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How Do You Solve a Problem Like a Psychopath?
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 20, 2013 The other night in my writing group I got starting writing about a woman I worked with many years ago. I am convinced that this woman was a psychopath. I’ve tried...
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The Flint Girls Go To A Fire
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 26, 2013 One more poem as we near the end of National Poetry Month. I wrote this rather prosey poem about my Mother and her family twenty-something years ago. I just came...
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The Next Big Thing
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 26, 2013 Thanks to my friend June Gillam for “tagging” me to promote The Next Big Thing! In June’s latest blog post she wrote about her upcoming thriller, House of Dads....
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Writing the Amherst Way
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 17, 2013 A few weeks ago I had the privilege of writing in a workshop with Pat Schneider, the author of Writing Alone and with Others, and the recently released How the Light...
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My Teaching Life
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 25, 2013 I’ve been posting pieces about my writing these past few weeks, and let me be honest here: that’s been easy. Writing is most often a solitary pursuit. If I’m not...
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Crown in Heaven
When I was teaching special education classes I often took my students out to grocery stores, fast food restaurants or shopping malls to teach them how to behave in community settings. We’d practice...
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Poverty and Our Public Schools
I chose to make my career in public education and I have become a fierce defender of it as a democratic institution. I worked as a special educator with children who have severe disabilities for...
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Tending My Muse
It’s been a year now since I’ve retired from teaching, and I’m sure it will surprise no one when I say retirement is GREAT! Every now and then a friend approaching retirement age will ask, “Do you...
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Happy Birthday USA!
I pledge allegiance to this sand and gravel road that runs between the river and my house, clumps of California poppies rangy stalks of fragrant fennel and burgeoning fig trees that grow wild on the...
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Delta Breeze
After a week where the temperature topped 105 degrees each day with little cooling at night, we are all so grateful to welcome back the Delta Breeze, the delightful wind that courses up from San...
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My Favorite Color
My favorite color is green. Specifically blue green, shades of turquoise and aqua. It’s not that I don’t like all the other colors, but I tend to favor green. I wanted to make it official, you know,...
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Good Summer Reads
Marketers would have us believe that summer is the time for books that are light and frothy, suitable for beach or poolside reading. But since I generally didn’t work for eight to ten weeks every...
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A Spiritual Master and a Scribe Walk into a Fast Food Restaurant
A few days ago I was in a well-known fast food restaurant chain with my friend Craig. I won’t say which chain it was in order to protect the confidentiality of the young man working there. I’ll call...
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Let’s Do Away With Schools
Years ago, when Sacramento native Dusty Baker was manager of the San Francisco Giants he used to dress up his 3-year-old son Darren in a miniature Giants uniform and let him hang out with the team in...
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On Feminism
I’m writing this for all the non-feminists out there. Please take a look! My playful suggestion in a recent post that we close all our schools leads me to a bigger question about raising children. I...
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On Feminism, part 2
Back in the 70s, when we talked about feminism or “women’s liberation,” we talked about very basic issues: equal pay for equal work, equal rights to own property and to mange our own financial...
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A Prayer for These Times
The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most beloved stories from the New Testament—not just among Christians, but throughout our western culture. In a nutshell: a man traveling on a public...
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In Memoriam
Craig Duering was the vehicle for a tremendous spirit. This spirit always had a tendency to vibrate faster than other spirits on this planet, and one day last week, it reached such a great velocity...
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Becoming A Novelist (featuring a salute to Nanowrimo)
I took a leave of absence from my teaching gig to write my first novel. At the time I was burnt out on teaching, but at least when I was teaching I knew what I was doing. I didn’t know how to write a...
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My Mother’s Orange Tree
On December 7th, 1941, my mother was at her friend Louise’s house. They were picking the first oranges of the season when Louise’s mother came out to the yard to tell them the news that the Japanese...
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