In early September, I applied to the Master Gardener program, which is run by the local county extension office. I have a quiz and interview with the selection committee this afternoon. I wasn’t going to say anything about my application until after the results were in, and I knew whether I made the cut or not. That…
Last Sunday in the New York Times, there was an article about a new animated movie produced by Disney’s Pixar coming out on June 22nd that caught my attention. I’m not generally drawn to animated movies. Perhaps that’s because of one too many viewings of “Bambi” and “The Little Mermaid” or that adult cartoons, like…
I know this is long, but if you are a writer or woman of a certain age, it is so worth reading (I can say that because I’m just the messenger, not the brains of the message). I spent the weekend at a writing conference for writers over fifty at Open Book in Minneapolis. I…
How do you live a normal life when you have words whispering in your ears every waking hour of the day and even in your sleep? Jotted down on scraps of paper, both physical paper and bits of cyber notebooks. I run my hand through my hair and wonder “How will I ever collect them…
Saturday night I flew swiftly from a deep sleep into a wide-eyed sitting position. A gasp of air, a desperate swallow to make sure I still could. I’d been dreaming. And in the dream something had frightened me, and with a sharp intake of air, I swallowed something large and oval. A rock? I don’t…
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all…
