Miriam Glassman

My dear teacher, my first true mentor, has died. His name was Alan Shapiro and in the 1970’s – 1980’s he headed up an amazing alternative high school program in New Rochelle High School called the Program for Inquiry, Involvement, and Independent Study, known to all as The 3I’s. He taught English and several inter-disciplinary [...]

Two of the famous people I share a birthday with are Edith Wharton and Mary Lou Retton. Edith Wharton is one of my favorite writers. She seems to me what Harriet M. Welch would’ve become had she lived at the turn of the century: A privileged New York woman with a talent for spying into [...]

…And sometimes, perhaps, a show signifies something more? Call it what you like: Separation anxiety, transference, holiday blues. But I have to admit I have unresolved feelings of great loss now that my weekly sessions with Dr. Paul Weston have terminated. Is it the accent? The mumbling into his gray zip-up sweater? Or is it [...]

How could this have happened? I pay my membership dues to the Dickinson Homestead, and regularly receive– and read– the “News From the Meadow.” But somehow, somehow, the knowledge that Garrison Keillor is going to make a special presentation in Amherst tonight in honor of Emily Dickinson’s 180th birthday, eluded me! The tickets are [...]

On the Fourth of July, a car pulled up to the front of my house and a woman I guessed to be about my age came to the door. Seeing that she was not holding a clipboard or pamphlets, I greeted her in a friendly manner. Perhaps she was having car troubles. Perhaps she was [...]

I know what you’re thinking: Quel triptych. But the other night while driving home from work at the library, I turned on the radio and by chance, tuned into one of my many personal holy trinities: Terry Gross interviewing poet Billy Collins about….wait for it….Emily Dickinson! Billy Collins has written the introduction to the Modern [...]

My book group is a wonderful Whitman’s Sampler of women. Our ages range from 50 to 70, and our various backgrounds bring enough stories to fill a thousand and one nights. Truly, I often feel that the most interesting discussions are not necessarily about the book but the personal stories prompted by the book.

This week [...]

“Dear Old Love” is a website and now, a wonderful little book of compiled anonymous notes to “former crushes, sweethearts, husbands, wives, & ones that got away.” In honor of Valentine’s Day, I gathered an armful of my favorites to put lovingly in a blog on the dining room table.  Feel the love, [...]

Yesterday I went to the mall to use a 15% off birthday gift card from Anthropologie. It was a very cunning little card with a tiny white birthday candle hanging from an elastic that one could wear as a necklace, if one was inclined to accessorize with small, wax candles. Anyway, it expires at the [...]