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…breathe deeply and often…

  • Steve liked to joke that he “sang best ten or twelve miles away” when asked, but volunteered just the same.

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  • Flying Through Snow

    When there’s a foot of snow on the ground one cannot always count on a garbage bag to carry one to the bottom of a perfect and steep hill, not even with a head start. The snow was hard powder and ripe for sledding. A black trash bag had been all I had needed before

    Read more

  • All Nighters

    He’s almost finished with his first semester and his feet are being used for kindling.

    Read more

  • Snowday

    A civilian doesn’t get it, gets mad when they hear about it, gets furious if they have kids in school, and they hear the words “Snow Day.” Yet, those are soul soothing words to a teacher. Even one who believes her class to be so important that her instructional time is the most important part

    Read more

  • The Nightmare

    “I love the way you think, Cynthia.” John ordered their desserts. 

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  • Barefoot Willie, revisited

    Barefoot Willie sang to his bunny and his bunny sang to him.

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  • Carolina on Their Minds

    Mary rolled the joint with a dollar bill and impressed the four others in the room as usual. Every Tuesday for the last two years the “Women of Presence” as they had labeled themselves, met in Lynn’s basement room and got high after work. Mary passed the joint to Sallie, who lit it herself. “I

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  • Healing Presence

    My seven a.m. writing group has been a healing presence for me. I’ve expressed more of myself to that group of people in fact and fiction than I ever have to any relative, friend, or therapist. Because of them, I’ve grown as a writer and a human. The journey continues to be full. I learn

    Read more

  • Three or Four Cabinets

    The ladies of the family have a disease. We are besotted with the collecting of pretty vintage dishes. Cheap dime store ceramics, thrift store cut crystal, hand me down depression glass and more fill not one but three china cabinets in my little old lady school teacher’s home. Actually, there are four if you count

    Read more

  • Virgie’s Soup

    My grandmother, Virgie made soup from whatever she had in the pantry, canned tomatoes, corn, green beans, potatoes, and carrots.  She cooked it down then thickened it up. It was sour with a hint of all the vegetables working in tandem. Soup days at Virgies’s were reserved for project days. We could work straight through,

    Read more

  • WeeGee Slumber Party

    “Don’t tell your mom I let you see a Ouija Board. They’re not toys,” Read more

  • Listen

    Listen on purposeLift your spirit with good words, and make your soul smile. Read more

  • Today is the Day

    Today is the day I say goodbye to Thanksgiving break. Anxiety and depression levels are rising, tonight is a school night after all. No more messing around with cats, movies, music, and road trips. House cleaning and laundry will become more of the chore they were before, and less of a leisure activity, they were Read more

  • Pastry Time

    I am tempted to begin making my rough puff pastry for Christmas. It’s fully delicious and cheap to make. Yet it is  the most labor intensive of all the Christmas delicacies I create, It’s worth every moment it takes for its creation. Butter and flour, rolled, folded, refrigerated and repeated at least five times, it Read more

  • The Beaded Purse

    Sherri had her daughter’s heart’s desire. Annie needed a beaded clutch purse to go with her formal dress for the prom, just big enough to hold her lipstick and her glasses. Styles go round and round, and she sure enough saved the pocket book she’d taken to her formal dance years ago. Truth be told, Read more

  • Lightning Temper

    I wouldn’t have been in the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning if I didn’t need to take some dog food and a loaf of bread to my elderly aunt. That’s all she said she needed when I talked to her last night, after I baked her casserole. I would have been at home, binging on Read more

  • Steve liked to joke that he “sang best ten or twelve miles away” when asked, but volunteered just the same.

    Read more

  • Flying Through Snow

    When there’s a foot of snow on the ground one cannot always count on a garbage bag to carry one to the bottom of a perfect and steep hill, not even with a head start. The snow was hard powder and ripe for sledding. A black trash bag had been all I had needed before

    Read more

  • All Nighters

    He’s almost finished with his first semester and his feet are being used for kindling.

    Read more

  • Snowday

    A civilian doesn’t get it, gets mad when they hear about it, gets furious if they have kids in school, and they hear the words “Snow Day.” Yet, those are soul soothing words to a teacher. Even one who believes her class to be so important that her instructional time is the most important part

    Read more

  • The Nightmare

    “I love the way you think, Cynthia.” John ordered their desserts. 

    Read more

  • Barefoot Willie, revisited

    Barefoot Willie sang to his bunny and his bunny sang to him.

    Read more

  • Carolina on Their Minds

    Mary rolled the joint with a dollar bill and impressed the four others in the room as usual. Every Tuesday for the last two years the “Women of Presence” as they had labeled themselves, met in Lynn’s basement room and got high after work. Mary passed the joint to Sallie, who lit it herself. “I

    Read more

  • Healing Presence

    My seven a.m. writing group has been a healing presence for me. I’ve expressed more of myself to that group of people in fact and fiction than I ever have to any relative, friend, or therapist. Because of them, I’ve grown as a writer and a human. The journey continues to be full. I learn

    Read more

  • Three or Four Cabinets

    The ladies of the family have a disease. We are besotted with the collecting of pretty vintage dishes. Cheap dime store ceramics, thrift store cut crystal, hand me down depression glass and more fill not one but three china cabinets in my little old lady school teacher’s home. Actually, there are four if you count

    Read more

  • Virgie’s Soup

    My grandmother, Virgie made soup from whatever she had in the pantry, canned tomatoes, corn, green beans, potatoes, and carrots.  She cooked it down then thickened it up. It was sour with a hint of all the vegetables working in tandem. Soup days at Virgies’s were reserved for project days. We could work straight through,

    Read more

  • Mary Comforts Eve

    “Girl, shit happens. You can’t tell me it doesn’t. Sometimes our choices are part of the grand scheme of the universe. A tale told by someone else. But you’re not the bad guy of the story, you’re free now,” said Mary. Eve sobbed with guilt and grief. The snake around her ankle climbed higher up…

  • Public Communications

    “I absolutely know what you want me to say,” said Thomas. He’d been with Celia all day and all evening. They’d worked all day together, been to the bar after work to celebrate with the public communications team, and now they were headed home. They were at the crossroads. “I can go right and head…

  • The Voice

    “Hugh Henry you have the ability to choke the living shit out of every situation like an intergalactic missile,” His mother told him straight up. She was tired of listening to his tirade about why the symphony shouldn’t play next Sunday. He thought it was too frivolous, way too frivolous, to assemble the whole orchestra…

  • Everlastingly

    “Everlastingly,” Janet hissed the word out as long as she could to give it the onomatopoeia sound of the crashing waves she needed to hear. “Listen! The mighty being is awake and doth with his eternal motion make a sound like thunder, everlastingly.” Janet quoted Wordsworth when she crossed the bridge to Emerald Isle. It…

  • Whitewater

    So they threw them together into the stream and the two splashes they made were as one. They tossed the rings into the maelstrom of the churning rapidsTheir perfect union ended as it had begun, blessed and honored.Washed downstream in holy water,Their wedding rings lost in the turbulence on the river rocks beneath the white…