There is nothing as sweet as the calm after the source of anxiety has vacated the premises. In reference to my current situation, I believe the skunks have moved on. It was news to me that skunks could live in residential areas of a city when I first smelled them last spring. I came home  Read the Rest…

At the end of Part One, I was crying on my kitchen floor, wearing a respirator mask and talking to an opossum with eyes as big as silver dollars who was under the house along with a family of dead rats: March 28 A beautiful, warm day but all that means to me is that  Read the Rest…

Feb 5 I hear scratching and scurrying sounds in the ceiling above my bed. It must be birds on the roof. Feb 10 I find a pile of sunflower seed shells dribbling from a bag of bird seed in the sun room. Outside the door is a fat squirrel innocently nibbling under the outdoor bird  Read the Rest…

You know sometimes you hear a noise in your house that you can’t identify? But one cat opens an eye and another one yawns. The third lifts his head up, but none of them summon a sense of danger or even curiosity. And so everyone relaxes. An hour later you find the shower curtain has  Read the Rest…

About 15 years ago there was a massive controversy in The OK Chorale involving a camp song called “The Titanic.” Something similar has come up and again it involves camp songs. Who would have thought that camp songs– camp songs!—would exercise so many people? I have finally realized that what most people call camp songs are  Read the Rest…

Putzer the Attorney and I were sitting in my sun room this morning drinking coffee when she got a text from her husband James in Walla Walla. “Don’t forget your wallet,” it read. “Do you get tired of hearing that?” I asked her. “Yeah, it’s gotten annoying.” Of course you’ll all want to know what  Read the Rest…

I’ve noticed that lots of writers do poems or prose pieces when they come upon significant birthdays and since I hope to be a writer if I grow up, I thought I’d mention that I turned 60 this month. A herd of my compatriots, all born in the Year of the Horse, 1954, have done  Read the Rest…

The Ballard Writer’s Collective took over Egan’s Jam House last Tuesday night to showcase the considerable literary talent that lurks in unassuming little Ballard. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Puget Sound area, Ballard began life as a Norwegian fishing village but was subsequently swallowed by Seattle. It lives on as a distinctive neighborhood  Read the Rest…

Let me begin by saying I am supposed to be thinking of something else besides the subject of this post. It all began when I made an attempt to get out of some work. When The OK Chorale finishes a quarter’s worth of rehearsals, we sing somewhere in the community.  The Christmas season has a  Read the Rest…

Public Utility bills began coming to Seth Burnside at my address last November.  At first I thought the bills had been mis-delivered as they sometimes are.  But it was my address, and my house that I have owned for 15 years.  I sent the bills back with “No such resident” written on the envelopes.  A  Read the Rest…