ARCHIVE
May 17, 2025
It is a disjointed memory, attached to impressions. I was fourteen, traveling in France with my family. One day we planned to visit an eighteenth-century country house, I don’t know why. For the architecture, probably. I remember nothing of
By Susan Dixon
March 17, 2025
I used to host retreats on what is popularly known as “Celtic Spirituality.” I was good at it, largely because I found the whole concept a relief from a particularly patriarchal and oppressive church experience I was caught in.
By Susan Dixon
January 15, 2025
I have been wrong about almost everything having to do with politics, communal beliefs, and human nature for ten years. I thought at every turn corrective forces, based in values taught in children’s books and elementary school, would mean
By Susan Dixon
January 6, 2025
I’m a reader and a writer. Like so many other readers and writers I love finding connections and themes. Even when I don’t like what I see I still look for meaning. So: today is January 6th, the traditional
By Susan Dixon
December 23, 2024
It was 1972. I was newly married, living in the north but traveling south for Christmas, which was a major festival in my family. Through a series of happy accidents, my husband had escaped any danger of being sent
By Susan Dixon
December 18, 2024
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Narnia is under an enchantment that makes it “always winter and never Christmas,” meaning “always dark and never light,” “always cold and never warm,” “always dormant and never growing,” “always fearful
By Susan Dixon
December 6, 2024
Most people I urge to write during this time dismiss the idea, or don’t register it as having any relevance to themselves. They aren’t “good enough,” they would say, or they aren’t “writers,”or their story isn’t interesting, or important,
By Susan Dixon
November 15, 2024
Over the years I have used this blog space to mess around—with ideas, kinds of writing, connections, seasonal musings. My categories have morphed over time and have held various kinds of writing in a loose organization that makes occasional
By Susan Dixon
November 6, 2024
We need a bigger boat now, because clearly the one we have been rowing is not adequate.
By Susan Dixon
October 5, 2024
Often on book-reading discussion boards someone will ask about DNF books. Do you have DNF books? What books are DNF for you? Is it even ethical, within the universe of book-reading morality, to DNF a book? Writing is difficult,
By Susan Dixon
June 10, 2024
Summer. Not my best season.
While most people are thrilled with sunshine and heat and energetic Outdoor Activities, I just want to find my cave where I
By Susan Dixon
March 19, 2024
I am already dreading the eclipse. I am awed by it, of course. Awed that it will roll across the United States, arriving in the Finger Lakes in the mid-afternoon and then continuing on its path into Canada. Where
By Susan Dixon