Category Archives: JB writing/journal

Thirty Seconds Over Wesleyland

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: November 6, 2009

1. Woke up this morning amid the green fields of Yale University, where I’d performed my one-woman show, “The Porcupine Woman” the night before, and then went out with friend & writer Dani Shapiro, and husband Michael.  Drink, as they say in Ireland, was taken. 2. Got in the car and drove to my alma [...]

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The Country of the Two Headed Woman

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: October 3, 2009

© 2009 Jennifer Finney Boylan The weather in Maine for the last two weeks has been a little schizophrenic, gorgeous autumn sunshine alternating with grey, cold days that prefigure the darkness ahead.   Still, there are times when that’s just the way we like it—too much beautiful weather tends to make people a little full of [...]

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The best day.

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: August 29, 2009

Yesterday, August 28, was a clear, sparkling late-summer day in Maine and I decided to seize it by dropping everything and driving up to the Bigelow Range and hiking the “Iron Triangle”– the “Horns” trail up to the Appalachian Trail, the A.T. across the Bigelow ridge to West Peak, and down the Firewarden’s Trail and [...]

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LOVE in USA Today

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: August 21, 2009

Michael Taeckens spoke of three stories–including mine–in todays USA Today: “Romance is a dangerous distraction,” editor Michael Taeckens writes in the introduction to Love Is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts (Plume paperback original, 297 pp., $16). He spoke with USA TODAY’s about some of the book’s true stories [...]

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A New York Minute

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: July 31, 2009

• Amtrak train pulled into New York as my iPod coughed up “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.” “My own seeds shall be sown in new York city.” Cool. • At the Met, had a conversation with the portrait of the woman looking out at us with a sad, lovely expression, pens in hand; over her shoulder [...]

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The Black Sheep’s Guide to Grace

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: July 17, 2009

July 17, 2009 When I was twenty I climbed onto the roof of an abandoned building with two friends on an October day and a few moments later we were surrounded by thousands of starlings, all migrating to the South.  We had not expected to find birds in flight when we climbed on to that [...]

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  • The Boylan Family, summer 2010

    DSC_0063 "You hang around our family, you learn all kinds of stuff."

  • Will Forte as Jennifer Finney Boylan on “Saturday Night Live”

    WiFo-Jennifer Finney Boylan-1

  • Jenny with Barbara Walters, December, 2008

    wawa

  • Jenny atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin

    2036947979_34bfbec240 August, 2002.

  • Surrounded

    boylanWith President Clinton and Maine's Governor John Baldacci, fall 2006.

  • JFB and Edward Albee

    edward_albee_by_fred_j_field-150x150

    Edward had been my teacher at Johns Hopkins in the winter of 1986. He visited Colby in fall, 2007. As we took our leave of each other, he kissed me on both cheeks and said, "We have done well. You and I."

  • Jenny and her teacher, the great John Barth

    Boylan_Barth

    Jack was my professor at JHU when I did my thesis, back in the day. After many years, I can now confidently say I finally understand his definition of plot. Which is, of course, "the perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a new and complexified equilibrium."