Deirdre on reading, writing and living

Four Writers Read From Their Work
February 5th, 7pm
At the Douglass Street Composer's Collective
295 Douglass St. (between 3rd and 4th Aves.) Map
in Brooklyn (2 blocks from the Union St. stop on the R train)
Prepare to laugh, cry and eat cheese!

Free event!


Nancy Rawlinson is a writer, editor, teacher and coach. She has an MFA from Columbia University and has been awarded several writing residencies and fellowships. She runs her own writing workshops, is a contributing editor for Guernica magazine and writes a writing advice column for The Faster Times.


Deirdre Sinnott is a memoirist and speaker who reveals the disturbing truths, outrageous behavior, and humbling circumstances that taught her how to survive. She splits her time between New York City and the Catskill Mountains.


Lily White is a saxophone player, composer and writer from Illinois. She currently lives with her husband, and her daughter in Brooklyn, NY. She divides her time between practicing, performing and re-learning how to ice skate with her daughter.


Comedian and writer Emily Epstein has been trapped in a self-cleaning toilet and has stitches from a treadmill accident. She performs all around New York City and the Northeast, (not to mention a boat in the middle of the Yangtze River in China). She has been a comedian in the New York Underground Comedy Festival and was on Good Morning America. Her writing has been featured in such publications as Travelistic.com, Gawker.com, and the Hartford Courant.
"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose."--Woody Allen

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Current Location: nyc
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: silence

What follows is a letter from MADRE the group I donated money to for Haiti:

Dear Deirdre,

Thank you for your generous gift for Haiti relief. Your gift is so important to our relief efforts in Haiti, and I knew you would want an update as soon as possible.

You may be wondering whether MADRE is actually able to transport emergency relief given Haiti's decimated infrastructure.

We have determined that our partner organization in Haiti, Zanmi Lasante, is able to bring humanitarian aid overland into the country. Teams of healthcare workers from the project have established a functioning supply chain through the Dominican Republic and are currently delivering medical aid to those most in need in Haiti.

Zanmi Lasante has more than 120 doctors and nearly 500 nurses and nursing assistants coordinating emergency medical relief efforts. They are setting up mobile field hospitals in Port-au-Prince, where staff can triage patients, provide emergency care and send those who need surgery or more complex treatment to our partner's functioning hospitals and surgical facilities outside the destroyed city.

At the moment, our greatest need is financial support to meet the needs of the communities hardest hit by the earthquake. Zanmi Lasante needs support to quickly procure emergency medical supplies and basic living necessities, as well as transportation support for the tens of thousands of people that will be seeking care at mobile field hospitals in the capital city. Time is of the essence.

Thank you so much.

Vivian Stromberg

P.S. - MADRE is collaborating with Partners in Health to send a team of medical professionals to Haiti. Find out more.

MADRE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
MADRE · 121 West 27th Street, #301 · New York, NY 10001 · (212) 627-0444 · www.madre.org

Current Location: NYC
Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: silence

When the lovely women at Drinking Diaries asked me to write a fun essay about alcohol, I didn't have to wonder much. I used to adore beer, so here is a send-up called, strangely enough, "Beer."

Note to poetry fans, this essay includes a few lines of verse.

I hope you like "Beer" as much as I did.

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Current Location: NYC
Current Mood: mischievous
Current Music: Silence

I made it. I know the year's still not quite over and I'm deep into The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver so there may be a few additional titles, but I made it to 50 books and that makes me happy.

There are at least four books that I own and feel guilty about not reading this year. Maybe I'll get to them early enough in 2010 to get them done. So here is my list:

1. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, by Niall Ferguson. 1/1/09
2. Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food, by Jan Chozen Bays, MD, 1/3/09
3. Just After Sunset: Stories, by Stephen King, 1/3/09
4. Bread Body Spirit: Finding the Sacred in Food, Edited by Alice Peck, 1/11/09
5. Foods Jesus Ate and How to Grow Them, by Allan A. Swenson, 1/23/09
6. Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed & Forgery in the Holy Land, by Nina Burleigh, 1/25/09
7. Company of Liars, by Karen Maitland, 1/31/09
8. House of Happy Endings: A Memoir, by Leslie Garis, 2/5/09
9. I Never Thought Addiction Could Happen to Me, by Loree Taylor Jordan, 2/6/09
10. Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America, by William Graebner, 2/6/09
11. The Kiss: A Memoir, by Kathryn Harrison, 2/7/09
12. Dread: How Fear and Fantasy have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to the Avian Flu, by Philip Alcabes, 2/21/09
13. No one belongs here more than you: Stories, by Miranda July, 2/22/09
14. A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana, by Haven Kimmel, 3/1/09
15. An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River, by Steven M. Wisw, 3/9/09
16. Love Junkie: A Memoir of Love and Sex Addiction, by Rachel Resnick, 3/12/09
17. Dooms Day Book, by Connie Willis, 3/20/09
18. Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher, 3/21/09
19. This Boy's Life, by Tobais Wolff, 3/28/09
20. Normal Eating for Normal Weight: The Path to Freedom from Weight Obsession and Food Cravings, by Sheryl Canter, M.A., 3/29/09
21. Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History, by Helene Stapinski, 4/11/09
22. John Henry Days, by Colson Whitehead, 4/30/09
23. Brother I'm Dying, by Edwidge Danticat, 5/3/09
24. Middlemarch, by George Eliot, 5/14/09
25. Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found, by Marie Brenner, 6/7/09
26. Fierce Attachments: A Memoir, by Vivian Gornick, 6/12/09
27. The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton, by Vivian Gornick, 6/15/09
28. Women In Utopia: The Ideology of Gender in the American Owenite Communities, by Carol A. Kolmerten, 6/21/09
29. The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, 6/26/09
30. The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative, by Vivian Gornick, 6/30/09
31. Born in the Wrong Country, by Milton Lee Norris, 7/3/09
32. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin, 7/12/09
33. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham, 7/26/09
34. The Fallen Man, by Tony Hillerman, 8/9/09
35. My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands, by Chelsea Handler, 8/12/09
36. Man Versus Nature: The Field & Stream Guide to How to Stay Alive in the Outdoors, by Howard Earl & Frederic T. Jung, 8/14/09
37. The Locked Room, by by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, 8/20/09
38. Underworld, by Don Dillio, 9/6/09
39. The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler, 9/11/09
40. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, 9/27/09
41. Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity, by Kerry Cohen, 10/1/09
42. Killing Castro, by Lawrence Block, 10/26/09
43. The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, 11/8/09
44. Unafraid of the Dark: A Memoir, by Rosemary L. Bray, 11/17/09
45. Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, by Ahmed Rashid, 11/21/09
46. Silas Marner, by George Eliot, 11/29/09
47. It's All About You: A Daily Comic Strip, by Tony Murphy, 12/2/09
48. Cousin Henry, by Anthony Trollope, 12/3/09
49. Madam Bovery, by Gustave Flaubert, 12/13/09
50. Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives, by Carolyn Kay Steedman, 12/16/09


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Current Location: NYC
Current Music: Silence

Michael need a hit and he needs it bad. Wait, it's not really a "hit" he needs but a shot, no make it a double shot. Michael is in real trouble. His drug of choice? Caffeine. And when the steaming water hits grounds, it's like elixir dripping down from on high. Coffee is life.

Tony Murphy's new book, a collection of daily comic strips, is good for the voyeur in all of us. What could be more entertaining than watching a neurotic stumble, tip-toe, and crawl through life? Murphy's characters are so real you feel like you could run into them at any cafe in the world. Did I mention that I laughed -- out loud?

If you're stuck for a present for that special someone who squirms at the idea that he or she is actually in a relationship or for your long-suffering Barista order of copy of It's All About You: A Daily Comic Strip right now.



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Current Location: NYC
Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Silence

My new essay, "The Grinder" was just published on Drinking Diaries. It's a follow-up to my "Video Tour of the NYC Bars." I chose one of the places I talked about in the video and expanded on it.

All of this is a spinoff from my as-yet-unpublished memoir Drunk Dreams.

I hope you enjoy the essay (and the video)!

Current Location: New York City
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: silence

I hope you enjoy this special supplement to my (as yet unpublished) memoir.

Current Location: New York City
Current Mood: excited

What came first the roasted chicken or the hard-boiled egg? Cooking is so universal and has been in vogue for so long, it's hard to look at with fresh eyes. But in Catching Fire, Wrangham seeks to explain the extensive roll cooking had in human evolution.

Instead of diving right into the history of mankind's development, the book begins by looking at how modern humans do on a raw food diet. There are many people who swear by eating food that is either raw or cooked at very low temperatures. Studies have found that while subjects have eaten the same amount of calories as their cooking counterparts, they loose weight. Part of the explanation is that heating food breaks some of the bonds that hold substances together on a molecular level. Because those bonds are softened or broken by cooking, it is easier for the digestive system to extract the calories.

By looking into modern hunter/gatherer societies, Wrangham sees social benefits to the division of labor, men hunting woman gathering and cooking, that add up to better survival chances for our proto-human ancestors. By cooking food, less energy was needed for digestion, creating smaller guts and spare resources for brain development. Paired women could count on the protection of their food by their hungry partners.

Chimps and great apes chew the raw food that is available to them for almost six hours per day. That much mastication takes time away from hunting. Modern man chews for an average of an hour to an hour and a half per day leaving lots of room for other tasks.

The book makes lot more points and it is a fascinating take on evolution and what separated humans from other animals.
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Current Location: Catskills
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: silence

Last summer I got a little paranoid. Charles was away working in the City while I stayed in the Catskills. Stocks were crashing. The economy was melting. Gas was peaking. And my mother was dying.

I began to hoard food and read up on alternative sources of energy. One was water power. I read many articles on the web and even printed a few in case the electrical grid stopped working and my tech-heavy life was rudely interrupted.

So, last week, when I saw that the Equinunk Historical Society was having a demonstration of their water powered saw mill, I ran over the Lookout. PA and went on a tour.

The photos are on my Facebook page and anyone can look at them here. It's great to know that there are a few examples of the sort of technology that's stood the test of time and requires no electrical juice, only water and gravity.

There are more tours this summer, the second Saturday in August and the first Saturday in October. They happen from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It's worth the trip.

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Current Location: Catskills
Current Mood: geeky

I'm happy to say that my manuscript Drunk Dreams: A Memoir was chosen to be one of ten finalists for the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference's Manuscript Contest. The conference is in July from the 24-26th. The winning book will receive $3000 and a publishing contract. I'm thrilled to be one of the finalists and will keep you all posted on the result.

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Current Location: Catskills
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: silence

When Robert Owen spoke about equality people responded. Some attacked his ideas, wishing that he had stayed a paternal factory manager duplicating his role at the textile mill in New Lanark, Scotland. There he transformed a typical early 1800's factory into a showcase of benevolence. He shortened the hours for plant workers. He improved the housing and living conditions. He even built a school for infants, the forerunner to kindergartens that are now considered essential to early development. Others responded to his new theory, a total reorganization of society based on equality that culminated in the Utopian commune of New Harmony, Indiana, by moving thousands of miles to be part of it.

In the 1820’s Owenite societies were springing up all over Britain and the United States. Most of them failed in a few years. The failures were due to poor planning, hardships suffered while trying to build communities from scratch, undelivered promises of equality, and competition with capitalist enterprises.

Kolmerten concentrates her research on the promise of equality between the sexes and has uncovered a remarkably rich history of the "woman problem" common to all of the intentional communities of the era. Despite soring rhetoric, the thinking about women's liberation was mired in contemporary understanding of female roles. Woman were promised that they would get equal education and be taught a useful skill, however they were expected to also keep the house, cook the food, be pleasing, and do all of the other domestic drudgery that tied them to the house to begin with. It was the typical "second shift" still expected of working woman today.

The contribution of Kolmerten's extensive research, through, no doubt, many giant piles of letters written by women who participated in the Utopian communes, is that the disgruntled feelings of these woman were part of the societies' failure. Some woman came willingly to try the new life, others as appendages of their husbands. Woman of all classes whose experiences were very different, from having servants to being too poor for such luxuries, were now expected to do laundry, cook, clean, and take on another task as well. Some even were denied the right to vote on their own conditions.

Because women seldom wrote their own histories, letters are all that's left of their lives and struggles. Kolmerten has distilled the sentiments of personal letters into a important new analysis of what contributed to the failure of the Utopian Socialists.

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Current Location: Bronxville
Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Silence

I look a little like linebacker with shading under my eye to prevent glare.



It's five days after my tumble off the bike. I'm still sore. My knee, elbow, and right arm still give me sharp reminders of my folly.

But, high on my thigh, hugging my short's seam, I've developed one of the more beautiful marks I've ever had:



Don't ask me what I hit, but whatever it was, it loved me.

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Current Location: Catskills
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: silence

Okay today was not such a great bike experience as Monday. I didn't even make it to the main road. I had just stopped to let the neighbor's dog sniff me so that he knew I was me and not some deer he had to chase. I began to glide down the damp road that our house sits on. I wanted to go slowly, but I simultaneously squeezed the brakes and stood up to ease my way over a bump. I pressed on the front brake harder than I should have and went right over the top of the bike.

Because my feet were still strapped to the pedals The back of the bike came off the ground and the whole thing flipped over on top of me.

I have a case of bike face:



Not too severe, but I bet that scrape on my cheekbone's gonna get colorful.

Small patches of skin on my elbows, knees, thighs, and one shoulder got scraped off as well.

So Monday I was grateful to be able to ride after 686 days off the bike, today I'm... thankful I didn't get really hurt? Resentful? Feeling a little unbalanced?

I don't know, but I'll get back on in a few days and hope that I have nothing this exciting to write about.

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Current Location: Catskills
Current Mood: sore
Current Music: silence

Forgive me oh bicycle god, most merciful, for I have sinned. It's been 686 days since my last communion with you.

On June 18, 2007, before the fog burned off hills, I was up and riding down one of the main roads that leads out of town, legs pumping, looking forward to the hill that pops out of the landscape five miles from my summer house. The ride was a sweet one, I made it to the 3.8 mile marker in the next county. The total mileage that day was 13.6. Very good for my morning ride.

The road crosses a small stream that never looked particularly impressive. But two days later a flash flood overflowed the stream bed, carrying with it mud and rocks, trees and garbage. The wall of debris-filled water ripped apart houses, rolled a trailer, tore up large sections of asphalt and flipped them like pancakes. It grabbed cars and trucks sweeping everything down the incline and into the Beaverkill. Four people died.

My house was unharmed, but the hamlet was devastated by grief at losing members of the community and shock at a fourth flood in three years.

I said to Charles, "You never know when it's the last time you get to do something." A few days later, as I was trying to figure out where to ride in the mornings, I hit upon riding to the next town over to pick up the newspaper at their grocery store. It was a ride that provided rolling hills and two challenging inclines. Not only that, if I veered off and took a slight detour, I got to roll over a wooden covered bridge. The solution couldn't have been more delightful. That morning, as I swept by the Willowemoc Creek, where it passes under a towering overpass that holds up the four-lane divided highway, I remembered to be grateful for the privilege of being able to ride.

The summer continued and I continued to ride. My last day on the bike was July 26, 2007.

In late 2008 I was diagnosed with Lichen sclerosus. Okay, it's embarrassing, it's gross, it's painful, and it's inconvenient to say the least. Bike riding was out or so I believed. My OBGYN and I worked on finding a solution. Well, he did most of the work. I just got profoundly depressed. Forget about the bike, we're talking about problems with sex and how to match my desires with my newly-discovered inabilities.

The summer passed with me barely even walking for the paper in the mornings. Those who follow this blog will know that my mother fell in July of 2008 and died in January of 2009. It's enough to say that it was a difficult summer for me and bike riding wasn't even on the agenda.

During the winter, as I contemplated this summer and wondered how I could get moving again, I hit upon the idea that I could buy a hornless bike seat and maybe, just maybe get back in the saddle and start pumping my legs again. I bought the "Spongy Wonder" and had it installed on the bike. And the beautiful son-of-a-gun worked.

My legs aren't as strong as they were 686 days ago, but I felt the old joy of moving on my own power and pumping my legs in rhythm with my beating heart. Will my knees hold out? Can I get used to the difference between a traditional seat the the Spongy Wonder? Will I be able to stay on the bike when giant trucks rush up behind me and try to suck me into their vortex? I don't know. All I know is that today I got to ride the bike again and it made me happy.

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Current Location: Catskills
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: silence

When the calls came, they were always there for one another. It didn't matter that one lived in the old neighborhood in Haiti and one moved all the way to New York City. They were brothers and when one was in trouble, the other one moved miles and mountains to help.

Danticat's superb memoir about her entire clan, focusing particularly on her father and his brother, puts them in their element for readers to meet. Their lives are built in the shadow of invasions and dictators. Small decisions have huge consequences.

Both men had a hand in raising Danticat and her brother. Scenes in the poor Bel Air neighborhood of Port au Prince (the capital of Haiti) begin when the author is a little girl. She and her parents live in a tiny house and dream of making a good and decent life. Soon squads of paramilitary men called the Tonton Macoutes, enforcers of Papa Doc Duvalier's rule, begin throwing their weight around. Danticat's father, tired of living under their gaze, overstays his tourist visa to the US. When his wife follows him, Danticat and her first brother stay with their uncle. It will be years before the family is able to live together again.

Larger historical events push the people of Bel Air to the breaking point and Danticat's family is threatened, just like everyone else there.

The book is beautifully written and can help readers unfamiliar with Haiti's tumultuous history catch up by focusing on the families trials and traumas. While the situation may be off the front pages, misery and resistance are is still thriving. It's well worth spending some time learning about Haiti and the people who struggle and live and die, both there and right here in the US.

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Current Location: Catskills
Current Mood: busy
Current Music: silence

Roger Sinnott was one of my uncles. He was my father's half brother. Roger could have stepped off the TV screen from an episode of Madmen. He was a very smart professional, a two-fisted drinker, and a sparkling wit at parties. Recently a Utica businessman told me that Roger and the Bank of Utica (where he was the president) were responsible for the support and survival of many local enterprises.

I had a passel of uncles. They are all gone now. There was Karl, my mother's brother-in-law. Karl was a big friendly guy who seemed to me to patient and supportive of my Aunt Lillian. Seeing him was a rare pleasure. Uncle Leonard was married to Lucy. He was interested in photography. I'm not really certain where Lucy fits in. I suspect she was related to my grandmother, Helene Doyle.

Uncle Bob ran a leather and luggage store in downtown Utica. He had silky white hair and always seemed happy to see us. His wife, a sister of Roger's, was a delight to be around. Uncle Bill, married to my father's sister Jane, was a mysterious man. He was rail thin, always on death's door, and had no visible means of support besides my aunt. My mother claimed that he'd had every disease in the book except leprosy. But Bill liked his wiskey and that's one of the most notable things about him. He was always a little stewed.

Now I have no Aunts or Uncles left. That layer of the family is completely gone and I feel like I've lost a huge cache of living memory. Last May it was Jane who died, this January my mother, and now Roger.

Roger lived to be 95. He had it his way for many years. He died at home, and that's the way he wanted it. Roger Sinnott, Presente!

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Current Location: NYC
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Beethoven

John Henry was a steel-drivin' man strong enough to break up a mountain so that the trains can come through. He beat a steam-powered hammer in a contest and then dropped dead with his hammer in his hand, or so the legend goes. Colson Whitehead (The Intuitionist and Apex Hides the Hurt) creates a strange and familiar world in the three books I've read. In John Henry Days the main character is an African-American journalist who goes from PR event to PR event freelancing and freeloading. He laughs and chats with his fellow "junketeers" at a weekend devoted to celebrating the legend of John Henry at the Big Bend Tunnel in Talcott, West Virginia.

A near death experience shakes his ambition to break the record set by a previous junketeer to go to an organized and paid for PR event every day for six months. So far J. Sutter's been going for three months solid about half way to Bobby Figgis's record.

Hundreds of people converge on John Henry Days and readers get to sit inside many of their heads. The main event is the unveiling of a stamp featuring folk heroes including the steel-drivin' man. Postal employees, town muckety-mucks, the daughter of a researcher who owned the biggest collection of John Henry paraphernalia, PR men, writers, townspeople, and stamp collectors all get their chance.

Whitehead loves language and it slides beautifully onto the pages of his quirky novels. John Henry Days won't help you decide if the man was a myth or a fleshy human, but it will absorb you and leave you with a sense of wonder.

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Current Location: New York City
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: silence

It's official! I can now make water, do my business, and so forth, and feel that it's safely going to go somewhere. The new septic tank is in.

New photos are here.

It works like a charm.

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It turns out that treasure comes in many forms. If you're in a desert the treasure is water. If you're in the water, the treasure could be a life raft. For me the treasure was the rusted septic tank.

As a city dweller I hardly give much thought to sewage. Too bad, because I'm sure its journey is actually fascinating. In the Catskills however, it's been on my mind since winter. Without going too far into the poo problem, I'll just say things weren't working as they should. But today we began phase one of fixing the problem.

There are photos here.

Tomorrow the new, sparkling-clean, tank will be put into the ground and I will be able to flush freely. Once again I can put the septic tank and all it contains out of my mind.

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Current Location: Catskills
Current Mood: satisfied

I would have called to say "Happy Easter" even though I'm not religious, nor was she.

I wouldn't have confessed that I'm still shocked she's gone.

I would have announced that I was going to take a walk in Central Park to look at the flowering trees.

I wouldn't have explained that I missed her because she'd still be around to talk to.

I would have reported that yes, they do have elms trees in the park just like I said last fall.

I wouldn't have confided that I'd been thinking about her because that'd be too weird.

I would have updated her on all the birds I saw including a mallard, a cardinal, numerous robins, some warblers, a bunch of sparrows, two house finches, and a grackle.

I wouldn't have mentioned that I love her because that would have made her uncomfortable.

I would have told her that I'd see her soon.

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Current Location: NYC
Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Silence