When I was in high school, Diana Felmet was my Home Economics sewing teacher. Mine and every other girl in the school since Home Ec was a required course and boys were not allowed to take it. (Oh, how the times have changed for the better!) Anyway, I learned to pick out patterns and…
Tag: flash essay
Flash Essay: Summer Night at the Hollywood Bowl
Ray and I are at the Hollywood Bowl getting ready to hear the LA Phil. This is the summer venue for the orchestra and tonight is exactly why. The temperatures have cooled off and we are all sitting outside with hills all around, munching on food everyone has either bought or brought from home. People…
Flash Essay: A “Dream” in the Making
Today I helped our family friend Alvaro prepare his paperwork for President Obama’s “Deferred Action” for undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children. We sorted through transcripts, pay receipts, school ID cards, plus any other indication that he’d been continuously in the country for the past 5 years, and added these to a stack…
Flash Essay: Us and the Dogs, Who Owns Who?
The dogs are barking. Why? Probably someone is walking down the street, or else William has meowed, sending two sets of canine ears on high alert. Sammie, our little foster dog, has shifted from half-dead to full of life. She is leading the charge this evening, protecting us from the dangers of the neighborhood. Tail…
Flash Essay: Birds in Flight or The College Essay Writing Process
This is the beginning of college essay season, when students start composing that 500-word paper, which may be the deciding factor in their acceptance to a prestigious/hoped-for school. I have helped many with these essays for the past 13 years, and my students, I am proud to say, have been accepted to Princeton, Yale, University…
Flash Essay: To Roast or Not To Roast in LA
The heat has been bad here in LA. It is the topic of almost every conversation and people are flocking to the movies and to the beaches to escape. The rest of us sit in our homes, which for the most part are without air-conditioning, and sweat. It ain’t pretty. I am from Texas, a…
Flash Essay: Architecture and Renovation: A Natural Part of Our Lives
Today was busy. We left at 6:15 this morning to work at the homeless breakfast and returned at 6:30 tonight after spending the majority of the day in Pasadena. We were visiting with a friend there who is involved in several housing renovation projects and since we are also old house renovators, we were happy…
Flash Essay: Heat and the Homeless in LA
The fans are on tonight, both of them sending cool air to me from two different directions here in the living room. The back door is open, as are the windows, but the house is still warm after a day with temperatures in the 90’s. This is not like Texas heat, which has topped 108…
Flash Essay: A Mish-Mash
It is 11:20 pm. I’ve just come back from a writing group with friends I’ve known since I participated in the John Rechy Master class. A good evening filled with talk of the woes in the publishing industry, the merit of self-publishing, along with critique of novels-in-progress. I like my writing friends. We’re cut from…
Repost: The Healing Power of Touch
I have a strong memory of spending a lot of time when I was a little girl snuggled up in bed next to my mother, her skin warm and her smell comforting. In that memory, my mother is always reading and her arm is around me so that I am nestled next to her. I…
20 Minutes a Day 