My office at work is being painted. The paint brand is Sherwin-Williams and suddenly I am thrown back to me at age perhaps six, just able to read. A hardware store on Main Street in Metuchen, N.J. has a sign…

Like a parenthesis in these days of incredible heat, a thunderstorm ripped through East Tennessee on Thursday. Thousands without power in Knoxville. And here, local angle, a tree was ripped right out of the earth in the little park where…

A recent, now widely circulating article in the Atlantic by Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” details the author’s difficult choice to renounce a brilliant career as the State Department’s director of policy planning to have more time…

Don’t look at the photograph now. Just believe me. When I was in middle school we lived in this house on Minisink Way in Westfield, N.J. The house was on top of a huge, steep hill. Here’s the proof: we…

My father adored Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers and read the whole (1200 pages mind you) at least twice. I’ve always been put off because it’s one heavy book (pounds and pounds) with big long sentences, huge paragraphs and…

A little domestic problem: little ants called “sweet ants” in our kitchen marching around on the counter. We tried mechanical means (squashing them) but more kept coming, lines and lines of ants. Thinking “better killing through chemistry,” I got out…

When we moved to Knoxville, Tenn. from our apartment outside Naples, Italy, Maurizio and I were charmed by the white picket fence and white wooden porch of our new house. The reality of upkeep dawned soon enough. Surprise! Mildew creeps…

I was talking to a neighbor who’d been talking to her neighbor whose backyard has a partial view of ours. She (the second neighbor) was complaining about “that gay couple with the drunken hot tub parties.” Now that could only…

A good and patient, caretaking dog helps in novel writing I believe. Jesse the dog normally sleeps in a small bed by the foot of our bed. But on nights when I’m up late writing, he won’t officially retire with…

I often walk Jesse the Dog on Hiawatha Street, a winding, tree-lined suburban street, not much traveled. On a 15 minute walk a couple cars may pass or none, if it’s early. This is good because Jesse prefers to walk…