Here is the link to our song, “Anything Else.” For those of you who read my blog regularly, you may notice that the first rendition of the song is quite different from the finished product here. The chorus with the hook, which I included in a second blog post, is not too far from the…

It occurred to me the other day that Luna is old enough at age 7 for me to work with her over the telephone just like I do with many of my other writing students. I thought that spending a little writing time together might be a nice connecting point she and I could share…

I just learned today that Elijah Lichtenberg, who has been my writing student since high school, has just been accepted to USC Gould School of Law. Elijah will be transferring from Southwestern Law School to USC after being at Southwestern for one year. While there, he not only maintained a 4.0 GPA in his law…

My brother George’s death anniversary was just a few days ago. Yesterday, I spoke with my niece Katie, who mentioned she’d had a tough morning as she re-grieved the loss of her father. I’d had a tough morning too on that day and we talked about the benefit of a therapeutic cry. As my mother…

I made this cake on Sunday and it was moist and delicious. Hummingbird Cake originated in Jamaica, where it was called a “Doctor Bird” cake, which is the nickname for the Red-billed Streamertail, a member of the hummingbird family. Presumably, the banana and pineapple cake got its name because it was so full of fruit…

I am the fifth out of six children; technically, the fifth out of seven since my little brother, Robert, died just a few hours after his birth. I was 18 months old at the time of his death. From my perspective, there were two sets of kids in our family: the older kids: Leslie, John…

I spent the afternoon going through photos of family and friends. I will share a few of the family just for the fun of it. These warmed my heart. I love all of these folks very much.

I wrote this story a while back, but it remains one of my favorite memories of growing up in my little Texas town. Thought I’d share it on this Friday evening. Miss Inez English lived on Pine Street, right around the corner from our house on 9th in my little rural Texas town. Her one-story…

Sacha is a senior at the LA County High School for the Arts. He has been my writing student for several years now and is a lovely young man. I am pleased to announce that he has been accepted at numerous colleges for next fall, including Ryerson University; Sarah Lawrence College; University of the Arts,…