Joe and I watched the Red Sox win the World Series and The Blob simultaneously on two of the three flat screen TVs in the Hotel Floyd Writer’s Suite this weekend. Mostly he watched the Red Sox and I watched the Blob and we periodically visited each other. Besides The Blob – the 1958 B [...]
This room is an artistic blend of old and new. An antique desk recalls images of writers from days gone by. The uncluttered classic furnishings in the study inspire introspection and calm, while the light infused olive colored walls throughout the suite offer an openness and brightness that stirs a calling to creativity and quietude [...]
I hovered over the table, across from Emily, the hip hop singer and saxophone player who was the lead singer for Foundation Stone before they broke up. We were snipping and clipping November submissions for the local newsletter that gets put together at my kitchen table each month. Every now and then I would break [...]
I was trying to figure out where I could go to get away from what the doctor was telling me. I wondered why he hadn’t taken me to a private room to give me such devastating news. Dan only had a 2% chance of living; they weren’t going to perform liver transplant surgery with those [...]
1. The view from my porch is a tease. It’s like a painting of peak fall foliage that I can’t touch because the paint is still wet. 2. The breakfast nook where my husband and I meet on sunnier days is deserted. 3. The trampoline looks like an uninhabited blue planet. 4. The hammock looks [...]
1. THIS is the song I’ve been dancing to two or three times a day. I may be stuck in the past but at least it’s not classic rock. 2. I’ve been dancing for a long time. Remember those wallet size high school senior pictures that we went around getting signed at the end of [...]
Without a paddle she straddles the middle of a puddle as if it was a pond and she was a traveler bigger than Gulliver. She ponders the riddle that looks like a doodle reflected in shadow in the muddled oracle. She dawdles a little before she settles hands on handles and feet on pedals. She [...]
I shop for words as though the dictionary was a catalog of women’s clothes or shoes As though the folded over corners of favorite words on pages were the edited alliterations of hemmed skirts Browsing for the uncommon I pin down a suitable meaning unfold a matching pattern for a custom-made fit And if I [...]
My life is structured around seasons and holidays in the same way I imagine an elementary school teacher’s might be. Every month I look for seasonal graphics and clip art to adorn the Museletter, the local newsletter I put together with others. Page colors are chosen with the seasons in mind. Orange and pumpkins for [...]
For ten years or so I taught creative writing classes at Floyd’s Blue Mountain School, a parent run cooperative with early roots in Rudolph Steiner. I taught several classes to kids from about four to fourteen once a week in exchange for a portion of tuition for my own sons who were students there. Over [...]
The bookstore clerk with the pierced lip called me Ma’am while putting William Carlos William into a brown paper bag along with the dependable red wheelbarrow prominently placed next to a white chicken on a page of unpunctuated poems The clerk avoided eye contact as he handed me my change Does it show on my [...]
1. THIS is the song that Joe says made him fall in love with me. I was singing it to him as he fell asleep when it happened. 2. If I ever do get a cell phone THIS is the ring tone I want. 3. Lately, I’ve been searching down and listening to songs that [...]
The best part of this essay would have been if I had been up early enough to hear it aired today on WVTF Public Radio. But I can still listen and so can you because the radio station has it posted on their website. You can hear me reading it HERE. It was probably the [...]
Clay is a material accepting of impression. It is a record of every process, from its geological formation in the earth to its eventual transformation in the fire. My work with ceramics begins with the clay. By using local materials dug from the river bottom and mountainsides of North Carolina, my work gains a connection [...]
1. The bride did not arrive in a carriage. 2. Her ride did not turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight. 3. She did not run from the ball at the Rockwood Manor or lose a glass slipper on the stairs. 4. Toasts were made and vows exchanged. A community of friends with [...]
I love that life is stranger than fiction and that it gives me some good stories to tell, which is why when I saw that the Sunday Scribbling prompt for this weekend was on jobs, I decided to write about my most unusual job. It wasn’t a job that paid much money or furthered a [...]
My friend Rob has been embroiled in a painful controversy regarding a book titled “The Truth About Slavery.” He has publicly asked the reasonable questions: What is a book with such a sensitive topic doing being sold by its author at our town’s yearly craft faire; and isn’t the authoritative title misleading for a book [...]
1. The neighborhood dogs are sitting out October … like wallflowers in the corner … they’re overdressed in fur. 2. I love an Indian Summer because it lets me stay in denial about the coming of cold weather a little longer. 3. These days I’ve taken to wearing an orange cat cap with black ears [...]
