Joanne Leedom-Ackerman's Blog, page 5

Lost in the Cloud

I’ve lost emails I’d saved as drafts on my phone. I have searched everywhere—in Trash, in Junk, in Sent, and in Received and have concluded they have disappeared, perhaps into the cloud. “The cloud” is a relatively new concept, at least for my generation. The miracle and mystery that all our information can be stored out there “in the cloud” still bends the mind. Who named this ephemeral space “the cloud”?

I am sitting outside on this cool summer morning staring up at a puffy ceiling of clouds a...

Early Morning on the River: When there is nothing to say or too much to say…

I sit in the early morning—5:30am—as the sun is coming up. I listen to the birds chirping across the sky and to the watermen on the river trolling for crabs or oysters, also with lines down for perch or trout or occasional catfish.

I’ve come downstairs to let my dog out. The morning is beguiling as it awakens with mottled light spreading on the water and the river humming with early traffic, so I let my day begin and sit on the porch listening and watching.

I’m always surprised how clear sound t...

The Power of One: Dissent in Russia

With the war in the Ukraine front and center in the news, I can’t help thinking back to my Russian colleague from PEN, the General Secretary of Russian PEN Alexander Tkachenko, or Sascha as we called him. I wonder how he would have responded to what is unfolding. During his tenure at Russian PEN, he stood up and argued with Vladimir Putin face to face on behalf of Russian writers and resisted when the government tried to close down PEN in Russia.

Sascha was complex—a former professional soccer p...

Reflections on Spring

The geese have gone. Dozens have abandoned our lawn and veered back to Canada for the spring and summer. They will return when the temperatures again drop up North.

For now cherry blossoms are blooming, daffodils have sprouted, and green buds are exploding on all the trees. Spring in its mercurial moods has come to the Chesapeake. The last (I hope) snow and ice storm of the season passed through a few weekends ago. Bright sun and balmy temperatures warmed us last weekend; this weekend hovered s...

Ukraine: Truth, History and the Future

Just hours before the attack unleashed on the Ukraine February 23/24, the U.S. Ukrainian Ambassador spoke at a sold-out dinner at the Sulgrave Club in Washington, DC. A former turn-of-the century beaux-arts home in DuPont Circle, the Sulgrave Club had landed the featured speaker of the evening, though no one knew how fortuitous when she was originally scheduled. I was invited as a guest of a friend to the dinner.

In her talk Ambassador Oksana Markarova recounted the true history of the Ukraine, ...

PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line

Publication Day—a combination of birthday, final exam, perhaps wedding day—the day when a book officially launches into the world, though in this pandemic time, the whistles and confetti and celebrations, or at least postponed till spring and outside gatherings, but the book itself is on its way to whatever shores and audience will take it in.

PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line officially enters the world February 1, 2022, though it has been available digitally on Kindle and AppleBoo...

Foxes and Hedgehogs

I’ve looked out on the same scene every morning for the past 20 months—a quiet river, brownish blue depending on the light, a spreading magnolia tree, large deciduous trees on the near shore, a flagpole, Adirondack chairs by the water, and the sun creeping over the horizon. The sun’s entrance shifts between the trees on the far shore depending on the season.

Each morning I slip outside as the dark sky grows light and sit by the firepit where I think and write and take pictures. I can’t stop taki...

Dinner and a Movie or Frontlines with ISIS?

(I drafted the blog post below March 12, 2019, but I was concerned that even this brief exchange might put my friend in danger so I checked with her before I published. She asked that I not publish it while the conflict was going on, so I filed the post away in the draft file on my website. At the time the situation on the ground in Syria was precarious. I recently re-discovered this file two and a half years later. My thesis still holds even while the circumstances on the ground have changed. I...

October: The Cruelest Month or Prelude to Halloween, Holidays and Spring?

“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote in the opening of The Waste Land,* published 99 years ago in October,1922. He characterized: “Winter kept us warm…” and “Summer surprised us,” but autumn isn’t mentioned in his epic poem.

Decades later a very different apocalyptic voice Hunter Thompson declared, “October is the cruelest month,” at least in any election year because “by then, the pain is so great that even the strong are like jelly and time has lost all meaning for anybody still inv...

Tempus Fugit/Carpe Diem!

This week PEN International came together virtually for its annual Congress with writers from around the world. What was to have been a large celebratory gathering in Oxford and London for PEN’s Centenary, disaggregated into voices and pictures on a screen from every corner of the globe. Some had easier internet access than others, but the majority of PEN’s 155 centers were at least able to zoom in for portions of the celebration and for the election of a new PEN International President, Turkish...