I was spellbound watching the grace of skater Peggy Fleming in the 1968 Olympics. I was eight years old. It was the first time I saw a woman float, dance, leap, twirl, turn, dance, spin on actual ice. Our family grew up in Southern California playing baseball and basketball but ice-skating (watching it!) opened me up to a whole new world of what the human body in lyrical, technical self-expression could experience. This New York Times article jumped out…check out the photos. It’s like watching the ’68 Olympics, all over again. xoxo From The New York Times: ‘When I Skate...

I’ve been taking cello lessons off and on for about nine years. I consider myself a ripe beginner. Growing up, I played the piano. That was my go-to instrument. Sitting in our corner living room, the light streaming in, I played lots of Neil Young, CSNY, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Cat Stevens, Stevie Wonder, a few classical pieces, and lots of free-floating improv. In my 40s, though, I was ready to embark upon a new musical adventure. I’d seen a band play in Ireland a decade earlier, struck by the woman on stage and the bold sound...

  Write a beginning poem. That is the only way to start what might become an advanced poem—not that advanced poems even exist at all! Poems are beginning. Poems are swimmers in the sea, angling one direction, subject to big swells, the pull of the current—and there you are feeling coldness of the salt water coating you, the pink horizon nudging you closer, making you feel hungry for lunch. Perhaps a tuna fish sandwich? I have one poem called “The Corner Fiddler.” I’ve been working on it for ages, since I first traveled to Ireland—where my people come from. Sometimes...

A fertile revolution challenging the status quo carved the social landscape of the 1960s. The events that had us riveted to the TV mirrored another one experienced in my childhood home, albeit one with a quieter face. In 1966, My youngest brother was born with what was called Mongoloidism. Mental retardation wasn’t cause for marches on the street. It was hush-hush news. The scientific explanation for Down syndrome echoes as a fait accompli: A genetic abnormality occurs in mitosis with an additional 21st chromosome, and this accounts for an array of intellectual and developmental challenges. As a kid that meant...