For my annual pilgrimage to Walla Walla, I decided to fly instead of drive. I hadn’t flown since 2009 so I was rusty on the procedure. I scored an expedited pass so I didn’t have to take off my shoes, but the water bottle I meant to leave in the car was still in my  Read the Rest…

All Present, a song circle for people living with ESML (Early Stage Memory Loss) is in its second quarter. Almost everyone from the spring returned. It’s a peculiar feature of this group that if I hadn’t been told every one of these singers had some form of dementia, I wouldn’t have known. Some of them  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…

Seattle Tilth is an organization that helps people to grow their own organic food.   They say this on their website in TilthSpeak, a dialect of GrantSpeak.  But that’s neither here nor there.  What is here, or rather was there is their spring edible plant sale, which I went to last Saturday. It was Tim’s idea.   Read the Rest…

Two huge raccoons raced in front of me last night when I was calling the cats.  The cats were sitting three yards away and refused to look at me, the person who feeds them.  They were like people at a sports event waiting for a moment they had anticipated and fantasized about all season.  The  Read the Rest…

Previously on this blog, my neighbor Gwen who knows something about just about everything had fixed my wireless connection (without my interference because I was asked to leave the house) and had cabled my computer up to the TV with the cable that she bought (so as to get the correct one on the first  Read the Rest…

My new student Alexis is six years old, directive– bossy actually–and bright.  She walks into the house in high-heeled sandals, and swathed in layers of leggings, dresses, and sweaters.  She comes into the house talking about the dog she saw on the way to my house.  She tells me what she has done in the  Read the Rest…

In an effort to prolong the aura of my recent thirty hours in Portland I am writing up notes made over a bowl of beef stew in the Heathman Hotel restaurant.  My former piano student Anna got me a rate at the hotel “where service is still an art” through her work at Rubicon International  Read the Rest…

Finally this story can be told.  It should be said at once that the whole business is anti-climactic, but I am going ahead with it.  It begins shortly after Thanksgiving Day when Gwen my neighbor who knows something about just about everything and I were planning our Christmas debauchery, to include a movie, a chicken,  Read the Rest…