Looks as if the December 13 date does not work for many of you. Could you
sll suggest a better da te? Obviously I want to avoid Christmas and that little
slide from Christmas to New Year. We could head for January but I am teaching 3 classes next term so I… Read full post »

Hey OS'ers! I am organizing our next meet up and hope you Chicago OS people can make it. If the date doesn't work for you, let me know. It's all flexible. It's all good.

When: Sunday, December 13, 2009
Where: The Bagel Restaurant and Deli
          &nbs… Read full post »

Before we had an excessive experience
We had no experience.

Like you, I understood
No sound--it was time to hold
our solitude in one hand.
The other free.

I fought for my life until
No life.
Like the vessel of a dream
made empty,
blood and tissue
unresponsive.

Gray, flat, like the wings
of a fallen bird,
I la… Read full post »

Yeah-- I want to see oppressed women in the third world be freed from male dominated cultures where they are tortured and treated like chattels, and globalism is certainly about freeing both women and men. But the female incarnation is a hard one and the older a woman gets the harder… Read full post »

Yes, the title to this post says it all, I suppose. Last week I finally had an experience that might be entitled: My First Day On A "Real" Job in My Entire Life. Yes, that's right. I taught my first class at Westwood College in College Writing (221). I have never… Read full post »

Sometimes the kids are all you have left...

to give you hope.
You wished and thought
when young

I'll be so wise when I am old!
Now look at you now--
you've become the sentimental old fool
You vowed you'd never be--
thinking of musicals you saw when you were
thirteen
has become more important t… Read full post »

I haven't posted in a while.

I been kinda busy.

Stay tuned.

I plan to put something out soon!

I missed you all!

Poet Loving the Fall

This is fiction. It could be fact. My tribute to those who lost their lives through no fault of their own.                                 … Read full post »

Lipstick is important!

Don'tcha think?

Stockings--style--fashion--

come on!

Also,

don't forget your nails.

You don't want a perfect look

with ugly nails.

Do you? 

"What's she really like behind the dark glasses? Anna’s appeal is that she has no interest in pretending to be human.… Read full post »

On the corner of Wrightwood & Sawyer
I saw Labor Day pass by underneath
My window.
I was not invited to any party
or gathering or BBQ,
no friends or family to meet,
family had other plans,
I am without friends in this
season.
My Buddhist people are
not quite friends yet.

So where am I?
Holida… Read full post »

Since blogging on open salon I have never yet made it to the front page. Of course, I am not alone here--many others haven't either! I've made Editor's Pick a couple of times, for which I am grateful, but I have yet to see a line from one of my blogs… Read full post »

 for Carl Sandburg

Out at the lake on Navy Pier     
People are shouting at the bar and eating ugly food
that might be fish but who knows babies
in prams and children eating junk are filled
with anticpiation--fake pirates look like college
kids visiting their parents. They memorized… Read full post »

It is a cool 65 degress or less. There's a chilly wind that feels like fall already, even though it's still August. What happened to our summer? Teddy Kennedy's formal funeral is on television.."Competition can be converted to collaboration" speaks the House of Repesentatives Chaplain in his prayer.… Read full post »

The liberal lion is gone. His life is a story of redemption. Even when the murky waters surrounding Mary Jo's Kopechne's tragic death trying to claw her way out of a car sunk in the waters off the bridge that Teddy drove off drunk from a party was… Read full post »

• 
• HELP WANTED: (YOUR WISH LIST)
• We are seeking an older, slow-paced woman, (memory lapses are preferred) with terrible interpersonal skills.
•  Someone who has been struggling with authority for a lifetime and has been fired at least once for insubordination
• lackluster
… Read full post »

B-You know you could have seen the doctor on your own. You didn't need me to go with you.

A-It's always a good idea to take someone with you to make sure you have an advocate.

B-But we were afraid you wouldn't know what to ask but you asked… Read full post »

 I will make this short. John Hughes was born in Lansing, Michigan--my home town where I grew up and where I went back to raise my kids. I was born a year before him. We are both Aquarians. I was born January 20 and he was born January 18. He died… Read full post »

My life is lived watching it from the window of my 2 room flat. I sit at my computer and look out onto the street below, the corner of Wrightwood and Sawyer, the corner where one side street meets one semi-busy street, where the sound of childhood laughter intersects with two… Read full post »

Frank McCourt:  

 Frank was 66 when he broke ground in the memoir genre and gave us the luminous, sad, hysterical, tear-inducing Angela's Ashes. I think of him joining Walter Cronkite sailing "into the mystic.." Two very different people, but both joined in the close proximity of th… Read full post »

Here is a small piece from my completed novel Saul's Last Book, a book still looking for a home:

Now let’s set the scene. I have to switch the iPod, connected to my little white space speakers that look as if they were beamed down from Roslyn, New Mexico,… Read full post »

The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who, in a moral crisis, maintain neutrality. 

Robert Kennedy quoting Dante

This happened when dogs could talk. Not a time when the world was perfect--we did things that all human beings did. We inhabited a different world than you do… Read full post »

This July 4, 2009 I am most proud of my kids--pure and simple.

But before I go into them and how wonderful they are and gush as any proud mother would do, I have to back track a little to provide some historical context. 

 In the… Read full post »

for W.S. Merwin 

I am growing personal now
As we often do when we grow older
All of life seems to be past us in a kind of
Old photograph hissing:

(Sounds that make your flesh crawl.)

That echo clanging like a loud, ugly bell:
"This was you, Oh , This was… Read full post »

OK Here is my one cent on Michael Jackson. I had HUGE hair because I was a naturally curly blond with long big 80's hair, but I don't have a scanner so I'll need to figure out how to get the pic onto my MAC so I can… Read full post »