I enjoy the magazine “Real Simple” with its space-saving solutions, its paired down decor and clean lines.  I like the concept, but I can’t live that way.  My house is filled with so much stuff, and each item carefully placed in view has a memory attached or a useful purpose to perform. 

My brain i...

During the season preceding Easter, the devoted of certain Christian traditions often give up something or find a new discipline to adopt. One appropriate way of experiencing a holy Lent is to go through an extended period of self-examination.  Beginning on Ash Wednesday (today!) and culminating wit...

Last week I wrote about rainbows, those fleetingly ephemeral manifestations of water and light.  Over Christmas I saw one as I was driving through a brief shower on the freeway.  I wanted to stop and take a photograph, but by the time I had pulled off the highway it was gone.  Many of God’s blessing...

As we emerge from the worst days of Omicron, the third but probably not the last of the COVID variants, we’re hanging onto a cautious optimism.  Some of us are angry at how long this difficult season has gone on, and we look for someone to blame for all the upheaval of the last two years.  We might ...

Just shambling and rambling my morning away,
  I’m roaming through yards on my A.M. sashay;
I’ve rummaged through garbage and eaten my fill,
  I’m zigging and zagging through gardens at will. 

Though some find me scary or startling at best,
  I have no intent of invading your nest,
of being a nuisance o...

“Marvelous” was my mother’s word.  I think she loved the sophisticated way that the first syllable could be drawn out, as in “MAH-velous.”  She used it all the time.  I mean ALL THE TIME!  On the other hand, she objected to my dad’s overuse of the word “great,” completely oblivious to her own fatigu...

The dancing candle flames break into prisms in her brain,
pixilating thoughts shattering in shards of names and
                           places of vague memory. 

Light in its promise of joy has become a cruel trick as well,
making the blaze of hope a terrifying glare, a revealing
                    ...

I pull across the white fog line
along the edge of the road,
not out of drowsiness,
but wide awake to the field
bursting with autumn joy, 

pumpkins and squash lying
haphazardly, spilling out of neat,
lines and rows, plump and orange,
framed by trees and gentle ascents
that form a glory-singing vale. 

A bl...

I grew up with the admonition, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”  If ignorance is no excuse, then willfully disobeying is even more inexcusable. Therefore, imagine my dismay when one morning in December the front page of the LA Times proclaimed, “Starting Jan. 1, food scraps must be tossed into t...

I discovered quite by accident that my mother loved parades.  It was back when our daughter was quite small.  Mom was visiting, and we decided to go to Disneyland for Mother’s Day.  (It used to be a great day to visit the Magic Kingdom, as most mothers don’t put Disneyland high on their list for the...