles It’s possible that Emma Goldman, the American revolutionary, would never have been able to have her effect on history without the financial and emotional support of another dangerous woman, Aline Barnsdall. |
![]() |
Living in the City of Holy Faith, October 2nd, 2024 Categories: New Mexico, Travel Tagged: Santa Fe Los Angeles Often when I'm asked, with less and less surprise, why I moved to Santa Fe in 1991, I repeat the familiar explanations... |
![]() |
Mending, September 29th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: The facts of the manufacture and eventual demise of clothes are becoming clear... this is an area where all of us who consume can contribute. |
![]() |
Why Are Some Women Conservatives, September 25th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: Drew Gilpin Faust The Civil War Donald Trump I've been thinking a lot about the reasons why some women may vote for the felon... |
![]() |
My Next Book After My Next Book, September 18th, 2024 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Taken by the Shawnee How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories The Blue Box How fortunate I am to have access to this incredibly rich trove of letters! Now that letter writing is at an end, there will be no more such collections. |
![]() |
The Fight Goes On, September 15th, 2024 Categories: Philanthropy Tagged: Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Hopscotch House I would be most grateful for your responses, both from you who enjoyed Hopscotch during its long history and you who might want to avail yourselves of it in the future. |
![]() |
Clifford, September 11th, 2024 Categories: My Family Tagged: The Blue Box Taken by the Shawnee Caroline Clifford Nephew Rose Caperton Writing to "My Dear Mary"—her niece and my mother—in 1954, Rose Caperton explained that the three leather-bound books she was sending had belonged to Mary's great-great-great grandmother. |
![]() |
A New Beginning, September 8th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: River Fields Apache Mesa Santa Fe Conservation Trust There are many benefits to putting land in conservation easements, and it is happening more frequently all over the country. |
![]() |
How Towns Are Divided, September 4th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: 12 Favorites of 2024 Santa Fe Fear knows nothing about physical distance. It's always fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar. |
![]() |
Labor Day 2024, September 1st, 2024 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Labor Day Screams of "Burn him! Burn him!" Friday night as the puppet went up in flames also burned what little is left of our understanding of the original meaning of Labor Day. |
![]() |
Goat Dressing at the Gay Rodeo, August 28th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe LGBTQ It almost seems, at least here in Santa Fe, that the presence and participation of gay people in public events have been folded into the omnipresent family culture... |
![]() |
À la recherche, August 18th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky, Writing Tagged: Taken by the Shawnee Kentucky Writing I was single and at that time and in that place, single women seemed slightly suspect; when I called the local ballet company to order one ticket, I was told they were only sold in pairs. |
![]() |
Can a Heathen Woman Be a Christian?, August 14th, 2024 Categories: Women, Writing, Religion Tagged: Taken by the Shawnee Religion Perhaps a healthy dose of heathenism would restore us to the churches (or other forms of organized spirituality) so vital to healthy communities. |
![]() |
The Blooming of Women Athletes, August 11th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: Title 9 Sports I want to congratulate not only Biels and Jackson but the unrecognized women who initiated and supported the programs that allow women athletes to bloom. |
![]() |
The Impossible Dream Renewed, August 7th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico, Politics Tagged: Hillary Clinton Kamala Harris Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Apache Mesa Disappointment and depression are hard to shake; they become a habit, protecting us from hopes that seem doomed. |
![]() |
The Movement, August 4th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: Feminism It is a decade that seems to me to be largely neglected... but it was crucial for me and for many other women and what we achieved does endure although constantly under threat. |
![]() |
Hope, July 31st, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Kamala Harris A friend's question prompted me to wonder why I've felt and heard so little enthusiasm—in fact, almost no mention among family—of the extraordinary elevation of Vice-President Kamala Harris to the position of Democratic nominee for the presidency. |
![]() |
To Dream the Impossible Dream, July 28th, 2024 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: Kentucky Foundation for Women Film To what degree are we talented women constrained in fulfilling our ambitions by the fear of being labelled insane or cast out? |
![]() |
The Death of Pip, July 24th, 2024 Categories: My Family Tagged: Black Pip 12 Favorites of 2024 Mary Oliver Pip, my shelter dog pitbull mix, died peacefully on Saturday after nine years of a beautiful life, hiking, enjoying the dog park, going with me on all kinds of adventures. |
![]() |
What Is Strength, July 21st, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: 2024 Election We are now caught in an unarticulated contest between "strength" and "weakness" going into the presidential election. |
![]() |
Hawk-Eye Is Here, July 17th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump 2024 Election After Donald Trump's ear was shot at the rally last Saturday, one of the uniformed men rushing onto the stage shouted, “Hawk-Eye is here!" and I felt the thrill I used to feel as a child when a wizard or a powerful fairy arrived to set things right. |
![]() |
The (Un)Known Project, July 14th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky, Art Tagged: Louisville Slavery Recently when I was in Louisville, I walked down to the Ohio River to see In Our Elders' Footprints and On the Banks of Freedom, installations which commemorate the enslaved people of the state. |
![]() |
Where Are the Women?, July 7th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump Joe Biden 2024 Election As always happens when the United States is at war, now on three fronts, women disappear. |
![]() |
The Meaning of Work, July 3rd, 2024 Categories: Philanthropy, New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico Recently I toured the Las Trampas Church where the elaborate interior, with altar screen, bultos, and other religious paintings was being skillfully restored by local craftsmen. |
![]() |
Slave Breeding in Kentucky, June 30th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Slavery 12 Favorites of 2024 Since coming home from Kentucky last week, I’ve had the privilege of connecting with several academics who have put many hours into researching this controversial and hidden topic. |
![]() |
The Zombie Law, June 26th, 2024 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Margaret Sanger Doris Duke Michelle Goldberg's column in The New York Times describes the 1935 Federal Comstock Act as a threat that Americans have not taken seriously. |
![]() |
Jacob Street, June 19th, 2024 Categories: My Family, Kentucky Tagged: Lizzie Baker Cecil Beaton 12 Favorites of 2024 Jacob Street when I was growing up in the prosperous white suburbs had only one meaning: that was the address of Lizzie Baker's house. |
![]() |
The Shawnee Have Their Own Park in Ohio, June 16th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee Margaret, if she were alive, would smile secretly, shielding her pleasure from her censorious Virginia relatives. |
![]() |
Some More Questions, June 12th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: Louisville Kentucky Lady Mary Wortley Montague Ozlem Ezer There's a magic for me as a somewhat hidden writer (essential for my work) when a book launch brings me into connection with new people. |
![]() |
Three Ideas: A Biography and Two Histories, June 9th, 2024 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Ozlem Ezer Austin Brown Lady Mary Wortley Montagu It will soon be time for me to start another three or four year writing project. I’d love to hear which of these three ideas you find most appealing... |
![]() |
Weaving the Threads of Historical Fiction: Ingenuity, Research, Integrity, June 5th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: The Blue Box Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee Margaret could watch, she could listen, and she could learn—and I learned along with her through research, thought, and writing and rewriting her story. |
![]() |
We Love Our Bad Boys, June 2nd, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump The bad boys all share a certain set of characteristics, which I think of every time I see women's enchanted faces turned up toward Donald Trump as he speaks. |
![]() |
Book Banning Begins at Home, May 29th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: Santa Fe Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee 12 Favorites of 2024 I'm hoping that the individuals who object to my book may in some form or another communicate with me. |
![]() |
What We Are Losing, May 26th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Do we really believe in education as a free exchange of ideas? |
![]() |
The Happy Family, May 22nd, 2024 Categories: My Family Tagged: Marriage My generation was known for our disruptions, the massive number of divorces and desertions that the rapid changes of the 1960's and 1970's ushered in… Fortunately, that bitterness seems by now to be at least partly assuaged. |
![]() |
Now It’s Happening!, May 19th, 2024 Categories: Women, Theater Tagged: The Women's Project Paula Vogel Theat I have been feeling for years that the big effort we made in the early 1980's to expand the presence of women as playwrights and directors had stalled. |
![]() |
Power of Protest, May 15th, 2024 Categories: Politics, Women Tagged: 12 Favorites of 2024 All around me I hear people disparaging the campus protests so brutally put down at a number of "top" universities, disparaged as a meaningless waste of time... |
![]() |
Aloneness, May 12th, 2024 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Adrienne Rich Single Blessedness We live in a Noah's Ark society where the expectation is that everyone, but especially women, will be paired. |
![]() |
Where Have All the Flowers Gone, May 8th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Although routinely disparaged by mainstream reporting as having no meaning or results—as the Vietnam protests were disparaged—and resisted with increasing violence, the students at big and small colleges and universities are taking risks for us, the silent older generations. |
![]() |
No Onions in Four Languages, May 5th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: Episcopal Church My Garden The old vows for heterosexual couples now seem not only outdated but impossibly demanding; gay couples perhaps have a different attitude. |
![]() |
We Always Wanted to Win, May 1st, 2024 Categories: Women, Kentucky Tagged: Women Kentucky Yes, we always wanted to win. And sometimes, we do. |
![]() |
A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats, April 28th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Kentucky George Rogers Clark As we stumble as individuals and as nations through a time of great uncertainty, some individuals and even some nations also stumble toward various forms of often painful enlightenment. |
![]() |
“Fatty, fatty, two by four…”, April 24th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: Women I hate to write the first line of a disgraceful ditty that I probably said more than once with other girls when I was a fourth or fifth grader. I was ashamed to say it, I knew it was wrong, and yet I did, which is probably the case with all wrongdoing. |
![]() |
Maybe Brett, April 21st, 2024 Categories: New Mexico, Art Tagged: Dorothy Brett How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories Mabel Dodge Luhan D.H. Lawrence Blessed as I always am in my work, I've discovered a possible new topic for a biography in the life of the British/American painter, Dorothy Brett. |
![]() |
Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself, April 17th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: meditation Black Pip Now that girls are not routinely instructed in fear—of mice, spiders, snakes, and the unknown—our native courage is much in evidence. |
![]() |
Next Year in Jerusalem, April 14th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: The Civil War Israel Drew Gilpin Faust Obsessions always interest me having hosted several of them with various results but I doubt that any of mine have shared the intensity with which Jews at the conclusion of Passover all over the world shout, "Next year in Jerusalem!" the dynamite that powers the unending war to erase Palestine. |
![]() |
5’9″ 235 Pounds, April 10th, 2024 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Sports Girls need to learn to play rough, a lesson we may be trying to forget today with our return as mothers and grandmothers to a relentless obsession with our female offsprings' looks. |
![]() |
What Are Your Ideas for Hopscotch?, April 8th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Hopscotch House I've been asked many times the last few months what can be done to support Hopscotch. What are your ideas for how Hopscotch could be used? |
![]() |
Thank God for the Sixties, April 7th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: The Sixties When Woodstock happened in 1969, I was deep in my baby-making and raising years with a young son and two more soon to arrive, and if I'd seen this photograph I would have been horrified. |
![]() |
A Brief History of the Kentucky Foundation for Women and Hopscotch House, April 3rd, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House 12 Favorites of 2024 Having long learned… the effect of art created by women on the lives of other women… I decided to design a foundation that would support women artists in Kentucky working as feminists for social change. |
![]() |
Phillip and Good Friday, March 31st, 2024 Categories: New Mexico, Kentucky Tagged: Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House Faith Now that I've placed the issues around saving Hopscotch in the hands of my very competent attorneys, for today a few thoughts about Phillip and Good Friday. |
![]() |
Northern Bobwhite Quail, March 24th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House It may seem strange that in the midst of the problems with Hopscotch and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, I'm choosing to write about the Bobwhite Quail. There are two reasons... |
![]() |
More Hopscotch, March 20th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky, Women Tagged: River Fields Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House I can't go into detail about our plans to preserve Hopscotch; this is complicated legally, and if successful, would be a landmark case, protecting other donors who find that their gifts have been abused by the not-for-profit they trusted. |
![]() |
More Soon About Hopscotch, March 17th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House To my friends, more soon about Hopscotch. |
![]() |
KFW: Hopscotch House Announcement 2024, March 11th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Hopscotch House Kentucky Foundation for Women I would like to hear a reaction from any woman who has used Hopscotch House in the past. Please leave a message below, on Facebook, or via email. |
![]() |
What Do I Have in Common With Elon Musk?, March 10th, 2024 Categories: Philanthropy, New Mexico Tagged: Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House His suit against OpenAI, just commencing in California, has some similarities with my struggles with what has become of the Kentucky Foundation for Women. |
![]() |
Fading Away, March 6th, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: Suffrage Susan B. Anthony Elizabeth Cady Stanton 12 Favorites of 2024 I'm dismayed to see how rapidly the women's movement is fading, eclipsed by monstrous wars but also by young women's failure to engage. |
![]() |
So “They” Let Us Have One Month…, March 3rd, 2024 Categories: Women Tagged: Feminism Women's History Month began without much attention and certainly without fanfare on March 1, 2024 and will end in deafening silence on March 31. |
![]() |
The Great I Am, February 28th, 2024 Categories: Religion Tagged: After finding a church where I feel at least to some degree at home and grow to love the Christian ritual… I hit an obstruction. |
![]() |
Pip Is Tired, February 25th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Black Pip Hiking Pip is full of self-will—one of the reasons we get on so well—and likes to dictate as much of his life as he can. |
![]() |
Letter to the Editor, The Courier-Journal, 2/19/2024, February 21st, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House I am writing to protest the just announced sale of Hopscotch House by the Kentucky Foundation for Women. |
![]() |
The Lost Cause, February 18th, 2024 Categories: My Family, Kentucky Tagged: The Stiles Letters The Lost Cause As I begin reading the collection of nineteenth-century Stiles letters that may provide the core of my next book, I'm brought reluctantly to remember two long ago incidents when loneliness pushed me closer to belief. |
![]() |
This Beautiful Weave, February 14th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico, Kentucky Tagged: Santa Fe Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House It strikes me that I have days like Sunday which seem to be a beautiful weaving of threads: red, blue, and all the other colors of the rainbow. |
![]() |
On Memoir, February 11th, 2024 Categories: Writing Tagged: writing workshops 12 Favorites of 2024 Writing Memoir writing is a much more serious task than it's often considered to be. It's not informal, it's not casual. It really is the writing of history. |
![]() |
Women Holding Things, February 7th, 2024 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: As a worldwide conflagration of violence has broken out, we women are not even holding our own. Our voices and faces no longer appear in the news. |
![]() |
Groundhog Day, February 4th, 2024 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House Groundhog Day Today I'm celebrating something that happened several decades ago when Hopscotch House, belonging to the Kentucky Foundation for Women in Louisville, was just getting started and we needed an executive director. |
![]() |
Silver Heads, January 31st, 2024 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: Women Taken by the Shawnee It is with dismay but not surprise that I read a description of the reaction of two “Silver Heads” to Tracy Emin’s panels on the main doors of the National Portrait Gallery in London. |
![]() |
Truck Driving Woman, January 28th, 2024 Categories: Travel Tagged: Amtrak She is, she told me, a professional long-haul truck driver, steering eighteen-wheelers with enormous trailers across big swatches of this county. |
![]() |
Umbrella, January 24th, 2024 Categories: Women, Travel Tagged: California For my daily walk I borrowed a big black umbrella. But—how to open it? |
![]() |
Throwing Apples at Indians, January 21st, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Amtrak Every time I ride the Southwest Chief East or West from Lamy, New Mexico—my preferred way of traveling—I meet at least one fascinating fellow traveler. |
![]() |
King’s Day, January 17th, 2024 Categories: Politics Tagged: Martin Luther King Jr. When I listened to Dr. King's speech on NPR Sunday night, I was moved by the great power of his church-trained voice as well as by his revolutionary message. |
![]() |
A Drop of Pure Joy, January 14th, 2024 Categories: New Mexico, Theater Tagged: dancing A few weeks ago, my beloved dance studio threw its bi-annual Showcase, an afternoon of dance performances by students and teachers for our own pleasure and satisfaction after a lot of hard work and many lessons. |
![]() |
Death of a Pack Rat, January 3rd, 2024 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe I read somewhere that the world is divided between those who only care about family and friends and those whose empathy extends to include people far away, strangers, never to be included in the near and dear. |
![]() |
The Feast of Saint Stephen, December 27th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico, Religion Tagged: Santa Fe As the old song says, "Ye who now do bless the poor/Shall yourselves find blessing." |
![]() |
Christmas Comes but Once a Year…, December 24th, 2023 Categories: My Family Tagged: Mary Caperton Bingham A Christmas Carol Favorites of 2023 Christmas I have such blissful memories of the Christmases of my childhood, first and foremost the firm insistence on going to church Christmas morning. |
![]() |
Christmas Miracle: Pip Is Completely Recovered!, December 20th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Black Pip Hiking Favorites of 2023 It took six weeks and three trips to the vet after his savage attack but we just took the first hike since that happened... |
![]() |
Azim’s Bardo, December 17th, 2023 Categories: My Family, Politics Tagged: Will's Things Little Free Library Favorites of 2023 In the tumble of donated books in the Little Free Library, I saw one with a title that spoke to me: From Murder to Forgiveness: A Father's Journey by Azim Khamisa with Carl Goldman. |
![]() |
A Kick in the Pants, December 13th, 2023 Categories: Politics Tagged: Radcliffe Harvard Favorites of 2023 Is it a coincidence that the head of Penn and the head of Harvard, one ousted the other threatened with ouster, are both women? |
![]() |
Smoke Signals, December 10th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Favorites of 2023 How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories Today I'm wondering about the future of literature in our beleaguered country. |
![]() |
Second Childhood, December 6th, 2023 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Christmas Favorites of 2023 We've spent too many words bewailing the sins committed against us in our childhoods, and they were sins, and they had drastic effects, and that matters; but Sunday when I bought this charming "Winter Fairy" at my church's St. Nicholas Bazaar, I decided it's high time to enter into my second childhood... |
![]() |
Multispecies Entanglement, December 3rd, 2023 Categories: New Mexico, My Family Tagged: Taken by the Shawnee Favorites of 2023 Santa Fe Marriage I'm witnessing a surge in big, old-fashioned weddings for those who can afford up to half a million dollars to rent tents, clubs, hire staff, and buy the necessary clothes. |
![]() |
I’m Thankful For…., November 29th, 2023 Categories: My Family Tagged: As our first snow fell here in the southern Rockies, my granddaughter asked me why I moved to Santa Fe 35 years ago. |
![]() |
Two Ways to Help, November 26th, 2023 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Ozlem Ezer I feel as helpless and depressed as many of us do, watching the endless destruction wrought by the wars we largely finance with our tax dollars. |
![]() |
Moving at Sheeps’ Pace, November 22nd, 2023 Categories: New Mexico, Kentucky, My Family Tagged: Henrietta Bingham Farmers Market Thinking about Tierra Wools' herd of sheep moving from their summer in the highlands here, reminds me of the two orphan lambs I raised in Kentucky when I was growing up. |
![]() |
Winter at Wolf Pen Farm, November 19th, 2023 Categories: Women, Kentucky Tagged: Horses Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Favorites of 2023 It was never my intention to create a private estate, and it gives me great satisfaction to know that River Fields organizes seasonal wildflower walks at the farm, and that a generation of children is growing up in my three rental houses. |
![]() |
Fear of Flying Is Fifty, November 15th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Erica Jong Jong's courage in going to bat for all of us who couldn't speak up for ourselves is a quality I will always admire. |
![]() |
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men?, November 12th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico, Women Tagged: Santa Fe Los Alamos Many who hear or read the phrase seize on its Biblical meaning which was literal and remains literal today, and as yet no one has suggested attempting to replace the book with Let Us Now Praise Famous Women. |
![]() |
These Are Those Who Have Come Out of Great Tribulation, November 8th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Homelessness Once a year members of my church here in Santa Fe volunteer to cook a week's supper for our unhoused population; I look forward to it. |
![]() |
The Price of Fear, November 5th, 2023 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Black Pip Favorites of 2023 A few days ago, my dog Pip was attacked as he lay sleeping on my patio here in the mountains, bitten savagely in three places. |
![]() |
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, November 1st, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Taken by the Shawnee New Mexico Reading Sallie Montague Lefroy ...Not exactly a wilderness but a great expanse of desert, south of Santa Fe, that goes on for miles and miles to the sprawling town of Alamogordo. |
![]() |
The Rewards, October 29th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Duke University Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture This is a time when we all need to be reminded that there are rewards for years of hard work, devotion and persistence. |
![]() |
Writing From the Point of View of Others, October 25th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Writing North Carolina Ideas are dangerous: it’s of their very nature, and it’s a danger that permeates the world of reading and writing. |
![]() |
Hands, October 18th, 2023 Categories: Women, Travel Tagged: Ireland Mary Caperton Bingham Favorites of 2023 Our faces show the inevitable effects of age but our hands seem to me to retain a little of our youthful hopefulness. |
![]() |
Taken by the Shawnee, October 15th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee Favorites of 2023 The design for the cover of my next book, my historical novel, “Taken by the Shawnee” just arrived from my publisher, Turtle Point Press. |
![]() |
Somewhere Out There You…, October 11th, 2023 Categories: Travel, Theater Tagged: New York City Ireland As I'm listening to long-forgotten but amazingly familiar tunes, I'm remembering the high point of my visit to Dublin last week... |
![]() |
Humans, Bees and Wildlife in 2023, October 8th, 2023 Categories: Politics Tagged: Today I’m headlining an important message from one of my friends, Arthur Firstenberg, author of the remarkable book The Invisible Rainbow. |
![]() |
Girls Take the Lead, October 4th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Women There's a shift of large proportions in what girls and young women are doing in this world. |
![]() |
Pick Up Your Socks, October 1st, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Los Alamos Nuclear Archbishop Wester The Federal government is having difficulty picking up its socks, in this case, the toxic waste left here in New Mexico and elsewhere as the result of sixty years of nuclear weapons building. |
![]() |
Equinox in the City That Lacks One, September 24th, 2023 Categories: Travel, New Mexico Tagged: Chaco Canyon New York City Of course equinoxes happen everywhere even in places that seem oblivious like midtown Manhattan where I'm roosting for a few days... |
![]() |
The War on Terror Is at Home, September 20th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Santa Fe When I pass a pretty adobe house on my street walking Pip, a disembodied voice suddenly speaks: "Hi. Your approach is being recorded." |
![]() |
The Ms. Book, September 17th, 2023 Categories: Women, My Family, Writing Tagged: Passion and Prejudice Gloria Steinem It arrived yesterday, a large, heavy, hardbound anthology of fifty years of writing from Ms. |
![]() |
Guys, Girls and Ladies, September 13th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Girls Women The New York Times I wasn't surprised to learn according to the "Newspaper Of Record" that "On the Internet, Everyone Wants to be a Girl." |
![]() |
As They Go, so Go We, September 6th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: pinon Years of drought and now weeks, perhaps months, of extreme heat have caused the loss of 2.3 million pinyon jays, which is 78.7 percent of their total population. |
![]() |
A Summer Romance, September 3rd, 2023 Categories: My Family Tagged: Cape Cod Favorites of 2023 Now with the summer coming to an end, I'm remembering what Labor Day meant to me growing up: the dispersal of the summer community. |
![]() |
Blue Moon, August 30th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Taken by the Shawnee Chaco Canyon Canyon de Chelly Margaret Erskine Tonight will see the rising of the first full blue moon... I'm making deviled eggs to take over to my friend Doug's house. |
![]() |
What Happened to Hawaii, August 27th, 2023 Categories: Politics Tagged: Hawaii Queen Liliʻuokalani was the constitutional Queen of the Hawaiian islands before she was overthrown by the mainland government and its forces in 1897, ending her long struggle to preserve the independence of her people |
![]() |
Email Issues, August 20th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Friends, due to issues with my email there will be no posts for the indefinite future… I hope to be posting again very soon! |
![]() |
The March of Cell Towers, August 16th, 2023 Categories: Politics Tagged: HR-3557 would mean "unrestricted proliferation of cell towers...near homes, schools and playgrounds" and "on any structure that could support an antenna." |
![]() |
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, August 9th, 2023 Categories: My Family, Art Tagged: Barry Ellsworth In the middle of all the shouting about the Barbie movie and the millions, if not billions, Hollywood plans to make, it's worth remembering that there was an earlier, much earlier, independent video. |
![]() |
California Dreamin’, August 6th, 2023 Categories: My Family, Travel Tagged: California It's no longer just the perfectly proportioned who wear thongs on the beach; the size of some of the buttocks on display is awe-inspiring. |
![]() |
Writing What You Don’t Know, August 2nd, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: writing workshops Writing workshop wisdom used to be write what you know, a doctrine I've found increasingly confining. |
![]() |
What’s the Matter With “The Runaway Bunny”?, July 30th, 2023 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Helena Lefroy Caperton Mary Caperton Bingham Children's Stories My mother didn't favor books written for children since she believed we could all absorb adult literature at an early age and be the better for it—and I think she was probably right. |
![]() |
Barbieheimer, July 23rd, 2023 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Favorites of 2023 Film Robert Oppenheimer The release of Oppenheimer at the same time of a new Barbie film is not a coincidence... But what is the connection? |
![]() |
Where Is the Match, July 19th, 2023 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Los Alamos Archbishop Wester It may be the role of our spiritual leaders—those we accept—to give us the wood for a fire but expect us to provide the match. I thought of that Monday |
![]() |
Summer Sports: Volleyball, July 16th, 2023 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Black Pip Santa Fe Women As I sit on a bench in the shade waiting for him, I see a group of eight young people working at pegging the outline of a big square and digging in two posts for a net. |
![]() |
Dead Souls, July 12th, 2023 Categories: Politics Tagged: Los Alamos women's movement Episcopal Church What happened to the energy and hope that created the Women's Movement? The urge to reform capitalism that was a part of the 1960s? |
![]() |
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, July 9th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House Women's International Study Center Favorites of 2023 By an unfortunate coincidence, both of these houses are in danger of losing their primary purpose. |
![]() |
The Silver Fountain: A Granddaughter’s Dream, July 5th, 2023 Categories: My Family Tagged: train Amtrak I have passed on my fascination with trains to at least one of my granddaughters. |
![]() |
We Had to Be Unlike Others to Survive, July 2nd, 2023 Categories: My Family Tagged: Favorites of 2023 New thoughts about the way we are raising our sons are uppermost in my mind. |
![]() |
Why I Love Westerns, June 28th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Horses Film I try to ration my secret passion, or rather its secret satisfaction, like a love affair I don't want anyone to know about. |
![]() |
An Unexpected Reason for Our Sliding Backwards…, June 25th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Harvard It’s not a surprise to find that many young people are employed at firms where the parent of their same gender work, but since women are earning at a lower rate, I’d be surprised to find that as many young women follow their mothers into the job market as men follow their fathers. |
![]() |
Are We Sliding Backwards?, June 21st, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Santa Fe Women Writing Am I pessimistic? Maybe so. But it's a pessimism that I think is appropriate. |
![]() |
New Mexico Rain, June 18th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Bill Hearne I sometimes think the greatest disservice of many which has been done to women is the writing, recording and endlessly repeating of romantic songs. |
![]() |
Underpants on the Stove, June 14th, 2023 Categories: Women, My Family Tagged: Men I’ve just spent a few days with my son and grandson and am reminded of the delightful chaos of living with boys and men. |
![]() |
Hanging On, June 11th, 2023 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Favorites of 2023 Louisville Kentucky Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm I'm visiting my old farm, Wolf Pen Branch Mill, ten miles east of Louisville, Kentucky for a few days, and find myself appalled, as always, by the spread of development. |
![]() |
A Patch of Blue Sky, June 4th, 2023 Categories: My Family Tagged: Lizzie Baker Favorites of 2023 I remember with increased gratitude the women I've known who, no matter what their circumstances, were able to continue to bring me light, warmth and humor. |
![]() |
Acequia Madre: The Mother Ditch, June 1st, 2023 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Acequia Madre To me the Acquia Madre's presence is a reminder every day of the central influence of women here in Santa Fe. |
![]() |
Me and Harry Belafonte, May 28th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: kunm New York City The role of popular performers in reshaping political opinions, especially for young people, has never been fully recognized. |
![]() |
The Glamour of Empire, May 24th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Virginia Woolf I'm reading Virginia Woolf's "The Years," the only one of her novels I haven't read. |
![]() |
Talking the Train Talk, May 21st, 2023 Categories: Travel Tagged: Amtrak Favorites of 2023 Everywhere I travel on Amtrak, I meet people who are dedicated to avoiding planes. |
![]() |
Old Friends, May 14th, 2023 Categories: Women, My Family Tagged: In the stories of my two old friends, both equally dear to me, I see a reflection of the problems of our country. |
![]() |
Hope, May 7th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Wildfires Los Alamos "'Hope' is the thing with feathers," Emily Dickinson wrote in 1861, wisely putting quotation marks around the word to signify its unreliability, for nothing is more easily crushed in our world today. |
![]() |
Student or Colleague? The Minimizing of Camille Claudel, May 3rd, 2023 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: Camille Claudel Is it possible for us to be perceived as original when the shadow of this inevitably more esteemed man falls so heavily across us? |
![]() |
Why Are We Being Dosed?, April 26th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Women A dear friend recently sent me a surprising announcement from the Centers for Disease Control. Why am I not surprised? |
![]() |
Going Backwards, April 23rd, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Women It seems to me that, especially since Covid, we are going backwards in terms of equality, having made a bit of a progress before the plague. |
![]() |
Touching Camille, April 20th, 2023 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: Favorites of 2023 Camille Claudel To me, Camille Claudel's story represents in heartbreaking terms the problems faced by talented women who depend on recognition by a better-known man. |
![]() |
Written by Worth, April 16th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Women Worth Bingham Favorites of 2023 We are still frequently silenced, either by our own fears or the manifest disapproval of the men and women around us. |
![]() |
The Other Mary, April 12th, 2023 Categories: Religion Tagged: Easter Surrounded as I am, and as all of us are, by unbelievers, I search for my own moments of connection with the Gospels, my own slender path out of the deep despair of agnosticism. |
![]() |
My Bear Is Back, April 5th, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico I know she/they are back because my tube bird feeders are lying on the ground, seeds scattered and gone. |
![]() |
Margaret in the Wilderness, April 2nd, 2023 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Doris Duke The Silver Swan Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee Ukraine Surrounded by disasters of every kind, we are seeing the great strengths of our extraordinary adaptability, valued and valuable as it has never been before. |
![]() |
The Grip of the Past, March 26th, 2023 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: The Lost Cause Asheville Passion and Prejudice Favorites of 2023 I’ve just received word that my new short story, “What I Learned From Fat Annie” has won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize for 2023. |
![]() |
The First Day of Spring, March 22nd, 2023 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: The New York Times Here with the first day of spring yesterday in the midst of heavy snowfall—98 inches on the mountain, the most in many years—I am announcing the Revolution. |
![]() |
The Writer’s Life, March 19th, 2023 Categories: Art, Women Tagged: Gertrude Stein Favorites of 2023 Gertrude Stein managed her life to make her writing possible. |
![]() |
Too Complicated, March 15th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Women Phyllis Chesler In this case, it's the opinion of scientists about female mice, attempting to explain why over the decades females have never been used in experiments. |
![]() |
Rose B. Simpson: Leaving Fingerprints Behind, March 12th, 2023 Categories: Women, New Mexico, Art Tagged: Santa Fe Santa Clara Pueblo Roxanne Swentzell Rose B. Simpson I remember when I first met Rose at her booth in Santa Fe's August Indian Market. She had hung an astonishing large color photograph on the front of her booth... |
![]() |
Las Vegas New Mexico’s First State Female Wrestling Champ, March 10th, 2023 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Las Vegas Optic The staunch Las Vegas Optic, one of a number of small town newspapers that have found the cash and the spirit to survive the universal collapse of print news publications, recently ran a photo and story on its front page that caught my eye. |
![]() |
Working With the System, March 5th, 2023 Categories: Women, Theater Tagged: Henrik Ibsen Reviews and revisions of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" sprout with each new Broadway season, an indication of how relevant, and how difficult this 1879 play continues to be. |
![]() |
In the Company of Women: Mabel’s House, February 26th, 2023 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Mabel Dodge Luhan House One of my pleasures here is eating dinner alone in a good restaurant and drinking a glass of wine. It is my best opportunity to watch people and to jump to perhaps wrongheaded conclusions about them. |
![]() |
Ash Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023 Categories: My Family, Politics, Religion Tagged: Jimmy Carter Ash Wednesday Over my long writing career, I've kind of resigned myself to being a Cassandra: the voice in the wilderness that speaks, or writes, about things most people would rather ignore and forget. |
![]() |
Promise, February 19th, 2023 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: Anne Cooper Dobbins Twice in my life, I’ve had the rare privilege of encountering a young woman of promise. Only twice because promise is handed out randomly or according to a pattern I can’t discern. |
![]() |
Girls Reset the Equation, February 16th, 2023 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico As the country turns away from supporting issues crucial to girls' and women's health, the scorn that is faced by all women, especially those young enough to appear vulnerable, is creating a mental health crisis. |
![]() |
Wolf Pen Mill Runs Again, February 12th, 2023 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Louisville Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Resounding through the maple and sycamore forest, the clanking must have drawn farmers from miles around, loading their carts with corn and driving over the rough stone road to the mill. |
![]() |
Valentine’s Day: The Girl in the Red Velvet Dress, February 5th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Valentine's Day A few days ago when I was poking in one of my closets, I found a battered old scrapbook from the 1930, a big collection of greeting cards spasted onto the scrapbook’s yellowish pages. |
![]() |
Haunted Houses, February 1st, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: I discovered for the first time an idea I've been revolving in my own mind: that the past, and the settings and people of the past, are crucial. |
![]() |
She, January 29th, 2023 Categories: Writing Tagged: Judy Chicago Paz Winshtein Virgin Mary Must the divine feminine be denatured? |
![]() |
That Debutante Summer, January 26th, 2023 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Favorites of 2023 Louisville Collegiate School Frontier Nursing University My rebellion, uncomfortable as it was—for my classmates were my closest friends—also signaled my leaving the South, going to college, settling in the Northeast and marrying a man my mother's friends identified, with horror, as a Yankee... |
![]() |
Kindness, January 22nd, 2023 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Black Pip Hiking Favorites of 2023 Such a bland word, and I haven't always appreciated its value, assuming that kindness is just one of our many gifts as human beings. |
![]() |
Two Lives Well Lived: Ruth Adler Schnee And Gina Lollobrigida, January 19th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Sometimes it seems we only learn of remarkable woman when their obituaries appear, even in the case of movie stars. |
![]() |
Oh Those Arms, January 15th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: We seem never to entirely escape from our fear of powerful women. |
![]() |
Sleeping With Animals, January 8th, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: Santa Fe Now that we are entering the coldest months of the year here in the Southwest, I’m saying a prayer of gratitude for all the animals I’ve slept with over the years. |
![]() |
Lipstick, January 1st, 2023 Categories: Women Tagged: New Year's Don’t make that list, just imagine it or dream it and make a totally unrealistic vow and watch it, in unexpected ways, come into being. |
![]() |
I Am My Grandmother’s Dream, December 28th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: It is appropriate to applaud the changes in our culture that have allowed these women to grow into adulthood free of the shackles—at least in part—of harassment and intimidation that made my young life such a challenge in the 1950’s. |
![]() |
The Virgin Goes Into Labor, December 25th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: Christmas Mary Caperton Bingham Virgin Mary 20 Favorites of 2022 Oh the ghosts of Christmas past! We all have them. May yours wear holly wreaths and drag chains of tinkling bells if they have to drag chains at all. |
![]() |
Wearing the Armor of Our History, December 21st, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: Feminism Gloria Steinem I like to remind myself of how radical our philosophy is, and how often targeted, diminished and deleted by the patriarchy that surrounds us like a woolen scarf tied much too tight. |
![]() |
Small Potatoes, December 18th, 2022 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Georgia O'Keeffe Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture Rough Point 20 Favorites of 2022 One of those rare fortuitous meetings that make life so interesting occurred in the fall in a hallway at the New York Society Library, my home away from home in that city. |
![]() |
Cellphones: Sit Not in the Seat of the Scornful, December 14th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: In the New Year, I’m going to attempt something radical... |
![]() |
Where Are the Snows of Yesterday?, December 7th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico As we move into another dry, warm winter here in the high desert Southwest, it's sometimes hard to believe that this may be what we are going to experience for the indefinite future... |
![]() |
Margaret Erskine: “Taken by Indians”, December 5th, 2022 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee 20 Favorites of 2022 I started writing Margaret's story, based on a brief memoir she dictated to her nephew many years after her taking... |
![]() |
Kitty, November 27th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Los Alamos Robert Oppenheimer I’m always interested in the lives of women who jump into these ambitious, deadly federal projects—jump in, fall in, are pulled or sucked in. |
![]() |
Giving Thanks, November 23rd, 2022 Categories: New Mexico, My Family Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2022 gratitude Thanksgiving I will be giving a special thanks for those who read these thoughts, and whose mysterious presence in my life keeps me going. |
![]() |
Mary Jane Colter and the Making of the Southwest, November 20th, 2022 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Chandler O'Leary Mary Colter 20 Favorites of 2022 There’s nothing to equal to results of our ability to collaborate, and to remember and record our foremothers whom the powers that be usually neglect. |
![]() |
Saying No, November 16th, 2022 Categories: Politics Tagged: The power to say no. Without it, can we ever feel we are in charge of our own lives? |
![]() |
They, November 13th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: We feminists hope and even believe that the work we've done over the past decades has expanded the boundaries of what it means, and can mean, to be a woman, but that hope and belief seems to me to have foundered on the pronoun issues of gender fluidity. |
![]() |
Women Rule, November 9th, 2022 Categories: Politics, Women Tagged: We plan, we get ready, and we go. Nobody hold us back. Our own fears don't hold us back. |
![]() |
Digging Out The Roots, November 2nd, 2022 Categories: My Family Tagged: Slavery Rose 20 Favorites of 2022 Times change. Time passes. A younger generation stands to inherit. One of its members challenged her ancient relative, the present owner, with what she feels is his guilt because of slavery. |
![]() |
Revising Ikons, October 30th, 2022 Categories: Women, Religion Tagged: Virgin Mary The image of Mary as "Virgin Mary, Meek and Mild" has been a problem for many women and probably some men during the 100 years when this became her most common representation. |
![]() |
Fascinating Women, October 26th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: Feminism Guerrilla Girls Chandler O'Leary There are a lot of us. And many of our stories have yet to be written. |
![]() |
The Good Uses of Obsession, October 23rd, 2022 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: I never saw the Mickey Mouse Club, but I do remember adolescent obsession. |
![]() |
Telling the Truth, October 19th, 2022 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Kentucky George Rogers Clark Our questioning of historical "truth" may be invalid when we are possessed of what we believe is the answer. |
![]() |
My Friendship Quilt, October 12th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: Feminism Phyllis Chesler The power of the feminist movement always was and always will be drawn from the friendship of women. |
![]() |
Celebrating a Master, October 9th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: John Cheever “Master” is what John Cheever (1912-1982) was, and is, although largely forgotten now in spite of the acclaim and the many awards he accumulated during his long career as a successful novelist and short story writer. |
![]() |
Do We Collaborate, October 5th, 2022 Categories: Women, Writing, Art Tagged: Phyllis Chesler The idea of collaborating has always made me a little squeamish. |
![]() |
Woman Honks Horn, October 2nd, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico Las Vegas Optic The Rio Grande Sun devotes a whole page to its police blotter. |
![]() |
Apache Mesa Ranch Resolved, September 28th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Apache Mesa 20 Favorites of 2022 New Mexico The ranch is not really for us human beings with our thin skins and our need for comfort. |
![]() |
Women Lead the Way, September 25th, 2022 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico I find myself getting annoyed: not another fundraiser when I'd rather be taking Pip for his evening walk and making some more progress in the book I'm reading! |
![]() |
Fire Engines: Perhaps a Silver Lining?, September 21st, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Wildfires I didn’t realize until Saturday that the Hermit's Peak firefighters and their engines had come to us from all over the West. |
![]() |
What Dresses Meant and Mean to Us, September 15th, 2022 Categories: My Family Tagged: Helena Lefroy Caperton My first party dresses were sewn by hand—not machine—by my adored grandmother, Helena Lefroy Caperton, my mother's mother, of Richmond, Virginia. |
![]() |
Two Queens, September 11th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: Phyllis Chesler Santa Fe What could be more different than these two queens? |
![]() |
Thread Dresses, September 8th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico, Art Tagged: Santa Fe 20 Favorites of 2022 Just as I was beginning to feel discouraged came a revelation as I was getting a cup of coffee at my neighborhood hangout here in Santa Fe. |
![]() |
Killing the Mama Snake, September 4th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Apache Mesa I must write my story of this place… a story of the intersection of cultures here that seem to have no history or sense of conservation in common. |
![]() |
Is It Sunset Time for Apache Mesa Ranch?, August 31st, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Apache Mesa I haven't written about my ranch in south-eastern New Mexico, near the old town of Las Vegas, for some time. In the interval, a lot has changed. |
![]() |
The Personal Is Political, August 28th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: Little Brother: A Memoir We may all be susceptible to thinking our “personal” stories are nothing more than personal, forgetting over and over again that, as Gloria Steinem said, “The personal is political.” |
![]() |
Finding Hope, August 24th, 2022 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: William Bingham Iovenko As I come to the completion of this draft of The Eyes of Addicts, I work hard not be overwhelmed with sadness... yet there is always light in the darkness. |
![]() |
Lux, August 21st, 2022 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Feminism At a fundraiser I was hosting the other day for New Mexico Women Rising, I met the publisher of LUX, a new slick magazine aiming to secure “The Future of Feminist Journalism.” |
![]() |
There Are Just Too Many of Us, August 17th, 2022 Categories: Travel, Women Tagged: Feminism Overpopulation La Leche League We've all experienced the overcrowding of big cities, from which some of us fled to small towns like Santa Fe, now overwhelmed too with commercial development and part-time residents. |
![]() |
Better Late Than…, August 7th, 2022 Categories: Women, My Family Tagged: inheritance Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham One of the most interesting facets of my biography of Doris Duke was the question of her inheritance. |
![]() |
Lionesses, August 3rd, 2022 Categories: Travel Tagged: Sports As Queen Elizabeth announced, the players had "set an example that will be an inspiration for girls and women today, and for future generations." |
![]() |
Truth and Reconciliation, July 27th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: Los Alamos 20 Favorites of 2022 Native American Boarding Schools I want to draw my readers' attention to the extraordinary visit of Pope Francis to Canada to apologize personally for the destruction of thousands of Native children over the course of two centuries. |
![]() |
Volare, July 24th, 2022 Categories: Travel Tagged: Italy 20 Favorites of 2022 After graduating from college and becoming engaged with a ring that was too expensive, I was spending a month of a sort of pre-honeymoon with the man I was going to marry in the fall. |
![]() |
These Small Blessings, July 20th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: Santa Fe gratitude Little Brother: A Memoir Will's Things Actually not so small. |
![]() |
Learning From Virginia, July 14th, 2022 Categories: Writing, Women Tagged: Virginia Woolf St. Johns College This summer is my sixth at Summer Classics, and I'm fortunate to be re-reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway with seventeen other people and two tutors, as professors are called here. |
![]() |
Where Are the Men?, July 10th, 2022 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: abortion Roe v Wade folk In the many debates I’ve been reading and hearing about the criminalization of abortion with the overthrow of Roe v. Wade, there is a major deletion: men. |
![]() |
We Go On Fighting, July 6th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico, Politics Tagged: Title 9 Roe v Wade Margaret Sanger abortion We always have, and we always will... |
![]() |
The Sea of Faith, July 3rd, 2022 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: Farmers Market Roe v Wade This week’s dismaying Supreme Court decisions made me fear for the first time in my life for the future of our world, not our Democracy, always somewhat in doubt, but the spiritual, emotional and physical world we all live in. |
![]() |
Take Your Hands off the Wheel, June 29th, 2022 Categories: Politics Tagged: Capitol riots We must watch the ongoing hearings into what happened in Washington on January 6, 2021, not to hear more detail about Trumps' malfeasance—we already know plenty about that—but to hear about the acts of courage some of those around him displayed that day and in coming forward now to testify. |
![]() |
Happy Pride, June 26th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico, Politics Tagged: Roe v Wade LGBTQ Santa Fe Planned Parenthood I doubt if any other town in the U.S. could celebrate Gay Pride with such a plethora of business and government floats. And with an enormous crowd composed of all ages and all genders. |
![]() |
Montana Was Made for the Wild Man: Women and Bad Boys, June 22nd, 2022 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Bill Hearne Little Brother: A Memoir We need to feel a connection to the heroic, so often defined as inherently male. |
![]() |
Leaving, June 19th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Little Brother: A Memoir 20 Favorites of 2022 Santa Fe Carmichael's Bookstore Whether I'm leaving on a short trip like this one or a long trip like the one next month, I feel the same mixture of nostalgia and apprehension... |
![]() |
Rules of the Heart, June 12th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: relationships I’ve really never imagined that there could be rules of the heart, but yesterday morning a dear friend laid his rules out in no uncertain terms. |
![]() |
In Praise of Book Groups, June 8th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: One of the many blessings of my life is my book group. |
![]() |
Woman, Writing, June 5th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: Writing Natalie Goldberg 20 Favorites of 2022 Writing in public insists that we exist as thinkers and creators of our own reality. It is of enormous importance. |
![]() |
Memorials, June 1st, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: I dug up a pinch of the holy dirt kept in a hole in the ground in a side chapel with convenient trowels laid alongside. |
![]() |
Tiffany Blue, May 29th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: Are we resigned, patient, wise? Or do we all learn sooner or later that pressing our noses against plate glass windows is the closest we will ever get to the goodies? |
![]() |
These Young Men, May 26th, 2022 Categories: Women, Politics, Religion Tagged: We are deep into another recreation of a woman-hating culture when the gains we'd painfully achieved in the 1960's are overridden by darkness... |
![]() |
Graduation Day in Snow, Colorado Springs, Colorado, May 22nd, 2022 Categories: My Family, New Mexico Tagged: William Bingham Iovenko The great benefit of an education in the humanities, now becoming a rarity, is its introduction via the Greek and Elizabethan playwrights to what they called "The tears in things." |
![]() |
Where the Bee Sucks, May 18th, 2022 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: Shakespeare As a devoted reader of all of Shakespeare's poems, I've always been puzzled by the verb, "sucks" in this line from The Tempest. |
![]() |
Hope, May 15th, 2022 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Filson Historical Society Louisville This is the way we save our history. Otherwise much of what we know becomes irrelevant. |
![]() |
First We Burn, May 11th, 2022 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: Wildfires Los Alamos Little Brother: A Memoir The national news, which almost never recognizes that New Mexico is a state—after all we have only five Congressional delegates—has been pricked into awareness by our five fires, one of |
![]() |
Escaping the Labyrinth of Nostalgia, May 8th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: Little Brother: A Memoir 20 Favorites of 2022 Wildfires As the first copies of my memoir, Little Brother, begin to circulate, I’m struck by the way some friends have responded to the photograph of Jonathan on the cover. |
![]() |
Where Are the Men, May 4th, 2022 Categories: Politics Tagged: abortion Roe v Wade We really can't be expected by any sane human being to take ALL the responsibility for consequences that will burden and at times nearly destroy our lives. |
![]() |
Moscow Rehearsals, May 1st, 2022 Categories: Theater Tagged: Julia Miles The Women's Project The Women's Project Theater One of the serendipitous rewards of time spent in New York City is the rediscovery of long lost and forgotten connections. |
![]() |
Who Left the Prayerbook by the Road?, April 27th, 2022 Categories: Religion Tagged: Hiking Looking at it closely, I saw that it had been much used, the gilt on the edges of the pages half worn off, the pages themselves, thin as onion skin, dry and vulnerable. |
![]() |
Another Silent Spring, April 24th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Wildfires Los Alamos Adrienne Rich Would it have made a difference if a man had written it, a well-known scientist? I wondered that this morning as I walked through our parched and silent woods here |
![]() |
How Things Change, April 17th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: Harvard Harvard Club It’s a small example and yet, I think, a telling one: how women were admitted as members to the Harvard Club of New York City. |
![]() |
You Said It, April 13th, 2022 Categories: Religion Tagged: Easter Ukraine It was a surprise to find myself on Palm Sunday, at the end of a crowd of several hundred people, following a cross through midtown Manhattan with police cars barring traffic. |
![]() |
Doris Farewell, April 10th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: Rough Point 20 Favorites of 2022 Doris Duke The Silver Swan Thursday night I was privileged to present a conversation about my book and Doris Duke in one of the huge gilded rooms at Rough Point... |
![]() |
Doris Redux, April 6th, 2022 Categories: Writing, Theater Tagged: Doris Duke The Silver Swan I'm about to leave New York City in its grey rain for Newport and Rough Point, the big house on Ocean Avenue Doris inherited from her father and that seems to have been closely associated, for her, with her mother. |
![]() |
Do I Grieve, April 3rd, 2022 Categories: My Family Tagged: Do I think grief is catching, like some new variant of the pandemic? |
![]() |
Fireworm, March 27th, 2022 Categories: Politics Tagged: Ukraine Sometimes it seems to me that we are all suffering from another form of Fireworm called War, or "Imperial Infantilism," as one commentator called it. |
![]() |
Getting to YES, March 24th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: The Silver Swan Little Brother: A Memoir Taken by the Shawnee Out of the sour ground of NO spring many hopeful sprigs, especially the generous responses to so many of my posts from you. |
![]() |
Something We Can All Do…, March 20th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe It’s a small idea. A simple idea: One day a week we don’t drive—to let the earth breathe, as a friend of mine described it. |
![]() |
Margaret in the Wilderness, March 17th, 2022 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee Ukraine Doris Duke The Silver Swan Surrounded by disasters of every kind, we are seeing the great strengths of our extraordinary adaptability, valued and valuable as it has never been before. |
![]() |
Political Correctness: Carried Too Far?, March 13th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: New Mexico Feminism Margaret raises what has always been a complex issue: should men be included in celebrations of women? |
![]() |
The Handmade House, March 9th, 2022 Categories: Travel Tagged: California I imagine the success of the Beach House was largely due to the energy of these women: Grandma on the rooftop, her three daughters, and their many daughters and nieces who enjoyed the house for three generations. |
![]() |
Remembering Will: March 3, 1970 – April 2017, March 6th, 2022 Categories: My Family Tagged: Southwest Chief William Bingham Iovenko 20 Favorites of 2022 Riding Amtrak's Southwest Chief, the only train left that travels east and west across our country and down to New Orleans, I notice as we cross the desert in New Mexico the small forgotten places... |
![]() |
Give Us This Day, March 3rd, 2022 Categories: Politics Tagged: Ash Wednesday Virginia Woolf Austin Brown Now, as always, there is the question of our minor influence as women on public events, even now when our faces and voices seem to indicate our ascendancy. |
![]() |
Lamentations, February 27th, 2022 Categories: Religion Tagged: kunm Native America Calling 20 Favorites of 2022 Lent is about to begin. Let us all get on our knees, whatever faith or lack of faith we hold and say one of the prayers from the Ash Wednesday service... |
![]() |
The Cruelest Month, February 23rd, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: T.S. Eliot New Mexico spring It’s always fun to dispute with Mr. Eliot who used to reign supreme in English Departments all over this country. |
![]() |
The Right to Be Forgotten, February 20th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico Los Alamos Innocent till proven guilty? A sword with two edges. |
![]() |
NO, February 16th, 2022 Categories: Writing Tagged: Taken by the Shawnee For me as a writer, the NO that seems to set a limit to all my hopes comes in response to an idea, a manuscript—or, in this case, a proposal. |
![]() |
The Woman in the Mink Coat, February 13th, 2022 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Lillian Hellman play "That's quite a coat," I murmured as she slid past me into the next seat. |
![]() |
Daughters, February 10th, 2022 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Virginia Woolf 20 Favorites of 2022 Last weekend I wrote about sisters. Inevitably I am now writing about daughters. Both posts concern lives of privilege but are not limited by that definition. |
![]() |
Two Sisters, February 6th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Taos D.H. Lawrence How does it happen that here in (relatively) remote and small Santa Fe, New Mexico, I’ve come to know about two sisters from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? |
![]() |
How Wonderful Is That, January 30th, 2022 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: Little Brother: A Memoir 20 Favorites of 2022 Farmers Market In the midst of so much bad news, this astonishing performance of starlings, those little birds many of us have learned to hate, is a reminder of our ability to communicate and cooperate |
![]() |
My Father, January 26th, 2022 Categories: My Family Tagged: Louisville Willa Cather Barry Bingham Sr. Henrik Ibsen 20 Favorites of 2022 I never asked my father about his manicures. It didn't seem appropriate to raise such a frivolous topic with a dedicated newspaper publisher. |
![]() |
Roe, January 23rd, 2022 Categories: Politics Tagged: abortion Roe v Wade I'm finding it difficult to celebrate my 85th birthday, the anniversary of the decision half a century ago that legalized abortion, forbidding the states to outlaw abortion in all cases and asserting this freedom as a constitutional right. |
![]() |
That Voice, January 19th, 2022 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Martin Luther King Jr. Who is willing now to take these risks to try to preserve the future of the world? |
![]() |
Money, January 16th, 2022 Categories: Philanthropy Tagged: We are a long way from the feel and the look of coins and bills; we are being moved rapidly toward an economy which will operate only with various forms of credit. |
![]() |
Lipstick, January 12th, 2022 Categories: Women Tagged: The US economy has long been based on consumerism and it seems very likely to me that most of the consumers are us women. |
![]() |
Out of Darkness, January 9th, 2022 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Black Pip Virginia Woolf kunm 20 Favorites of 2022 I have learned in dark times to turn to a few trusted resources. |
![]() |
Oh Those Resolutions!, December 29th, 2021 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: New Year's holidays 21 Favorites of 2021 A dear friend of mine reinvented the ritual of New Year's Resolutions this year, writing a letter on paper trimmed with gold stars to send to his friends... |
![]() |
Mary’s Birthday, December 25th, 2021 Categories: My Family Tagged: Christmas Mary Caperton Bingham 21 Favorites of 2021 No, not that Mary, who was busy having a baby, but my mother, Mary Caperton Bingham. |
![]() |
Bone, December 22nd, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: kunm Native America Calling Yesterday morning on KUNM, the invaluable National Public Radio Station where five days a week I listen to "Native America Calling," the only program in the country to showcase the tribes, I heard about a business in Arizona that makes prosthetic devices—arms, hands, partial hands and legs. |
![]() |
bell, December 19th, 2021 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Kentucky Feminism I only met bell hooks once at a large feminist gathering—but as it happens when a powerful woman is in the room, her presence registered. |
![]() |
The Silver Swan Sails Again, December 15th, 2021 Categories: Writing Tagged: The Silver Swan Duke Farms Rough Point Shangri La 21 Favorites of 2021 Doris Duke Due to the generosity of a store here in Santa Fe called Travel Bug, I was able to give a reading from the biography a few days ago to a large and appreciative crowd. |
![]() |
Making Heroines, December 12th, 2021 Categories: Women Tagged: The Silver Swan Little Brother: A Memoir Where are our heroines? |
![]() |
A Page a Day, December 8th, 2021 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Kentucky 21 Favorites of 2021 Worth Bingham On a recent trip home to Kentucky, I came across a small worn black journal called "A Page A Day." |
![]() |
This Is the Hour of Lead, December 5th, 2021 Categories: My Family Tagged: Scott 21 Favorites of 2021 Emily Dicknson William Bingham Iovenko I think in fact there is no forgetting, but a different kind of remembering that goes on all the time in a deep, hidden layer... |
![]() |
We Will Never Learn, December 1st, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Debra Haaland kunm Native America Calling Native American Boarding Schools Finally, finally, the story of the Native American boarding schools in the U.S. has been sprung open by the discovery of the buried remains of more than a hundred children at a residential boarding school in Canada. |
![]() |
Little Brother Comes Home, November 23rd, 2021 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Little Brother: A Memoir 21 Favorites of 2021 Jonathan Worth Bingham Jonathan will be back in the place he loved best, and the only place he ever felt he really belonged. |
![]() |
Old Fire Dragaman and Women’s Anger, November 17th, 2021 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Feminism As long as guilt and fear hamper us, what weapons do we have to combat cruel and unfair treatment? |
![]() |
The Abandoned, November 7th, 2021 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: Camille Claudel 21 Favorites of 2021 Paris An indication of the “treatment” they were given is shown in Lundy’s sketches of the medicine bottles she found: mercury cyanide, mercury chloride and tincture of belladonna (deadly nightshade.) The sketches are burnt into paper with a soldering iron. |
![]() |
Tractor Art, October 31st, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico South Pass Ranch This broken fragment means more to me than the vaunted collections of art I’ve seen in many museums, here and all over the world—this humble evidence of respect for handiwork and the human need to embellish. |
![]() |
Margaret, October 27th, 2021 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee We have no heroes and we blindly search for them everywhere. Women heroines need not apply. |
![]() |
Lipstick, October 24th, 2021 Categories: Women Tagged: Wordsworth I often smile now to think of my vow and my doomed attempt to get my friends to copy me. But I also love and admire that earnest girl who knew, even then, that I was going to choose a different path. |
![]() |
O for a Muse of Fire, October 19th, 2021 Categories: Theater Tagged: Shakespeare Ordinary, daily speech has always been sloppy, but what is sliding away is the higher use of words as in the great plays, great literature, and great poetry. |
![]() |
Why I Believe, October 11th, 2021 Categories: Religion Tagged: Episcopal Church Jonathan Worth Bingham Little Brother: A Memoir William Bingham Iovenko 21 Favorites of 2021 I have no other way to accept—or begin to accept—the tragedies over four generations that have engulfed my birth family. |
![]() |
Flashing on the Sixties, October 3rd, 2021 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: Jonathan Worth Bingham Little Brother: A Memoir William Bingham Iovenko Lisa Law The Sixties I am not an unequivocal admirer of that period, those people, and all that they caused—or helped to cause—to happen, in the early 1960’s and continuing to this day. |
![]() |
Two Women: Margaret and Doris, September 24th, 2021 Categories: Writing, Women Tagged: Margaret Erskine Taken by the Shawnee 21 Favorites of 2021 Doris Duke The Silver Swan I've come to believe over the years that there is a core similarity that connects the lives of all women. I think it is our ability to adapt. |
![]() |
Choice, September 19th, 2021 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: abortion 21 Favorites of 2021 No one in her right mind is "pro-abortion." I know from personal experience what a difficult decision this is. |
![]() |
My Grandmother Is Turning in Her Grave, September 12th, 2021 Categories: My Family, Politics Tagged: United Daughters of the Confederacy 21 Favorites of 2021 The Lost Cause Helena Lefroy Caperton Richmond My beloved grandmother could never have imagined that the enormous statue towering over her hometown would be pulled down, carved up and crated off to an uncertain future as it was a week ago. |
![]() |
Bounty, September 8th, 2021 Categories: Writing Tagged: Santa Fe My Garden gardening The soft, slow ending of the summer here brings much needed rain, coolness, and the coming to fruition of many fruits and vegetables. |
![]() |
Black Canyon, September 1st, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Hiking One of the many blessings of my life is the trail system in Hyde Park which starts about ten miles north of my house. |
![]() |
The Mother of All Bombs, August 29th, 2021 Categories: Politics Tagged: I have trouble saying "we" dropped the bomb. But ... we must accept a degree of responsibility. |
![]() |
Sorrow-Acre, August 22nd, 2021 Categories: Travel Tagged: Isak Dinesen Denmark Henrik Ibsen We pay the price for our many forms of immaturity—but I prefer that to what seems to be the ironclad maturity of the well-cared-for Danes. |
![]() |
Her Pact With the Devil, August 18th, 2021 Categories: Writing, Travel Tagged: Isak Dinesen Denmark 21 Favorites of 2021 The habit of forming pacts to shape her chosen life began when Karen Blixen was standing on a granite boulder at Folehave with her younger brother Thomas, then fourteen. |
![]() |
No Phone No Gun, August 11th, 2021 Categories: Travel Tagged: 21 Favorites of 2021 The Danes are a practical people living within the limits of a limited world. |
![]() |
No water, August 8th, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Facebook BioLet My plight is not so dire as what will face all of us when our water really is gone. |
![]() |
The Judy, August 1st, 2021 Categories: Art Tagged: Judy Chicago Her life has been full of difficulties but she has made or forced her way through, never using excuses, always questioning why the art world, which has been so cruel to her until very recently, diminishes the importance of women's art. |
![]() |
Those Words Are Weapons, July 28th, 2021 Categories: Politics Tagged: Capitol riots A crucial question from a congressman: "Is this America?" |
![]() |
Guilty Until Proved Innocent…, July 25th, 2021 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Elizabeth Cady Stanton 21 Favorites of 2021 Does fearlessness on the part of girls and young women cancel judgement and common sense? |
![]() |
Colors of the World, July 14th, 2021 Categories: Politics, Writing Tagged: We are rounding the curve and coming into the homestretch—as we often do, both as individuals and as a culture—in the race toward what I'll call SUPERSENSITIVITY rather than its usual and somewhat discredited name, Political Correctness. |
![]() |
I Speak for Democracy, July 8th, 2021 Categories: Art Tagged: kunm I, along with thousands of other teenagers, did "speak for democracy" in a laboriously fashioned essay, presented on the radio, and winning me a prize—a black and white TV set my parents insisted that I return. |
![]() |
Murder in Mississippi, June 27th, 2021 Categories: Art, Travel Tagged: 21 Favorites of 2021 I know what to expect of Rockwell’s art, or I thought I did: homey sentimental depictions of an America that no longer exists and perhaps never did. |
![]() |
Staying Put, June 24th, 2021 Categories: Travel Tagged: Southwest Chief train Amtrak I still don’t want to go anywhere but if I go I want it to be on a train. |
![]() |
Voluntary Shared Abundance, June 13th, 2021 Categories: Philanthropy Tagged: As often the case with big gatherings (on Zoom or otherwise), there is often one phrase that stands out. |
![]() |
Tomorrow: The Vanguard, June 9th, 2021 Categories: Philanthropy Tagged: For all my friends who might be interested in attending the free online U.N. conference The Vanguard tomorrow, here is the final agenda. |
![]() |
Vegetables and Recovery, June 3rd, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: addiction For me, there's an irresistible connection between the baskets of glowing vegetables at our Saturday Farmers' Market and the hope expressed in this poster for recovery from addiction. |
![]() |
The Vanguard, May 30th, 2021 Categories: Philanthropy, Writing Tagged: The Lost Cause The Women's Project Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture Kentucky Foundation for Women I am looking forward to the rare opportunity that will be offered me, and I'm looking forward with even more interest to the fascinating variety of presentations that will make up the program. |
![]() |
The Way It Was, May 23rd, 2021 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Radcliffe Harvard Sylvia Plath Sexton We all want to forget our history, especially when it is shameful, and for this reason I am particularly grateful for a just-published biography of my peers. |
![]() |
Smashing the Canon, May 20th, 2021 Categories: Writing Tagged: 21 Favorites of 2021 We are still engaged—and will probably always be engaged—in smashing the canon. |
![]() |
Living in a World on Fire, May 16th, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Wildfires Driving down from Taos yesterday, I followed a dusty, beat-up pickup truck with an American flag painted on the tailgate. |
![]() |
Our Voices, May 12th, 2021 Categories: Women Tagged: Women Feminism I have to recognize that we have not made the progress in the arts that women have made in journalism for reasons of class and white privilege |
![]() |
How History Is, May 9th, 2021 Categories: Art Tagged: Santa Fe I was delighted to visit, yesterday morning, Nikesha Breeze’s astonishing show, “Four Sites of Return: Ritual, Remembrance, Reparation, Reclamation” at form & concept gallery. |
![]() |
Saving Wolf Pen Mill, May 5th, 2021 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: 21 Favorites of 2021 Louisville Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm Wake up, you well-off widows! We are all part of a world that is threatened by our individual decisions. |
![]() |
Huck and The Daughters, May 2nd, 2021 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: United Daughters of the Confederacy 21 Favorites of 2021 The Lost Cause Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, easily his masterpiece, was published eighteen years earlier and would have given the ladies palpitations if they had dared to read it. |
![]() |
May Stevens: A Life Well Lived, April 28th, 2021 Categories: Art Tagged: Feminism We met one summer in the 1980's when we were both artists in residence at the remarkable Blue Mountain Center, situated on 1600 acres of woods in the Adirondacks in New York State. |
![]() |
Those Soft Kentucky Voices, April 22nd, 2021 Categories: Writing, Kentucky Tagged: We stopped yesterday in the middle of my class on writing memoir to listen to the verdict in Minneapolis that will send the policeman who murdered George Floyd to jail on all three counts. |
![]() |
The Techno Chasm, April 18th, 2021 Categories: Politics Tagged: Bookstores We may not be able to stop this radical change that is ruining so many but that does not excuse us from doing whatever we can. |
![]() |
Father and Dame Ivy, April 14th, 2021 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Barry Bingham Sr. During a vacation trip to England years ago, I became aware, to my surprise, of my father's fascination with two British writers: Sylvia Townsend Warner and Ivy Compton-Burnett. |
![]() |
Goodbye and Hello, April 11th, 2021 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Louisville 21 Favorites of 2021 The degree of change that has transpired since the long overdue advent of Black Lives Matter and the murder of Breonna Taylor in Louisville last spring is summed up for me in a Community Forum essay by columnist Quintez Brown. |
![]() |
The Lament of the Long Haul Trucker, April 7th, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: I can't forget an eloquent letter in The Santa Fe New Mexican recently from a man who is invisible to most of us except when his monster eighteen-wheeler rushes past on the throughway. |
![]() |
Jump Start, April 1st, 2021 Categories: Writing Tagged: Tillie Olsen, for me, is a startlingly loud call to continue to work, no excuses allowed. |
![]() |
Shooters, March 28th, 2021 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: Robert Oppenheimer New Mexico Los Alamos Little Brother: A Memoir How often have those of us—and there are many—whose sharp intelligence and ambition have not provided an escape from unresolved psychological problems found a route to normalcy through intellectual achievement and acceptance? |
![]() |
Why Teach, March 25th, 2021 Categories: Writing Tagged: Writing writing workshops I want to persuade writers to use all five senses in their writing, instead of just the visual—and to sharpen visual descriptions with fresh, unexpected adjectives. |
![]() |
Doing the Laundry, March 21st, 2021 Categories: Women Tagged: I was converted a long time ago—one of the possibilities of privilege—to the belief that we women have more important things to do than the laundry. |
![]() |
Doris Duke: A Lifetime Search for Faith, March 17th, 2021 Categories: Religion, Writing Tagged: Doris Duke The Silver Swan On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 I presented a talk to The Library Committee of The Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, New Mexico entitled "Doris Duke: A Lifetime Search for Faith." |
![]() |
Christa McAuliffe Middle School, FL, March 14th, 2021 Categories: Writing Tagged: On February 4, I spoke to students at the Christa McAuliffe Middle School in Palm Beach County, Florida over Zoom at the request of Dr. Alexander Bellas, Grade 8 English Language Arts Teacher. |
![]() |
When We Work Together, March 7th, 2021 Categories: Politics Tagged: New Mexico Debra Haaland Probably, these two women don't know each other but they share certain defining characteristics: age, wisdom, and a recognition that the earth is our mother. |
![]() |
Heterodoxy, March 3rd, 2021 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Women Writing Women's Lives Yesterday I was mesmerized by two presentations at our Women Writing Women's Lives Zoom meeting. |
![]() |
Barbie Forever, February 28th, 2021 Categories: Women Tagged: Mothers She's back in force. |
![]() |
Hacked, February 24th, 2021 Categories: Theater Tagged: Amazon I just received an email which appeared to be from Amazon—logo, etc.—advising me of a purchase of a laptop by a man named Craig something in Delaware and asking me to call. |
![]() |
Forgiveness, February 21st, 2021 Categories: Writing Tagged: Writing writing workshops One of the problems with memoir writers, as I see it, is that we aim too low. |
![]() |
Vindication, February 17th, 2021 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: 21 Favorites of 2021 Doris Duke The Silver Swan The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's grant of 1.6 million dollars to pay for the digitalization of thousands of tape-recorded oral histories of indigenous people has a special meaning for me. |
![]() |
Mothers Are Hurting, February 14th, 2021 Categories: Women Tagged: The New York Times Feminism Mothers The problems have always been with us, but they were easier to ignore when the economy boomed. |
![]() |
Red-Headed Man, February 10th, 2021 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico I am proud of the Red-Headed Man. |
![]() |
Groundhog Pâté, February 7th, 2021 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Kentucky Foundation for Women Hopscotch House 21 Favorites of 2021 I might have forgotten Groundhog Day entirely except for a box that’s just arrived from my dear friend, Wren Smith, in Kentucky. |
![]() |
Fabulous Women, February 3rd, 2021 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: The Blue Box Here is the proof, internationally as well as nationally: women do more than survive; we lead. |
![]() |
My Dinner Guest, January 31st, 2021 Categories: Art, Women Tagged: My dinner guest sits quietly as the sun sinks in the west behind her, but her quietness is temporary. |
![]() |
The Blessing of Snow, January 27th, 2021 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Black Pip For anyone who lives where early January brings the first major snowfall, there is a feeling that everything is right with the world. |
![]() |
Pink Seesaws and My Birthday, January 24th, 2021 Categories: My Family, Art Tagged: I just passed a most delightful birthday with my Santa Fe family, outdoors, in 45 degrees, with coats and coconut cake baked by my eldest granddaughter. |
![]() |
We Must Listen, January 20th, 2021 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Capitol riots We are in the time now of the spouting of the dragon's teeth but the soil was prepared for them decades ago. |
![]() |
Reclaiming Our Flag, January 13th, 2021 Categories: My Family Tagged: William Bingham Iovenko It is still my flag, and ours. |
![]() |
We’ll Just Pretend It Never Happened, January 10th, 2021 Categories: Politics Tagged: Joe Biden Kamala Harris Capitol riots Sooner than we might expect, we will begin to blot out, explain away or even deny the importance of what happened in Washington, D.C. |
![]() |
My Mother’s 116th Birthday: December 24, 2020, January 3rd, 2021 Categories: My Family Tagged: Mary Clifford Caperton It has taken me so long, decades after her death, to realize what a blessed and blessing spirit my mother, Mary Caperton Bingham, was. |
![]() |
Two More Seconds of Daylight, December 30th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe My Garden Where tribes were destroyed or driven out, many of us relative newcomers are not aware of the history that confronts us here in the Southwest every day. |
![]() |
Merry Solitude, December 25th, 2020 Categories: Women Tagged: Sarabande Books Christmas gratitude Ozlem Ezer 20 Favorites of 2020 As I prepare to enjoy Christmas in blissful solitude, I'm particularly grateful for having learned during the past ten years how to love myself alone. |
![]() |
Fifteen Hours of Darkness: The Solstice, December 22nd, 2020 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: For me this solstice has special meaning, perhaps because last night at sundown I was hoping to see the close conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, so close they are being called "The Christmas Star." |
![]() |
A Bright Light, December 20th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico, Politics Tagged: Debra Haaland 20 Favorites of 2020 This week, president-elect Joe Biden’s appointment of Laguna pueblo native, Debra Haaland, as Secretary of the Interior, gives proof positive of change. |
![]() |
The Paper Carrier’s Prayer, December 17th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Santa Fe New Mexican gratitude Every year at about this time, Yolanda leaves a typed note with the newspaper. |
![]() |
Taos Pueblo and the Battle for Blue Lake, December 13th, 2020 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: Blue Lake Debra Haaland Cooperation to restore rights, to serve justice, and to recognize the sacred. That's what I hope for when our new administration takes over in January. |
![]() |
The Way to Do It, December 9th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: coronavirus Santa Fe What has happened since to weaken our moral fiber and make some of us unwilling to sacrifice? |
![]() |
Beware, December 6th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Helena Lefroy Caperton Jonathan Worth Bingham Little Brother: A Memoir Can we be forgiven for signing these disreputable contracts, which often do not stipulate the amount of money we are expected to contribute to the publishing of our books until after we've signed? |
![]() |
Hidden Heroines, December 1st, 2020 Categories: Women Tagged: The dramatic figure of Richard Oakes obscures two Native women who were crucial to the eighteen-month occupation of Alcatraz. |
![]() |
Let Us Instead Consider, November 25th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Natalie Goldberg I've never been enthusiastic about writing prompts, but these were of a higher imaginative quality than anything I've encountered before. |
![]() |
White Privilege, November 22nd, 2020 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Mary Caperton Bingham Jonathan Worth Bingham Little Brother: A Memoir As I begin to re-read piles of research, looking for details I may have missed and will want to include in this final revision of Little Brother, I find myself face to face with this issue. |
![]() |
An Index of First Lines, November 15th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Poetry We all need comfort, especially now with the pandemic raging across the nation. I was reminded of my all-time comfort sources: an open log fire, a line of poetry, and a beautiful overblown pink rose. |
![]() |
Little Brother, November 11th, 2020 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: Jonathan Worth Bingham Little Brother: A Memoir 20 Favorites of 2020 For the past four years, I've been chipping away at this complicated and difficult subject... |
![]() |
A President Who Knows Poetry, November 8th, 2020 Categories: Politics Tagged: Poems Poetry 20 Favorites of 2020 Poetry is essential in my view, the only art form complex enough to deal with the contradictions of human nature. |
![]() |
A Seat at the Table, November 4th, 2020 Categories: Politics Tagged: Santa Fe Donald Trump Regardless of who wins this election, we as a people need to think about the results of the disruption of the past year. |
![]() |
The Meaning of Art, October 28th, 2020 Categories: Art Tagged: Santa Fe A group of our local artists on their own initiative, without official permission or sponsorship, built an altar in the Railyard Park. |
![]() |
Why Do Women Have to Be Nice?, October 25th, 2020 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Georgia O'Keeffe World War Two O'Keeffe's assertion of ownership of a mountain is outrageous and refreshingly so, in itself affirming that she was not a "nice woman." |
![]() |
At Last, October 21st, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Radical change is never achieved slowly and quietly. This is a conservative country, by and large, and we have to be shaken out of our complacency for anything notable to happen. |
![]() |
A Dream Deferred, October 18th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Apache Mesa 20 Favorites of 2020 New Mexico I was unable to move through my bitter disappointment that my original dream, dependent on a man, had collapsed. |
![]() |
My Bear, October 14th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico She's not my bear, she's certainly not my friend, but I am very happy to share my porch with her. |
![]() |
Nevertheless She Persisted: 30 Years of Women Writing Women’s Lives, October 11th, 2020 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: biography Women Writing Women's Lives Feminism Elizabeth Cady Stanton The conference reminded me that we women offer each other extraordinary support and encouragement in all walks of life, essential to our achievement and even to our survival. |
![]() |
Sallie Bingham Reads, October 7th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Treason: A Sallie Bingham Reader The Silver Swan Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture A wise interviewer asked me yesterday what I hoped to achieve through the presentation of my two current books... |
![]() |
Loving the Bad Boy, October 4th, 2020 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump How often have we witnessed in our own behavior, in others' or in literature, what seems to be women's archetypal empathy for the bad boy? |
![]() |
Gold, September 30th, 2020 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico Donald Trump Hiking At this time of year and on till the end of October, the hills around Santa Fe are heavy with gold hunters, carloads of people who want to look at the gold leaves on the Aspens. |
![]() |
Where Are the Religious Leaders, September 27th, 2020 Categories: Politics, Religion Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2020 I may have missed their presence at the demonstrations that have been happening all over the country, most recently in Louisville, Kentucky, but I doubt it. |
![]() |
Starting Something, September 23rd, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: New York City The New York Review of Books I attended some of those early meetings, since my then-husband was one of the founding group, but I don't remember venturing an opinion. In those days, the opinions of young women weren't usually regarded. |
![]() |
Intemperate, September 20th, 2020 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: San Juan Pueblo Blue Lake Mabel Dodge Luhan House Mabel Dodge Luhan We are riven, today, not only by righteous concerns for justice on all levels but by the need to express those concerns in very loud voices |
![]() |
Rage, September 17th, 2020 Categories: My Family, Writing Tagged: racism Whether it's black rage or white rage—justified or not—rage makes me uncomfortable. |
![]() |
There Was an Old Woman Tossed up in a Basket, September 13th, 2020 Categories: My Family, Politics Tagged: Lizzie Baker Cecil Beaton What we are all obliged to do now: to join in sweeping the cobwebs. There is a little time and a little space, provided by the pandemic, for such a sweeping... |
![]() |
The Best of the Best: Small Town Newspapers, September 9th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Las Vegas Optic This past week brought about the demise of the Los Alamos Monitor here in New Mexico, done away with by its owner Landmark, with the usual excuses about declining advertising. |
![]() |
Train Me, September 6th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Black Pip Yesterday morning Pip and I started on a new adventure: our first obedience class. |
![]() |
Claudio, September 2nd, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe I saw Claudio the other day, waiting for his order of barbecued ribs at the van that sits these days of the pandemic in a parking lot... |
![]() |
What’s Good About It, August 30th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: coronavirus James Salter As we head into the sixth—or is it the seventh month?—of the pandemic, I'm reflecting on what sweet juice can be extracted from these sour grapes. |
![]() |
Smoke, August 26th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Wildfires climate change It happens every summer during these years of drought, and we should be thankful it didn't happen until last week... |
![]() |
Housedress, August 23rd, 2020 Categories: Women Tagged: Women The housedress and its definition mark a shift in what we expect of women in the midst of this pandemic. |
![]() |
Brass Belles: The Missouri Ladies Marching Band, August 19th, 2020 Categories: Women Tagged: Suffrage Susan B. Anthony Gertrude Stein As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, I am remembering the role that music, as well as words, played in this extraordinary triumph. |
![]() |
Privilege and the Privy, August 16th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Henrietta Bingham BioLet If there is any excuse for privilege—and I don't think there's any hope of eliminating it in the near or long future—it's that inheritors have an obligation to preserve land. |
![]() |
Loving Indians, August 12th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico One of the saddest effects of COVID for me is the closing of our neighboring eighteen northern pueblos, especially as we are in the summer season of harvest dances. |
![]() |
Hats, August 9th, 2020 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico Women's International Study Center Hats The Peruvian hat makers shown in this film made by Erica Nguyen, a fellow at the Women's International Study Center here in Santa Fe, are part of an ancient tradition. |
![]() |
Down Town, August 5th, 2020 Categories: Art Tagged: During the early years of the last century, American girls were shipped to England to find husbands lured by their family dollars... Winston Churchill's mother was one of these so-called "Dollar Princesses." |
![]() |
Wolf Pen and the World, August 2nd, 2020 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Kentucky Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm 20 Favorites of 2020 We never escape our past or our responsibility for our past, as we never escape the future we have agreed to create. |
![]() |
Starting Again, July 29th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: James Salter John Cheever The rest of us have to find a way to write bold and glittering and daring fiction without their form of fairy gold. |
![]() |
Summer Evening, July 26th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico 20 Favorites of 2020 After supper on these warm evenings in Santa Fe, my dog Pip usually insists on a walk. |
![]() |
And Now, Margaret Sanger, July 22nd, 2020 Categories: Women, Philanthropy Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2020 Margaret Sanger Doris Duke The Silver Swan Yesterday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed the name of Margaret Sanger, "founder of the organization," from its Manhattan clinic because of her "harmful connection to the eugenics movement." |
![]() |
Bear, July 18th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico 20 Favorites of 2020 A few years ago when I built my studio on the edge of the Santa Fe Watershed in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, I was visited by two bears. |
![]() |
Puttin’ On the Ritz, July 15th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: dancing coronavirus That's what we all need right here (wherever here is) and right now. |
![]() |
L’esprit de L’escalier, July 12th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: coronavirus Santa Fe Black Pip We took our usual shortcut through an open field where an old house used to stand... |
![]() |
What We Can’t Say Now, July 8th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Doris Duke Milk of Paradise Julia Miles The Silver Swan Sarah Gorham Treason: A Sallie Bingham Reader 20 Favorites of 2020 We need to define, and vigorously defend, the line between art and politics. |
![]() |
I Can’t Teach You to Write, July 5th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: writing workshops Taos SOMOS What I can inspire, if not teach, is the appetite for putting words down on the page that has been my theme and my salvation since I was a child. |
![]() |
Let’s Dance, July 1st, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: dancing 20 Favorites of 2020 Why dance now, when we are all wrapped to a greater or lesser degree in gloom, even despair, with worse times ahead? |
![]() |
Eat the Rich, June 28th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico Where are we to turn for sustenance, the well-off as well as the less comfortable? |
![]() |
Paranoia or Self-Pity, June 24th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: coronavirus New Mexico We tend to be rather forgiving of ourselves and others when we describe the fears we are experiencing as "paranoid"—whether they are or not. The same forgiveness is not granted to those of us who say we are "full of self-pity." |
![]() |
Searching for Community, June 21st, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm coronavirus There has to be some kind of work, it seems to me, to bind a group together. Socializing and shopping together are not enough. |
![]() |
Juan de Oñate—Brutal Conquistador, June 17th, 2020 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: As we are seeing all over the country, protests against police brutality stir protests against other forms of brutality—they are all the same, and recognizing this energizes all of us organizing for radical change. |
![]() |
Where Have All the Flowers Gone Two, June 14th, 2020 Categories: Politics Tagged: The Sixties Will this younger generation find those flowers? I don’t know, but at least there’s a chance that they may try. |
![]() |
The Limits of Loving, June 10th, 2020 Categories: Politics Tagged: Equality How much of what is wrong with our world today could be fixed by an outpouring of love? |
![]() |
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, June 7th, 2020 Categories: Politics Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2020 The Sixties What destroyed the hopes so many of us had in the sixties and seventies, when the deep-rooted racism in U.S. culture seemed to have been... well, not uprooted, but at least disturbed? |
![]() |
Tear ‘Em Down, Slats and All, June 3rd, 2020 Categories: Politics Tagged: We won't change anything without violence and destruction. Good intentions have done all they can do. |
![]() |
Change of Pace: My Master’s Horse, May 27th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Short Stories I'm going to treat you—and it will be a treat—to bits and pieces of what I really want to write. |
![]() |
How Libels Take Hold, May 24th, 2020 Categories: My Family, Women Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2020 Lady Mary Wortley Montague Hearsay, sometimes passed down for three hundred years, sticks—especially if it is negative, and especially if it adheres to a woman. |
![]() |
Power Corrupts, May 20th, 2020 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Feminism Are women somehow exempt from the deleterious influence of power? We have so seldom exercised visible power in the past that the question hasn't been asked. |
![]() |
How Creative We Are!, May 17th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe climate change coronavirus Amazing to see the way friends and strangers here in Santa Fe do more than "adapt" to the virus—they make hay out of it. |
![]() |
Clearing Out, May 10th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: The Silver Swan As I put my files, copies of the originals at Duke, into boxes for the shredder, I glance at a few that came as such pleasant surprises when I first found them eight or nine years ago. |
![]() |
The Female Economy, May 6th, 2020 Categories: Women Tagged: Women It is important for the 9% of U.S. women who belong to what the Harvard study calls Elite/Independent to step up to leadership roles. |
![]() |
A Queen Exiled at Home, May 3rd, 2020 Categories: Women Tagged: Doris Duke Hawaii Shangri La If we treat ourselves as the queens we are, the example of Liliʻuokalani may inspire us. |
![]() |
Heroes in Breeches, April 29th, 2020 Categories: Kentucky Tagged: Frontier Nursing University I didn't think the horseback-riding British midwives I worked for years ago in the Kentucky mountains were heroes. |
![]() |
Treason on Stage, April 26th, 2020 Categories: Theater, Writing Tagged: Off Ezra Pound theatre It was Ezra Pound's personal story of committing treason against the U.S. during World War Two and his even longer-lasting treason against the three women who loved him that drove me to writing this play. |
![]() |
Being Needed Doesn’t Mean Being Well Paid, April 22nd, 2020 Categories: Women Tagged: Women Feminism 20 Favorites of 2020 I was raised by one of the millions of women who then as well as now fill the most essential U.S. jobs. |
![]() |
Next Comes, April 19th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Sarabande Books Treason: A Sallie Bingham Reader 20 Favorites of 2020 I like to write about risk... and risk, by its very nature, seems best suited to shorter forms. |
![]() |
The Delights of Research, April 12th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Doris Duke Rubenstein Library The Silver Swan 20 Favorites of 2020 There is nothing like opening a file box, with some unknown's penciled label at the top, and diving into an absolutely unpredictable collection of letters, notes, interviews—anything Doris Duke, in my case, decided to save. |
![]() |
“The Swan” Launches!, April 7th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: The Silver Swan 20 Favorites of 2020 I am so grateful to all my readers and potential readers and I look forward to being in touch with each and every one of you. |
![]() |
Here Comes the Swan, April 5th, 2020 Categories: Theater Tagged: Julia Miles The Women's Project The Women's Project Theater Instead of Swan talk, I’m attaching an announcement about the recent death of my dear friend and mentor, Julia Miles, founder of The Women’s Project and Productions in New York City in the 1980’s. |
![]() |
Zoom the Miracle and a Few Others, April 1st, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: I've always been comfortable with what I think is my healthy dose of vanity. Don't we all need it to enjoy our blessings? |
![]() |
The Good News, March 29th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Hiking We're learning—in small towns, in countries, in continents—the lessons we desperately need if we are going to survive... not only this crisis, but the far greater looming crisis of global climate disruption. |
![]() |
That Sweet Little Breeze, March 25th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: For all of us who have bad moments in the dark of night, try opening a bedroom window... |
![]() |
Brace Up, March 22nd, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: World War Two As we advance into—and, I hope, through—various stages of panic and hysteria because of the virus, I am reminded of what the British went through during the German Blitz in World War Two. |
![]() |
In A Dark Time, March 15th, 2020 Categories: Women, Kentucky Tagged: Poetry Kentucky Foundation for Women Feminism How ironic and, yet, how strangely fitting, that this flying virus arrives at the middle of Women's History month and just before the April 7 publication of The Silver Swan... |
![]() |
Doris Duke is Born, March 8th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2020 Doris Duke The Silver Swan Cecil Beaton What do I hope my biography will accomplish? Nothing less than a complete reconsideration of Doris Duke. |
![]() |
Part Time Dancer, March 1st, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: dancing I'm so carried away when I dance that I sing along with the music and hardly know or care where I'm putting my flying feet. |
![]() |
The Wild West, February 23rd, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Taos For Taos, a small town in the Rocky Mountains near Santa Fe, another snow means first of all figuring how to move around... but there are other stories. |
![]() |
What Was Cut, February 16th, 2020 Categories: Writing Tagged: Doris Duke Duke University The Silver Swan I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due. |
![]() |
Votes for Women, February 9th, 2020 Categories: Women, Politics, New Mexico Tagged: Feminism Mabel Dodge Luhan Suffrage In the middle of all the horrors in the U.S. Capitol, we need to remember that much more significant events are happening. |
![]() |
It Takes a Village.., January 26th, 2020 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico Since I've never lived in a village, this statement, made by Hilary Clinton a while ago, never had much meaning for me until a now. |
![]() |
Firebrand in the Trojan Horse Part Two, January 19th, 2020 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Women's International Study Center Ozlem Ezer Sometimes the Trojan Horse is actually a country or some part of a country in the grip of intolerance. |
![]() |
Firebrand in the Trojan Horse and the Half Step Strategy, January 12th, 2020 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2020 I've had the singular good fortune to meet this past week a most remarkable young woman, Mara Zepeda. |
![]() |
New Mexican Women Claimed the Right to Vote Almost One Hundred Years Ago, January 5th, 2020 Categories: Women Tagged: Suffrage Susan B. Anthony Elizabeth Cady Stanton We are at a curious moment today, in terms of suffrage and of women's rights generally. |
![]() |
Dancing for the New Year, January 1st, 2020 Categories: My Family, New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe dancing William Bingham Iovenko New Year's I'll be dancing in the New Year—out with the old, in with the new, and hope springing eternal. |
![]() |
The Indignities of Age, December 30th, 2019 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: I think I'd rather fall down in the street, which would be easy to do today in snowy, icy Santa Fe—at its most beautiful, and, like everything beautiful, somewhat treacherous. |
![]() |
Christmas Eve in Santa Fe, December 24th, 2019 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Christmas The ritual of planting candles to light the way to church for midnight mass on Christmas Eve was brought first to Mexico by the conquistadores. |
![]() |
Meritocrazy, December 22nd, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: Now that we have it all, what will we do with it? |
![]() |
Exquisite Aloneness, December 1st, 2019 Categories: Women, Travel Tagged: California Single Blessedness 20 Favorites of 2019 There is an avidity, even an arrogance, and a superb energy I sometimes detect in those who live alone... |
![]() |
Maligned Because She Is Different, November 29th, 2019 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2019 The public shaming of Hill is yet another example of the hypocrisy of our culture, which pretends to respect or even worship difference, but is deeply and actively hostile to it. |
![]() |
Pigtail on Fire, November 24th, 2019 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump 20 Favorites of 2019 Dr. Hill... seemed to me, uniquely as a woman, to represent a fearless insistence on doing the right thing. |
![]() |
Rich Kids, November 17th, 2019 Categories: Philanthropy Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2019 From early childhood, the children of the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens receive the education, the grooming, the allowances, loans and preferential treatment that make the Dream (however it is defined) possible. |
![]() |
Dead Girls, November 10th, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2019 Anne Cooper Dobbins Except for so-called celebrities, or criminals, we are all forgotten within few years of our deaths. |
![]() |
Some Remarkable Women, November 3rd, 2019 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: Judy Chicago Anne-Marie McDermott Linda Stojak Agnes Pelton Dorothy Brett 20 Favorites of 2019 I give you several women who have been seen as remarkable; they stand for a multitude of others who through timing, luck or geography are never given the accolades they deserve. |
![]() |
Bad Girls, October 27th, 2019 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Edna O'Brien 20 Favorites of 2019 Erica Jong Rosemary Daniell Sylvia Plath Joan Didion Kate Braverman The death of the writer Kate Braverman here in Santa Fe a few days ago led me to think about the accomplishments, and the legacy, of other Bad Girls. |
![]() |
Women Under Fire, October 20th, 2019 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: How often over the centuries women have banded together all over the world to stop invasion, conquest and bloodshed. |
![]() |
Rich Kids, October 13th, 2019 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: children 20 Favorites of 2019 New Mexico has been a blessing for me, which may explain (but not excuse) the fact that I had very little idea of the dire condition of many of our children. |
![]() |
“I just couldn’t bring myself…”, October 6th, 2019 Categories: Politics Tagged: Donald Trump 20 Favorites of 2019 It's a badge of honor, as well as proof of membership in a certain group, bound together by familiarity and a shared ethic. |
![]() |
The Third Fire, September 29th, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: Activists like me who have spent decades working in various fields for social justices are, I think, right to assume that this new young militarism is drawing on our work of many decades. |
![]() |
Spring Chickens, September 24th, 2019 Categories: Politics Tagged: Santa Fe They are so beautiful, the young people—from press photos, largely young women—who marched through the streets of our cities and towns Saturday demanding crisis responses to climate change. |
![]() |
Liberation, September 15th, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: Andrea Dworkin Mary Daly Phyllis Chesler Adrienne Rich It's hard now to believe the extraordinary sense of liberation I as well as many other women felt during the early 1970s |
![]() |
Dogs of Santa Fe, September 11th, 2019 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Black Pip Hiking We love dogs, we spoil dogs, sometimes we give dogs the love we can no longer afford to give human beings, after so many losses and disappointments. |
![]() |
Changing My Mind, September 8th, 2019 Categories: Writing, New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico Mabel Dodge Luhan D.H. Lawrence Seldom has a book caused me to change my mind... but D.H. Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia changed me. |
![]() |
Labor Day in These United States, September 3rd, 2019 Categories: Politics Tagged: Labor Day When will we avid consumers quit going to Walmarts? Are lower prices really a defensible excuse? |
![]() |
Ode to Cerrillos, September 1st, 2019 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: New Mexico Bill Hearne Music How blessed I am to leave near a little spot in the desert that deserves, and is given, its very own ode. |
![]() |
Dry vs. Wet: Switzerland vs. Italy, August 25th, 2019 Categories: Travel Tagged: Italy Generalizations about countries are always questionable... yet as I reflect on my recent tour, the contrast between them seems to boil down to these qualities. |
![]() |
I Chose to Climb, August 16th, 2019 Categories: Travel Tagged: The heroic in some form is essential to our souls. |
![]() |
Reading Toni Morrison in China, August 11th, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: The New York Times Morrison’s raw courage in confronting and describing the effects of incest, racism, and the tragedy of women forced into its confines will be with me always. |
![]() |
Sleeping with Strangers, August 7th, 2019 Categories: Travel Tagged: Women should not wear veils. A religion that insists on that is as culpable as a man who insists on it. |
![]() |
A Kiss Is Just a Kiss, August 4th, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: Abuse is screwed into the frame of the patriarchy. Top males so often exert their power over people they perceive to be weaker. Once, it was slaves. |
![]() |
Spanish Market and the Triumph of Craft, July 31st, 2019 Categories: New Mexico, Art Tagged: Santa Fe Spanish Market These staring female saints, these progressing pilgrims, are as far as can be imagined from the images in European churches—or even in the "white" churches of the northeast. |
![]() |
Recording Two Women’s Friendship, July 24th, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: The Blue Box Mary Caperton Bingham What did these two stout scrapbooks mean to my mother? |
![]() |
How Do We Go on Living?, July 17th, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: New Mexico When I saw the Century Plant blooming in my dooryard garden yesterday morning, I remembered the letter Sido wrote to her son-in-law, Colette's husband, turning down his invitation to come for a visit. |
![]() |
Writing History, July 7th, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: Feminism Taken by the Shawnee 20 Favorites of 2019 There are so many hidden stories that we as writers and readers need to write and to read—and to demand that they be written by women. |
![]() |
Drowned in the Rio Grande, June 30th, 2019 Categories: Politics Tagged: immigration The history of our shared responsibility, as U.S. citizens, for the deaths at our border is also our responsibility for our government's decades-long covert attacks on the democratically-elected leaders in those countries. |
![]() |
Flamenco: The I I Do Not Wish to Lose, June 23rd, 2019 Categories: New Mexico, Theater Tagged: dancing The whole tragic history of Spain seemed contained in this music and these movements. |
![]() |
Judy Chicago: The Master in Action, June 16th, 2019 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: Harwood Museum of Art Judy Chicago Elemental, terrifying, and beautifully rendered—often in tender pastels—these images of women in the throes of labor and birth speak to the power we, as a gender, are often afraid to claim. |
![]() |
Children in Church, June 6th, 2019 Categories: Writing, Religion Tagged: Episcopal Church They made no noise, having been warned beforehand, and perhaps silenced by the the powerful male voices of the priests and the bellowing of the organ. But they moved. Oh, how they moved... |
![]() |
Legacy of Harm, June 2nd, 2019 Categories: Philanthropy, Writing Tagged: James Buchanan Duke 20 Favorites of 2019 Doris Duke Doris Duke must at least have wondered if her generosity, in all its forms, could ever compensate for the destructive effects of nicotine addiction. |
![]() |
What Is Lear, May 30th, 2019 Categories: Theater Tagged: I wonder if this is where we are going, toward a future where gender and even appearances are the last rather than the first details we notice and judge in friends and strangers. |
![]() |
At Last, May 26th, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: Doris Duke The Silver Swan 20 Favorites of 2019 In Manhattan last week, I was finally able to assure myself that The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke, will be published next spring. |
![]() |
Unbearable Truth, May 19th, 2019 Categories: Theater Tagged: Plays New York City When I came out of the Roundabout Theatre production of Arthur Miller's play, All My Sons, I immediately faced an unbearable truth. |
![]() |
And It Does Go On, May 16th, 2019 Categories: Art, My Family Tagged: William Bingham Iovenko Ellsworth Gallery I am devoutly grateful for the lives of Will's two older brothers who have mourned him with me and yet managed to go on. |
![]() |
Who Was Magnolia?, May 5th, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: Short Stories Writing A short course in how a short story might be made. |
![]() |
The Secret Bunker, April 27th, 2019 Categories: My Family Tagged: Sallie W. Montague Sallie Montague Lefroy The Lost Cause A big resort in the mountains of West Virginia, called The Greenbrier, figured often in my great-grandmother Sallie's tales of her girlhood in Richmond. |
![]() |
The Double Cottonwood, April 21st, 2019 Categories: Women, Writing, New Mexico Tagged: writers Georgia O'Keeffe SOMOS I find myself involved in three groups to my great pleasure and satisfaction, this after many decades avoiding groups as a waste of time. |
![]() |
She Is Burning, April 17th, 2019 Categories: Travel Tagged: Paris Notre Dame has always seemed to me a dark, brooding and august female presence presiding over Paris. |
![]() |
Faith, April 13th, 2019 Categories: New Mexico, Religion Tagged: Are we entering a time of converging faiths, offering hope to some, or only another giant step in the widespread agnosticism that seems at times a sure forerunner of despair? |
![]() |
Einstein with the Hopis, April 11th, 2019 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Harvey Houses Mary Colter Mileva... may have contributed to her husband's discoveries; in letters he alludes to them as "ours" although the question is unanswerable for lack of evidence. |
![]() |
When a Great Woman Dies, April 7th, 2019 Categories: Women, Kentucky, Art Tagged: Kentucky Foundation for Women Ann Stewart Anderson 20 Favorites of 2019 When a great woman dies, we need to think about her again and again. |
![]() |
Letting Go of Apache Mesa Ranch, April 2nd, 2019 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Apache Mesa 20 Favorites of 2019 Continuing to own an unproductive piece of land at the end of a terrible road broke through several layers of my dreams—or where they delusions? |
![]() |
The End Is the Beginning, March 31st, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: Women's History Month ends today—one month out of the twelve to represent more than half of the world's people—with the hope and the promise that we are just beginning. |
![]() |
Burning the Forest, March 24th, 2019 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Wildfires What is it in men that delights in lighting fires? |
![]() |
Nearly Lost, March 19th, 2019 Categories: Women, New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Music 20 Favorites of 2019 The first issue, of course, is to level the playing field so that women have the same opportunities for education and performance as men. |
![]() |
Sometimes It Takes a While, March 16th, 2019 Categories: Kentucky, Art Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2019 Several decades ago, I became aware of the work and life of Enid Yandell, a Kentucky-born, Paris educated sculptor whose statues I used to see at various ceremonial points in |
![]() |
Amazon, March 10th, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: A bookstore offers companionship, conversation, perhaps even a sense of community which nothing arriving by mail can ever hope to deliver. |
![]() |
Two Spirits, March 7th, 2019 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2019 LGBTQ Two Spirits have always walked among us, unrecognized and, at least in the past, often reviled. |
![]() |
W.O.W., March 3rd, 2019 Categories: Kentucky, Art Tagged: Judy Chicago Ann Stewart Anderson 20 Favorites of 2019 I immediately recognized the originality and daring of a kindred spirit. |
![]() |
18 Favorites of 2018, February 26th, 2019 Categories: Women, My Family, Politics, Writing, New Mexico, Kentucky, Travel, Religion Tagged: I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes. |
![]() |
Don’t Let Sex Distract You from the Revolution, February 21st, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: New York City Feminism The discussions about gender were more congenial to me than the groups that confronted the problems heterosexual relations posed for women committed to some form of the revolution. |
![]() |
Teaching Girls, February 15th, 2019 Categories: Women, Kentucky Tagged: Louisville Louisville Collegiate School A small school in a southern city where girls were usually curbed physically or mentally, the Louisville Collegiate School for Girls and its teachers did not deal in... limits. My years there started me on my way as a writer. |
![]() |
Galentine’s Day and Our Great Leaders, February 14th, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: Valentine's Day Feminism Susan B. Anthony Elizabeth Cady Stanton My only problem with this pleasantly mad-cap idea is that it seems to focus on friendships between ladies... |
![]() |
Caught in the Act, February 10th, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: Doris Duke One of the most notable differences between women and men in public life is we seem to know better how to avoid scandal. |
![]() |
Cuba… What Can I Say? (2), February 3rd, 2019 Categories: Travel Tagged: I have more questions, most of them unanswered, which adds a piquancy to the beautiful aquamarine seas through which we are traveling off the south coast of Cuba. |
![]() |
Cuba… What Can I Say?, February 1st, 2019 Categories: Travel Tagged: I feel an affinity with what I can see of Cuban life today and what I know this island had gone through. |
![]() |
Kentucky Boys, January 29th, 2019 Categories: Politics, Kentucky Tagged: It was only words. But words have gotten us where we are now. |
![]() |
Making Money off Poison, January 24th, 2019 Categories: Philanthropy Tagged: Judy Chicago Brooklyn Museum of Art The cliche, "All great fortunes are founded on a crime" is true more often than not. |
![]() |
Mary Oliver Is Dead, January 20th, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: Mary Oliver 20 Favorites of 2019 Poetry Her gift seems simple and yet it is neither simple nor common but the "confiding intimacy" of her great poems. |
![]() |
The Work of Rose B. Simpson: Woman Warrior, January 13th, 2019 Categories: Art Tagged: Santa Fe Rose Simpson's warrior women become women of flesh and blood... this is a fearsome prospect for some, maybe many, women. |
![]() |
Inhabited by Poetry, January 10th, 2019 Categories: Writing Tagged: Poetry Beginnings of anything are always inspiring, more than middle or ends, which tend to be tedious. |
![]() |
Start by Getting Them in the Room, January 5th, 2019 Categories: Women, Politics Tagged: Feminism The opening of the U.S Congress, two days ago, showed us what happens when we are in the room. |
![]() |
Bare-Breasted, January 1st, 2019 Categories: Women Tagged: 20 Favorites of 2019 Let's begin the New Year with a salute to an astonishing woman, Agnes Sorel, the "acknowledged mistress" of the French king Charles the Seventh. |
![]() |
The Welcoming of Friends, December 30th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Christmas 18 Favorites of 2018 New Year's Over the twenty-seven years I've lived in Santa Fe, many people have come and many people have gone. |
![]() |
The Mustard Seed, December 25th, 2018 Categories: My Family, New Mexico Tagged: Christmas William Bingham Iovenko As a child, I planted seeds every spring and knew how likely it was that, when I forgot to water them, they would never spring from the dry earth. |
![]() |
Free To Be… You And Me, December 23rd, 2018 Categories: Women Tagged: Music For a while, there was magic in the air. |
![]() |
What Part, December 18th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico, Art Tagged: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Ann Stewart Anderson Judy Chicago Sometimes I'm grateful for the old Roman Catholic doctrine of Original Sin that held there is no innocent being, even a newborn, since Eve's fall. |
![]() |
The Ruts Remain, December 16th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Christmas Mary Oliver dancing 18 Favorites of 2018 Bells are ringing all over Santa Fe and the Plaza is blindingly bright with tree-strung lights... |
![]() |
Pip in Winter, December 9th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Black Pip Hiking My black dog Pip, now three and a half years old, fears not cold, snow or rain. For him it is all an adventure. |
![]() |
First Wolf in Yellowstone, December 4th, 2018 Categories: Politics Tagged: Yellowstone National Park There is something about the fierce wordless independence of the female wolf that stirs an atavistic antagonism. |
![]() |
First Snow, December 2nd, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe I will always miss the sensation of diving off the slope, at ten thousand feet, and sailing down the longest run with big curving sweeps of my skis. |
![]() |
Too Many, November 28th, 2018 Categories: Politics Tagged: Women Environment Religion Overpopulation We all know, if vaguely, that we are facing something we might call a catastrophe. |
![]() |
Victoria’s Secret Goes Down, November 25th, 2018 Categories: Women Tagged: Feminism 18 Favorites of 2018 Debra Haaland I look for changes that seem small, even ridiculously small, and yet may herald changed attitudes in this slow-moving country of ours. |
![]() |
My Azure State, November 11th, 2018 Categories: Politics, New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico Debra Haaland I have lived here for twenty-seven years, and in all that time, I’ve felt and seen a slow progression in state politics toward justice. |
![]() |
A Woman Conducts, November 6th, 2018 Categories: Women Tagged: Music So what is the difference between a woman conducting and a man? |
![]() |
The Next Step, November 4th, 2018 Categories: Writing Tagged: Little Brother: A Memoir Taken by the Shawnee 18 Favorites of 2018 The Silver Swan Jonathan Worth Bingham How to live on nothing is a question the publishers have not condescended to consider. |
![]() |
My Mother’s Cookbook, October 28th, 2018 Categories: My Family, Kentucky Tagged: Mary Caperton Bingham I did make some progress... although probably my greatest accomplishment was mayonnaise made in a blender. |
![]() |
Losing Will, October 13th, 2018 Categories: My Family Tagged: William Bingham Iovenko 18 Favorites of 2018 The art of losing, if it can even be called an art, can’t be mastered. |
![]() |
Taos Day, October 9th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Farmers Market What a way to celebrate the vibrant heart of a small town. |
![]() |
The Tooth, October 7th, 2018 Categories: Writing Tagged: Food Since the tooth has been with me for a long time and has served me faithfully, I decided to write its story. |
![]() |
Two Women in an Elevator, October 4th, 2018 Categories: Politics Tagged: Women have been taught not to scream lest we be discounted as "hysterical"... and so the strength of our voices, and of our fury, has been denigrated and eliminated from public discourse. |
![]() |
Apples, September 30th, 2018 Categories: My Family, New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe William Bingham Iovenko Like the medieval desert mendicants, holy men who lived their lives in remote caves and were sometimes fed by ravens, Will had long ago lost any interest in possessions, or any taste for food. |
![]() |
Will Walking Away, September 23rd, 2018 Categories: My Family Tagged: William Bingham Iovenko 18 Favorites of 2018 What is it about our world that destroys our young men? |
![]() |
From Dream to Reality, August 28th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: 18 Favorites of 2018 Apache Mesa Taken by the Shawnee It is finished after almost two years of work, with many changes—some of them drastic, others simply disappointing—along the way. |
![]() |
Single Blessedness, August 26th, 2018 Categories: Women Tagged: friends Single Blessedness 18 Favorites of 2018 My self is precious, and it needs and deserves nourishing as the center of my life, not an outcropping. |
![]() |
Indian Market: When We Are All Together, August 23rd, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Indian Market Santa Fe Native American art Through all these years of turmoil and change, the Santa Fe Indian Market has persisted. |
![]() |
Do Right Woman: Aretha Franklin, August 19th, 2018 Categories: Women Tagged: Music No one can appreciate the depth of Aretha Franklin's influence as clearly as women, like me, who came of age in the Feminist Movement in the late 1960's. |
![]() |
The Fire This Time, August 16th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico Wildfires Burning to prevent burning produces unwelcome results... even in the face of wildfires, we may do our forests a favor by leaving them alone. |
![]() |
Basket, August 12th, 2018 Categories: Politics Tagged: My friend Katie is a Cassandra, cursed by the god to know and speak prophesies that no one would believe... Her mission is the end of the world. |
![]() |
Girl 27, August 7th, 2018 Categories: Women, Art Tagged: The New York Times Elizabeth Cady Stanton Patricia Douglas was “Girl 27” on a long list of young extras who were invited to an MGM party in Hollywood, in 1937, under the guise of a casting shoot for a movie. |
![]() |
Pip’s Wild Friends, August 5th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Black Pip Life gets pretty boring for a lone dog like Pip, especially now—it is so hot and the hiking trails are so crowded we don't go there much. |
![]() |
Shoes, July 29th, 2018 Categories: Women Tagged: dancing Shoes tell a story. Many stories. |
![]() |
Celebrities, July 22nd, 2018 Categories: Writing Tagged: Passion and Prejudice 18 Favorites of 2018 The Silver Swan These days if a writer is smitten with the idea of writing a new book—a new analysis—of any supposedly well-known person, the obstacles to her research will be enormous. |
![]() |
Ranch Time, July 15th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe New Mexico Apache Mesa As always with a big new project, the day of reckoning comes at last. |
![]() |
The Century Plant, July 1st, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe My Garden The wisdom of old age: to stay and savor, rather than leaving to experience more. |
![]() |
A Nation Afraid, June 29th, 2018 Categories: Writing Tagged: 18 Favorites of 2018 I've been wondering why we in the blessed U.S. seem so frightened of just about everything. |
![]() |
Doris Duke: Changing Faces, June 24th, 2018 Categories: Writing Tagged: Doris Duke The Silver Swan 18 Favorites of 2018 We are all too complicated and contradictory to be explained. |
![]() |
City of Angels, June 17th, 2018 Categories: Travel Tagged: Los Angeles Los Angeles is somebody’s kingdom, maybe everybody’s kingdom, but I don’t think it’s mine. |
![]() |
The Extraordinarily Gifted, June 10th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico, Art Tagged: Santa Fe The last few days have brought me into contact with four extraordinary people... this seems amazing. |
![]() |
No More Water, June 7th, 2018 Categories: New Mexico Tagged: Santa Fe Wildfires In times like this, I'm grateful that—so far—Santa Fe has been spared, and perhaps the closing of our neighboring national forest will prevent disaster. |
![]() |
The Santa Fe National Forest Has Closed, June 3rd, 2018 Categories: Writing Tagged: Santa Fe Hiking We don't know how to behave in the woods. |
![]() |
Philip Roth Is Gone, May 27th, 2018 Categories: Women, Writing Tagged: Philip Roth John Cheever As a young writer publishing my first novel at the time of Roth's debut, I wondered even then why this gentle, pastel novel received so much attention. |
![]() |
Volare (2018), May 24th, 2018 Categories: Travel Tagged: Music Italy What do we do with the remnants of romance when we have long outgrown it? |