Last August, I spent three wonderful days at the Wellspring House in Ashfield MA. I’m grateful to have had the space, time, solitude and solace, which allowed me to finish the manuscript forReconnaissance. 
The Phillis Wheatley Room
Author Archives: hettypress
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment—uncensored
The Answer Is Never
Sabine Heinlein | Longreads | April 2015 | 16 minutes (3,886 words)
One time, when I was in my early twenties, I shared a hospital room with a mother of many. I had a skin infection that wouldn’t respond to oral medication, and the 50-something-year-old woman had severe, inexplicable hives. Our main topic of conversation revolved around neither of our ailments. It was about my not wanting to have children. She was insistent, which seemed ironic considering her hives flared up whenever her family visited her on Sundays. I eventually compromised with the woman. Okay, I said, I will put off my decision until I reach my thirties. “You are starry-eyed,” she huffed. “You young women want it all. But you can’t have it all!” Maybe, I thought, some of us don’t want it all.
View original post 3,796 more words
Community Foundation shares results of three-year Valley Gives pilot
By all accounts Valley Gives was an overwhelming success. In total, Valley Gives Day events of 2012, 2013, and 2014 have helped 559 local nonprofits raise nearly $5.9 million from more than 24,400 generous donors, many of whom gave online for the first time.
After we were done celebrating the results of the 2014 Valley Gives Day, the Community Foundation began evaluating results, nonprofit and donor surveys, and in-person listening sessions held immediately after Valley Gives 2013 and 2014.
Here are some highlights of what we learned:
- In 2013, only 21% of the nonprofits participating in Valley Gives Day were all volunteer organizations (no paid staff). In 2014, this proportion doubled, to 42%, as did the proportion of nonprofits with annual budgets under $100,000, from 27% in 2013 to 41% in 2014. This means much of the growth in numbers of participating nonprofits since 2013 is due to small organizations…
View original post 396 more words
Cherokee Slave Holders and a Poem
The Joy Project
Yesterday, a very kind man asked me to name three things recently that have brought me joy. I was a bit down in the dumps (to put it very, very mildly), it wasn’t an out of the blue question.
I paused.
“My son. My kids. They bring me joy. They’re so funny, if you just listen to them and their funny little ways, the questions they ask, the gratefulness for small things (sometimes), the kids, they laugh so much. They bring me joy.”
He nodded, and gestured for me to carry on.
“And… The day before yesterday I found a tiny white feather on the ground. My son spotted it and said it was a feather from Grandad. He said Grandad left it there for him so he would know he was still with him. He’s four. He’s lost a lot in his short life, he seems to have a…
View original post 369 more words
The Best Thomas Hardy Novels
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote 14 novels, so picking a top ten won’t prove too difficult a task. What are the best Thomas Hardy novels? This is undoubtedly going to prove a difficult and controversial issue, but we thought we’d take this chance to select the ten we think are worth reading – and we’ve even ranked the novels in order (and the order, too, is bound to prove controversial). Do you agree with our ordering and general choices? We’ve included some interesting facts about the novels in each description of the novel.
10. Under the Greenwood Tree (1872). Hardy adopted an overtly pastoral title for this, his second published novel. His first, Desperate Remedies (1871), was an example of sensation fiction (a genre more usually identified with Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins). It didn’t fare particularly well, so Hardy took the title of his next book from a song…
View original post 1,156 more words
Hetty Startup's blog 