Category: Uncategorized

  • Nanny, Who Was Also Midge, Who Was Also Jessie Magdalene

    Jessie Magdalene MacDonnellApril 13, 1922 – October 1998 The MacDonnell house is average in size for Nova Scotia. Its two stories are chopped into six tiny bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, and sitting room—a tight fit for Daniel, Bridget, and their thirteen children. Even the cliff on which the house teeters and the jagged cove below…

  • Everything

    “This is everything.” That’s the first thing I heard her say, as I passed the couple near the corner of 14th Street and Avenue A in Manhattan. “It’s all of it. Everything.” She was crying, in the strained, frustrated way small children sometimes cry when they feel helpless. She had long straight sandy blonde hair;…

  • What Is Somatics?

    Over on my Psychology Today column–The Elusive Brain–I promised a follow-up on my column about somatics and trauma. Readers had lots of questions. This is Part 1 of my interview with somatics practitioner Sumitra Rajkumar. You can find Part 2 here. As a practitioner, how do you describe somatics to somebody who’s curious and doesn’t know…

  • John Cameron Mitchell’s ‘Anthem Homunuculus’

    You will find spoilers here. And some chaos. Depending on your preferences, you might not want to read this until you’ve finished Anthem Homunculus, John Cameron Mitchell’s musical dystopian drama full of heart, delivered via podcast, like an old radio play.   I interviewed Mitchell for a piece in Psychology Today, about brain stuff at…

  • Bowie’s Duet with Himself

    I made my first infographic. Or a stab at one. My students are making some, so I thought I should try it too. My students didn’t know Bowie’s “A Space Oddity.” I tried to hide my shock. But now they know a lot about it. Bowie recorded “A Space Oddity”  in 1968. It was his…