HBW at the keys, ca. 1926
I thought I’d use a photograph of my father on this page. Dad loved words and wrote all his life. It was he who nursed my writing dreams.
For my 12th birthday Dad brought me home a new Hermes portable typewriter—orange (it was 1971). In later years there were heavy Royals, then IBM Selectrics, and eventually, a shared excitement over early MacIntosh computers. Though I never had much public success with my writing, Dad was always a staunch fan.
Thanks, Dad. For everything.
The links below are to recent bits of my writing, many unpublished.
- Thoughts of a Meat Eater, published in Connections, the alumni magazine of the Audubon Expedition Institute, Lesley University
- Fans on Fifty-Fourth Street, written after watching the premiere of Mamma Mia! in New York City, July 2008
- Farm Speech and Video, given at NCS, October 2003
- Farm Story Emails, various small adventures written on the wing
Fairhope Farm 
Love this photo of Grandpa, didn’t know photography was common for everyday people back then.
Grandmother, your great-grandmother, who died a couple of months after I was born, was a photography fiend and there are loads of great photos of that family of five. Grandmother herself is the only one who isn’t seen too often. Uncle D. hand-tinted a couple of blow-ups of Grandpa as a boy for Grandma after he died. They are just lovely.
Here is a slightly out-of-focus snapshot of a windy day at the ocean.
Judging from your Grandpa, the baby sitting, it is about 1918. The lineup is Herbert, Hamilton, Edith, Dorothy, Eleanor, and their father, Edward (my grandfather). Grandfather died of a heart attack five years later.
I will never forget sitting at Grandma’s breakfast room table when I was a little girl. It was evening, and Grandpa was telling me about his father dying when he was nine years old. I must have been about seven myself. I thought it was the saddest story in the world.