“Once it’s over, you write it all down in second person, so that it doesn’t sound like you who’s complaining. So it doesn’t sound like a complaint. Because you have been blessed. You have been blessed. You have been blessed.” I FEEL TWO TOTALLY CONTRADICTORY things about this post. I want to [...]
FOR TWENTY YEARS, when our kids were young, we had a summer house (not to be confused with a summerhouse!) on Whidbey Island. It’s a place I always think about this time of year, maybe because the change of seasons felt so palpable there. After spending long summer weekends sitting on [...]
I KNOW—IT'S BEEN A WHILE! I didn’t really mean to stay away so long. Part of it was that I had to go into my cave and write. And part of it is that last fall, my sweetie and I dropped everything and fled to Scotland. And it’s been haunting me ever [...]
THERE’S AN IMAGE from one of those summer boat trips we took with my friend Becky and her family when our kids were young that always haunts me this time of year. Orcas Island, late August, walking along a lane above the water. (Somebody was probably complaining their feet hurt.) But what [...]
In summer the song sings itself. William Carlos Williams IT’S FINALLY SUMMER with a vengeance here in the Pacific Northwest after a dark, drippy June. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t post last month because it would have just been another rant about the weather! True to form, summer arrived here [...]
THE WALLED GARDEN HAD ITS second anniversary May 17 and once again, I’m feeling so blessed by all the love and support it’s gotten. I recently enjoyed zooming into the Between the Covers Book Club and talking with a lovely group of women meeting at a Barnes & Noble in Chico, California. [...]
T.S. ELIOT FAMOUSLY OBSERVED in The Waste Land that “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.” I remember my shock when I realized that the persona in this poem does not want spring to [...]
I’M GOING TO DO SOMETHING I promised myself I would try not to do—and that is use a blogpost for shameless self-promotion. This Saturday, March 16, I’ll be joining a group of women writers from Washington state at the Woodinville branch of the King County Library, to celebrate Women’s History Month with [...]
IT’S A GOOD THING I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, because I’d have already bombed it: my pledge (to myself) to blog once a month in 2024. Alas, here we are almost to Valentine’s Day and I’m just getting to my Book Oscars for 2023. In my defense, I have to [...]
IT’S A FEW DAYS after Christmas and I have seen (almost) all my dear ones, opened all the lovely presents, and eaten all the delicious food I can hold. And once again, thinking of all the gifts 2023 held for me, I find myself filled with gratitude. In April, I wrote about [...]