Category Archives: Uncategorized

Hable Espanol?

Here’s something I don’t get and it’s come up in casual conversation twice in the last two days — once with a guy buying aspirin for his bad knees in the check-out line at Drug Mart, me holding my soon to be new hangers. “All these people speaking Spanish. They should just learn to speak

Now the real work begins

The editor sent an email today that she’s sending edits on Informally Yours. This book was such fun to write. Two years ago Allan Wolf and I thought of the idea on the plane home from IRA — a book of boy/girl love poems. We had known one another since the 1995 National Poetry Slam

safer, smafer

In Florida they have a law named for Jessica Lunsford, the poor girl attacked and killed by a neighbor, a repeat offender, a kind of scum lower than whale poop. In response to this attack (which did not take place on school grounds during a busy school day by a school contractor, let’s remember) the

Summer Reading

I was all over the place this summer in books — Africa, Pakistan, Peru, Chile, colonial America and perhaps the most frightening land of all — adolescence. I didn’t have a summer reading list and I’m not facing a quiz. I can’t figure out if this is an advantage to being out of school or

Driving through Somerset County

Coming home from visiting Kelly and family today we hopped off the turnpike to take winding route 30 through PA. Coal country. Laurel Highlands. 2909 elevations. Towns too small to make the map. Whoever heard of Shanksville? That is before September 11 when Flight 93 dropped out of the sky into a field there. At

This Can’t Happen

This cave in, this hurricane, this almond-sized explosive device found in the breast of my daughter Kelly. This can’t happen. That’s what I said when I heard about the lump, what I said on the phone, what I said to friends, and what I continued to say until 3AM on the morning of her surgery

Nothing but fun

What could bring 3 generations of chicks together for a fun night along with a gender, age, race, economic diverse audience of great music and smiles, dancing in the aisles, albeit somewhat pricey — joy?
American Idol comes to Cleveland in concert. Okay, okay, I know. But as an event to take a wide-eyed

National Poetry Slam 2007

Austin is hot — once again. I mean the thermostat in the car read 108 one day. That’s hotter than a match head, as the saying goes.
For the first time in a few years, Cleveland sent a team. They are a young team with lots to learn about reading the audience, but they performed

Hideous

I was browsing blogs, putting off working on taxes and the evil treadmill and I came across this phrase: “Michael Vick and the hideous dog fighting scandal” and thought, great word! Hideous. You don’t hear that word so much anymore. The irony here is that there’s so much that is hideous

open door policies

We keep the doors open in the summer. For the dogs. Or that’s the excuse. The sliding glass door off of our bedroom, the side kitchen door. When we are home, they are open. I like it that way. Did the same thing at my last house.
Guests helpfully close the doors or comment, “oops,