Author name: Diane Lefer

Yesterday, guest blogger Diane Lefer set the stage for today’s post by telling us about symbols and their visceral impact on people. In today’s installment, she protests, goes to jail, wins a grant, doesn’t get the money, learns that key to surviving incarceration is knowing show tunes, deals with a cat who isn’t shy about her emotional problems, writes a book, sells a book, discovers that selling a book is a little like selling your soul, protests the war (or rather the fact that due process isn’t applied equally or fairly), and learns, yes, that sometimes the government comes through. […]

We are proud to say that we meet many fascinating people. What seems like a casual hello at an open house can lead to a lengthy, intense discussion about something you never expected. When we met Diane Lefer at a party, we discovered that a mutual friend had been trying to get us in the same room for years (we also realized that we had, indeed, been in the same room many times, most likely at opposite ends of the bar). Diane, we discovered, has a secret past, but it is her current avocation that held us in thrall. The