This past weekend, I spoke at the memorial service for my niece, who died a month ago and was one of my two closest blood relatives. It was good to have a few meals and time with some of the remaining members of my family and her friends, and I also spent several hours combing through various bits of my [...]

Recently I attended a Zoom meeting of one of my two women’s groups. The theme the facilitators chose was “Mothers—the Rose and the Thorn.”  Ah, such an apt metaphor, I thought. We each had the opportunity to express from our hearts how our mothers, most of whom had passed long ago, had both the rose and the thorn in their [...]

Here’s an excerpt from my forthcoming book, No Spring Chicken: Stories and Advice from a Wild Handicapper on Aging and Disability. Some people may not know that the physical aspects of driving a car can be a challenge for a person with even partial paralysis. As a teenager and thereafter, I had to drive crossing my left leg in front [...]

Does absence make the heart grow fonder?   I know this is usually an adage applied to romantic relationships, but I’ve had this on my mind in a general sense lately.   I’ve been away from blogging for some time; I hope you’ve missed me, if you ever read me at all! I’ve been working on my second book, No [...]

Part V   Seeking forgiveness and acting for change   I had the honor of visiting the Slave Market Museum in Charleston, South Carolina a few years ago. Seeing the paintings of how black people were chained into slave boats, lying down, several layers deep, as if they were not even human, and the painting of one slave woman being [...]

Part IV   More history, and contrition   In further readings about my Allen background, which were available partly because we had a distant relationship by marriage to Andrew Jackson, the notorious racist, and so showed up now and then in history records, I was able to learn more about the Allen’s and their relationship to the slaves who lived [...]

Part III of V   Confessions   When I was in high school in the mid-1960’s, I had prejudices. (I may still have some, but nothing like the lack of awareness I had then.) I was brought up that way. I didn’t see a black person until I was five or six, but later had black friends whom I loved [...]

Part II of V   Bias   I’m not fond of rap music. But that’s a cultural bias; it just doesn’t appeal to me. I like its aspect of poetry, and that sometimes some of the spoken songs are humorous or beautiful or plaintive. Those things, I appreciate. It’s an important cultural mode and I respect it. I assume there [...]