L.A. Affairs: At 77, I had a crush on my best friend’s widower. Did he feel the same way?
Published July 26, 2024 in the L.A. Times, Illustration by Ciara Hart
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naked in the woods
Published by Oregon State University Press, 2015.
In 1970 I dropped out with my husband, ten friends and an ever-changing mix of strangers to live communally in the back woods of Oregon, leaving my Yale graduate degree behind.
“Naked in the Woods,” is the story of those compelling, iconoclastic, life-changing days illustrated with photographs I took at the time. It chronicles my shift from reluctant hippie to committed utopian against the story of our loss of innocence.
Brotherhood frayed. We vied for food. These were small skirmishes, ones we could absorb. Land was a bigger problem. Money and our futures were at stake. Ultimately we were not as far out as we thought.
See photos from the book & listen to interviews
Bargains:
A Coming of Aging Memoir Told in Tales
We, the elderly, have been taught to objectify ourselves as jokes, to expect to be overlooked, our less than shapely forms proof of society’s worst fears. People glance at our crenellated necks and spotted hands and think of us—if they think of us at all—as faded beings passively waiting for the last bus to arrive, opening its doors with a sigh.
Cut! Wrong picture! Rewind that tape. Here's the surprise. Inside this less than juicy body resides a fecund mind and a fluttering heart, not in need of defibrillation, but beating with the powerful rhythms of life.
In, Bargains: A Coming of Aging Memoir Told in Tales, a 61,200-word collection of twelve personal essays, I move through my seventies from the last vestiges of middle age to the true beginning of old age. Intimacy, sex, friendship, family, self, work and mortality are explored, written from the perspective of my generation, the Baby Boomers, that fatted pig in the python of time.
Completed Manuscript Seeking Publication
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Every Cast-Iron Pan Tells a Story
Published in The Washington Post, April 13, 2021
1945. Flame licks at my crusted bottom. Slabs of cornmeal mush crackle on my flat, black surface. "are they done yet, Mommy?" ask the four excited children at the kitchen table. I hunker down. The second side browns. Spatula lifts my work high. "More, Mommy! More!" they cry.
I am ready for this job -- and for the Passover briskets, Sunday cobblers, and birthday ribs that metamorphose in my iron belly.
1985. "More, Mommy, More!" the children at the table cry. I live at the house of the daughter. Again and again, the fire moves through me. I am strong.
2020. The room is quiet. The children are gone. The daughter cooks for herself. She turns the crisped polenta with mottled hands. Memories rise; her mother at the stove, her babies at the table. Both of us wonder what lies ahead.
Short Pieces
and photosJan / 2024
Bargains
Two Realities
I awake each morning quivering on the cusp of two realities. Eros beckons me into the light of all that is and that is to come.
I awake each morning quivering on the cusp of two realities. Eros beckons me into the light of all that is and that is to come.
Nov / 2023
Woman
When I turned fifty I photographed a series of images of women that I juxtaposed into diptychs. My goal was to
Oct / 2023
Hair
I Became we
….It happened late in life. I shot the first image early in the pandemic when I was single
….It happened late in life. I shot the first image early in the pandemic when I was single
Oct / 2023
Arching Across the Sky in My Chariot of Years
Into My Eighth Decade
Arching across the sky in my chariot of years, the last remnants of middle-age stream behind. Closest are the
Arching across the sky in my chariot of years, the last remnants of middle-age stream behind. Closest are the
Sep / 2023
No Hiding From the Truth of the Numbers
I am old. I am a woman. What, I ask myself, does that mean?
There is no hiding from the truth of the numbers. They stack
There is no hiding from the truth of the numbers. They stack
Sep / 2023
ABOUT ME — MARGARET GRUNDSTEIN
Who am I, I asked myself at the cusp of my seventies. Now, at its close, I have an answer. It is so simple
Oct / 2018
Wrapping
Hello?
Hello?
Is anybody here?
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you behind the displays. Yes, I would like some assistance
Hello?
Is anybody here?
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you behind the displays. Yes, I would like some assistance
Oct / 2018
Inches
I lost two inches.
There I was. Walking through life. Minding my own business. And wham! Two inches gone.
There I was. Walking through life. Minding my own business. And wham! Two inches gone.
Margaret
Grundstein
ABOUT
Margaret Grundstein was raised in Detroit, attended the University of Michigan and then headed east, first to Goddard College for a Bachelor’s in History and then to Yale to graduate with a Master’s in Urban Planning in 1970. With the ink still wet on her diploma, Margaret headed west, dropping out to live communally in the woods of Oregon, an adventure she writes about in her first memoir, Naked in the Woods; My Unexpected Years in a Hippie Commune, published by Oregon State University Press in 2015. Five years later, having dropped back in, Margaret created a niche that fit her life as a single parent, owner/director of a preschool in Venice, California which she still owns today. Margaret also has a private practice as a psychotherapist in Los Angeles. In her 60's she added a third career, writing. Margaret’s second book, Bargains: A Coming of Aging Memoir Told in Tales, a collection of twelve personal essays, is presently looking for a home with a publisher.
Contact Margaret