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Looking west out over the ocean this afternoon, I can sometimes see Castle Rock, point-six nautical miles offshore. Then the fog folds it back into invisibility. We are both fond of this, I think, the cooling fogs, the way fog signals a very hot day someplace else but not here, at least not yet. Overhead,…
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When we were children the zoo in Seattle was free. There were no tickets, no guarded gates. You could walk in the main gate or by the elephant exhibit or from Lower Woodland or over by the rose garden on the south side. The Seattle Art Museum (then at Volunteer Park on Capital Hill) was…
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It was Gary’s 70th birthday Sunday, yesterday (it was also Lily Tomlin’s 80th and John at the Post Office had one and Barry Gibb became 72 and the guy at the market in Lincoln City turned 29). We drove down the coast in the morning, stopped at a farmers’ market, took our time. We didn’t…
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““I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it.”—The Color Purple by Alice Walker My favorite pair of gloves are purple. They are not quite dark enough because I want the shade to conceal stains. That sounds practical, but I also prefer the shadows,…
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On 10 September 2015, I created a folder on my computer titled COLORbook. My intention was to complete a series of chapters about color, an entire book of nonfiction about my personal and cultural understanding of color. The idea had been stirring in my head for a long time. My earliest essay about color I…
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Wasted. Not drunk or high, I’m talking about money. Our biggest waste was “The Maples,” a piece of land just over two acres that my husband and I purchased in the early 80s when our firstborn was a baby. I have photos someplace of me holding him in my arms. Above us are the enormous…
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just for fun. “On the Decay of the Art of Lying” is a short speech (or essay) written by Mark Twain in 1880 for a meeting of the Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, Connecticut. Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption–no, for the Lie, as…
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I completed two quilt tops this month, and pieced the back of one of them too. To be perfectly honest, I have completed two quilts at once before. But this was especially fun. I could, in the simplest form, sew two lengths of cloth together to make a front and do the same for the…
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I have a story under consideration just now at two literary journals. One of them has had it for well over a year. The other began considering it today. It is an important story to me for a variety of reasons and has received a good deal of praise from editors who “nearly” chose to…
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It’s one of those phrases. “Poor kitties” is another. I should probably list more, but two will do. Today is our anniversary. Forty-fifth, unless you count our time together as a couple, which pushes it to fifty. We have a lot of lines and inside jokes that no one gets but the two of us.…
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