December 15, 2025

Well. Who else is hanging on by their toenails?

I had everything under control (read: gifts, orders, eggnog, cranberry nut bread, decorating, tree, outfits, post office!) until a few days ago when mid-way through a party I basically sagged. Turned out I was coming down with a glandy sore throaty thing. Later that night having left before the dessert churros and feeling sorry for myself I flushed my reading glasses down the toilet. Yup. I watched in slo-mo: drop-splash-flush and in a SPLIT second they were gone. Cue the plumber that has not called back. Cue a weekend of marginal holiday movies, hot water and lemon and my broken second backup pair.

Then cue another round of horrific gun violence around the world. And earth shaking weather. And anger that is running deep in the veins of America. Suddenly this makes all the above superfluous. If I can summarize anything about 2025 it is this; what once was irritating is positively forgettable in the wake of political decisions and repercussions, violence and hunger.

I pray every day that guns do not find the people that I love. I pray that I can keep priorities in order and may I note they are not the ones from 2024: now I worry about my neighbors going hungry. About my children and their children feeling safe. About having enough years to make a difference. These are no longer wishes. They are fierce intentions.

Marbleheadfoodpartry.org

donate.wck.org

https://www.redcross.org

Suicide Prevention Hotline

Seattle housing

This is a tiny portion of places that need urgent support in my two home towns. Spread the word. Love your neighbor more than you ever have before. Say hi to every stranger you pass, who knows, that gesture may save someone that day. Because we are all hanging on.

Practice human-to-human time in real time, hard. It is the little things that make the big changes.

I obviously have to buy more bird food this week, because, well, the squirrels have figured out how to jump the bird buddy feeder and I will not deny need. And if you have any good movie suggestions, let me know.

Love you all. Really.

table manners

Words

OOOOF.

I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony. (But, well, him).

There are a lot of ways to use our words and the current beings in self proclaimed power covered in minutia by the press are no role model; in fact, the escalating small-minded bigotry of our elected officials is in danger of leaching into all our language, behavior and attitude. How else can we interact this holiday season?

This is obvious and important advice as we approach the season ahead and gather with friends and family and strangers that may not follow your beliefs or eat meat or gluten or dairy or eyes. Think before you speak: I departed a medical appointment last week saying “Have a nice Thanksgiving” to a couple of doctors that probably don’t celebrate this American holiday and as the words fell out of my mouth I knew I labeled myself ignorant (among other things) in just a few words. I fretted the entire drive home, kind of sick to my stomach. What I adore about this country is our diversity and in the next few months so many will celebrate so many different beliefs in joy. As they should. As we built this country to allow.

If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all: closer to home, if you know Uncle Cliff voted the complete opposite chances are you and he shouldn’t sit together or talk politics. Put your plate down somewhere else. Go ahead, switch the place cards. We can also ban politics from the table, like cell phones, and maybe have an old-fashioned shout-out about dog breeds, or table manners, or sleep suits for babies. These topics can devolve into laughter. Make that your goal.

Be grateful: for so many reasons each holiday is precious to me. Being with anyone around a table of food prepared with love is a singular privilege whether you are eating take out or turkey or eggplant lasagna with one person or twenty-five.

That is what manners are, and despite the current climate we all need to remember them.

Happy Holiday Week however you spend it. Make the table laugh.

I am grateful for you.

Alexandra Dane

Feed your Neighbor, SNAP, VOTE for humanity in the next election

What I Do Not Need.

It is October 31 and I am in the city of Seattle for a writing afternoon with other creative souls. A running group just passed me dressed as bumble bees. My barista is a skeleton. A moving inflated ghost made me jump as I walked to my car. In a few hours residents will prepare for the masses or turn their lights out and hide. Which one are you? But we can’t hide, can we.

As of this morning a local bagel shop Toasted has given away 12,405 bagels and breakfasts no questions asked. A Portland coffee shop Heretic Coffee has raised over $225K to provide free meals to SNAP beneficiaries who are losing benefits. These initiatives –there are hundreds — to feed neighbors in need is a stark reminder of the tentative line between full and hungry, fed and starving, well and unwell. And this is America?

The holidays are coming in hot. Starting tomorrow I am going to donate to food pantries, organizations that wrap and deliver gifts for children at Christmas and community mental health outreach programs. If humanity in the United States is going to be so challenged by the very body of elected officials that we put there to preserve it, I say we turn our resources outward and show what we are made of: just google ‘food bank’ ‘holiday gifts for children’ and ‘wellness funds for _________’ to see who in your community needs your help.

I am telling Santa: I do not need anything but others do.

Join me in giving what you can to keep people fed and well and cared for. As I am writing I was alerted that the government has been ordered by a federal judge to use emergency funds for SNAP. Going crisis to crisis, this government is eroding the safety of our population.

Keep your neighbor safe. It’s time to care.

Someone recently commented to me they hoped the president doesn’t say ‘Well if they can feed themselves we don’t need SNAP.”

President Trump, we don’t need you.

Being human, Emoji, Miss you, What is lost

Thumbs Up

I have an issue. My problem is with emoji.

Currently — and I just counted — there are twenty fat yellow thumbs in response to my last text to something or someone. I am all for efficiency and speed but here’s my thinking: what actually DOES this thumb mean?

“Yes, I read it?”

“Yeah, that sounds good?”

“Ok, that plan works?”

“Got the invoice, will settle?”

“Miss you too?”

“Thanks for making that happen?”

Just to cite a few interpretations. But my problem is I interpret this particular emoji as “I don’t have the time to actually communicate with you so this will have to do.” Well.

No one uses email or even posted mail these days so short efficient texts keeps me in touch with so many people. Don’t get me wrong I love tacking on emoji I mean there is even a BALL OF YARN emoji and a turtle and a lacrosse stick and a hairdryer and a steaming cup of coffee to name a few. These are really fun ones to jolly up a text, but that’s after I have used a few words in letters. So am I not worth actual words that convey the emotion/message you would like me to know?

Maybe I am too literal. I did terribly on multiple choice exams, finding a reason to check all the boxes if I thought hard enough. I want to be clear: I treasure our communications and take the time with my answers. But the key here is ‘communication.’

This particular emoji maybe ALL of them have dumbed us down; it actually takes less time to type a response than to search for that emoji and click on it. Try it.

It gives me a feeling of loss that we can’t use words anymore. So much is being lost right now, cultural and emotionally, politically and financially. We need to work really hard to keep being human together.

It’s a very ugly thumb. Even the heart emoji is better. Thanks for listening.

joy, light in the heart, wedding

Light in the Heart

The bride arrived in a horse-drawn cart. As she walked down the newly-mown aisle her eyes locked on her fiancé and never wavered. A lace veil pinned to her hair danced upwards in the updraft of a mischievous breeze. All around us the hundred-acre field began to assume twilight, the sky crisping to cerulean blue, the trees sharpening their red edges, the hay turning molten gold. I might have held my breath: I had little to do with this marriage and everything to learn from it.

Lately I have caught myself cynical more than positive. Muttering. Feeling abandoned. Pulled under by a sort of fear-negativism-blighted attitude. A very uncharacteristic dark in the heart feeling has made it hard to write, get out of bed with any bounce, tackle the hard chores.

I don’t remember the last time I felt the heat of love like what radiated from this bride and groom. Every cliche for sure — eyes sparkling, smiles wide, laughs from the belly, endless kisses. The musicians mimicked the breeze. The light was magical. Their affirmations so sweet.

The wedding of a friend’s daughter last weekend in a field surrounded by love and light gave me hope, pure and simple: hope for happiness, hope that the energy force of love and devotion thrives and is resilient, despite.

I predict those two will slay the world with that energy. Even those of us on the fringes of their lives came away light in the heart after they recited their vows, slid on their rings and dipped down for a beautiful embrace. Love will absolutely conquer all.

I have let current events here and amongst the world overwhelm because I forgot the basics: find joy first and the rest of what the world throws at you will bounce off.

Thanks for inviting me. Now where will you find the light in your heart?

The alter.

A field in Albany Maine, October 11 2025

October, Retreat, Thinking, time

October 2025

A different kind of shutdown.

I am always a little short of breath in October. The month arrives a few days after another birthday and there is an sense of urgency to hurry up and get ready for the changing season ahead: from writing submissions to swapping out closets, packing away the cottons for wool, light quilts for down puffs, figuring out if my pants fit from last February and OMG closed shoes. And not to mention the blousy, overgrown garden beds. Writing has taken a way-back seat in the face of the tasks.

The result is I spin in circles and never feel like I have actually accomplished anything, the day is so short, the lists so long.

This week I booked a few days to myself in Vermont at my daughter’s empty house, another year older not wiser, lugging mountains of newspapers to catch up on, two laptops (in fairness and gratitude I was given a beautiful new Airbook for my birthday and I don’t trust it yet), four books to choose from, too many sweaters and several knitting projects. That old adage there are only so many hours in the day seems pretty obvious. But my instinct called for a reset, and my old instinct said pack it all, get’er done.

As I sit in the stillness of a sweet house set between a mountain and a river I am drinking tea, breathing the crisp air, and have some take-aways.

There is in reality so much time.

After I unpacked the car, put away the food, unlocked the front door, dragged a chair onto the stoop, boiled the kettle and made a cuppa I sat and didn’t think about anything except the gift of this week and that my time was my own here. I bet this took all of fifteen minutes and it was NOT a waste of time. In fact, I felt it expanded the hour.

2. What I really needed to do (and drive four hours to realize) was just think.

The best writing — the blogs, the essays, the flash memoir, the submission bio’s — happens to me in stillness. That’s when can let my brain receive a sentence. That’s when I run with it. All this tasking has shut it down. It has taken two days of staring into solitude to realize I can just let the season change without my help.

3. There are no cider donuts to be found here. Vermont, come on. Stillness requires donuts.

I am heading out to the store now, stopping along the way at a few farm stands, really needing nothing just meandering the county, looking at the land breathing. Then I will get back to things. Maybe.

Don’t put your phone in your pocket. Look at the sky for a while. Drink a little hot beverage. Think about the colors. Or lack of color. Or the birdsong. Or your gratitude that the trash truck is whining down the street doing its job. Or the dog that is not yours is barking at nothing. Apply no judgement. Feel the time. It is all yours.

And somebody tell me where to get a cider donut, stat.

#guns, #shootings, #Whatareyougoingtodo, awareness, Grandchild, Guns control

September 1, 2025

I am on a small island off Martha’s Vineyard, so basic that we have to pack our toilet paper, ketchup and clothespins. Renting here has been a family tradition that has become sporadic in the last ten years because of work, weddings, illnesses but this week we are here, walking with the last of the Monarch butterflies and soaking up the scent of sunbaked rose hips. Hard to explain how surreal it can be to disconnect, go to bed with sand in my toes and watch the clouds pass overhead as a purposeful activity.

I am fortunate, to say the least.

But it sneaks up, real life. My family and I rocked on the porch and talked assault rifles, the right to bear arms, mental illness. What we circled, as we took turns holding my seven-month grandchild, is fear.

A beautiful smiling being we love beyond reason will put on a too-big backpack and head to daycare, preschool, Kindergarten and beyond in a blink. What do I do, how do I hold this, this edging towards dystopia under this president, this Congress, this social blindness to making safe decisions for children? This freedom to do the unthinkable? Here is what I have been thinking, staring into the waves: do I have to have this actually touch me personally to do something? What do you think.

The photo of a mother with shoes in her hands running barefoot towards the church where children were killed and injured while praying shredded my soul. You bet I have begun research. Let’s see where this goes.

In the meantime, it will touch us all and pretending otherwise because of your income, community, or beliefs is short sighted. How long am I going to sit this out just because I can?

Do the hard things for the long run. That is what I am thinking.

You?

Banned Books, Read

Read On

One of my best memories as a child: being dropped off at the public library in my small Connecticut town, population less than 8,000, while my mom did errands. I am not sure if that seeded my love of reading — to pick whatever I wanted, to skip down the stairs with an eye-level stack in my arms — or the times when I was given free-range in a bookstore, dropped off alone (older, teen, hopefully) in the Yale Co-op bookstore in New Haven, full use of the blue and white striped charge card, unsupervised and allowed to purchase whatever I wanted to read.

You will not be surprised that on one spree I came home with “Forever Amber” my first bodice ripper read under the covers with a flashlight several nights running, my racy introduction to seduction, idiot men and lace. That trip also yielded a book on birds, a mystery series and Black Beauty. I credit choosing the worlds inside all those pages to my relentless pursuit of information. When you are raised to believe reading any book of any genre and size is normal, the brain is fed, watered and grown. Reading makes us smart.

Thanks, Mom.

Yet. Here we are in 2025. To date PEN has documented nearly 16,000 banned books in America.

My children are introducing their children to books now. It is incredibly important to me that access, imagination, and being normal is still part of their vocabulary regarding reading, the difference today that I will accompany them on their book buying and borrowing forays (I hear sighs of relief). I dream of buying or acquiring every banned book and making a library for them. Hold that thought while I go check my finances.

You cannot tell me the news the starving the bombing the hating the raking over of human life in the world, splashed on social media, headlines and TV, is better than reading Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, one of the most compassionate stories of fiction in print. Or I mean THE GIVER? That little apple tree, that tiny child, the huge lesson about sacrifice? Both books on the list.

I have sent a bookcase to my son (apologies, assembly needed) for his six-month-old baby. I want this little boy to see the books — the color, the potential — feel the excitement of a new story when he looks across the room. Nothing subtle about me.

Stop at every big public library and little free library you come across. Books freely given, freely loved. A small, mighty revolution as funding is being slashed for our hardworking public spaces. Bring the words, the vocabulary, the perspective, the language to every corner of the world. This child/mother/Mimi forever believes information is power. Come check out my library any time. You can lock the doors but you cannot lock minds on my watch.

What favorite book do you have on your shelf?

Read on.

Centrum, Fort Worden, Writing Workshop

Summer Camp

Everyone is in sensible shoes. I am at Centrum, a writing conference at Fort Worden Historical State Park in Port Townsend WA, walking through crackly dry grass and covering some distance between buildings for events. Nikes, Merrills, Hokas, Tevas, Keens in all shapes and sizes sprint off during lunch break, efficiently walking the mile to-and-from the gleaming lighthouse seen from the classroom windows, with plenty of time to return for a quick bite before the afternoon sessions. I lean back barefoot on the grass and wiggle my toes. The sky is as blue as the ocean below us and everywhere I look all the shades of color melt together like a Rothko painting. I do not wear the same sporty footwear. I do not hike to the lighthouse and get all sweaty in this free hour. Instead, I unlace my tried-and-true Keds Triple Kick leather sneakers, a shoe that perfectly supports my ridiculous high arches and narrow tapered feet and picnic shoeless and alone on the vast lawn. The briefest white cirus clouds float overhead and trail to the sea. I execute a few yoga moves. I crunch a carrot: I don’t care that I look like a camper on her first day in bright white tennis shoes; I have crossed the country for my own version of adult summer camp.

Six days intensive workshops on Place in Story. Six afternoons in craft and other workshops. There is no sunbathing, umbrella cocktails or massages. Instead, I am working my mind and my words. This is really fulfilling — even the critique sessions on my writing — and just as it has taken me decades to decipher what fits with my high arches and narrow, skinny feet it has taken me the last fifteen years to realize I like to work more than lounge.

My Mini hummed and my brain fired all the way here. I like going places where I am anonymous even if adrenalin, anticipation and fear are dominant emotions this week. Thrown amongst complete strangers sharpens me.

Day one is done. The week is young. I have a few more freckles from lunch break. I have met new writers that have engaged with me and my words. My smile is even brighter than my shoes. With any luck I can stay awake to read a few pages of a good book tonight.

Alexandra Dane, Be big., Believe in yourself, We need to talk.

“We were born with the power on.”

@lovestephaniegreene

When I am on this coast, writing by the Atlantic ocean, I live in a small historic town in a small 1864 house where historic is everything. This has it’s ups and downs as ever-changing committees impose rules that can cost a fortune (read: wooden gutters, single pane windows, permission needed for architectural changes seen from the street) and are never practical — but they are HISTORIC.

I attended a block party last weekend and found out fiberglass gutters and double-paned windows will now be allowed, exactly a year after we replaced both under the old historic guidelines. I am not complaining, just tired. Tired of current committees upending last years rules, being wrong-footed trying to find and use information and resources.

Oh. This sounds familiar.

The Big Beautiful Bill has just staggered through the Senate and lurches towards the House, fast and furiously putting us out of health care options, food programs desperately needed, and medical care. We barely had time to read the bill before it slammed through wreaking havoc. I am collecting voices and information, want to speak with me?

I spent a good portion of my life trying to be small: small voice, small body, small thoughts, small clothes. Look alike, don’t unsettle the norms, squeeze into the outfits that everyone else is wearing. Let me tell you that can only go on for so long before everything bursts and especially me: I am not small. My writing life has not busted anything apart but grown me up and out and beyond small — it feels good to fill a space with who I am and also just saying: loose linen. As my writing builds momentum I have found a community who loves my ‘on’ button and are not offended or threatened by it. You should also know that in the last ten years when I expand/explore/take risks I have both succeeded and spectacularly failed. The current in me just gets stronger. Do I really want written in my obit ‘she could have done so much more?”

What a waste of energy, tamping it all down.

So here we are. Have you thought about what you will do to help? On a community level, we are making prayer shawls at a furious rate. On a personal level I am gathering woman friends for afternoon time — sort of a ‘fika’ concept, once a week. We pool our resources — mental and emotional, no criticism, bipartisan, open and affirming. We sit. We heal. From the ground up. Recently, there have been root beer floats, too.

We need to talk. Bring yourself.

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