I was stunned when the first lockdown was announced. Like most, my first thought was, “I can’t go OUT?” But then I realized – I hardly go out anyway! I’m an old fart, so I don’t walk well, and I’m deaf as a post with failing hearing aids, so interactions are difficult to start with. […]
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Tag: adventure
SHE’S NOT THERE!
You’re writing a book! That’s great! You’re going to help people, entertain them, introduce them to something new and/or innovative, or even change the world with your ideas. Let’s say you’re a therapist or health or emotions specialist, and you want to help a person get past unwanted memories of trauma. You’ve gone to school, […]
PRACTICING PEACE
Many years ago in the mid-80s when I lived in Honolulu, I had a psychic reading with a gal named Alice Anne, who was well-known and very popular. At the time, I had a fairly large house with a living room that had enough space to seat 20 or so people. I hosted classes and […]
THE ANCIENTS
When T and I moved into the little one-BR house on Maui near the beach, no one thought to mention it had been built over an ancient Hawaiian burial ground. It had been covered up in the late 1800s to make room for a white-man’s housing development, rows of little plantation houses for the cane-field […]
UNDER THE ORDERLY NIGHT SKIES
We finally got to Huntington Beach, and stayed with T’s mom for a couple weeks. After our snowy misery back east, the good weather seemed just this side of paradise. T got to bliss out surfing every day, while I filled drawing pads and played in the sand. But soon it was obvious we were […]
THE CORNER THAT ALMOST KILLED US
The rest of our visit with my folks was blah-normal. At last it was time to go back to California. After about a nano-second of deliberation, T and I decided that finding a hire-car to deliver to the west coast for someone was a much preferable idea over hitching back. We had had enough of […]
A HARD-WON PEACE
Our drive from Des Moines to Long Island was flawless. I was almost shocked at how easy and fun it was, after our two almost-fatal encounters with truckers. Our ride, Harley, was a delightful man who, instead of leaving us off in Des Moines as we had planned, invited us to stick with him all […]
BILLY’S 18-WHEELER
We left the thrift store wearing every single thing we’d bought. They may have been new-old clothes, but it was beyond description how heavenly it was to be warm again. Now we were seriously hungry. Good fortune was ours — there was a diner close by, so we trudged over, lugging our heavy back packs […]
DONNER PASS
T and I came back to California in the middle of January. Being used to the weather in Hawaii, I forgot all about how wet and cold San Francisco was, and was wearing short-shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops. By the time I got off the plane and over to the baggage claim area, I felt as […]
SNOW BIRTH
“Nurse! Hand me the scalpel, please, it’s 9:00 and my dinner is waiting!” Nurse hands scalpel to doctor, and my first live birth, my first son, Aaron, comes screaming out into the ice-cold delivery room air. “Nothing wrong with the lungs on that one!” the doc declares, as he rises from his chair, gloved hands […]
ALL CONNECTED to AI
Recently, we have suddenly been inundated with the ‘introduction’ of new avenues of access to various types of AI, Artificial Intelligence, software. I say ‘introduction’ because ironically, we have actually been using it for years, without it being called “AI” outright. Do you use spellcheck? Alexa or Siri? Siri’s voice recognition and is powered by […]
MA’S GARDEN
I didn’t want to write this. I’ve been back and forth, afraid to post it. But I have this feeling I Have To. Know what I mean? Not for me, but for Someone Out There. I hope it somehow brings you peace, whoever you are. So to preface the story: It’s been a hair less […]
IT’LL BE FUN, HE SAID…
Seven hours, crammed in with T’s squiggling, wiggling 2 and 4 year old boys in a narrow, silver tube, flying across the 3000 miles stretch of treacherous open ocean with nowhere to go to escape. I thought I’d go mad. Finally, Honolulu Airport. I was so ready to dash out the door and board the […]
LET’S GO TO MAUI, HE SAID…
Hurrying, stumbling, trying to get our packs and jackets out of the car as fast as we could, we knew our Ride would drive off without even waiting for us to close his precious bright turquoise 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air’s thick, heavy doors. And he did, the doors swinging shut with a clomph as his […]
MAKING LOVE UNDER THE SLINKY STARS
I met my second hubby in Big Sur. I had been working at Dancer, Fitzgerald and Sample in San Francisco as a junior art director. My very conservative boss, Sam, had a firm hold on the department. Despite the restraints, my co-workers and I spent our days rocking out to the Beatles, the Stones, Van […]
ALIENS OVER MY NEIGHBORHOOD
1966. I was living in a flop house with ten other hippies in Santa Cruz, California, with my brand new boyfriend, T, who would eventually father my children. I woke up when the morning paper slammed to the porch. I went outside, picked it up, and read: ALIENS TO GET GREEN CARDS The article went […]
SEND LOVE, NO MATTER WHAT
This was a hard lesson for me. I grew up in a family that loved to sit around after dinner and make fun of, criticize and totally shred politicians, celebrities and other people in the news. It became second nature to be arrogant. You can imagine how many friends I lost, one by one. I […]
EYE LIGHTS
I have this weird thing that happens if I’m looking straight ahead, and there is a shiny thing on either side of me – the shiny thing makes light rays that go out and catch me – kind of like strings that pull my attention. Hard to put into a drawing – this is as […]
RAMEN YOGA
When I first moved to Hawaii in 1966, I was introduced to a local oriental dish called Saimin. It was a rich chickeny or maybe fishy broth, with thin slices of roast pork, chopped green onions, long, skinny, squiggly, tangled rice noodles, and seasonings rich with ginger and other spices I didn’t know of at […]
CRUNCHY YOGA & AUDIO BOOKS!
Recently I’ve been creating a 1-2-3 systems webinar for teaching authors how to make their own audio books. Why audio books, you ask? Because although it’s easy to publish kindle books on amazon, you can get your audio books onto 47 other platforms! Imagine you have one book, and you put it for sale on […]
UPWARD DAWG
I loved Downward Dawg that I designed yesterday, that I figured I should-oughta make Upward Dawg, too. This one’s one of my favorite poses – I have a funky congenital glitch at the base of my spine that makes this position really difficult – so of course I enjoy it, right? Snort! When I come […]
DOWNWARD DAWG
I remember the very first time I ever saw anyone doing yoga. I was 21. My then-hubby bought a huge how-to book that had big in-your-face photos of the yoga guru posing in all these wild contortions. I was aghast! I’m supposed to twist my body into that shape? Nope. Won’t. I did do the […]
The OTHER OTTER
I birthed my younger son at home. Labor had started at 10 pm, but I went to bed anyway, exhausted from canning tomatoes all day. I awoke with a bang at 3 am, though, and somehow, as daddy went to get the midwife, I clambered clumsily and carefully down our loft ladder and crawled over […]
CAVE CANEM
When my parents built their beautiful self-designed house, they embedded a 4-tile Italian design of a growling dog, in lovely ceramic colors, into the wall next to the stairway. It wasn’t just a regular stairway – oh no, can’t have that! It was a curved stair, open, with huge, thick wood steps made out of […]
TWO for TANGO
When I first moved here to California, I went through a bit of culture shock. The air is grey, not yellow; people wear mostly dull browns, greys and blacks, not bright aloha shirts, sarongs and bright-colored clothing; friendly greetings in stores on the street are regarded as suspicious and either ignored or given stink eye; […]
FREEDOM BIRDIES
You know how when you watch a movie and you end up rooting for the little guy? Well, I do, anyway – such a common theme – well this is the little guy who’s fed up with the shenanigans being pulled by the supposed ‘good’ guys (in this case, the all-powerful, ever-present moon, supposedly benignly […]
REBEL
What happens to kids who just don’t fit the square, round or even triangular holes in society? They end up like I did, seething inside, wishing for friends, afraid of the certain mockery when I opened my mouth, envying the easy friendships others had. Finding solace in art and reading; always alone, always wary of […]
DO THIS FOR YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS
People ask me how they can support their favorite artists if they can’t buy from them. Here are a few ideas you can try. • Do you know any gallery owners? If you think your fave artist’s work would fit the gallery, send the gallery owner or acquisitions manager a link to your artist’s website […]
OLIVER: Sees You
September of 1999 was a hot one. I had just returned to Santa Fe a short month ago from a stint back east, house-sitting for my dear friend, Cynthia, out on Long Island. I hadn’t been able to find a place I could afford yet. I did find a little secluded glade down by an […]
BELLA: Early
My dad used to burst into my bedroom, at dawn:30 a.m., throwing the door back with a bang, roughly yank all the covers completely off me and my bed, and cheerily spout, “Time to get uuuuuuuppp!!” He thought he was being SO funny. N O T . But could I ever convince him of that? […]