In this Story... with Joanne Greene

There must be an angel on my shoulder. How else can I account for the fact thata) My hair didn’t go up in flames the morning I lit the firepit with the gas up too highb) I wasn’t hit by the silent hybrid lexus on Birdie Drive while walking the dogc) I didn’t trip over the crack in the sidewalk while walking too fast after almost being hit by the hybrid LexusAnd then, of course, there are the other notable facts. I wasn’t killed in the accident...the colon cancer was only stage one...the lung resection showed no cancer at all. Some might say that I’ve been lucky. Others call me unlucky, to lose both parents and both siblings before reaching 60. But I choose, instead, in my wiser, more evolved moments, to focus on the fact that I had them in my life for as long as I did. Counting blessings can work when one is not depressed. I’m proof!And that is why I’m not letting all of those pesky aging things get me down. Nope. Not me. Sure there’s a benign brain tumor that has to be checked each year; the TMJ disorder that makes me wear an ugly mouthguard and has me eating mush whenever it flares; there’s eczema in my ear; GERD & Barret’s Esophagus which requires daily medication and a periodic edoscopy; I had my cataracts removed and take eye vitamins twice daily to slow down the macular degeneration and then there’s oh so commonplace, wait, why did I walk into this room?. But all of this is manageable. Really manageable. In fact, there’s humor if you’re willing to go there.I celebrated my 70th birthday with a gaggle of friends in Costa Rica, dear friends, friends who were always positive, never complaining, always on time, who stood up after falling saying “I’m fine!” (OKAY, I was one of those people. What’s a bruise anyway?) We hiked through rainforests and cloud forests, found the elusive sloth, the quetzel, a brightly colored tree frog, and even a taranchula with the help of Stiven, our exceptional guide,.We laughed hysterically as white faced capuchin monkeys hopped onto our table and stole the pineapple slices out of our pina coladas. We swam in the warmest Pacific ocean we’d ever encountered and zip lined in Monteverde, even taking on the Tarzan swing. If this is 70, I’m all in. And then….on the last day of the trip…Fred and I had the biggest thrill of all – the healthy birth of our grandson, Luca Samuel Greene.So what do I think of aging? So far so good. Yes there are wrinkles and crepey skin, yes I need periodic naps and am told that I sometimes repeat myself. But, hey, I’m not going to stop pushing the envelope, taking reasonable risks, and surrounding myself with loving, authentic, smart, honest people because that’s what makes the journey rich and meaningful. ##~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Women on the radio receive letters from prisoners. It's a given. I only responded once and it was when I was contacted by Bill Harris, of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the small band of revolutionaries who had kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. Hear the full story of my experience with a man the FBI called one of the first terrorists to emerge from the American left.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

What does it mean to spread love everywhere you go, to make those who cross your path happier for having done so. Balancing open heartedness with cynicism can be tricky but in a world where hate pervades, we could a lot more love.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Many, if not most, of us love the beach. Some of the best memories of my childhood are of the timelessness, the smell of the ocean, the sound of the waves crashing, and the warmth of the sand and the air at Nantasket Beach, near Boston. Our childhood "happy places" are good to return to in our minds when we're feeling unhappy, unsaafe, or unmoored. Try it!Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Often, we hold two truths simultaneously. It's a skill that humans develop, an art form for some of us. In this episode of "In This Story," Joanne Greene speaks about dualities - about the messages we tell ourselves and how we're always balancing an inclination toward goodness and getting away with something. Here's an example of a duality: religion is the source of much conflict; religion is also what helps people to forgive, self-reflect, and rise about our instinct to get revenge.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!They must have loved their tea.They probably couldn’t risk life without it. What if the new world didn’t have samovars? Their heavy, brass samovar, or self-brewer as it translates, is Russian tea kettle that was used by everyone from royalty to the peasant class in the 18th and 19th centuries. And not just in Russia. My maternal grandparents shlepped this bulky item, engraved with Russian writing that I can’t decipher, across the sea, when they emigrated from a village outside of Kiev in the Ukraine to Ellis Island and then on to Providence, Rhode Island in the first decade of the twentieth century. One can only assume that making and drinking tea was too much a part of daily life to leave to chance. What if there were no tea making devices in America? How would they make it through the day? I get it. That first cup of coffee in the morning is like air to me. And I’m fussy. Each time we travel, I consider packing my Nespresso Virtuo machine along with the milk frother. But since I try my best not to check luggage, I leave my coffee to chance. Imagine what it meant to board a ship for the chance at building a brighter future. Sure, they’d survived the pogroms, where vicious mobs of Russian soldiers came barreling through on horseback, burning Jewish homes and raping women. But it was economic opportunity that drew my ancestors to pack up and leave. My grandfather and his two brothers were all kosher butchers, and they couldn’t all make a living in their little village. In Providence, Rhode Island, America, they’d heard, there were enough hungry Jews to support three kosher butchers. And, sure enough, all three opened butcher shops and each made a decent living. The samovar was a fixture in my home growing up. We never actually used it; it was more of a yiddishe objet d’art. A modern American family of the fifties and then sixties, we used tea bags – such a luxury - from Swee-Touch-Nee. When the big black tin of tea bags with the gold lettering was finally emptied, my mom used it as a sugar container. She was practical. Tea was a drink for when our tummies were upset. Instant Maxwell House –decaf Sanka later in the day – were the adult beverages of choice in our home. The percolator was brought out for company, along with the matching sugar and creamer dispensers. My grandparents’ samovar holds a place of honor in our home, more than one hundred years after and thousands of miles from where it arrived on American soil. The question remains, where will it find its next home?Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!In this story, I consider the Fairy tales. I’m Joanne Greene. I never quite saw myself as a princess. If I squinted enough, I might see myself in Orphan Annie – that orphanage looked like a blast. And I had a thing for Shirley Temple, with her cute little dances and conversations with grown men, though I definitely didn’t envy her curls. And then there was Dorothy. Yes, I would be Dorothy especially if I could carry Toto or, really, any dog in a wicker basket and travel around with a lion, a scarecrow and a tin man. Organizing three friendly but needy men and helping them get their shit straight. Yup, that’d be a job for me. Fairy tales never quite connected. Take Humpty Dumpty, for instance. Why was a fragile, pale faced, underdressed, egg sitting way high up on a wall? To give the king’s men and even their horses a good laugh when they found him crumpled into a million pieces on the ground? Not funny. No inspiration.And take Little Miss Muffet. Have you ever sat on a tuffet? As a young kid I thought it was made-up word because nothing else rhymed with Muffet, but in fact it’s a small grassy mound or clump of grass. Precisely the kind of place where you’d find an insect or an arachnid. And a picnic of curds and whey? Really? Disgusting! And this was before refrigeration, much less the little pre-packaged, hermetically sealed containers that lunch parts for kids come in today. Mainly, though, who sits outside on the ground in a forest when they’re afraid of spiders? It’s asking for trouble. Miss Muffet should have read Charlotte’s Web like I did. Then, she’d love spiders. Now, who could relate to Cinderella? A victim with unrealistic fantasies, that’s who. Yes, I empathized with the part about missing out, again and again, as the youngest member of the family. But Cindy, get a little self-respect. Poor me, mopping the floors. My stepsisters are so mean. Why do they get all the fun? Self-pity, my friend, will get you nowhere. Dream on about your magical prince…like some man who hasn’t done a day of work in his life is going to save you from your pathetic little life. Grow a spine. Go on strike. Get back at your sisters. Do something other than whine and feel sorry for yourself. Snap out of it! And, finally, there’s the Gingerbread Man. Who, in their right mind, would tell this story to a child? The woman bakes the gingerbread man and when she takes him out of the oven, he’s alive. And pissed. He runs for his life – faster than the woman, and the man who starts to chase him from the garden, and the pig and the cow and the horse, all of whom want to eat him and can’t catch up. So he comes to the river and, since he doesn’t know how to swim (what gingerbread man would?) he hitches a ride on the back of a fox because, right, they’re notoriously trustworthy. When the fox tells him his back is aching and he should move up to his nose, the gingerbread man does and the fox promptly eats him. The moral of the story? Eventually, something’s going to get you but if you like running, go for it.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online or retail book seller. Joanne may be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, or your book club, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!Most of us fall into the category of either farmer types or hunter gatherers. Farmers can think long term, they plan and then they wait. Not me. With relatively quick reaction time and a short attention span, I’m better suited to have been a hunter gatherer. As a woman living in the latter part of the 20th century, I found writing 5-minute newscasts and 60 second radio features to be a good career fit. It’s also why it’s hard for me to believe that over the past many years, with the help of writing coaches and editors, I’ve written and published a full-length book. Crazy. By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go tells the story of how it took getting hit by a car, enduring a major hurricane, and surviving cancer for me to learn how to slow down and trust that it was okay to relinquish control. Control, I learned, is a seductive illusion, that people don’t like me because of how much I accomplish. I came to understand that while optimism has its limits, gratitude does not. You can feel through your grief and anger, and even feel sorry for yourself, as long as you keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other. Everyone’s parent or grandparent had sayings that they’d repeat ad nauseum. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” was one that I particularly hated. It’s also fueled my recovery time and again. “Count your blessings” may win the best advice award; It’s certainly the cheapest, safest, most accessible antidote to self-pity I’ve ever encountered. And “this too shall pass”, if you really consider it, is a reminder that whatever pain you’re suffering, be it physical or emotional, is temporary. Unless of course it’s not. What enabled me to embark upon, and ultimately complete, a long-term project? I moved beyond the perceived need to get whatever it was done, as soon as possible. I acknowledged that while I’d been paid to write things for decades, I knew virtually nothing about writing a memoir. So, I found experts to enlist and invested time and money in my own growth. And then I stuck with it. When Brooke Warner of She Writes Press told me that she’d publish my book if I agreed to hire a developmental editor, then a copy editor, and finally a proof-reader, I said “Absolutely.” All of that made my book better and now, years later, I’m proud of the work. How does it feel to have spilled my guts and shared my most vulnerable moments in both print and an audiobook? It’s a question I’m choosing not to ask myself.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is available for pre-order from your favorite online book seller. Release date is June 20, 2023. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!The Smell of BrutJust a brief whiff of his neck, a tiny sniff of that soft pink skin laced with perfect platinum peach fuzz, launched a reverberating chain reaction of unprecedented sensation, an orchestra of strings swelling, chills rippling up my arms and down my legs. Is this normal? Is it merely a scent that’s hurled me into an alternate universe? Rendered me helpless, a mass of quivering flesh, on the precipice of out of control, at the mercy of who knows what? What’s happening to me? This is way more than what I felt at age ten in the Coolidge Corner movie theater watching “A Hard Day’s Night” when Paul – he who needs no last name - looked directly at me. I loved the Beatles, but Paul had stolen my heart. How in the world could his grin, the way he cocked his head to the left, make my stomach flip upside down in a way that was so much better than any roller coaster or when someone ran their nails up and down my back? But this, these electrocuted nerve endings, this sudden I don’t know who or what I am, and I don’t care, as though someone changed the channel, took over my mind and body all at once, replaced it with what can only be described as temporary euphoria. Meadows filled with bright yellow flowers, swaying in a warm breeze. Technicolor rainbows and a million shooting stars, sunlight glinting on freshly fallen snow. How could a fragrance, an odor, a simple smell trigger such a phenomenon? Pipe down, Shakespeare. It’s just a product, for God’s sake, a liquid formula created in a laboratory and mass marketed to men and boys everywhere. Is it possible that it only has this reaction on me? Could this unique mix of chemicals somehow be awakening hidden sensory receptors in my body alone? Or perhaps I’ve discovered something. They’d have to redo their ad campaigns. But if it could do this for others, how could they sell this in stores? Its power is too great. And, if they did, how could anyone afford to buy it? No price would be too high. And yet they named it. After a savagely violent person or animal. Yes, that’s what had me in its grip. Something fierce. Uncontrolled. Primitive. Uncivilized. Just one word. One word, minus the final letter. The culprit was BRUT.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is available for pre-order from your favorite online book seller. Release date is June 20, 2023. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!In this story, I consider An Apple Watch…. What is this tendency I have to say “I don’t need that….I’m fine with the way things are” I don’t need to redo the carpets….buy a fancy car….order what I really want on the menu. Do I even know if I’d like a spiffy car? An expensive entrée? New carpets. Instead, I’ll make do. A $30 analog watch is fine. I buy my clothes at Marshall’s or Nordstrom Rack. And then I’ll tell anyone who will listen about the bargain I got. This is not cute. Or admirable. But it’s an old trope that I can’t seem to shed. I feel like a charicature of myself sometimes. Like the Jewish mother who says, “Don’t Worry, I’ll sit in the dark.” Why can’t I shop retail? Just slide that credit card across the counter and think nothing of it. Why must I compare a menu’s prices – and, admit it, Joanne, the calorie count – when deciding what to order? Cutting meat and chicken out of my diet has made things easier. Now it’s just fish or vegetarian. Less time with the menu. Some of this is a holdover from teenage eating disorders. Some of it is that age old mentality of scarcity. What if I lose my job? What if the money runs out? What if I place more importance on possessions than on experiences? As though buying one cashmere sweater will send me down a slippery slope of chronic indulgence, conspicuous consumption, where I’m inches away from becoming shallow, materialistic and, God forbid, vain. For years I’ve said, “I like shopping at the discount stores. It’s my version of hunting where no one gets hurt.” I pick through the racks, in search of the prize – but like with a box of Cracker Jacks, the prize is generally a letdown. Don’t buy it because of the percentage markdown, I tell myself. It’ll sit in the drawer or the closet like so many shirts before it. Better, I say, to find something you love….Something that makes you feel beautiful –– maybe even sexy….. for an older woman. For years I’ve said the Apple watch is not for me. Why do I need it? I asked. My phone and my watch together do all the same things. But lately, I started to wonder. Why not? More convenience. More security (I do misplace my phone at least 5 times a day) and functionality that I’ll probably become hooked on within a matter of weeks? Tonight, when we go out to dinner, I’m going to intentionally splurge just to see how it feels. On the dollar amount of my entrée? On a second glass of wine? On dessert? (Probably not…) Any, and all of these are fine. This is the mantra now. My mom never ate dessert until she turned 90. After that, she said, who cares? Imagine what might have been if she’d started eating dessert in her sixties? I think its time to find out. PS. At dinner, I had a cup of vegetable soup, a Caesar salad and a glass of seltzer…with lime. Epic fail.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

"By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" by Joanne Greene is available for pre-order from your online favorite book sellers. Release date June 20,2023Learn more at joanne-greene.comIn this Story...I Move to CaliforniaI learned to drive a stick shift after convincing my parents to buy me a used 1972 white VW bug with standard transmission for my twenty-first birthday. Five months later, it was stolen in broad daylight out of the parking lot behind Papillon, the wine and cheese café where I worked that summer. Poof. Gone. With the insurance money, we replace it, ironically with another 1972 white beetle, this time with automatic transmission. I parked in in Harvard Square one afternoon and, when I returned, the car was gone. What are the chances? Clearly, it was a sign that it was time to leave Boston and move to California. My sister and brother-in-law had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area that year with their sixth month old son. My mid-year visit birthed a fantasy that I, too, might head west. Why not start my post-college life in the city I’d officially named my favorite on my cross-country teen tour in the summer of ’69? I could do without snow, annual car theft and entrenched provincial mindsets. In short order, I packed my bags and was on a flight. San Francisco had it all – natural beauty, unbeatable counterculture, and great year-round weather. I was ready for adventure, to explore new terrain, to write at the Owl and Monkey café at Ninth and Irving, and to apply for jobs at alternative radio stations. It was definitely the right decision as my career took off, I met my husband of forty-something years, and birthed two California boys who, in their late 30’s, have no intentions of leaving the Golden State. Even my parents spent their final years here. Other than earthquakes, annual wildfires, the lack of water, and the cost of living, California is home.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

"By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" by Joanne Greene is available for pre-order from your online favorite book sellers. Release date June 20,2023Learn more at joanne-greene.comIn this Story... A Love Letter to My HometownDear Brookline, Massachusetts, There is so much about you that I treasure, yet I couldn’t wait to leave. I reveled in your history and architecture, your proximity to Boston and even Fenway Park, your neighborhoods filled with two-family homes and three-unit brick apartment buildings built early in the 20th century, the mix of professors and small store merchants, professionals and fourth generation liquor store owners, Jewish delis and bookstores, the distinct seasons that both delight and oppress. I loved that the streets in Coolidge Corner were empty on the high holidays, yet hated that everyone in my class was Jewish, except for the one or two Catholic kids. My dad knew all of the cops and gave them bottles of booze for Christmas so our car, with the license plate 39187, never got a parking ticket. My mother wouldn’t shop at Pick a Chick, where rotisserie chickens twirled in the window, because she could cook her own chickens. We brought in Chinese food, once a week, and ordered enough for a second meal that included spare ribs and shrimp with lobster sauce, even though eating ham or pork chops was completely out of the question. Jack and Marion’s, the big deli next to Brigham’s ice cream (where we always ordered Jimmies on our cones) had oversized menus and the best free pickles.Our schools were tops, or so they told us ad nauseum. We had hip teachers, from Harvard, who taught us about Jazz and women’s liberation, Neitsche and Ibsen. Brookline Village, filled with gentiles, was worlds away – about a mile – and South Brookline was where the neuvo-riche lived in ranch style homes. Fisher Hill featured mansions where the Goldbergs, who owned Stop and Shop, lived. A maid cleaned Debby’s room every day.I could walk to the homes of Aunty Rosie and Aunty Selma, to and from school and Hebrew School, and to my Bluebird and, later, Campfire Girl meetings at Evie’s house. We learned to drive and also to go “parking” with our boyfriends in the lots at Boston College. Going to see the view up on Cory Hill was code for making out in the front seat or maybe even the backseat. Brookline, you offered snow, sleet and sludge in the winter, blindingly beautiful colors of fall leaves, bursting blossoms in springtime and steaming sidewalks in summer. The biting cold and stifling humidity made us tougher but, alas, I was blessed with a sense of adventure that sent me first to Chicago and then to San Francisco, in search of something else. I’m happy here but man could I use a big plate of fried clams with tartar sauce right about now.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

"By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" by Joanne Greene is available for pre-order from your online favorite book sellers. Release date June 20,2023Learn more at joanne-greene.comIn this Story...I Lose My PhoneFor the first forty-six years of my life, I functioned, if not thrived, without the use of a cell phone. For the next five years, I carried a cell phone that was simply a phone. It could neither take photos nor provide me with answers to all my questions. Yet now, well into my sixties, I feel stripped of my identity, naked, bereft and totally destabilized when, suddenly, my trusty iPhone goes AWOL. It happened in LA at a mediocre Mexican restaurant two weeks ago. I took said phone into the baño with me to sneak a text to my son. Two words into the message, seated and in progress, I noticed the empty toilet paper dispenser. Dammit. Necessity led me to try the toilet seat covers - a sorry substitute. Flustered, I did what I could and headed to the sink, carefully placing my phone on the blue tiled ledge while I lathered up. When I returned to our outdoor table and reflexively reached for my phone, it wasn’t there. Oh no. It’s probably still on that ledge. A quick trip back to the baño yielded nothing. The first waiter I stopped knew nada. The next waiter said that a woman in a tight black dress, irrelevant but apparently memorable, had asked if anyone lost a phone. “Great,” I replied. “Did she turn it in? “No,” he shook his head without guilt or remorse. “She left.” First, I panicked. Then, got angry. Ranted about hating the restaurant and its unhelpful wait staff. My husband remained calm and sprang into action. He tried the “find my phone” function. To no avail. He called my number. No answer. He texted “reward for return of this phone!” Crickets. Then, he drove us straight to Costco to purchase a replacement. He’d cancelled the credit card I’d slipped into the phone’s case on an app he’d downloaded and spoke to our insurance agent who confirmed that we were out of luck. Pathetically, I kept apologizing and thanking him. Using his phone, I ordered a replacement driver’s license from DMV and a new medical card from Kaiser. An hour later, new phone in hand, I felt whole again. There were calls, emails and texts that I’d missed; social media posts and news events had taken place without my knowledge. Yet now, I could resume my unhealthy dependency and, once again, feel connected. I had a phone. A better phone. And all my data was intact. I could breathe again.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

"By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" by Joanne Greene is available for pre-order from your online favorite book sellers. Release date June 20,2023Learn more at joanne-greene.comIn this Story....I Share A Brief Family History with MeatMy mother didn’t trust the meat that supermarkets sold. She once said that McDonald’s couldn’t be serving beef because they were only charging fifteen cents per hamburger. She only bought meat from Lipsky’s, the kosher meat market on Beacon Street in Brookline, delivered to our door once a month. The order would include lamb chops and London Broil, hamburger meat for her layered mashed potato meatloaf, a three or four-pound brisket, perhaps some calf’s liver and a container of chicken livers, all of it which would be placed in the freezer, in the basement next to the washing machine and dryer, wrapped in white butcher paper, scotch-taped on the side. My mother’s father had been a kosher butcher who ran one of three kosher butcher shops in Providence, Rhode Island in the early part of the twentieth century. The other two shops were run by my grandfather’s brothers. Back in Russia, they couldn’t all make a living. But in the new world, there was enough demand for kosher meat to support all three Mittleman families. The meats my mother prepared and lovingly served to us never varied. Brisket was the holiday special – always marinated in a mixture of cider vinegar, ketchup, a packet of Lipton onion soup mix, and brown sugar, slowly roasted for 5 hours at 300 degrees. Did anyone love it? Not really. But it tasted like Rosh Hashanah and Passover and the idea of bucking tradition hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind.Chopped liver was one of three possible Friday night appetizers, along with jarred gefilte fish and homemade chicken soup. The liver, served with celery sticks, was supposed to be a treat. I’m not sure we ever mentioned that no kid in recorded history has ever liked liver, in any form. Most suppers at our house began with an iceberg lettuce salad, sprinkled with a few pieces of peeled cucumber, carrot, and tomato, drizzled with Wishbone Italian, home-made Thousand Island (mayo mixed with ketchup) or Milani’s 1890 French salad dressing. Chicken, made in numerous ways, depending upon the recipes that her sisters Dora and Faye had recently shared, was a Friday night necessity. I could have sworn it was a commandment: thou shalt eat chicken on Friday nights. Kind of like the way Catholics ate fish on Fridays. Was that why the school lunch on Fridays was always fish sticks with tartar sauce? God must have wanted it that way. Fish for the Catholics; chicken for the Jews. The chicken Mom made could be drowning in orange juice and canned pineapple pieces or rolled in egg and crushed corn flakes. Generally baked, it would occasionally be broiled, but never fried. “Who needs the fat and the calories?” she’d say. No one responded. When Mom made chicken soup – with noodles if it wasn’t Passover and kneidlach (matzah balls in Yiddish) if it was – there was always a plastic container of boiled chicken in the frig, which Dad, and only Dad, ate. Have you ever smelled a container of boiled chicken? What would my parents, much less the grandfather who died before I was born, say if they knew that I’d given up meat altogether? “How can you give up meat when our ancestors worked so hard to be able to buy it?” Of course I’d have answers – about the hormones in meat today, the adverse health effects of a meat-based diet, the impact of the beef industry on climate change and, of course, my attachment to animals of all kinds. But the greater answer might have something to do with my openness to new ideas, my respect for but not total adherence to tradition, and the global nature of today’s world which has opened the door to cuisines of all varieties. Rarely do I repeat a recipe because the NY Times is always showering me with new ones. Foods from faraway lands using ancient ingredients like farro and bulger, beans of all kinds, and the best of what grows right here in California throughout the year. The truth is, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish cooking, about which I knew nothing growing up, has always had it heads and tails over Ashkenazi food. Wait, did I really just reference heads and tails when talking about food that I like to eat? First, I give up meat. Next, meat idioms.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

"By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" by Joanne Greene is available for pre-order from your online favorite book sellers. Release date June 20,2023Learn more at joanne-greene.comIn this Story...I Share a Little Women's HistoryI couldn’t throw out, okay or recycle, the pink “While You Were Out” slip that showed I’d missed a phone call from Gloria Steinam. It was 1976 and I was producing a weekly feminist show for Berekeley’s KRE Radio called “Women Making Waves.” You get the double meaning, right? Airwaves? And “making waves’, like making trouble? Gloria was one of my heroes, a feminist role model of the highest order, and Ms. Magazine, of which Gloria was co-founder the year I graduated from high school, was something between a manual and a bible for me. In 1977, I went to Houston for the National Women’s Conference because a group of Lesbian Separatists raised the money for my roundtrip flight. Listeners to my radio show, they thought the only way they’d get the truth about what happened was to send their own reporter. Alice, the station manager, said yes because it wasn’t going to cost her anything. It didn’t occur to me how big a deal it was that a woman was running the radio station. I met Margo, a fellow journalist. in the elevator of the Houston Convention Center, on my way to pick up press credentials. “Where are you staying?” she asked in a lilting southern accent. When I shrugged, she said, “It’s settled. You’ll stay in our guest room! And I’ll drive you to and from the conference each day.” Southern hospitality is really something. There were so many women, from every state, every ethnicity, and every walk of life, all there to claim their rights. For the right to an abortion, to love whom they want, for decent childcare. rape crisis centers. shelters for battered women. Rights for prostitutes who consciously chose their profession. The organization, based in S.F., was called COYOTE, an acronym for “Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics.” And then there was conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly with her bullhorn, trying to keep women out of the military, out of the board room, and send all of them, all of us, back into the kitchen. Four former First Ladies spoke, and I washed my hands in the Ladies’ Room right next to feminist icon Kate Millet.I recorded everything – the plenary sessions, the conversations happening in the hallways, interviews with the most fascinating women I could find – and somehow, with the help of the radio station’s production director, I turned it into a one-hour documentary called “Women on the Move”, the title of the conference. I assumed that the Equal Rights Amendment was a slam dunk, that there would be National Women’s Conferences every few years. That this was just the beginning of normalizing rape crisis centers, that battered women shelters would spring up in cities across the country. What never entered my mind in 1977 was that Roe v. Wade could be overturned by the Supreme Court, and that women in nearly half of our nation would, once again, be forced to choose between risking their lives or taking an unwanted pregnancy to term. Of course, I also couldn’t have imagined that the Supreme Court would legalize same-sex marriage in all fifty states. It’s a good thing I’m not a betting woman. Happy Women’s History Month.Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

In 1977, the new film starring Jane Fonda was “Julia”. It’s about the writer Lillian Hellman’s lifelong friendship with Julia, a wealthy American who fought against the Nazis when they invaded the university she was attending in Vienna. I worked at KRE radio in Berkeley and it was rare for me to land an interview with an A level celebrity. The publicist had told me to meet Ms. Fonda at the Stanford Court Hotel on Nob Hill, in her suite. Jane Fonda was not only an actress at the time but a major anti-war activist and environmentalist. That’s what gave her hero status for me. I was nervous as I knocked on the door of her suite. Twenty-three year-old me, about to interview Jane freakin’ Fonda. She answered the door herself, wearing jeans and a sweater – like a normal person. Whoa. I’d expected a whole staff or at least a personal assistant. She seemed to be alone as she welcomed me in, so warmly it was like we were longtime friends. The space was gorgeous but stiffly formal, with silk upholstered Louis IV style furniture in a range of beige tones. I got the sense that she’d be more comfortable in a big burgundy velvet arm chair. As soon as we sat down, and I started setting up my cassette player and microphone on the mahogany end table, she asked, “Joanne, do you by any chance have a cigarette?” “Actually, I do,” I said, flabbergasted that she needed something from me. ‘Would you mind if we shared one? I barely smoke and I don’t buy my own but every now and then…like right now…I just want to have a few puffs.” “Happy to,” I said, pulling my pack of Marlboros out of my purse. It was the hard pack I loved – at least at that moment in my smoking life. We shared a cigarette, which I lit with a match before smelling the Sulphur, a habit I maintain to this day ….it smells so good…. It was like two high school girls, sneaking a cig before class. With every puff, I tried not to physically pinch myself. Am I really sitting here, in an extravagant San Francisco Hotel suite, chit chatting with the Jane Fonda. “One more thing” she said, before I hit record to start the actual interview. “Can this cigarette be our secret? I have a reputation to uphold!” “Absolutely,” I said. The statute of limitations on that secret is surely up by now, don’t you think?Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!