Ray, Rachael, Luna and I were walking out of a Thai restaurant this evening, just about to step off the curb, when a car came racing around the corner on the road right in front of us. Behind that car was a police car in hot pursuit. Rachael saw the driver of the first car:…
Category: Flash essay
Heat and El Nino
Here I sit at 10:10 in the evening with two fans whirring and all the windows open. The heat is still with us, folks, here in LA. We are all counting the minutes til we get a nice westerly breeze from the ocean and we return to our beloved Southern California weather, which only varies…
An Unexpected Request Today
Of the 1367 posts that I have written for this blog, the one entitled, “My Sister’s Eulogy Complete with a Few Jokes,” consistently gets the most hits. And today, I had a first. A woman wrote in the comment section of my blog that she had stumbled upon the eulogy for my sister in a…
What I Believe
I am a liberal Democrat, but I do not believe in going into attack mode with any of my many Republican or Libertarian friends. I am a great believer in healthy dialogue about issues, but have no desire to draw a line in the sand between us and them. I believe that is what has…
A Little Under the Weather
I don’t feel very well tonight. A bit dizzy, a little stuffed-up, a little achy. Ray read that the Santa Ana winds are bringing in high levels of ragweed and mold. I am highly allergic to mold; not so much ragweed, not that I know, at least. But mold, definitely. My ears are itchy, too. I…
What’s Good about “Six Feet Under”
Ray and I are down to the last four episodes of the television series Six Feet Under, which aired from 2001 to 2005. (Yes, I know we are slightly behind the rest of the modern world.) I have a few thoughts on this series before I view these last episodes. I may not feel a…
Back in the City
We are back at home after two days in Ojai. What a switch from almost no sound at night except for coyotes versus driving through Hollywood with hundreds of people on the street and lots of neon. It doesn’t take long to get used to that more rural experience. We were in Hollywood because we…
What We Are NOT Doing
Dear folks, We need to look long and hard at what is happening in our society related to firearms and teenage boys. We have a serious problem on our hands and these mass murders are getting far too commonplace to be considered an aberration. In the most recent case in Oregon, news reports state the…
Art of the Personal Essay
I visited the Beverly Hills library yesterday and found this book by Phillip Lopate, who is considered one of the top American essayist of our time. This is an anthology of wonderful essays spanning from ancient times to the present with writers as varied as Seneca to Joan Didion. I love the form of the…
Feeling Heartened
I am in Week Two of my “Writing Short” class that I am teaching for Story Circle Network and I just have to say how much I am enjoying this experience. I have taught this class many times over these past several years and each time, there is a wonderful coming together of personalities and…
20 Minutes a Day 