Thoughtlessly this morning I brushed my teeth with the tap water. I cooked oatmeal over a steady natural gas flame in a heated home and...

It was a winter day in the late seventies.  I had been struggling with the joyless parts of stay at home mothering and not particularly wel...

There's nothing poetical about getting your feet cut -- voluntarily. The pain really has to be too much before you present yourself at ...

Sometimes writing by assignment can bring some surprising results, This morning Michael led the teachers in his memoir activity. In my brai...

Where were you on 10/10/10? This seems like an important date, and I almost missed it. I mean, I was here, but where was I? In computer upda...

August light turns in by eight and night comes early in the forest lullabied by crickets' chorus, shrilly sung crescendos by a choir tha...

What'd he say? What'd he say? We were in the student center, gathered around a black and white television, a jumble of summer school...

How Does Your Garden Grow? It stretches, grabbing air, the fence, the stakes set for climbing. Green tomato shoots, a laughter of l...

"Will this thread work with this fleece?" I asked the 50 something clerk standing confidently behind the counter at the fabric sto...

Maybe the sun was out that day. Or maybe Dennis Cox looked at me at lunch. Or maybe that was one of the 47 days I was dismissed early to h...

The publishing world is in scale down mode, near to lockdown. Editors and production people are loosing their jobs and major players are not...

Lists of reasons to not write are long, most of them written by people on deadline. This past week, in order to avoid doing my work (writing...

“Kids just don’t know how to work,” I hear my friends complain. They have no desire to learn nor do many of them have the desire to do much ...

"Keep the machine running." This is a quote given to me from Michael and to him from a veteran machinist. When Michael asked the o...

What I want to do is blog about what a fab time I had at Granny Camp and visit with the Ohio Writing Project at Miami U (very cool), but fir...

There are no words. So many notes, books, poems all offered with genuine, hopeless chagrin: There are no words . . . Still we seek to find t...

I forget when I first dreamed of being a writer. I've always being a note taker. One of my earliest writing recollections was when the p...

Last night Michael and I were up at the mall (again?) and he remarked, "isn't it amazing how this season just gets people to go out...

And there we are. Left to right: Scottie (aka Scooter), Stephie, Thomas, Sara Kelly, Sara Ellen, Danny, Ben. Ready -- Swing! A little unsure...

Get a snack. This is a long list. Starting with: Get a snack. Walk the dog. Stare out the window. Play solitaire . Knit something that is de...