Miscellaneous Musings
What Can Happen in a Week at Whiteley and After: Bliss and a punch
The Whiteley Center is a retreat for scholarly and creative activities at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island. “It is a phrontistery – a space for study and thinking,” says the website. And it’s a space for writing, I would add, which I did plenty of during my recent week…
Read MoreIn My Mother’s Yard
Today is my birthday. I started it off by getting on an early flight back to Seattle after spending the last twelve days in National City, CA, where I grew up and where my mother began her dying on June 8. I arrived the next day when she was released from the hospital for home…
Read MoreSo I’m Taking This Class
It’s been decades since I’ve taken a weekly class with writing assignments. My days are spent at work in a cubicle downtown, my evenings as much as possible on my writing—right after doing the NYT crossword puzzle online. That little celebratory ditty that plays upon correct completion of the puzzle is a nice reward, but…
Read MoreWho’s Who in (My) Fiction
As I anticipate the publication of my next book Hola and Goodbye from Carolina Wren Press a year from now, I also anticipate the assumptions that the readers among my family will surely make about the characters in the book—that this or that character resembles this or that family member. Let’s test those assumptions. My…
Read MoreVisit the Real National City, Unfiltered
There’s a new promo video about National City, California, the place where I grew up and about which I wrote an essay titled “Home is Where the Wart Is.” As you might imagine, my essay is at odds with a Visit National City tourism campaign. All soft focus with bouncy music and a honeyed voiceover,…
Read MoreOther Talents
“Why didn’t you tell me… to bring along my harmonica?” the Baroness says to Max when Maria leads the Von Trapp children in song in The Sound of Music. The Baroness is being sardonic. We know she has no musical talent. I felt for the Baroness back then when I saw the movie in 1965…
Read MoreHow Katharine Whitcomb’s Sad Poems Lifted Me from the Blues
A few weeks ago I was blue. I can’t say exactly what caused my melancholy as I rode the bus to work that day amid passengers whose ears were occluded with ear buds and whose thumbs busily scrolled the smudged surfaces of their smart phones; or as I sat in my cubicle attending to my…
Read MoreWhat I Read in 2012
I read just over 30 books in 2012. So sue me. I’m a slow reader. There was only one year when I managed to read a book a week. I’m not sure how I accomplished that since it happened when my kids were still fairly young. With work, writing and family, I must’ve stolen a…
Read MoreLies, Fakery, and Fiction
I took vacation time from work last week to work on my new novel. I wanted to put myself on track to finish a draft by the end of the year. While I made good progress, I might have made more had I not allowed myself to be distracted by the Internet. I was posting…
Read MoreThe Art of the Long Walk
When my husband dropped me off at Golden Gardens Park last Thursday for the start of the Long Walk, many of the walkers had already assembled. “That’s not your demographic,” he chuckled. Indeed, many of the participants were decades younger than I. But at 59, I’m quite fit, having been a runner for over 30…
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