Do read Part I first for backstory. (Photo is not my mother, but this is how she held her hand when she smoked.) I tried cigarettes perhaps three or four times in high school. The first time I inhaled, I had a coughing fit, of course, and the smoke hurt my lungs so badly; I thought “Why in the world [...]

I grew up in an atmosphere of cigarette smoke, like many children in the 1950’s and 60’s. My mother smoked Salems (filtered), two packs a day, although she often had one cigarette burning in the living room and one in the kitchen, so, giving her the benefit of doubt, maybe she only smoked a pack or a pack and a [...]

(Photo: Camp Fire Girls' Camp in the Sierras, 1958) My earliest memories of childhood, going back to age two, are recorded in my memoir, Not a Poster Child. I shared much of what my childhood was like from the perspective of a child with a disability in that book. Summer days bring forth a host of other memories for me, [...]

Part II [This was initiated by a prompt from the website of Laura Davis, writing coach. Please do read Part I first.] The wilderness inside me thrives in kinship with the natural world. I do have a wild girl in me. She sat under a bush at nine years old while at Camp Fire Girls camp in the Sierras and [...]

Part I of two parts: Here’s a poem by Kabir: "I said to the wanting-creature inside me: What is this river you want to cross? There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road. Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or resting? There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman. There is [...]

  Photo: Ella Haddix, first 18-year-old to register to vote in the US in 1971. Here she speaks to high school students in 2006 about the importance of the 26th amendment, giving them the right to vote. I came of age in the late 1960’s. I grew up with Republican parents, and until I was about sixteen, I believed the [...]

  Is life today significantly different for women than it was one hundred years ago? [Photo: my grandmother with her second husband in about 1940] My grandmother bore fourteen children with my grandfather, who was a railroad engineer, gone much of the time. Some of their children died, but over eighteen years, they created a houseful; sometimes twelve people were [...]

This blog is meant primarily for anyone who is feeling as deflated, disappointed and disheartened as I have felt for the couple of days since the US election. But you're welcome here, whoever you are. I was stunned that Trump was re-elected, but not surprised. I had hoped the US was ready for a stable, well-organized, intelligent, knowledgeable, compassionate, strong [...]