I’ve been writing with fountain pens since 2015. When I started, I could not imagine paying more than $25 for a pen. Nor could I imagine owning more than two or three. My favorite was a blue Lamy Safari with a fine nib that I used every day. I ran through about three ink cartridges per week. Today, I own more than 100 pens each of which ranges in cost from $25 to $800. I rarely use cartridges...
Diana Preston’s Eight Days at Yalta: How Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin Shaped the Post-War World is an excellent, fast read. The stamina required just to travel to Yalta is mind boggling as were the conditions under which FDR, Churchill and staff resided once there. Concise, well-written summary and assessment of the negotiations that took place and the ways in which Yalta shaped world...
Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics, by Sylvana Tomaselli is an accessible overview of Wollstonecraft’s entire body of work. Tomaselli places Wollstonecraft’s books and essays in the political context of her time, with the French Revolution playing a big role. Although this wasn’t a biography of Wollstonecraft, elements of Wollstonecraft as a person are included:...
Lordy Jesus. So this was a “grail” read for me. A book I’ve contemplated reading for many years but never got around to tackling until I spotted this centennial edition as a guide. For others who are thinking of diving in, I cannot recommend this edition of the book more highly. The Cambridge edition is organized with short, insightful, and interesting essays that precede each...
The first thing to like about Charles Finch’s What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year is its cover: a drone’s eye view of a lawn party with individuals, couples, and pods of family/friends socially distanced from one another and outlined by thin, white circles. Finch is best when he describes the ways in which he coped with the pandemic, especially the early months: listening to...
I read Fiona Hill’s memoir, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century, thinking it was going to be a memoir of her time in the Trump Administration. It was that but so much more. Covers her childhood and adolescence growing up in the mining town Bishop Auckland in Northern England and her extremely improbable career thanks to opportunities of education...
“The Little Book of String Theory,” by Steven Gruber I read this book because my youngest daughter is studying physics and I feel like I need to educate myself on the topic (somewhat) in order to understand our conversations about her course work, internship at Fermilab, and whatnot. The most interesting bits in the book were references to whether the Higgs boson particle exists. The Little...
I am a communications consultant and writer who has spent decades helping organizations tell their stories effectively. My memoir-in-progress — “Things Could Have Been Worse” — explores reconciling with my estranged father who suffered from schizophrenia and alcoholism. My writing explores what it takes to disrupt generational cycles of dysfunction without resorting to Old Testament-inspired acts of vengeance. Expect posts about the unexpected ways trauma shapes our lives (anyone else find themselves obsessed with EDC and fountain pens?) and how most of us can inch our way toward the outer edges of the Emotion Wheel with a mix of therapy, existential philosophy, and repeat watches of Dexter. My perspective comes from surviving a childhood that would score near-perfect on the Adverse Childhood Experiences test and years of professional communications work.