Marshallville Stories Now on Audible.com
Optimism
Four Things You Cannot Fix at 3 AM
A CAREFULLY RESEARCHED SELF-HELP GUIDE Photo by Megan te Boekhorst on Unsplash 1 — That small, niggly message from your stomach that says it needs a couple…
The Brave New AI World
WITH A SALUTE TO THE HUMANOID BRAINS OF WRITERS PAST Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash I was confronted with an ad on a busy urban…
Can We Talk About Guns?
Can we talk about DOING SOMETHING about guns? Photo by Paul Einerhand on Unsplash I am, to be clear, just a little old lady who never messed…
Welcome to my digital world. I’ve been writing (for newspapers, magazines, online sites) since the 1950s, and blogging since first introduced to the idea via a paid blog for news aggregate site True/Slant in 2009. My roots are in small town Virginia and my heart is in hometown San Francisco. For more than you ever wanted to know, click on the tabs above. Current essays and hopefully enlightening &/or entertaining thoughts are under the Blog tab, or grouped in my most frequent categories below. Thanks for visiting!
Current big news: MARSHALLVILLE STORIES is HERE and available on Amazon and Audible. You can read about its genesis in this blog post. Or, here’s a 2-minute sample from the audiobook (video by Sara Vitale, narration by Katherine Conklin.)
COVID Collection
The Night We Climbed the Water Tower
Photo by Arturo Mendez on Unsplash It was chilly, and very dark; that’s what I remember most clearly. But where Mimi went, I followed. Mimi was two years older,…
Look Me In the Eye
AN ARGUMENT FOR PERSON-TO-PERSON COMMUNICATIONS Photo by Laurent Jollet on Unsplash Recently I fired my doctor. She and I had gotten along okay for a number of…
Isolation is a Soul-Killer
WHAT WE (HOPEFULLY) LEARNED FROM THE PANDEMIC Photo by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash My sister Helen was a hidden covid victim. Helen, who died recently at 95,…
America
Watch Your #*$%+#@~ Language
Thoughts on National Grammar Day Photo by saeed karimi on Unsplash National Grammar Day is upon us. I learned this from my favorite San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Kevin Fisher-Paulson, who opines…
Natasha Trethewey’s “Memorial Drive”
REVIEW of an UNFORGETTABLE MEMOIR I picked up a copy of Natasha Trethewey’s memoir Memorial Drive at JFK, starting a cross-country flight home just as Black…
Survival in the Friendly Skies
WHEN PLUNGING TO YOUR DEATH IS IMMINENT Photo by Richard R. Schünemann on Unsplash Airline passengers fall into two groups: those who can handle turbulence, and those…
End of Life
Book Banning and Other Nightmares
We have done this in the bleak, dark past Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash Today’s education wars are giving me a déjà vu headache. Ron DeSantis…
The Glory of Modern Dentistry
Or – How in the world am I going to pay for all this gadgetry? Photo by Quang Tri NGUYEN on Unsplash Dentists, my oral surgeon told…
Losing – But Not Mourning For – My Sister
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash Several weeks ago I lost the last of my three older sisters. Condolences are still coming in almost every day via…
Feminist Collection
Guns & Massacres & Priorities
Photo by maxzzerzz ❄ on Unsplash REPORT FROM CALIFORNIA: We’ve had a flurry of mass shootings in recent days here in sunny California, the state with the…
Did the Founding Fathers Miss Something?
MAYBE WE COULD LEARN FROM THE MICROSTATES . . . Rep. of San Marino Postcard (Author photo) The above postcard recently arrived from my…
Meeting Mother Nature in Montana
AND A FEW OF HER CREATURES AT THE FRONT DOOR Author photo Big Sky Country! I’m a native Virginian transplanted long ago to San…