Today, I started at 10 am and worked for 2 hours with one student on his personal statement for a Master’s program in Oral Health, which will be the precursor to his dental school personal statement.  Then from 2 – 7, I worked with another student on a college term paper on police brutality. After…

Tonight, we had the first in a series of “fun” nights put on by what Ray called the “Ladies and Gentlemen’s Auxillary.”  We had a potluck, where everyone was encouraged to bring their favorite “funeral food,” meaning the dish that people bring to the family before a funeral and/or the food served at a funeral…

Today we are up in Ojai.  We worked all day cleaning and clearing and now I’m exceedingly tired. I feel good about what we accomplished so it was worth the effort.  The weather was quite cooperative. Just around 75 all day with a nice ocean breeze. I am headed to bed.  This is short, but…

Today has been a day of sleeping.  This is after several long days of work, one of which was 11 1/2 hours long with students.  I found this piece that I posted several years ago and decided it reflected accurately my need today for the refuge of a quiet room and several naps.  Refuges are…

I am delighted to report that I  have been chosen to offer two workshops in the upcoming “Stories From the Heart IX” Memoir Conference in Austin, Texas on July 20 – 22, 2018.  I will be presenting one of the two Friday pre-conference workshops entitled, “How to Improve Your Writing and Get Published: Flash Fiction…

I wrote this several years back, but I love this story of my brother George’s last day. My brother approached death with such grace, it is awe-inspiring.   *** Fourteen years ago today, my brother George passed away. He was 54 years old. George called on the evening of May 2nd, 2004 and told me that…

I live across from a fourteen-story condo building here in Los Angeles, and sometimes I feel as if I’m the Jimmy Stewart character in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Rear Window.  No, I haven’t seen a Raymond Burr equivalent dragging out a dismembered wife, but I did see a man walking around naked in his condo one evening and…

Ray and I drove up to Ojai this evening. We have business to attend to up here tomorrow and will also get to see Liz and Ron. It is 51 degrees right now so I am sitting in my coat in the Airstream though we have had the heater on. Ray and the dogs are…