There was a large spider on the floor-length curtains. Large is relative, of course. I'd say it was about the size of the palm of your hand. I've told this story before, but this is in case you missed it. And the point this time is different. I was probably five or six. Before this …
It's here! My first event since the pandemic descended. The pandemic is still with us, of course. This is an outdoor event with half the number of artist than there could otherwise be, and we'll be wearing masks. I wouldn't do this at all if it were an indoor event, even though I am vaccinated. …
So so so often I work on a story, rewrite several times, put it aside and come back to it to rewrite again, finally feel like it's finished and share it, only to have panic and suddenly realize how much I got wrong. Such feelings are common for many of the writers I know. Perhaps …
A home that caught my eye in Salem. Definitely not the house I grew up in. In grad school, I had a final exam with a one word question. We had to write about this one word. (For the life of me, I can't remember how much time were were given, but it was at …
One more story. This is from before I was born. It is something my mother told me. My dad bought the house before they were married in 1965. He built his first dock. It proved lower than it should've been because soon after, the water level rose. About an inch of water covered the dock's …
I love the lake. The lake doesn't love me. Dad bought his house on the lake before I was born. The lake lives in my earliest memories. In childhood, dad would make me volcanoes in the beach sand. We had our best conversations on the dock. As a teen, I sat on the dock to …
I was planning to write about the winter storm here in Texas, the surprise of being without electricity or heat from 2am Monday to 1am thereabouts Thursday. We didn't lose water, thank goodness, but plenty of my friends and students did. Some people are still without water. Aside from the love, dogs provide heat! We …
In the early days of the pandemic, when the city was shut down and the weather here was lovely, I'd find messages written on the sidewalks. I haven't been for a walk in quite some time. At the moment, it's 23 degrees in my corner of the world, and we are not used to it. …
I prefer to read fiction over non-fiction, and I prefer to watch documentaries over movies. That seems contradictory, doesn't it. Recently, my husband and I thought we were going to watch the hand-painted aniamted movie about Vincent van Gogh, but what we clicked on turned out to be a documentary on the making of the …
The Civil War brought us death on a massive scale, and I've read how people turned to seances. First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln held seances too. The Spiritualist movement was already in place by the time of the war, but certainly so much violent death spurred more people to try so-called spirit circles. (Aaron Mahnke's …
Continue reading There’s a Gaping Hole in the Livingroom Wall
