Technology has a shadow side. It accounts for real progress in medicine but has also hurt it in many ways making it more impersonal expensive and dangerous. The false belief that a safety net of sophisticated drugs and machines stretches below us permitting risky or lazy lifestyle choices has undermined our spirit of self-reliance.

At the very end of a book I can manage to work for longer stretches but mostly making stuff up for three hours that's enough. I can't do any more. At the end of the day I might tinker with my morning's work and maybe write some again. But I think three hours is fine.

Every summer my husband and I pack our suitcases load our kids into the car and drive from tense crowded New York City to my family's cottage in Maine. It's on an island with stretches of sea and sandy beaches rocky coasts and pine trees. We barbecue swim lie around and try to do nothing.