If an ox can be a gentle diplomat with a devilish sense of humor, that was Chuck, the circle boss. Standing next to each other, I am so tiny, we looked like we were from different species. The top of…

The guards seemed to have vanished overnight. They took anything of value, anything, scraps of cheese, jugs of water, whatever clothes hadn’t already been raided and stolen by them or someone like them with them.. In the morning people woke…

In the morning, nothing compares to waking up with you in our bed that faces the west window. This January morning, the sky's still dark at six in the morning. The floor feels wonderful and cold on bare feet, the…

Earlier this year I arrived in Italy prepared for a month in the north. During the quick transit through the airport to find the airporter, I remembered that in the north I can understand everyone, even the teenagers. They all…

There is that stuff that weighs thick and heavy when your eyes first scratch open on any given morning: we used to call it pond scum, my dear ex husband and I. For years and years in our younger life…

(Still working on that novel...) “Momma!” Ivy shouted from the living room. “There’s a dead pig on the porch.” I rearranged the words inside my head, trying to make sense of them. I was probably still a little high from…

To see all or nothing at all is just the way mommy is, sweetheart! So when mommy sees you do bad naughty things, and hears you talk back, all of a sudden mommy sees a terribly bad brat .If I've…

During a writers' retreat at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Muir Beach, I had a series of seizures, a couple of them on the beach itself. Everyone who has seizures has their unique types. I have no awareness…

I guess that one reason why people love ghost stories is that if there are ghosts, our loved ones are not lost. Something, even something evanescent, lingers, we don’t really have to say good-bye, ever. Plus, if the ghost lingers…

[Using my Creative Caffeine time to work on an essay...sometimes I do write to the prompts!] Who thinks of the future when they fall in love. I didn't when I met my husband. I didn't when I adopted my dog.…

So go the lyrics to the delightful bouncy tune in Rodgers and Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA, the show that changed the face of the modern American musical comedy. It's the adorable plea coming from the mouth of cowboy Will Parker , who…

No matter how hard we try, we cannot make our bodies last past their due dates. Nope. That’s one ball that starts rolling and that stops its journey definitely and definitively! WE cannot stop it. We wear out. So no…