Thirty-three years ago today I was living in Santa Cruz, California, and endured the devastation of the Loma Prieta earthquake and—ironically or symbolically—the end of a long term relationship on that same day. It sucked. People died and hearts hurt and I was lost and struggling as a still unpublished writer. The ruins from the earthquake in Santa Cruz 33 years ago today. Today I experienced the...
I’m not someone who feels especially embedded in my community, even though mental health experts say a sense of community is important to well-being. So I’d been meaning to find ways to get more involved locally, because I always listen to what the experts say. I volunteered for the crew to help artist Fernando Orellana paint a new mural on the rail trail that runs near my house. The mural was a...
I am stressed about our sugar maple under duress. Was it sixteen or eighteen years ago we planted it—I’m not so good at record keeping. We’ve watched the tree grow and every autumn its leaves have kept their promise. Sugar maples are experts at that. Every year I’m thinking I’ve never seen a more beautiful tree. I’ll take just one more photo. Growing. Growing. Bowing before its glory. The thick...
Hey there—if you’re looking for a hot, page-turning beach read to cap the summer season, I’ve just published my third novel: “The Culling.” This dystopian thriller is about a woman on the run from an unjust death sentence who teams up with the mercenary assigned to hunt her in an attempt to escape and join the resistance against the authoritarian regime. Think of it as Shirley...
Sometimes the stars align and we’re all at home and in the mood to watch a movie as a family. This time we went old school and sat down to the iconic horror film “The Shining”, directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the novel by Stephen King. From Rotten Tomatoes: “Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) becomes winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his...
I am asked if I want to hold her and I offer my arms and cradle the baby. She is tiny and buttery warm. Her eyes are closed and she is new and exquisite. Weightless and yet entirely substantial. I stare at her like a dream. All around me, her parents and family beam like full moons. A powerful sense of well-being flows over me. A smile arcs across my face. Immediately, instinctively, I begin a...
They Shot Sonny on the Causeway The actor James Caan died yesterday. I first saw him in “Brian’s Song” in the role of Brian Piccolo, the Chicago Bears running back and teammate of Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams), in a highly emotional movie about Piccolo’s death from cancer. Could that be the first movie that brought tears to my eyes? In “Misery,” he played the role of every...
This time the geese are talking to me. They’re everywhere. Along the shore, among the gravestones, on the driving path, in front of my car. I have to come to a full stop not to run them over. I visit this cemetery once in a while to think of my mom whose ashes we spread in the lake. Today, because of the geese, because of their strange, insistent behavior, and because among all these Canada geese...
When fractured in a world gone horrific, helpless against the forces of antagonism, trembling in anger and frustration, numb from despair, your breath tangled and spirit crushed, sometimes all you can do is visit a treasured place, and if you’re fortunate you might notice a moment so aligned and rhythmic, and even if it’s not the song of hope you wanted still you are offered a moment of...
We stood waving our signs under the hot afternoon sun and we called and chanted to passing drivers at the busy intersection. It was a day of organized protests, held across the country, to demand equal health care rights for women, for women’s choice, and to revolt against the sickening storm of conservative theocracy flooding our nation and attempting control of our lives. Some drivers honked...
One of the few special events in Albany, NY is the annual Tulip Festival in Washington Park. The tradition dates back to 1948 when the city of Albany sent aid to the Dutch city of Nijmegen which was struggling to recover from the devastation of World War II. To express their thanks, the Dutch sent tulips, and the annual Tulip Festival was born. Part of the Tulip Festival tradition is the naming...
Irene Klein and son It’s almost forty years since I’ve had a mother. Many memories of my mom are foggy, others long forgotten. But today I’m remembering how on our birthdays my mother would rock us in the chair and sing an Italian lullaby. Every year. When I got older it became a joke, but still a required tradition. It was funny because my mom and I both knew I was grown up now. David’s an...
You’re just a visitor to the National Mall and you want to fly your kite on a sunny day, you want to see the sails puff in the wind, rising into the sky, soaring and fluttering, the long colorful tail bebopping in the breeze, but if your kite flies too close to the Washington Monument then secret service agents draw their handheld mini lasers and cut your line and your kite plummets and crashes...
Fighting through a maze of rocks and winter’s dead leaves, this harbinger of spring, two crocus blooms, purple and gold, determined to be seen and I saw them, surprised and pleased. War and death and disease and hatred—and still, hope springs eternal.
That’s right, it’s Pi Day—March 14, or 3.14. Or 3.141592654 and on and on, with no repeating pattern. What does one do on Pi Day? Bake pies. For those who may not remember Euclidian geometry, Pi, represented by the Greek letter π, is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. For any circle, the distance around the edge is a little more than three times the distance across. Two...
