Page Lambert's Blog, page 3

The Coronavirus and The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Gary Ferguson and Mary Claire are Teaching Us About Living Well in the World

Did any of you, when you first heard that the coronavirus was sourced from a live-animal market in China, have this fleeting thought: What did we expect after centuries of treating animals cruelly? Did we think there would be no consequences?  Perhaps it’s time we look not only into the pathology of the coronavirus, but also into the morality of it.

We have always known there would be a day of reckoning. The bad news is that the final arbitrator might be Supreme Nature herself....

Cummins' American Dirt and Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth: Can stories, even when they aren't our own, build bridges?

Jeanine Cummins is on the hot seat right now for writing American Dirt, a novel about immigration and life on the Mexican/American border, which was (until a few days ago) believed to become one of the most important novels of 2020. Oprah named it a Book Club Choice. Stephen King endorsed it, as did Ann Patchett, John Grisholm, Sandra Cisneros, and other notable writers. The New York Times and Amazon gave it the #1 slot. Rumor has it that the publisher paid Cummins a 7-figure advance.

A few...

American Dirt and Cultural Appropriation: Cummins thought she was building a bridge but she might have been digging a grave

Jeanine Cummins is on the hot seat right now for writing American Dirt, a novel which was, until a few days ago, believed to be one of the greatest novels of 2020. Oprah named it the Book Club Choice. Stephen King endorsed it. Ann Patchett, John Grisholm, and Sandra Cisneros endorsed it. The New York Times and Amazon gave it the #1 slot.


Then the dirt hit the fan, for Cummins and Flatiron Books (an imprint of MacMillans). The book tour was cancelled. Oprah pulled away for a few days, then...

The Gifts My Father Has Given

In my hands I held a hardback copy of Jules Verne’s Classic Science Fiction, torn airmail packaging scattered at my feet. The inscription: “To Matt, with love from Grandpa Loren, San Francisco.” Why is my 75-year-old father sending my 9-year-old son a 511-page book? The inappropriateness of the gift irritated me—a gift hurriedly bought with too little care given.

But perhaps it was unfair of me to expect my father to know what a boy of nine would like. Then I remembered that spring, when we...

The Kindness of Mister Rogers, The Wonder of Nature

I was only a little surprised when I read in Mary Pflum Peterson's piece in The Washington Post that her 21st century kids liked, really liked, the original Mister Rogers. So much, in fact, that they binge-watched all the old episodes with her.

"He likes kids, Mommy,” her daughter said. “Kids know when a grown-up likes them.”

But it was her youngest son's comment that got my attention. 
“And he’s not too loud,” her son added. “When we watch him, there’s no noise. You don’t have to...

Isn’t that the whole freaking point of fiction?

If you read fiction, chances are you’re drawn now, more than ever, to stories that help you escape today’s polarizing politics. Nostalgic stories. Futuristic stories. Stories that draw you into worlds other than your own.

Penguin Random House editor Sally Kim, during a panel in New York City at this year’s BookExpo (the industry’s mega trade event), suggested to the audience that readers are urgently craving perspectives that are not their own.

“Which, of course,” she said, “is the...

On the road again!!

Nature & Words is on a summer sabatical, which is to say that I just "got off the river" after my 22nd annual "River Writing Journey for Women," which featured renowned sculptor Roxanne Swentzell as my featured artist, 21 other amazing women, an ancient canyon, a river following an ancient bed to the sea, and .... 


Now I'm on the road again, heading to New Mexico with my husband John Gritts to lead our 7-day, "Santa Fe & Taos Sojourn: Sacred Lands, Sacred Art, Sacred Words" retrea...

Honoring N. Scott Momaday, Honoring Our Ancestors

NEW YORK, NY — Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, poet, playwright, and professor N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D., accepted the 2019 Ken BurnsAmerican Heritage Prize at an event held at the American Museum of Natural History. May 2019. 
Last week my daughter Sarah, visiting from Oklahoma, took home with her a chest filled with her great-grandmother’s antique grape-patterned silverware, and a portrait of her great-grandmother taken when she was a young newlywed. An antique pewter broach from this sa...

On the River with Joy Harjo, Our New U.S. Poet Laureate

When women gather at the river, something rather wonderful happens. We have, after all (like eagles), been gathering at the river for thousands of years. To bathe our children. To wash our clothes. To gather water for drinking, for ceremony, for cleansing. Even, like the eagles, to catch the fish we will feed our families.


Six years ago, 18 of us gathered on the Colorado River with Joy Harjo. We laughed. We bathed. We danced. We wrote in our journals. We asked, "How do we know when a story en...

Breaking Bread: Sapiens and the Three Daughters of Eve

<!--[if gte mso 9]>