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?
I Can’t Teach You to Write
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.
The Wild West
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.
Sanctuary
I am blessed to have, in my life, several sanctuaries, one of which I am able to visit daily, the others at least once a week.
Faith
I have been thinking about faith, manifested in two of its aspects in Taos: The Penitente Morada behind Mabel’s house, and the nearby graveyard.
Counterculture Culture
For most of Grandfather’s neighbors and friends, memory of the communes is sharp and sour. We have yet to sweeten it.
Mabel’s House
It seems we are still confined, in our appreciation of women, to admiring our roles as facilitators of other people’s lives.
My Writing Group: The Little Engine That Could
For any of you who think, or have thought, about starting a writing group, here is a model that works.
What It Takes to Be a Writer
Abandon professionalism. Hard work, always, is essential, but the notion that there is such a thing as “success”—a large audience, critical acclaim, and money—is, for nearly all of us, a delusion.
New Year’s Day
I am wishing all of you, friends, acquaintances and strangers, who are kind enough to read these thoughts, the most beneficial, peaceful and fruitful new year—a cold winter with lots of snow, a spring full of bloom.