For some reason, windmills tinge my mood with melancholic nostalgia. Not sure why - I'm not Dutch - but seeing these strong yet graceful structures flail at the air reassures me. Perhaps it's that windmills turn something invisible - the air - and transforms it into power that intrigues me. We visited Williamsburg on the way home and this mill was my first glimpse… Continue

Traveled home from Philly on Amtrak late yesterday afternoon. The train's packed, the quiet car full, and I trudged through three cars before I found a seat. The woman by the window had her laptop out, jacket and bags strewn on the seat I wanted to make mine. I felt badly asking her to move her stuff, but damn if at fifty bucks I was going to stand in my Italian leather… Continue

Even then, more than a year earlier, there were neurons in her head, not far from her ears, that were being strangled to death, too quietly for her to hear them. Some would argue that things were going so insidiously wrong that the neurons themselves initiated events that would lead to their own destruction. Whether it was molecular murder or cellular… Continue

Today, on the Southern shore of Maryland, we traipsed through woods and found a mother swan settled on her nest.



One portent of Spring. Another is the dirt cracking in the garden, the plants and rocks shoving up through the once-frozen soil. And yet another is the rhubarb, blood-red globules poking through last year's leaves blackened with rot. Pussy willow fuzzies… Continue

This is how long it takes to become "good" at something.



10,000 hours. This is one of the statistics buried in OUTLIERS, Malcolm Gladwell's treatise on success.



That's 600,000 minutes. Since there are 525,600 minutes a year, I figure if I write non-stop for a year with no sleeping, eating, or potty breaks, I'll be a "good' though exhausted writer.



Just thought you'd like to know... maybe by then the market will have improved as much as… Continue