September 10, 2006
My hood
September 10, 2006
My Hood
The neighbors in my hood had a celebratory potluck tonight. The developer, whose family in the past has performed surgery on this old village with the delicacy of a bulldozer, burying the old grist mill to put up a Kinko’s and erecting stripmalls with spreading lawns of asphalt from one end of town to the
September 9, 2006
Techno Trauma
My phone stopped taking a charge. I know this feeling, understand it in my core. When the sun is perky and I am too comfortable under the comforter. When no amount of caffeine starts my engine. The time I fell asleep at the only professional football game I ever attended, crowds
September 5, 2006
“the smell of hope — the opposite of hate”
I’ve been feeling depressed lately about the state of the world. News articles and television conspiring to remind us daily about the vulnerabilities of mother earth and all her minions — human, fish, reptile and fowl. From polar bears to tropical frogs to children in Afghanistan and green space in Ohio, it seems
September 2, 2006
“way back when, in ’67”
Name that song. If you can name Steely Dan, you were probably alive and musically aware in the 70s, as was most of the audience at the outdoor concert last night. Gray ponytails and speading foundations filled the lawn at Blossom. The temperature was in freefall, but Hurricane Ernesto’s leftovers didn’t reach the
August 30, 2006
just a Wednesday
No rushing, no deadlines. The cats are out, the dogs are in. Summer is slowing down to turn the corner into fall. School is open, the pool is closed. My neighborhood is far from peaceful.
Mentor’s school district is in financial crisis and decided to sell our neighborhood school at the firesale price of 700,000.
August 26, 2006
Outspoken!
The book is at the printer. There are hardly better words an author can hear. It means all the work that the writer can do is done. Books start out in pieces, ideas, outlines, proposals, chapters, rewrites upon rewrites and then they come back in pieces, galleys, designs, finally, a printed cover. Then there are
August 21, 2006
Home is where the washing machine is
Outgoing suitcases are a study in organization. Socks in this pocket, folded jeans, t shirt rolls framed by shoes turned business side out. Incoming suitcases on the other hand look as if they have been gathered from trees, bushel basket dumped then stir fried. Unappetizing at best — and after a day of serving as
August 20, 2006
It’s official.
I could never be a migrant. First of all, my intestines tend to over-dramatize ingestions of bad food. Second, after a couple of days of that drama, I almost threw up with dehydration and heat exhaustion on a 2.5 mile hike on the desert trails. In order to hike from Nogales to
August 20, 2006
“And some go both ways” to quote the scarecrow.