I’ve talked about learning to sew for years. I want to be able to make clothes in the colors and styles I like rather than forcing myself into procrustean fashions. This pandemic and the stay-at-home orders (and my lack of work and ensuing free time) has been a boon to me, a self-learner. I’ve been  Read the Rest…

Although I am enjoying my retirement, I do often think about my former students and my life as a teacher because I loved that life. In trying to decide what stories to tell from my teaching days, I came upon a favorite formula: confess a scorching embarrassment, shape-shift something painful into something funny. So here  Read the Rest…

I got my naturalization papers last week. I made it past the health screening in spite of having a concussion.  After reading that you could be forgiven for thinking I still had one. Anyway, here’s what happened: On Thursday in an accidental maneuver too complicated and boring to describe, I knocked heads with my dear  Read the Rest…

On this last day of a moody year, I think it would be a good exercise for me to review all the good things about the spin cycle of the last month, otherwise known as the holiday season. The holidays begin in October when I start the fall quarter of the OK Chorale and All  Read the Rest…

For reasons I have no desire to remember given what it wrought, my creative energy was surging in the month of June. I proposed to my All Present team that we do a second volume of songs for our song circle. In the past, we’ve just swapped new ones in to replace ones that the  Read the Rest…

Despite its title, this is not a post about politics. It’s about the weirdness of being a performer. I used to do a lot of performing and the truth is I didn’t enjoy it. The feedback I got was that I looked and sounded poised (for the most part) but inside I was terrified and  Read the Rest…

I’m in a better frame of mind about this year’s time change primarily because I am not cursing the Republicans for elongating daylight saving time, which they did during the Bush administration.  It’s been, what ten years, and I still haven’t gotten over it.  These days there are so many things to curse the Republicans  Read the Rest…

The day after the election the pall that settled over Seattle was dreadful.  It was as though someone had died in every home–except for the guy around the corner who has had a big sign in his front window for eight years: No Obamanation.  For a month he had a Trump/Pence sign plastered over that.   Read the Rest…

“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.” Rebecca Solnit (Thank you, Jenni, for this quotation) I am no stranger to panic.  I suffered for nearly 20 years with panic disorder.  A counter-intuitive  Read the Rest…

Last May when I was two weeks away from my trip to England, I started a folder called “Stuff to Do When I Get Back” and began tossing notes quite liberally into it.  After spending an idyllic June in England, I came home to my life, which includes wonderful friends and neighbors, my two cats  Read the Rest…