Follow Joanne on Substack
Going forward, all my new blog posts will appear on Substack. This will give us a cleaner, more reliable way to stay connected.
Listen to this blog Last month’s Substack essay “In Search of Kindness” follows up here with acts of kindness observed. I was recently visiting my old neighborhood in London where I used to live, walking down High Street Kensington on a sunny July day. The High Street was bustling with people—residents, tourists, children, darting in and out…
Listen to this blog Nobel physicist Albert Einstein advised: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.” He urged a new way of thinking. I’ve taken this observation as a guide, a touchstone of thought and problem-solving, be the issue personal, political or cosmic. Often the first instinct is to get…
Listen to this blog The young woman next to me sat silently at the table for the first hour of presentations and discussion. She was younger than the other women, with long dark hair, frailer than the more robust women around the table. Her slender fingers touched tentatively the papers in front of her. I…
Listen to this blog I walk through the Tuileries Garden on a sunny Sunday morning in Paris with all the celebratory marble gods and generals along the broad path, with flowers and children and families, with the Musée de l’Orangerie and Musée du Louvre nearby and the Place de la Concorde (Harmony Square) ahead. The…
Listen to this blog Carolina Wren, Canadian Goose, White-throated Sparrow…birdsong at dawn on a Sunday morning. The light has shifted and arrives later now that daylight savings is over. More bird sounds rise as the weather warms. The birds appear to harmonize and get along with each other with their different pitches and warbles and…
Listen to this blog The sun is rising but hiding. I know the sun is there by its effect, by light shining up on the clouds above, even though I can’t see the sun. It is mid-January in Florida, and I’m sitting fully dressed in the sand by the ocean at high tide on a…
Listen to this blog I’m heading South for a few days. The frozen river in front of me has melted, the ducks are swimming again, but sub-freezing temperatures and ice and snow are returning tomorrow, and hunters are still out till the end of January. I want to think in the sun, or at least…
And Then They Said… Listen to this blog Ducks and geese are on the river this morning swimming south to north, squawking and talking to each other all at the same time and to their friends across the water. It is cold, though not quite freezing. I wonder why they haven’t yet taken off for…
Listen to this blog As the year comes to a close, as the landscape, at least the political landscape, has shifted, is shifting in my country, as new books are written, as new promises are made, and not many (any?) broken, at least that I’m responsible for, it seems a good time to look back…
Listen to this Blog I’m writing this blog on the eve of one of the U.S.’s most fraught—and many feel consequential—presidential elections, at least in my lifetime. By the time many read this, the results may be in, or contested. Recently one of my earlier blogs popped up in my email—I don’t know why—but I…
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