Dear Cary, I didn’t know who my father was until I was 44. The “father” I had was a man who married my mother when I was 2, and adopted me when I was 6. I found out at 14 that he wasn’t my father, but my mom still didn’t tell me about the real one. She made up yet another story, and that was all I had until age 44. The man I now refer to as my stepfather (although legally he was...
Dear Cary, I am a twice-divorced 54-year-old woman entrepreneur who supports herself through the practice of her craft. I have a 17-year-old daughter. She is bright, creative, articulate, sleeps a lot and talks to her friends and boyfriend on the phone, is an artist, cartoonist, and enjoys studying underwater hydrothermal vents. Senior year is around the corner and the world has gone mad – we...
Dear “a Mom,” A few more things, less ordered and quasi-poetic. You say, “Time seems to be collapsing.” You also say that she sleeps a lot. It’s good that she sleeps a lot because this article refers to a study of almost 28,000 teens where researchers found that most of them were not getting the recommended nine hours a night. “The most important thing to remember is that your...
Dear Cary, I’m feeling guilty these days about how comfortable my pandemic experience is. I mean, I feel the weight of the chaos going on, for sure. But my family is healthy, our home is comfortable, we can get groceries delivered, our income is steady, etc. I see other people struggling financially, and especially those fighting the good fight for justice, and I wonder why I lucked out while...
Dear Cary, Why is it that when I tell people they need to wear a face mask, I’m the one who ends up feeling terrible? I don’t just go around willy-nilly telling this to any maskless person, although I have been known to speak up in supermarkets if someone gets too close or exposes his or her nose. But in my apartment building, where there are a lot of high risk people (including me)...
Dear Cary, I’ve been coping with an anxiety disorder for most of my life. I know and use many of the available tools: the meds, meditation, therapy, exercise, talks with good friends, chocolate chip cookies. Engagement in living in this minute, now. Random acts of kindness and shopping. For years I’ve managed, more or less. But This Minute Now is outstripping all my coping skills. This minute now...
Dear Cary, I remember an afternoon, during my senior year of college, in a tiny hamlet in upstate New York, sitting at my desk, and writing a paper for one of my classes. I do not remember the class, or the subject of the paper. I do remember tip-tap-typing away, focused, with open books lying about on the desk and floor, passages marked with pencil, fluorescent sticky notes protruding from pages...
There was trouble right away the first day of the Lydia Favors Beholden Riverwash Film ’n Theater Festival. Protesters ringed the town and were blocking entrance roads. Sheriff Stern was looking for David Twist and Marc Chute with a warrant to search their mobile command center trailer. Rock star PR1ckè® was threatening not to perform unless his contract rider specifying three changes of...
Dear reader, In Donald Trump, I see a man obsessed with death but unaware of his obsession with death. What clinched it was his recent rallies. They were literally invitations to infection. The life-affirming had become death-affirming, and the tragic gulf between Trump’s awareness and his actions was palpable. So I began to think about malignant narcissism and the death wish. I would love...
Dear Cary, I am a 67-year-old bald white man who wears glasses. Recently, I’ve been around people who assume that because I look like Mitch McConnell, I think like Mitch McConnell. I don’t look THAT much like a GOP senator, but… you get the idea. It’s very sad to have spent a lot of my adult life working against racism and get lumped in with the KKK and the GOP. I...
Last Thursday’s column, “My Parents Don’t Like Me,” made me wonder: How many times have I recommended that book by David Burns in the past? Wow. The answer surprised me. So I put together this list. Though it sounds like I’m either obsessed or on the take, the truth is, that one book made a lasting impression, and, cognitive therapy turns out to be good for lots of...
I rode the train to Florence today. I wore my surgical mask and sat only in the designated seats. I walked the streets of Florence today, ate lunch in Florence, bought tea in Florence, visited the Ceccherini music store in Florence, and got back on the train and came home to Castiglion Fiorentino. Then I watched CNN. And I am appalled. I am appalled at America’s failure to contain this...
Cary D. Tennis · SYA Podcast #4 Stuck in the House With the Kids
Dear Cary, I am glad you started up again with Since You Asked, way over there in Italy. I hope Italy is not a sad place now, but it must be, a whole generation of grandparents has died off. This summer will be a season of national mourning for Italians; the Christmas season will feature so many families experiencing that first difficult holiday without their beloved parents and grandparents...
Hi friends. this … is the audio of “Advice Column No. 3,” posted on Soundcloud. I haven’t mastered the whole rss/podcasting process yet, so i just keep posting these audio files here. I was thinking, what can I play on guitar to put with this, and of course “Amazing Grace” came to mind so in the intro and interspersed throughout i play those big sad notes on...
Dear Cary, I feel helpless. My husband almost died two weeks ago. I coerced him to the ER at the last minute where he collapsed trying to get in the door. Once in there, he vomited so much blood all over me and all over the ER room that it looked like a crime scene. I didn’t realize he had been in pain for quite some time. He was diagnosed with an illness and spent a week in ICU, then...
Every now and then in his reality show called “The President,” Donald Trump tries a gag that fails. The idea probably came to him in the wee hours when he stews and sweats and tweets. It had a glow, it felt right, the idea of getting up there with a goddam Bible on the church steps, shaking that Bible at people like a stick, that Bible must have looked good to him, this square black bomb made of...
Tears come out of my eyes and wet my cheeks and go into my mouth and taste salty. I watch Atlanta’s mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tell the citizens of Atlanta to go home and I get it. This is no way to blah blah blah I get it, I hear the reason born of pain and oppression and I get it but I would be there too, wouldn’t I, if I were there. I would also be feeling that enough is enough, fuck it, burn...
I have lived so long with America, with its promise and its shame, with its beauty and its tragedy. I have lived so long now with America’s numbness to its own pain, its impotence, its blindness to its own shame and its own crimes. I have lived so long with this! I am in tears! I am in tears with all the rest of us who have lived with this for so long and have protested and written and spoken and...
Dear Cary, I met an animal communicator a few years ago, read the books she recommended on the subject, and was surprised to get verifiable results with several different creatures. (“Tell Carl I need my green ball, please,” and “The full moon is in three days.”) Now I am running out of things to talk about with my main communicatee, a dog. Do you have suggestions...
Dear Cary, Thanks for writing about grief. I’ve been grieving too, and any interpretation of grief helps me feel connected. I hope your lungs feel full of air for however you grieve. Telling stories or wailing that losses are always unfair or cycling uphill or laughing at a broken cup. I wonder what you think about change and upheaval. How do we put back together relationships strained by...
Dear reader, After last week’s column about emotional pain and suicide I wanted to write a nice lighthearted column. So I looked for a nice, lighthearted letter like I used to get sometimes at Salon. Couldn’t find one. Just people in deep pain. All over the world, people in pain, uncomfortable, forced to change, give up routines, give up comforts, face fragility, precariousness, lack of...
Hi Cary, My name is Tremayne and I’m an 18-year-old from Queensland, Australia and I feel like I’ve hit the pinnacle of my depression. I used to be the most happy person in the world. Even when things went to shit I would always put on a smile (even during the COVID-19) and make a joke like nothing matters. I’m always prepared for anything and like life it drags me down when I...
Dear Cary, What is difficult for me and my husband is having our two quite loud and active boys with us the whole day, every day. I have such a longing for being alone. Here in Germany we are allowed to go outside, but not meet with other people who are not part of our household. I am very glad we have a forest very near. The kids and I go there daily. Also we have a small garden with a...
I asked readers of my newsletter to write to me and tell me what they see out their windows. PART 1 RAN LAST WEEK. This is Part 2. (the photo above is what I see.)–cary t. 4. Peacocks and mangoes Mumbia, india Dear Cary, Greetings from India, where 1.3 billion people are in lockdown since 25 March. For many weeks, all of us have been doing our best to keep to ourselves. This is no small...
Dear Reader, Yesterday I texted an old friend and mentor in San Francisco, a person who has been dear to me, who has guided me through the spiritual wilderness into which I will occasionally wander in moments of loss or grief or fear. I texted him to get in touch, no big thing, it’s been a while, I’ve been living in Italy for over four years now, and the reply was, “Is this...
I asked readers of my newsletter to write to me and tell me what they see out their windows. 1. A murder of crows Portland, Oregon Dear Cary, A group of crows is called a murder. A murder of crows. Portland has multiple murders of crows. The Audobon Society says more than 15,000 crows roost in downtown Portland in the fall and winter. I’m not sure about the spring, but my amateur...
Dear Cary, I’m writing a book based on my day job where I have access to all kinds of sensitive information. It is about the parallels between criminals and business people and I’ve named it, “Everything I Know About Entrepreneurs I Learned from Drug Dealers.” I’ve been privy to a lot of behind-the-scenes situations including going on ride-alongs with various federal...
Dear reader, I’ve missed you. So I’m writing the Since You Asked column again. Remember the first one, October 17, 2001? My answer began like this: “We’re all on unfamiliar ground after Sept. 11.” So welcome back to the unfamiliar. Write to me. I need letters. Tell me your troubles. Don’t worry about the anonymity thing. I’ll never tell anybody. This first letter was a funny letter, so I’ve...
After two and a half years working on The Stones of Le Santucce, about the rebuilding of a bombed medieval Tuscan convent into the Residence Le Santucce, the Tanganelli family, the town of Castiglion Fiorentino (and our reasons for leaving America, and the tragic bombing of December 1943, and Napoleon’s suppression of the church, and Garibaldi’s visit in 1849, and the rise of Fascism...
Dear reader, Enjoy with me if you will the humor of this, from my notes on the writing of The Split-Second Forever: Soon after I began living in this little town in Tuscany, I told everyone I was writing a book about it—about Le Santucce, about the history, about medieval building techniques, about Tuscan convents, about this beautiful place the Alfeo Tanganelli built from the bombed-out ruin of...
We will do workshops in Italy again one day, once this awful pandemic recedes! Meanwhile, this post captures some of the spirit of our Italy-based Amherst Writers and Artists method workshops.–Cary T., April 2021 Surprise! A huge chocolate festival happens during our Tuscan Writing workshop. So we’re going there! Come on along! Coincidence, coincidence. While we are having our...
[UPDATE July 27, 2021: I briefly called it “The Split-Second Forever” but the title has gone back to being The Stones of le Santucce.” Just so you know.–ct] I’ve been working on The Stones of le Santucce nearly four years. People are starting to wonder. I saw Professor Alpini this morning, standing near the gate to our little walled garden, talking in the driveway with a...
As I mentioned in a post from the other day, when I decided to create an Amherst Writers and Artists-style workshop centered on food, I started reading the Stories from the Kitchen collection and then someone sent me to this interesting and helpful piece in Poets and Writers. The writer attends a class about food writing, and Corrine, the instructor, says to describe a lemon. “Look again,” said...