Mai La was 18 years old when she got off the plane at SeaTac wearing her little Chinese pajamas.  I was 27 and waiting with Nghiep, a Chinese friend, and a photograph of Mai, courtesy of World Relief Refugee Services. It was 1981.  The “boat people” from Viet Nam were flooding the U.S. west coast.  Read the Rest…

I’ve been waiting for the traffic on my last blog to slow down before I posted another.  I don’t know if it delivered all that it promised, but “Sex and Betrayal at the OK Chorale” sure got a lot of hits. (www.elenalouiserichmond.com/2011/04/851/) If that’s what it takes—a racy title—I was toying with the idea of  Read the Rest…

  When I was at Whitman College in Walla Walla (not Spokane, that’s Whitworth) I was part of a recurring act called the Temperance Union.  Four of us donned the frumpiest outfits we could put together and performed “Away with Rum” to whoever would listen: We’re coming, we’re coming, our brave little band, On the  Read the Rest…

If you ever meet my friend Nina, don’t rhyme her name with Deena because I will be hearing about it for a month.  Her name rhymes with Dinah. We went out to dinner the other night.  We talked about a dismal blog entry I was wrestling with.  By the time we had turned the topic  Read the Rest…

Monday: Gwen, my neighbor who knows a little bit about just about everything, calls to say she has finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, it’s good and would I like to borrow it? Half a dozen people have already asked me if I have read it.  Half of them have told me it’s too  Read the Rest…

Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold. Do you remember singing that song in grade school or in Girls Scouts?  Pigtailed little girls holding hands in a circle, ensconced in a swirl of harmonies.  I, for one, didn’t know what the hell the song was about.  I still  Read the Rest…