I am a lifelong music lover (and sometimes a singer too). I studied and adore opera, I throw myself into the blues, I grew up on The Eagles, James Taylor, Van Halen and Willie Nelson. But last year, on August 13, to be exact, I found BTS. I was at Oracle Park for post-baseball Fireworks Night. When BTS’s Dynamite played over gorgeous bursts of sparkling color, I was filled with transcendent joy, an essential nutrient that had been absent for far too long in 2020 and 2021.

After that night at the ballpark I couldn’t let go of the pure and powerful happy feeling that song gave me. So I downloaded a BTS playlist…

In the tech industry you’ll often hear a founder say “We have no competitors! We are creating a new category! No one does what we do!” Whenever a company says that, reporters and analysts roll their eyes. PR people do too, because it’s much easier to take over and change markets than it is to forge a brand new path. Remember the Newton anyone?

As spring slides into summer San Francisco and I are both in that betwixt and between place – windy, warm, foggy, radiant. I am not sure what to write about this month, so I am turning to the ever generous, ever reliable George Saunders again. His radical preference exercise was a delight. He invited his Story Club readers to randomly pick…

One of the tasks every new writer faces is filtering. There is so much advice available. What should one follow?

I’ve got a funny relationship with optimism and pessimism. After working in corporate PR for decades I’m pretty jaded about business and government leaders. When a CEO or anyone in government makes a stupid decision with painful consequences I’m not surprised or indignant. I just shrug. Of course that’s what happened . . . .

In July 2019 I wrote an essay in an attempt to answer a question so awkward that it made me sweat. In March 2020, not long after the pandemic closed us in our homes, I revised it. This month, reflecting back on March 2020 and thinking about what’s ahead in 2022, I remembered this piece.

Here’s a flash version of my essay Alone. 

“Why didn’t you ever marry?” my dead fiancé’s son asked me, in a voice that sounded so much like his father’s I had trouble breathing.