If you’re interested in writing, and you’ve been on the internet in the last few days, you may have seen that Amtrak granted a pilot writers’ residency to a New York writer, who took the Lakeshore Limited to Chicago and back, working away in her 3’6” by 6’8” sleeper cabin. And since then, other writers […]
If you were a kid in the eighties in California, you might have done things like this: Save the bathwater and flush the toilets with it. Turn off the shower when you soaped up. Let it mellow. You might have even had a Rube Goldberg-like contraption like the one my dad made to use water […]
One of my New Year’s resolutions is not to write in a journal everyday. I’m terrible at it, even though I wished I loved to scribble daily. I can’t even keep up with my Planner Pad. (In fact, I’ve already lost my 2014 edition). That’s not to say that I haven’t occasionally kept a notebook. […]
Tonight, if we can remember the words, we might be singing about auld acquaintance. And we have many: several People of LWON–Heather Pringle, Erika Check Hayden and Thomas Hayden–moved on in 2013 (and Virginia Hughes just before that). We miss them all. So I thought I’d try to bring at least one of these fine […]
This weekend the moon pulled back the curtains on the beach, revealing plenty of sand in the evening hours. I love the beach in the winter, particularly near dusk. The sand seems to go on for miles; when there’s a full moon, it rises from behind the mountains, which are still rosy from alpenglow. I […]
I need a new disease. Not for me, not exactly, but for my son. Instead of stories about two mystery solvers named Sam and Lydia, he wants me to regale him with chronicles of ailments, with tales of viruses and bacteria. This started yesterday, because we were going to the doctor to get Hepatitis A […]
One of the ornaments that will come down from the attic in the next few weeks has a fairy wearing a blue gown on it; she’s sitting on a crescent moon. This picture has a quote below it: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be […]
This is the game my older son and I played this weekend. He would bolt into a four-lane thoroughfare, and I would shout and jump around: “Get out of the street! It’s not safe! GetoutgetoutGETOUT!” Then I would dash into the street after him and we would laugh and laugh. And then he would pretend […]