What I Find Fascinating
My I Love America Morning!
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…
Read MoreThe Trip That Settled Traveling Again?
When I was four years old my grandmother dressed me in my best, drove me to the Los Angeles train station, tearfully handed me and my little suitcase to a Super Chief “nurse-stewardess.” The uniformed stewardess never left my side…
Read MoreThe Inspiring Jane
I can’t imagine there is even a handful of women of a certain age on this planet who, this morning, don’t feel diminished by the loss of their sister, Jane Goodall. Ach! When I was of traveling ability I so…
Read MoreA Happy Accident
We’ve been overwhelmed, Bill and I, deluged with family visiting (marvelous)…added to the usual stippling of doctor’s appointments…then of course the cleaning ladies weren’t able to come so in the kitchen my pick-it-up-use-it-then-set-it-down-in-the-wrong-place created impossible chaos. Last night my darling…
Read MoreCrazy to Sing!
Early in the tenth grade at University High School, one day at lunch in the patio, a cluster of us from Emerson Junior High were spooning up our yogurt when someone said, “You know, we should also form a Tri-Y.”…
Read MoreA Cinematographer to Keep an Eye on
We are over the moon exultant at the news of cinematographer Christopher Ripley’s achievement in the Venice Film Festival. Chris is boon companion of our granddaughter, James Francis Whelan IV. Last year, young Chris spent months in the Kalahari Desert–pure…
Read MoreComfort In Case You’ve Just Suffered A Big Disappointment, Too~
Department of Misery Loves Company…Mayhap… ~By Sylvia Thompson, A Cook Who’s Been Working in A Kitchen 82 Years… So a special bunch was coming for supper—three of Bill’s grandsons plus two extra gents, one from Paris! A wowzer occasion. Had…
Read MoreChecking In ~ End of Summer 2025
Yesterday I wrote my children asking if they remembered where they were forty years ago on that day… We all were en route to Galveston, Texas, to celebrate the first wedding in our family—eldest daughter to the treasure she…
Read MoreMy Nights with Harry Bosch
Husband Bill—Professor Emeritus of Eighteenth Century English Literature, American Literature, and Film Studies—loves detective stories. The author of What is Film Noir?* is a particular devotee of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler—Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe transcribe wonderfully to the…
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