This is the time of year that the screens go back up on our windows and the porch picnic table gets covered with a red and white checkered table cloth. It’s also the time of year when I can’t keep my hands clean. The red clay of Virginia outlines my cuticles, and my nails are […]
This (preparing my tax return) is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. ~Albert Einstein The Audit In April I calculate poetry the way others do their taxes as though the world was overdue for a good accounting Bursting to put […]
I’m from ice skates and alphabet streets jump ropes and black and white TV… This is the photo that was meant to be posted with the “Where I’m From” entry last week, but my computer was ill and wouldn’t upload. It’s still not fixed but the symptoms have gone dormant. Can a computer fix itself? […]
I agreed to a 5 question interview with J&J’s Mom at Millersville. I just got finished telling her, after viewing her wall mural art (posted at her site) that she could have a new career as an artist…or maybe as an interviewer, which is another art form, according to a book I recently read, titled […]
My idea of a great job would be writing the sayings on valentine heart candy, or coming up with the names for lipstick or paint colors, but I know even that would get boring. I can’t think of anything that I like enough to want to do it over and over, day in and out. […]
Loose Leaf – ADJECTIVE: Related to, having, or being leaves that can be easily removed, rearranged, or replaced: a loose-leaf notebook; loose-leaf paper. The American Heritage Dictionary. If you type “loose leaf” into a search engine, you’ll get a multitude of pages having to do with tea or paper. As a writer who fills notebooks […]
The thing the critics don’t get about me is the fact that I’m Irish ~ Eugene O’Neill When I went to Ireland in 1997 to visit my grandmother’s hometown, I learned more about myself there than I could have in 10 years of psycho-therapy. The majority of the Irish people I met reminded me of […]
…to bring you a just for fun springtime poem: Spring Vacancy The birds are back checking out the real estate a high-rise nest on my porch rafter A one room shelter inaccessible to cats with southern exposure and a landing deck Left empty last year by its previous owners who followed the flock down the […]
I get nervous when I draw attention to myself. My hands shake when I open a Roanoke Times newspaper and know that a political commentary I wrote is inside. When the local newspaper did a story about my first book, I felt like a girl in my first training bra that the whole town knew […]
Death is real. It comes without warning. No one escapes it. Soon my body will be a corpse!” ~ A Buddhist passage When my brother Jimmy died unexpectedly 3 years ago, I wrote his eulogy. My brother Danny died a month later and I wrote a poem describing how removing his breathing tube, IV, and […]
“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.” ~ Robert Benchley It only takes having one child to make parent. Following that logic, one might assume that one paid-for-published piece of writing would make one […]
Some of my friends are getting tired of hearing about my blog, or they miss me because I’ve been online more than usual, writing blog entries. I remind them about the long political articles I used to email out. Since I can’t change our current government, even though it’s getting worse everyday, I might as […]
