I have avoided writing about overtly political topics in this blog, mostly because it’s divisive and I need space for other aspects of my writing life. Satire is a reliable outlet for frustration, angst, and general world-weariness, but as I try to digest the events of yet another exhausting week [...]
I subscribe to a daily email roundup and summary of local environmental news called the Salish Sea News and Weather. Yesterday’s installment contained a story from Seattle’s KOMO News called “Got squid? Why officials say you should catch and eat it out of Puget Sound.” It went on to say, [...]
I'm following up on a previous post on the meaning of home and how laughter helps define it, and on another post on the science behind the benefits of laughing. Here’s an example, one of many, of how the weekly round table of six friends who meet at our local pub, [...]
Yes folks, it's that time of year again, where thoughts turn to zombies and we are reminded by the Center For Disease Control and FEMA that the federal government has preparedness pages for the apocalypse. I kid you not, see for yourself. And here. This year the only difference is that [...]
My friend Kristen, who is an otherwise upstanding Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, was visiting our home with her husband, Lou. We all knew Kristen takes fitness seriously, but over pre-dinner drinks she surprised us by saying, “Did I ever tell you about the time my mother and I participated in [...]
It started innocently enough, with our local sailmaker and friend Carol Hasse saying, “Oh, you MUST meet these two new friends of mine! You will absolutely LOVE them!” So she set up a blind date of sorts at our hometown pub: my husband, Jim, and me, with these two strangers [...]
A 7-hour, 460-mile drive on I-90 from coastal Washington got me to Wallace, Idaho and a campground next to a pub, to which of course I repaired, forsaking camp ramen. It had been an easy drive except for the kid in a beat-up pickup truck driving the wrong way on [...]
When you think about a road trip, what comes to mind? A sizeable corral of literature beckons—Steinbeck, Kerouac, Pirsig, Wolfe, Bryson—hey wait, where are the women writers? Is Thelma and Louise our only touchstone, complete with its Freudian cliff-plunge ending? No. There are plenty of good women writers writing interesting [...]
Compilations of best first lines in novels abound on the internet, and they usually include Call me Ishmael. (Herman Melville); and, Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez); [...]
I don’t know about you, but for me, reading news headlines lately is like watching reruns of Ren and Stimpy inviting the cast of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to watch Discovery Channel host Paul Rosolie deliberately get swallowed whole by an eighteen-foot anaconda, with subtitles. I mean, it’s nuts, [...]