The Musings & Ponderings of Stella (And Friends)

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Stella Fosse

A Week of Nobel Queens

A Week of Nobel Queens What a week for older women! Poet Louise Gluck, 77, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” Gluck is a professor at

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Montage for blog Who Says Erotica is Porn?
Stella Fosse

Who Says Erotica is Porn?

Who Says Erotica is Porn? I got into a minor spat with a romance writer one day.  She was talking online about how much writing romance means to her as an older woman, which I totally understand.  Just like writing

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Ubuntu - I Am Because We Are Header Graphic
Stella Fosse

Ubuntu – I Am Because We Are

Ubuntu – I Am Because We Are After six months of pandemic, it’s clear that this strange time exacerbates fear and brings out the human tendency to distance ourselves, to label one another as “Other”. It is easy to see

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Stella Fosse

Life in the Third Act with Plague

Life in the Third Act with Plague. What it’s like to get what you want in a pandemic I recently read a fabulous article [registration required] by Caitlin Moran with the subtitle “Goodbye, nice, jolly, happy Caitlin. Hello, angry Caitlin.” Moran’s

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Mirinda Kossoff

What I Did Not Know About Racism

My guest blogger Mirinda Kossoff, who grew up in small-town Danville, VA, shares a powerful recollection in What I Did Not Know About Racism of what it was like to grow up in the South one hundred years after the

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Stella Fosse

The Surprising Bliss of the Non-Consumer

The Surprising Bliss of the Non-Consumer One of the best things I’ve done lately is to set up a weekly conversation with an accountability buddy.  I talked about doing this for years but just started during shutdown—partly because video calls

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