Lisa Solod's Blog
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May.11.2013
I want my mean, bitchy, drunk mother back. The mother who was depressed and melancholy, who said cruel things about my work and criticized my parenting, who undermined instructions to my kids by saying, “You really don’t have to pay attention to her.” I want the mother back who invited herself...
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4 comments
Jul.30.2012
In yoga class a few days ago, the teacher, a woman, began the class by saying that originally, yoga was a practice that only men were allowed to participate in. The young women in the class seemed baffled, especially a teenager whose father, the only man in the class, went on to ask if anyone in...
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Oct.24.2011
I was into my thirties before I began to tell the truth. I hadn’t exactly been lying in the three previous decades; but what I had been doing was, at best, dissembling, and at worst, well, let’s say I was avoiding the truth. And all the while I had no real idea I was doing it.
I come from a family...
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Aug.24.2011
My daughter came home recently and told me that she had found the tattoo she would get were she to get a tattoo. It was a quote that said, "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not why ships are built." When I looked it up, I saw that its attribution seems to be in some doubt. But its meaning is...
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Jul.18.2011
Michele Bachmann is not a feminist but she is running for president. Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman and a lawyer, is running for president. Michele Bachmann is a mother and a foster mother and a wife and she is running for president.
What part of this makes any sense at all?
Michele Bachmann...
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May.05.2011
All writers write for free at some point. Bradly Cooper's character in Limitless not withstanding, who do you know who has had no published work but has still gotten a contract and an advance to write a novel? Some celebrities, perhaps, but they don't really count. And they often have ghosts who...
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Apr.15.2011
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I was standing with family and friends in...
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Aug.26.2010
For all those tired of debating who is a “real” American and to whom Constitutional rights apply, and don’t, the feud between literary star Jonathan Franzen and bestselling novelists Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult is a welcome distraction.
Actually there is no feud. It’s just...
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Dec.24.2009
“I’m looking forward to Christmas,” an old friend tells me over the phone. She’s spending it with her Jewish ex-husband and two half-Jewish college-aged daughters. “I love spending Christmas with the Jews.”
The stereotype in America has long been...
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Sep.22.2009
All of you writers and would-be writers who have never been sexually abused by your parents, suffered from domestic assault, been abandoned on a highway somewhere by grandparents when raising you got to be too much; any of you who have never suffered from anorexia or bulimia, are not cancer...
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12 comments
Sep.14.2009
Once upon a time, a little Pollyanna-ish I know, I actually believed that most people were decent, most people were inherently good, and most people when given the chance were kind. I also believed in a) manners b) civility and c) generally good behavior in public and private.
Not that I assumed...
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4 comments
Aug.15.2009
According to today's Daily Beast the legendary and, yes, old, Bob Dylan was questioned by a twenty-something police officer in New Jersey when someone reported “a scruffy old man acting suspiciously.” The twenty-something cop had no idea who Dylan was and made him prove his identification back...
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3 comments
Jun.12.2009
Anti-Semitism has been a fact of my life for its entirety, from the first time, at age 5 or 6 I was told I was going to hell because I did not believe in Jesus, to the countless times I was called a “stupid Jew,” a kike, a baby killer, and a host of other names; from the time when, after the tent...
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May.20.2009
Salon..com http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/05/19/kramer_dirt/index.html recently ran an article and an interview with the editor of a new book of essays I am included in, called DIRT: Writers on the Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House.
In the article the writer...
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Apr.23.2009
Getting men to talk about family in an open and honest manner is a rare and special treat and reading Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry is like sitting in a comfortable chair, hidden in a darkened room, listening to guys tell their secrets to each other - when they think we aren’t listening...
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About Lisa
I was born in east Tennessee in the fifties and I knew I wanted to be a writer from the time I was 8 years old. I published my first newspaper piece at 17 and went on to publish part of my thesis while at Brown. I worked as a magazine editor and writer for...
Causes Lisa Solod Supports
Temple House of Israel, Staunton, Virginia, CASA