Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal

  • Portrait of an Author as a Victorian:  A Conversation with Anthony Trollope

    What does Trollope have to say to authors of the 21st century? One evening, years ago, I was with Bailey White, the author and NPR All Things Considered commentator. Among the topics discussed was what to read when writing a novel and how to avoid having another author’s narrative and characters’ voices jumble ours. Bailey…

    Read more →

  • The Darkness We Ignore: Confessions of a Guilty Bystander

    There are ghosts that haunt me. On a warm spring afternoon, I was in New York City’s Washington Square Park listening to Country Joe and the Fish. I was in the City, having spent the morning on Wall Street with a high school business class. As I listened, a young woman, a teenager like myself,…

    Read more →

  • Poetry and Standing at the Edge of the Raccoon World

    I had the opportunity to be an early reader of the galleys of Who By Fire by Mary L. Tabor. An excerpt from my review appears at the end of this essay. What do you take with your morning coffee? What do you see in the domestic details of your life? Ours is an object-world that…

    Read more →

  • Crime and the Empty Spaces Between Us

    The abduction of Nancy Guthrie has riveted national attention for 15 days. The news media and social media have given extensive coverage to the search for her. Her family’s plea, their desperation for the return of their mother, loved and respected by those who know her, disturbs the heart. We ask ourselves, who would kidnap…

    Read more →

  • Grocery Shopping with Mister Lincoln’s Elephant Boys

    Grocery shopping in our home is usually done on Thursday or Friday. The upcoming week’s menu and the supermarket list are written concurrently. This saves time and money in the market. The problem with this is that we each prefer shopping in different stores. My preference is for a small grocery market. The large stores,…

    Read more →

  • To be “resilient optimists” in a Time of Crisis

    In my hometown of Oakland, New Jersey, there are two lakes: Mirror Lake and Crystal Lake. My family home was on Mirror Lake, which was commonly known as “Little Lake.” I recall the summer days when we neighborhood children gathered to swim and the winter afternoons when we skated. Occasionally, I would take my bamboo…

    Read more →

  • About Food and Friendship

    A friend, Eszter, invited my wife and I to breakfast at the Dexter Brunch House this past Sunday. The ambiance is comfortable and modern, and the cuisine is good. The restaurant has undergone numerous changes to its name and interior design over the years. When I first went there, it was known as The Lighthouse.…

    Read more →

  • Translating Judith Herzberg

    The Dutch poet and playwright Judith Herzberg has presented the world with a body of work that reveals her sensitivity to fine details of a moment, those details she observes, and to the language required to express the subject. She discerns in the mundane what is elusive to others.  Pieter Vandermeer writes of Ms. Herzberg:…

    Read more →

  • Intellectual Disability: Breaking My Silence and the Orbits I Live In

    A New York Times article by Dan Barry and Sonia A. Rao touched a nerve in me. The on-line article, published on 26 January, is titled “The ‘R-Word’ Returns, Dismaying Those Who Fought to Oust It.” The piece was republished on 29 January in the print edition under the title “Spewed by the Powerful, a…

    Read more →

  • RUPTURED

    Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is right. The prime minister is correct when he says there is “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality.” He is accurate when he responds to Donald Trump’s taunts by saying, “Canada doesn’t live because of the United…

    Read more →

Instagram / TikTok / X

Designed with WordPress