It occurred to me when I looked at myself in the mirror this morning that I would never see myself the same way again.

My perspective is about to be forever altered.  

 

I remember exactly when it occurred to me that I might need glasses for something slightly…

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"What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

~ from The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

 

It was universally acknowledged that it had been a good year.  Standing at the podium, overlooking a sea of humanity, it was easy to think on… Read full post »

 

 

It's hard to say when my husband stopped liking Christmas.  It isn't that he hated it, exactly.  On a certain level he loved it, the 'O Holy Night' part of it, but like my father he was at an uncertain peace with it, a private war, reclined in a chair… Read full post »

To friends and loved ones near and far, good friends on Open Salon, all the best at the holidays and always.

 

The photo is one taken of us on the beach at 505 Front Street, Lahaina, Maui, a few years ago at the Feast at Lele.  It seemed to… Read full post »

 

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not sure I want a president whose first name is 'Newt.'

Jo Anne Worley of Laugh-In once said that she dreamt about the secrets of the universe, and quickly scribbled them onto a piece of paper at her bedside.

The next morning, she awoke and read the paper.  "Cottage cheese." 

 

 

 

My dad with his brother, fishing.  Wy… Read full post »

 

I still remember where I was that brisk November morning when I got the call, on my way into a Minnesota hospital where my husband was a patient.

The nurse on the other end sounded young, and surprisingly nonchalant.  "Oh, hi, Mrs. Riordan.  Lawrence is fine, but. . ."… Read full post »

Just a few months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, a nineteen-year-old student at St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota, was writing letters home to his parents in Chicago anticipating going to war, wanting very much to fly.

That student was my husband.  These are excerpts from some o… Read full post »

 

 

 

 

 

i never wrote your epitaph, but if i did

i'd say you liked hermes ties and hot dogs,

linen handkerchiefs and bikini briefs, 

the opera, paris, oysters on the half-shell,

bookbinder's soup, pickled herring, 

tennyson and longfellow, 

french cha… Read full post »

The breaking news, confirmed by Apple, that Steve Jobs has lost his seven-plus year battle with cancer is indeed sad.  He was a genius, a visionary, and changed the world.

 

May he rest in peace.

 

 

 photo from the Apple homepage 

 

Apple leadership issued s… Read full post »

 

People have been asking with increasing regularity recently when I plan to head south.  It's a little like asking Mary Poppins when she plans to move on to the next family.

When the wind changes.

I'm sure there are those, many in fact, who go through everything right away… Read full post »

 

 

 

I was in third grade or thereabouts when the U.S. Government decided to flood the Green River valley.  

We called it the Seeds-ke-Dee, like the trappers and traders before us, explorers and Native Americans who had inhabited the land or passed through it, leaving trails and petroglyphs, and occa… Read full post »

 

Our collective 21st century consciousness is bookended by an apple--one in Eden, another in Cupertino.

I dreamt last night of Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett in the back seat of an old convertible mugging for the camera with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett enjoying a Dilly Bar from Dairy… Read full post »

Something there is about going home, sagebrush and barbed wire, whether thirty years have passed or three, the mountains always in your blood, your collective memory, where wild mustangs run free.

  

 

 

 

  

Danes… Read full post »

 

 

I packed your shirts away today.

Mom gave them to me after you were gone, too soon, along with a couple of your books, your wallet with those scraps of paper in them recording every pill, every date.  They all need to go to the backs of other people,/… Read full post »

When asked what his favorite memory was of the JFK inauguration, my husband would faithfully respond, "Hearing Frost."

For it was on that January morning in Washington something of consequence, amid the monuments, the snow, the cold.  The poet.

January 20, 1961. 

"The land was ours… Read full post »

Casey Anthony listens to testimony during the state of Florida's case against her.  (AP photo/Red Huber) 

From the beginning, the case of the State of Florida v. Casey Marie Anthony has been about one thing, the selling of Casey Anthony. While it might have appeared on the surface t… Read full post »

 

 

The '68 Chevy paneled wagon was warm and purring already in the Wyoming frost by the time Dad plucked us from our beds in the middle of the night and tucked us, still in pajamas, into neatly arranged sleeping bags in the back.

By breakfast, we'd be pulling… Read full post »

I'm doing something this week I never expected to do in my lifetime: driving cross-country alone. . .well, not alone exactly. . .with a dog and a bird. If that sounds like a circus train that derailed somewhere back apiece, well, it is. And it did.

It's not like I… Read full post »

 

 

". . piece of cake (*fingersnap*), Bren." ~ from Sixteen Candles

 

 

we've overstayed our welcome, you and i

the candles dimmed, our hostess gone to bed

there's nowhere here for us to lay our head 

let's raise another sláinte for the dead

then we'll be… Read full post »

My father was the first to show me what it meant to be fully human, fully vulnerable, in spite of being the Jitterbug King.

He never pretended to be perfect.

Make no mistake, he was pretty darned good.  Most girls, especially oldest, especially "daddy's girls," take their father for… Read full post »

Two years ago, June 16, 2009, I tiptoed for the first time into Open Salon.

A year ago, on the one-year anniversary, I blogged this:

 

 

 

 

 

I love liza Donnelly.  There, I've said it.

In the 80's I used to snip little Roz Chast cartoons out of the New… Read full post »

 

you only come to me in dreams now

soft, blurred-edged, never sharp

two colors, green and black,

maybe some tan

and words not really spoken

but heard

i bend in the cottage, closing, 

ask you to walk the dog

you step outside

no leash 

 

 

 

photo:… Read full post »