Hooray to Katia, who has been accepted to UCLA, UC-Berkeley, UC-Santa Barbara, UC-Davis and Loyola Marymount University. She will be attending UCLA. Katia’s essays are full of color and vivid images. Her writing helps the reader see, hear, taste, touch and smell whatever she is describing. She is very particular in her word choice to…

My writing student Ethan will soon be graduating from LA Count High School for the Arts and has been accepted at five schools, all for musical theater. Theses include: University of Miami, University of Arizona, Syracuse University, Boston Conservatory and Otterbein University in Ohio. He has committed to Boston Conservatory. Clearly, Ethan is very talented…

Learning a Lesson in the Night Abby, the apple; Leslie, the lemon; and Brigitte, the banana all live in a fruit bowl in the kitchen of the Sand family. They live in a beach house in Estero Beach, Mexico, where they just moved. Coral, who is twelve-years-old, loves the ocean so much that her room…

Michael has been my writing student for several years now and I will truly miss him as he heads off to the University of Michigan where he will be studying Computer Science in the Engineering Department. He and I have become great friends during our time together, especially since Michael has a natural inclination for…

This is a great recipe for a turkey burger. It comes from Cook’s Country Magazine, which is part of America’s Test Kitchen and I can guarantee this is one seriously excellent burger. The Fried Onion Burger (FOB) apparently originated during the Depression in El Reno, Oklahoma, which is 25 miles from Oklahoma City. Mashing onions…

A while back, my friend Sarah Hensley gave me a recipe for a honey-sweetened chocolate cake that uses avocados rather than butter or oil for the fat. Today, I made it because our avocado tree is full of avocados and we needed to use as many as we could. The cake is light and, because…

What Jasmine Learns at Puppy School Jasmine is a puppy who is pretending to be sick. She doesn’t want to go to school because there’s so much math and she doesn’t like math.  Her big sister, Moon, loves school and doesn’t understand why Jasmine doesn’t love it too.  Jasmine is jealous of Moon because she…

Look at the ghosts among us In a world where they’re pushed and shoved Look at the ghosts among us Sons and daughters who were once loved Cherokee Chief Lives in a tent in the woods near the 101 Life on the run Wears his black leather jacket From the days in his rock and…

Jacob Peterson stared at the taupe vase with its intricate pattern of lines that held a bouquet of purple and white lilacs. He loved that vase. He had made it with his own two hands. The pattern on it reminded him that life had dozens of lines and intersections, places to connect and disconnect. The…