FLORENCE HOWE

Come for a book talk and lunch. See the details here: http://www.florencehowe.com/events.htm

As I made my bed this morning, I thought, how easy it is to smooth out the wrinkles, line up the pillows, pull up the quilt. It takes only less than a minute, and yet, some mornings I avoid the ritual. Is it a sign of health to make my bed or to ignore it? Or is the question irrelevant? Am I searching for meaning in a world that seems purposeless? Or if the world is not purposeless in general, still, I can find no purpose in it for myself. Yes, my friends tell me this is simply the aftermath of finishing a huge project. The slough of despond—does anyone remember that expression?—will soon depart and I will be engaged in a new project, feeling hopeful again. (more…)

I just received news of two new reviews coming in. A man--at least I think it's a man--who has a regular blog, just wrote a long and sensible review of A Life in Motion. It's amazing to me, and I've written to him asking why he did it. With reviews, one must depend on the kindness of strangers. (more…)

I just learned that A Life in Motion is now available in the Google eBookstore. You can download it by going here: http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=xGs5Rg-9VUwC&dq=A%20life%20in%20Motion&as_brr=5&source=webstore_bookcard

I thought I would write blogs as I moved from place to place in California, and so I carried my little Toyota with me. But the most I could do at the end of a day of talking, talking, talking, was to write a brief journal reporting on how tired I was or how I’d spent the day and evening talking. Or, when I was more tired that that, I wrote nothing. And the next morning was no use, for I rose in time to begin another schedule. (more…)

Yes, it all felt wonderful the next morning, and I promised myself I would never get so “nervous” again. We’ll see, of course, but there was something about speaking on hallowed ground about the Dean who had saved me from my mother and the President who had changed my future despite my mother that was frightening, as though my mother was, herself, in the room. Silliness, I know. But I plan not to read those sections in California and Seattle. (more…)

It’s the day when I’m to read from A Life in Motion at Hunter College’s Roosevelt House, the “campus” of my college years back in the mid- to late-nineteen-forties. And I’m incredibly nervous. I am taking deep breaths, and I am remembering the first time I spoke as a feminist back in 1969, from a manuscript called “Should Women Read Fiction?” when the venue was a Michigan university classroom filled with about 50 faculty members and graduate students. Those were the days when I had hives before I spoke, red rings around my wrists. This is more than 40 years later and at least I have no hives, only breathlessness. (more…)

Surprise: a normal sunny Sunday, with no snow indicated. I can see the small trees on my terrace once again, standing tall, even looking a bit refreshed. Can that be true? Will they survive this winter like no other in the seven years I’ve lived here? And what will February and March be like? After all, for years they have been New York City’s snowy months. (more…)

I’m on JetBlue, flying east after a week in Los Angeles. Two hours out of L.A., the ground beneath the plane is snow-covered, seemingly flat, though in the distance, I can see small mountains and a river, frozen. I long for a map, but I will have to settle for a glance back at the week that opened a year of speaking about the memoir it’s taken so long to write. There it was, when I got to California, in my hands, the hefty volume I had been trying to write for 20 years. (The publication date is April 1, but books are available from www.feministpress.org.) (more…)

It’s near midnight, Monday, November 29, 2010, and I’m wondering how a blog might differ from the journals I write whenever the spirit moves me, and in which I record what has been going on in my life. One of my favorite questions I ask myself in journals is “How do you feel?” It’s partly a joke, since I used to suffer depression and so the journal was one way of checking on the depth of that condition. (more…)