Every once in a while, not every year, maybe every few years, now and again, here and now, it all feels like too much. Not enough. I lose focus and passion and a sense of purpose. What’s it a…

A couple of years ago, I took a class at the Portland metal studio, Ninety-Twenty. I wanted to recreate a sterling ring I’d made for Gary while I was still in high school in the fall of 1968 …

I found Vivaldi when I was a teenager. Vivaldi – Summer from The Four Seasons | Netherlands Bach Society. These are the original instruments that would have been used in Vivaldi’s time.…

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a reel from “Toby-the-Neuro-Scientist” about maybe not quite failing his A-levels. He failed to achieve a score that would get him into the University p…

“Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em,” They told my dad when he was training in Arizona for WWII. In January of 1964, the Surgeon General of the United States announced in pri…

Our 52nd anniversary is coming up in twelve days. We’re going out for an early dinner that night because I have to be home for a Zoom meeting of a nonprofit. That’s okay. We are nearly …

After I wrote the book, after the years of writing and revising, authenticity edits and developmental edits, after proofreading and proofreading again. After I finally decide it’s perfect [it…

Let’s not mince words: the last eighteen months have been an absolute nightmare for federal ocean and conservation policy. Landmark environmental protections have been rolled back or severely hobbl…

Just now I’m seeing lots of reels on Facebook complaining about idiotic teacher’s in-service activities. Forms groups with people you don’t usually talk to. Markers and butcher pa…

They used to say, Nice guys finish last. We may want to rethink not-nice as a way of life. Right about now, the world could use a dose of niceness. My brother said our mother was the epitome of &#8…

Something happened. I’d made a big decision, a big one, without even noticing. I’d made a hard turn into something that felt wonderful, and before I even knew it was happening, it happe…

Yeti, our last dog’s favorite treat was a Greenie, a green starchy chewable bone-shaped object she could chew into bits and swallow in a minute of two. Green meanies are something else and th…

My birthday is two months from next Friday. I will be 74, the age my grandmother and also her elder daughter died. When my mom turned 80, I teased her that she hadn’t expected to live that lo…

cover yourself I’ve got you covered that’s a great cover you’ll need cover June was an eventful month, and I have a few photos to prove it. My MFA residency happened in Forest Gro…

It is widely reported that given the theoretical choice of meeting a man or a bear in the dark, most women will choose the bear. Men are justly offended by this report. Women take a breath and nod.…

June is ridiculously busy, which is not something I can say about most months. Most months my busy is entirely self-inflicted. I read, sew, knit, run, post online. Scrub floors. Gary and I drive to…

My goal was to post once a week on Fridays. I had posted randomly, sometimes a few times in a week, sometimes a few times in a month. It seemed to me that reliability should count for something. Mo…

I have a cold and our building fire alarm woke me just after 4am this morning. I would have liked sleeping a bit longer. But since I was up and a neighbor sent me a link to his father’s obitu…

I was reading an upbeat story about a species of dove native to a Pacific island that had become extinct in the wild since 1972 due to human activity and human-introduced species. Cats are often ci…

On Monday, Gary and I covered at least ten miles. I ran two of them. Wednesday I ran three miles and we walked. I scheduled a 3-mile run for this morning, but Gary wasn’t feeling well so I we…

On beach runs, I cannot resist the amber agate, striped limpet, or rare bit of glass. I circle, bend to pluck them from the ground, and bring them home. I pile stones on the coffee table, line limp…

Happy birthday, Mom. You would have been one hundred one.

When I cross the street I look both ways, even when I’m in a crosswalk, even with there is a light telling me I may, and I look both ways even at a crossing of two one-way streets where I sho…

Coming back from my run on this morning, I saw a crow standing well out on the shore in about an inch of water. I gave the bird a bad time about that. “What are you doing out there? That&#821…

A favorite Heritage Tree in Portland, shown in winter. It began dying a few years ago. It’s gone, but a sapling thrives in its place.

Six months ago, Gary and I stopped drinking altogether. Gary tells people who ask that he stopped because I asked him to as a birthday present. Okay. Maybe. It saves money, spares us hangovers, and…

My mother said those words to me hundreds or thousands, or perhaps only a few dozen times. They were the words that stuck, the instruction that carried over into my dreams where I routinely switch …

It was still dark the second time I woke this morning, and I remembered the screaming man. We’d walked to Portland State University to the Saturday Farmers Market. I was hoping to find organi…

“More than 3,200 events took place across the country on Saturday [March 28, 2026], from New York City to Driggs, Idaho, a town of fewer than 2,000 people in a state Trump carried with 66 per…

I am aware this sounds like an April Fool’s joke, but it isn’t. My second Bridge Crossing, I think, three and a half years ago on 9 October 2022. I ran the next year or the year after. …

It is a newer expression, “Read the room.” It suggests that a person should have the sense of where others are emotionally and intellectually, how they view what is said and seen, and m…

The signature CALYX image celebrates fifty years of CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women+ founded in 1976, on the 200th anniversary of our nation. It served as a reminder of the great am…

“However ill-founded, however misguided, hope is the basic stratagem of mortality. We need it, and an art that fails to offer it fails us.” —URSULA K. LE GUIN, ”Facing It,” from Da…

In the first episode of the new series, Scarpetta, a scene from “28 years earlier” (1996?) had “The House of the Rising Sun” playing. Good cover. Gary would know the group, …

I missed this past Friday’s post. Apologies. I love a stormy sky, and I surely got wet on the day I took this photo. We often are rained on during our walks. I know what it feels like to have…

This is not my day to post, but today, just now, a frighting event. That is a young bull Roosevelt elk on the sand, what is called locally a spike because he has his first antlers. The orange objec…

Years ago, as a “starving student” who worked every hour I could get, I also participated in psychology experiments that paid volunteers. I only did the safe ones, the sitting-in-a-soun…

If you’ve been reading my blog or my Facebook page, you might know that we have been restoring our rental, a duplex attached to our home. It’s just off the beach at the end of a dead end stre…

The scenario I detailed in class was based on a true story. It happened in the last century in a city back east. Baltimore, maybe. Brooklyn? A walk to the park. Daphne blooming outside the Washingt…

I began writing fiction in 1990 as a result of a week-long summer class for teachers teaching writing. I had three art degrees and had taught art at an elite prep school but had been hired to teach…

This might look like a snowy scene, but it’s just a fiddled forest photo. Four months ago today, our longtime tenant totaled his car. We were grateful he didn’t die, that he didn’…

I never claimed to be “blocked.” You know that word, right? It’s a term familiar even to many people, even those not devoting their days to being writers. Visiting my MFA Residenc…

Hello, readers. I wrote the post below before Good was murdered. Good was murdered. I have read the articles, the defense by MAGA, the responses from newspapers around the world by reporters who wa…

Well, now, this is a weak post—you may have noticed by now I’m aiming at weekly posts on Fridays. This post is short because I put up a “New Year” post yesterday. If you choose to…

It’s New Years Day, the day we make promises to ourselves about how to have a good or better year. But I’m not making promises, only suggestions for myself. Here’s the short versi…

The truth is, I used to hit. (I’ve stopped—when? Decades ago now.) For example, I’d slap my husband’s arm in what was meant to be a playful way. Not hard. Well, a slap hard enough to leave a …

Like last week, this post is late. I mean to write early, but it’s been a week of strong wind, heavy rain, an 18-hour power outage, some baking and planning and writing, and exhausting work o…

I nearly didn’t post this week at all. But let me share a personal tradition that I miss while I’m sitting here on the sofa, the television paused. I had a writing assignment I shared b…

This week I got started painting our rental and completed my quilt top and three submissions. I was researching something the other morning that I don’t remember, but Gary and I got to talkin…

I was still teaching when I reposted an old blog: WHY YOU DON’T WANT TO BE A TEACHER. That post arrived on my old Blogger site in 2011, then here in 2019. I think black oystercatchers are my …