Wednesday, January 2, 2019
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
. It was the Scots poet Robert Burns who said it best. “The best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray.” The reason for this train of thought today has to do with my own procrastination or whatever it is that has stopped me from a) getting my ducks in a row with the will, durable power of...
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Tuesday, January 1, 2019
WONDER WOMAN’S FIRST STEP
I don’t know whether Rose felt I was watching out for her or just trying to be the bossy big sister. She was nine and I was twelve, and we were new to the farm at Lincoln Creek. We’d never been around huge animals like cows and horses. Back home we’d had cats, dogs and chickens, which were not at...
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Sunday, December 30, 2018
RADIO DAYS
SALKUM, 1950 – Our link to the outside world was radio, and it was on whenever Mom was in the kitchen. We listened to the news, to popular music and dramatic programs. There was a daytime soap opera: “Young Widder Brown.” Its intro was “Can a young woman from a small mining town in the West be happy...
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Saturday, December 29, 2018
OMIGOD! GEORGE’S HOUSE IS ON FIRE!
When I was in high school we lived in the last house at the end of the street in the village of Salkum, which was in the middle of nowhere on the western slope of the Cascade foothills in Washington state. The former lumber mill cook-shack / dining hall had been partitioned into three rooms, painted...
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Friday, December 28, 2018
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
This morning I was looking through my bookshelf for an idea and came across a book by Eric Berne, M.D. “Games People Play.” It came out in 1964. The frontspiece in my copy lists 26 printings by 1966. Berne prefaces his text by explaining this book was intended to be a sequel to his earlier book...
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Thursday, December 27, 2018
WANNA PLAY?
When I spoke with my son about my decision to use the name Al Dente as a character in a writing exercise with The Center’s Write Your Own Story group, he suggested it might be fun to come up with other food related names, and a plot. Olive Oil comes to mind, along with Poppie Kornacki. Or: Melba...
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Wednesday, December 26, 2018
JUST ANOTHER TUESDAY
Christmas season can be a hassle. We can get overwhelmed by the folderol, the expectations, the ho-ho-ho and red fuzzy hats. Some of us get downright Grinchy and depressed. So son Russ and I decided to change our focus. Christmas, we decided, would be just another Tuesday. We wouldn’t even exchange...
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Tuesday, December 25, 2018
WHILE THE CENTER IS CLOSED FOR THE SEASON
A LITTLE WRITING EXERCISE Long ago on radio Detective first grade Sam Spade brought poetic justice to the arrogant miscreant dirty deeds doers. He had it made in the shade. Has there been an iconic detective since Columbo with such a household name, and trademarked fame? It seems not. So, boys and...
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Monday, December 24, 2018
A SHORT WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE
Years ago – I won’t even tell you how long – we used to love to go out dancing. The Edwardsville Moose lodge hired a band on Saturday nights and they played all the big band music from the ‘30s and ‘40s.The fox trots and waltzes were great, but my favorite was the jitterbug, aka swing. Roy didn’t...
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Sunday, December 23, 2018
THE THREE WORDS
Perhaps I didn’t outline the assignment very clearly. I thought it was pretty straightforward: choose a one-word title for a chapter in your story and write a paragraph to introduce or frame it for the reader: 3 times. But – as we know – communication involves two people. The first is the writer who...
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