Jo’s Blog

If you could go back to the day you got the diagnosis about your child, what would you tell yourself? What rules would you give yourself to live by? What do you know now that you wish you’d known then?  A letter to my younger self – 25 [...]

Building a fire last night, I got an infinitesimally tiny splinter in my right hand. By morning it was swollen and red. I removed it awkwardly using my left hand to ply the needle. I could not BELIEVE that something so small could cause so much [...]

Today I did a writing workshop for a small group of the Foundation’s staff. They were eager and engaged students and the session flew by. We discussed grammar, spelling and punctuation; the importance of clarity and brevity and the urgent [...]

When my parents were my age (I am 56), they bought sympathy cards in bulk. Every time I visited them, they had either just gone to a funeral or were just about to go to a wake. It seemed as if everyone they knew was dying. I feel as if I have [...]

I just listened to Death, Sex and Money – which is rapidly becoming my favorite podcast ever. This episode was on people who live alone: what they like about it, what bothers them, how much it costs – both financially and [...]

It doesn’t snow here in Dehradun. Our coldest day this week was 37 F (that’s a little under 3 Celsius) and with a daughter in Chicago (6 F; – 14 C) and a son in Boston (25 F; – 4 C), I know enough not to complain. Except! [...]

When the news of the Peshawar massacre of school children broke, I was deep into watching a political thriller called The State Within, a BBC production recommended by Jesse Kornbluth at Head Butler. It is a seven-part edge-of-seat drama which [...]