It is the last of August, and this ending could not come too soon. It's been a memorable month. There are great things about August: my wedding anniversary, the birthday of my older son, and surely something else. In the old days, August is the month I began playing solitaire compulsively—with cards, not on the [...]
I began using fancy pens when I was in college as an Art major. Mostly I wrote with a 0000 stylus fountain pen—a Kon-i-noor Rapidograph. The tip of such pens is a tiny tube, thinner than a crow quill, and notorious for clogging. The 4x0 tip makes a line 0.18mm wide. I used a 3x0 [...]
My step-grandmother's secretary desk has pride of place in our home opposite the front door. Yesterday, I began emptying this beautiful secretary, purchased in 1962 for $125. Baubles, birthday cards, baskets, and relics of childhood. Things my mother and grandmother kept, programs from Ian's early performances, and things I had forgotten completely even existed. A [...]
We were very young when we met and still young when we married. Lucky in that joining, as in so many things. Lucky my step-grandmother was a weaver. Lucky her second husband loved Gary. Lucky to walk off the street in Cannon Beach and get a job in a bakery. Lucky our sons were born [...]
One day my favorite design teacher, Hazel Koenig, saw me walking to a metals class in the Art Building. She stopped me to ask if I would be willing to help out at a state art education conference. That would have been about 1974. Later, she got me my first teaching job. I thought of [...]
The burn ban. The pain did not begin with the cake or fire or police, but it ended with the pain in my feet. I do not believe this was all my fault, but I will worry that it was. Maybe the bad day began with the cake. I did everything right. With multiple dietary [...]
And a check came for my story, "If It Were True Owls Dream." It appears in issue 5 of Liminal Stories. The illustration they chose disturbs me because in my head I see Beatrice from the other side, facing left. (Plus, this character is right-handed.) The early drafts of this story used my grandchildren's names, but those [...]
