The New Jersey Girl!

Friends, relatives, classmates, colleagues, professors- a whole bunch of you who, at one point or another, believed in me, shared with me, and have encouraged me along the way.

I thought I was the only one who thought that tomatoes had changed. Gone was the deep red color- and totally gone was the fragrant aroma and tangy sweetness that my memory associates with tomatoes. Tomatoland is a book that partly explores this travesty, and goes deeper to expose the common practices of companies in the Florida out-of-season tomato industry: the overuse of pesticides & fertilizers, the widespread use of illegal migrant workers and their mistreatment, the lobbying power of the Florida Tomato Board, and what is being done to offer the consumer better alternatives.

My rational mind (and some of my most loveliest, older than I, friends) tells me that I have nothing to worry about, this is just a phase. I can accept that. Yet, I continue to subject myself to Female Number Torture.

1. To behold your beauty once more. To hear the sound of gentle laughter in your voice, as I watch your lips slowly curve into a smile. To give these dying words a fitting farewell, Held prisoner all these years in my heart. To release them to the wind, in your presence And watch as […]

One of the most enjoyable things about being a home educator is learning new things through my children’s studies. My two eldest daughters love history, and are insatiable readers like me. Most recently we have been reading a biography about Abigail Adams, and I have been very encouraged by what I learned about her life […]

It has taken me a while but I am actually starting to look around for signals! I would much rather know ahead of time, no matter how short notice, than be blindsided- although this might be a sign of “older,” and not necessarily “wiser.”

I follow some tweeters whose politics I disagree with completely, basically because I just want to understand other points of view, not just fill my feed with things I would automatically agree with.

In the process of mourning there are stages, I think, that a person has to go through to be able to get to a point of peace. There is no set time limit, there is no formula. For me, part of the process involved going back home, going back to New Jersey.

To honestly say “I am a writer” I have to deliberately be a writer.

It was in a dream in a low-light room in a box of matches from a pocket It was a rapid friction a flare of passion reflected in dark eyes It was in a dream I sometimes tell myself where nothing I touched could touch me back It was in my skin in the evidence […]