Print stories, radio pieces, and a few random musings nobody will publish
Again, with the musty old essays! I wrote this one three or four years ago and just rediscovered it last week. da·cha (däch) n. A Russian country house or villa. For years, I have wanted my very own dacha. Maybe there’s something about dying empires that stirs longing. In September of 1991, I boarded a…
Opening Statements: A Real-Life Murder Mystery The State’s chief attorney, an intense young woman with porcelain features, takes the stage, startling us out of our torpor. She paces and gesticulates emphatically, as if to communicate her moral outrage: the defendant, she insists, has shot an unarmed man who begged for his life in his final…
How a cursory yard makeover (mentored by Mom) transformed me into a hopeless garden geek.
Last spring I posted about Hal’s and my harebrained “Let’s get in shape real fast” scheme, buttressed by a 60-day DVD workout plan called “Insanity.” And insane it was: six days a week, for forty to sixty minutes a day last April and May, we slid a disc into the computer and bounced, heaved, and…
Nobody wants to do it. I certainly didn’t, especially after enduring the first few hours of jury selection, a process (called “voir dire“) which is so insistently repetitive, so oppressively tedious as to produce a powerful narcotic effect in us trapped, helpless potential jurors awaiting the resumption of our lives. I actually heard someone say,…
Why studying languages makes your brain a better organ.
Sometimes being around teen girls can be pretty painful–all that excruciating awkwardness comes whooshing back. The giggles. The blushing. The word “like.” That’s because being a teen girl is often painful. I remember. I was one, a rather long time ago, and a particularly scrawny, flat-chested, and knock-kneed one at that. I recall the near-constant…
Kids Gain Wisdom, Resilience from Siblings with Chronic Illnesses or Disabilities Two summers ago, I met Rebecca Scarpati while I was working on a public radio story about an innovative creative writing and performance camp for girls, called “Act Like A Grrrl.” Rebecca’s daughter Cyan had been with “ALAG” since its beginnings around 5 years…
The Greenery 