Category: Around and About | Page 2

Yesterday at 4:50 pm

Contemplation for the End of a Year–Start of a New One

To close out this—for me and mine—momentous year, a light deft touch by the inimitable Billy Collins (formerly Poet Laureate of the United States). Blessings on Billy…this poem is a mind-bending-yea-saying note for a New Year… The Afterlife* While you…

29 Dec 2025

Aspects of Learning ~ 1

Becoming My Own Best Self

10

Tuesday, December 24th…Sitting with Bill in Dominican Hospital, Santa Cruz. We arose at 4:45 this morning because we had to report to the hospital at 6:15 a.m. Bill was scheduled to have a pacemaker installed…his ninety-five year-old heart was showing…

16 Dec 2025

Don’t Return That Vessel Empty!

Musings

3

Gene was writing witty advertising copy at an agency in San Francisco so we had moved to a rented house on Belvedere—a small enclave in San Francisco Bay. Our fourth child, Amanda, was brand new. David, our eldest, was five.…

7 Dec 2025

Approaching “A Further Shore”

Musings

13

You know, every so often life takes you by the scruff of the neck and gives you a good—a really good–shaking. Everything goes blotto. Numb. Still everything hurts. Up till then, things were going along swimmingly. Your family got fed.…

27 Nov 2025

Some Years of Brussels Sprouting

In the Kitchen, at the Table

1

I want to write a few lines about Brussels sprouts before the stroke of Thanksgiving… Hard for me. Doing my best. But here we go. Yes, I read online there has been some genetic pushing and pulling in the Brussels…

20 Nov 2025

Oh, David!

Doing My Best

14

I began writing this “sickabed-on-two-chairs…” Not really two chairs…our big bed…but I love that old-fashioned expression. I’ve been ill—wretched deep hacking cough of bronchitis—because my son—my firstborn—is in the hospital. Gravely ill. (Hate that adjective.) Whether or not he will…

5 Nov 2025

“Turn the volume up!!!”

Musings

7

Here I am. Still sickabed on two chairs. Never occurred to me I’d be in bed with bronchitis for a whole long week. Nuisance. (The worst part is I didn’t get around to unpacking from our trip to Boise when…

1 Nov 2025

Just Checking In…

Musings

14

Not well. My old friend from Mill Valley days, Bronchitis, has pushed its way through the door and taken hold of me. (In Mill Valley our house was in a grove of dew-dripping redwood trees and I was constantly plagued…

20 Oct 2025

The March

Around and About

0

Nothing I can add to what you’ve likely read and heard about the tens of thousands of us across the country. Just that I’m so glad I did it… What was surprising is that I would say the average age…

15 Oct 2025

My I Love America Morning!

Musings

4

My I LOVE AMERICA* Morning: This Saturday (October 18th) I’m going to join the No-Kings Protest here in Santa Cruz. Walk one mile through town… Be one more American sending Trump a message that he has got to give up…