I went to a wonderful wedding recently in France. Actually in the South of France, and it was a perfect time of year for it, in September, with gorgeous balmy weather, and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a wedding which touched me more. People had come from all over the world for it, from Japan, Vietnam, India, the US, and all over Europe.  And the wedding was held in the medieval town of St. Paul de Vance in the South of France. » read more »

I just read an amazing book, called “A Stolen Life”, which is a memoir written by Jaycee Dugard, the woman who was abducted/kidnapped in California at age 11, and held captive by her abductor and his wife for 18 years. I believe she was found a year ago, by sheer accident. During her captivity, she gave birth to 2 daughters (at age 14 and 17), fathered by her kidnapper, and she and her daughters were freed together, and are now leading a normal life, reunited with Ms. Dugard’s family, and rediscovering the world in her case after 18 years of isolation, and her daughters are discovering the world for the first time. » read more »

Happy Birthday

In Stores:  July 19, 2011

Valerie Wyatt is the queen of gracious living and the arbiter of taste. Since her long-ago divorce, she’s worked hard to reach the pinnacle of her profession and to create a camera-ready life in her Fifth Avenue penthouse. So why is she so depressed? All the hours with her personal trainer, the careful work of New York’s best hairdressers, cosmetic surgeons, and her own God-given bone structure and great looks can’t fudge the truth or her lies about it: Valerie is turning sixty.

Valerie’s daughter, April, has no love life, no rest, and no prospect of that changing in the foreseeable future. Her popular one-of-a-kind restaurant in downtown New York, where she is chef and owner, consumes every ounce of her attention and energy. Ready or not, though, April’s life is about to change, in a tumultuous transformation that begins the morning it hits her: She’s thirty. And what does she have to show for it? A restaurant, no man, no kids.

Jack Adams once threw a football like a guided missile. Twelve years after retiring from the NFL, he is the most charismatic sports analyst on TV, a man who has his pick of the most desirable twentysomething women. But after a particularly memorable Halloween party, Jack wakes up on his fiftieth birthday, his back thrown out of whack, feeling every year his age.

A terrifying act of violence, an out-of-the-blue blessing, and two extremely unlikely love affairs soon turn lives inside out and upside down. In a novel brimming with warmth and insight, beginning on one birthday and ending on another, Valerie, April, and Jack discover that life itself can be a celebration—and that its greatest gifts are always a surprise.

Whenever I see that date on a calendar, I think of the movie of the same name, Ground Hog Day, and it reminds me of my own life. In the movie, Bill Murray, the actor, kept living the same day over and over and over again. Every time he woke up, he was living the same day again. The concept is pretty funny—-except when it happens in real life.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to make many of the same mistakes again and again, and again. It’s not that I’m unaware of them, but our patterns are so hard to change. I have gone to groups, done a lot of soul searching, read self help books, and REALLY worked hard at changing some of the things I do. And some of it has worked, but sometimes, more often than I like, I find myself doing the same unconstructive thing again, let people get away with things they shouldn’t, being too cowardly (myself) to speak up when someone is standing squarely on my toes, or just doing the same things myself. I don’t want to. I’m aware, but our old habits die hard, and sometimes I hear my own voice and think, OH NO!!! Not that again. I guess life will be a work in progress til the end. » read more »

I found the sweetest quote of Mother Teresa’s recently, “We can’t do big things, only small things, with an immense amount of love”. » read more »

Hi Everybody,

Well, I’ve just had an exotic ‘modern’ techno experience. I discovered yesterday that there are people out there in Internet-land » read more »

My head is spinning a bit, and I had to share it with you. I think I’ve mentioned to all of you before that I am deeply, powerfully, and sincerely technologically challenged. I write on a 1946 manual typewriter that seems modern to me. I paid $20.00 for it a million years ago, at the beginning of my career, » read more »

After the tragedy of 9/11, someone said to me that travel would never be the same in this country again. It seemed an odd thing to say, when the real focus was on so many lives lost, and such a shocking betrayal and attack on our own turf. I suppose the people who experienced Pearl Harbour felt the same way. Other than those two events, I can’t think of any other attacks on American soil, by people from a foreign country. And yes, things have changed since. Like any terrible event, once you know it can happen, life is forever changed. » read more »