Essays and Commentaries
Essays
Reading the Landscape
Vermont Almanac Dispatches, 11-09-2025
For 16 years, I managed my husband’s medical practice. The “Mom and Pop Doc Shop,” I called it, because it was like an old-time general store where the proprietors lived in back and knew who would come in when, what they would buy, and when they would pay, if ever. Our office was never so quaint as to be attached to our house, but that never stopped patients from dropping by after hours for an informal consult. And, like a general store, it took both of us to run the practice.
Hunting For Words
Women Writers, Women(‘s) Books, 11-04-2025
Walking into the woods in the dark before dawn carrying a rifle was the hardest thing I’d done since I turned sixty. Writing about it was harder.
I became a deer hunter because I wanted to be able to find my way through the northern forest without following a marked trail. One day, while weeding the tomatoes, I looked over the garden fence at the woods that hemmed in the field, and I heard a voice from the universe say, “Learn from the deer.” That’s when I knew, against all odds of gender and heritage, I would become a hunter—and write about it. Writing is how I make sense of the world, and I knew telling friends, readers, and my radio audience about my intention to write my hunting story would hold me accountable. It did.
He Was My Grandfather
The Commons, Issue 480, 10-10-2018
I thought the recording booth would be a safe place to say what I never expected to reveal. I had no interest in being vague when the English language already provides a perfectly good, accurate, and specific word to name my abuser.
Care Package
Dartmouth Medicine Magazine, Fall 2007
For 16 years, I managed my husband’s medical practice. The “Mom and Pop Doc Shop,” I called it, because it was like an old-time general store where the proprietors lived in back and knew who would come in when, what they would buy, and when they would pay, if ever. Our office was never so quaint as to be attached to our house, but that never stopped patients from dropping by after hours for an informal consult. And, like a general store, it took both of us to run the practice.
Collections
Live to Write – Write to Live
Live to Write – Write to Live was the blog for The New Hampshire Writers Network. For seven years, I wrote bi-weekly essays about the business and craft of writing in my Wordshop—an 8×10 building about 100 feet from my back door.
VPR Commentaries
I loved telling stories to create change as a commentator on Vermont Public Radio from 2006 to 2018.