The many special times and seasons we celebrate have their particular focus. Birthdays,  weddidng anniversaries, Easter, Christmas: all have something unique at their core, and our mind fixes on that essential element when we c0mmemorate the occasion. This month we celebrate Thanksgiving. In the national psyche, this day has its collective focus, which,  more often than not, is a far cry from what the real emphasis ought to be. As the day approaches, it would be good for us to take a few moments to reflect on our individual focus for this major holiday. From years of observing the preparations for celebrating Thanksgiving, I would hazard a guess that we…

  Hello Everyone, Here is a trailer for my new book, Island Hearts. My publisher has prepared this eye-catching trailer that gives you a taste of the story and  invites you into the book to read, enjoy, and share with friends. Copies are available on Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble. Get your today. Regards, Judith    

Welcome to October! Already  stores have  put out their seasonal decorations and their scariest Halloween costumes, but October is far more than door wreaths and spooky creatures.  It is the month that  poet Paul Laurence Dunbar calls “the treasurer of the year.”  it collects some of nature’s most gorgeous bounties and stores them in places where people travel long distances to visit. Besides its captivating beauty, the month also provides a  vast array of occasions that have been singled out for celebration.  October 1 has been designated World Vegetarian Day, and  World Smile Day is on the 2nd.  National Walk in the Park Day occurs on the 10th, and National…

GET   READY   TO   WELCOME   ISLAND HEARTS. Release Date: September 30, 2022 Love can  blossom  in surprising ways and in unexpected places. So it is  for Claire Wynter, who has returned to the U.S. from a successful search  for her missing grandmother in Jamaica. Claire brings back with her the memory of a nascent romance and her promise to return to Karl Grayson “soon.” But prejudice wears many faces and is found in unsuspecting places.  Claire’s brief brush with prejudice while on the island stalls her plan to return to Karl. She doesn’t connect with him until after three weeks have passed  and  with much soul-searching. She now  tries to reach…

  What has been your relationship to food? Does what you eat have anything to do with who you are? Before you say no, think about it. The question goes beyond having a tendency to like to  eat, which a lot of us do. In high school, I had a good friend whose nickname was Foodie. You can guess why. He was quite popular and had no problem answering to the name.  But our relationship to food  goes  deeper than  merely liking to eat.   Social scientists tell us that a lot of things go into making up our identity, and food is one of them. Their research reveals that food…

Assumption/Noun/a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen without proof It happens to all of us. We make a judgment about someone or something and expect things to play out the way we think they will. The dictionary definition given above  says that we  assume something  to be true and expect it to happen without proof. And there’s the rub. We don’t have proof; we merely assume,  based  on our feelings,  our faulty observations, even our prejudices. An excellent short story, “After You, My Dear Alphonse,”  by the famous American writer Shirley Jackson, which  I reread recently,  made me think more seriously  about  assumptions. In the…

  Over the past few years,  our county government  has built roundabouts on a number of thoroughfares in the area where I  live.  The idea behind these circles in the middle of well -traveled roads was to replace stop signs and improve traffic flow. Were our county leaders trying to copy Washington DC’s Dupont Circle and Thomas Circle, which handle a great amount of traffic fairly well each day? Perhaps so.  Ours aren’t as elaborate as the ones in DC, however, but they’re working very well. To date, we have six of them, and I have  yet to see or hear of a traffic accident at  any one of them.…

  When you’re out and about, do you ever find yourself  so preoccupied with your own thoughts that you tune out the talk around you? Not me. Without even trying, I hear snippets of all kinds of conversation. I’m not listening deliberately, but I hear anyway. Perhaps it’s the curious writer in me. Once as I  walked behind two students on a university campus sidewalk. I caught snatches of what they were saying, but it was when they got ready to go their separate ways that I heard the words that stuck with me. The young woman told the fellow she was with, “Take it light.”  English teacher that I…

linchpin/noun/ a pin passed through the end of an axle to keep a wheel in position/ a person or thing vital to an enterprise; a vitally important person; one that serves to hold together parts or elements that exist or function as a unit (Merriam Webster Dictionary); the most important member of a group or part of a system that holds together the other members or parts or makes it possible for them to operate as intended (Cambridge Dictionary) In Anthony Doerr’s bestseller All the Light We Do Not See, seven-year-old Werner asks a lot of questions: “If the moon is so big, why does it look so little?”  and…

In my neighborhood, spring announced its planned  arrival several weeks ago  with clusters of yellow brightness in my neighbor’s yard a few doors down the street. Let me say that, from my reading of Scripture, I have learned to shun coveting—not a good thing. Case in point: the calamitous results that followed the actions of  Ahab and Jezebel, which lets me know that dire consequences  come in the wake of covetousness.  Yet every time I drove past that front yard, the thought crept into my mind, I wish I had some of those. The “those” were the neighbor’s jonquils,  clustered bursts of life attracting admiration—perhaps a little envy—and certainly signaling…