Oh My Gosh, the Wash!

Oh My Gosh, the Wash!

How well I remember the sensation of the twin rubber rollers on the wringer of Mom’s white enamel washing machine pressing down hard on my young flesh from hand to lower arm—my screams—then Mom’s quick thrust, disengaging my arm from the wringer.   When I was...

read more
Stitching Memories: Fabric Art

Stitching Memories: Fabric Art

From January to June 1967, creating my wedding gown kept me in stitches. Before my August  wedding date, I was thrilled to first find a pattern, purchase fabric, and then fashion a white peau de soie dress on a budget. My roommates in the little bungalow on Middleton...

read more
Breakthrough: Broken and Healing

Breakthrough: Broken and Healing

Breakthrough “What a gorgeous day to take a walk,” I exclaimed to Barbara, my walking partner for years as we ambled down the streets of our neighborhood. “Yes, and isn’t it great: 65 degrees in December, and we don’t have to wear jackets” was her reply. We both pride...

read more
The Riddle of Mellow Music

The Riddle of Mellow Music

  It’s disgraceful---displaying a perfectly good violin as an ornament, but there it is—on top of my piano propped on a small brass easel! The thing is, it’s not perfectly good: the G string is missing altogether, a black peg has broken off the neck, horsehairs...

read more
Sex and the Sago Palms in our Back Yard

Sex and the Sago Palms in our Back Yard

My iPhone, sleek and neat in its azalea-colored bumper, is the linkage to my past and present worlds. Two weeks ago I published a blog post featuring snaps from my iPhone, one picture about a sago palm tree on our patio.   Now I'm musing about another encounter...

read more
7 Mini-Stories from Random Photos

7 Mini-Stories from Random Photos

  A picture is worth a 1000 words, so the saying goes. But, sometimes a picture is worth fewer than a thousand words---only a few hundred. The photos below speak for themselves, but most need a little explanation, included with the vignettes below. All of them...

read more
Two Novelists and an Author with her Grandson

Two Novelists and an Author with her Grandson

Readers & Writers!    I'm always on a reading spree, but today I pause to share some of my best finds with YOU!   Novelist Alice Hoffman Reading Alice Hoffman's historical fiction is always a treat for me. Her prose glows as she probes the magic and mystery...

read more
Rhapsody in Breeze

Rhapsody in Breeze

Like a blushing bride, impeccable from head to toe and listening for the first strains of the Wedding March, works of art require just that: Work and time to re-work. Years ago, as a professor teaching English literature, I introduced students to examples of exquisite...

read more
Take a Break with Liz Gauffreau’s Pleasant Haiku

Take a Break with Liz Gauffreau’s Pleasant Haiku

I am pleased to be part of author Liz Gauffreau’s blog tour, Day 10. To date, I’ve read Distant Flickers to which Liz contributed a short story and reviewed two of her books, Grief Songs and now Simple Pleasures. Liz shows up regularly to comment on my blog posts....

read more
Yummy Sandwiches: The Earl, a Marquee, and a Duke

Yummy Sandwiches: The Earl, a Marquee, and a Duke

The Earl It’s a fact! On August 6, 1762, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich asked for a meal between two slices of bread and thus, the sandwich was born. Legend has it that the Earl was a gambler so addicted to card-playing, he didn’t want to leave his card game to eat—thus...

read more
3 Miracles and a Cloudy Haiku

3 Miracles and a Cloudy Haiku

Behold, some miracles!   SPEECH   Skills learned in early childhood become more difficult to acquire later on, says the research. It seems simple to teach preschoolers any language they hear. In fact, they can learn it often without a trace of an accent. Why...

read more
Flipping from Bad to Glad

Flipping from Bad to Glad

In early May 2024, I discovered that the Contact page on my blog was not working  properly at all. To my chagrin, since 2017 the messages of at least 17 people who tried to contact me through my blog failed to make a connection (GASP)! Why? The page on my blog where...

read more