Category: BLOG

What’s the worst sentence ever uttered by any kid in the summer months?   “I have to weed the garden.”   These gardens stretch out like miles of oppression and suffering even if they are only a few square feet. I can tell you for a fact that I hated gardens when I was a kid […]

I wish this story were different. I really do. The first time I ran into this issue was in a conversation I had with an older lady I knew a long time ago. Her name was Margaret. She liked people and she liked making fudge. Every week she would whip up a batch and deliver […]

This story starts with my mom, veers off into a seemingly non-related story about two tough guys and then lands back in my mom’s lap. You’ve been warned. 1: Mom – “It could be worse,” was a favorite saying of my mom. She would bring it up at the worst times—never with a cheery smile […]

I will admit that I was not a fan of 2020. That seems to be the consensus. “Goodbye, 2020 and good riddance.” And in fact, I was doing just that—purging emails, tossing files, cleaning up and throwing out, when I got to the photos. I remembered a ritual that many families do at a funeral—they […]

At the writing of this post, I await with excitement and trepidation my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. The good part is the family part—visiting with loved ones amid a hubbub of noise, clutter and humid cloud of delicious food aromas. And that brings up the increasingly more evident bad part—my stomach. Back when I was 15, […]

Stories are more than entertainment. They teach us about life and how to live it. For example, here are a couple of stories about character movement and editing.   Character movement– If your major character changes in an engaging way, that is called character movement and the reader will enjoy the story more. As a writer, I discovered this by […]

This morning I talked with two people on the cusp of a breakdown. Everyone’s anxiety about the school year and what that might or might not mean for parents, children, sports, employers, and everybody reminded me of a story from my haphazard college days. I can’t say it was a good idea, but here is […]

If you were to ask me how long summer lasted when I was a kid, the answer would have been for-ever! Long, lazy, eternal times of hot weather, boredom, swimsuits and bicycles. The smell of Noxema and tanning oil, the sound of a screen door slamming and cicadas buzzing. The taste of water out of […]

It has been a while since I was in school. But some memories remain, and one even became a habit. That memory was getting the course syllabus each semester, a grocery list of when assignments were due, tests, quizzes and reports and… down at the bottom…hah: Minimum Requirements of this Course. I would determine the absolute least amount […]