Suprise Me

O’Shaughnessy’s Ode has always arisen in me to describe what being a poet means. I am one, since the age of eleven I write.  Have to. Whenever the blood flow swells in me, whenever the thought erupts or the passion breaks through these mesmerized human threads, I write.  Johnny next door was a few years… Read More

“There were several drive-ins around Spokane from the 1940s to the 1980s. A few lasted until the early 1990s. A family could take a fussy baby to the drive-in and no one complained. You could park near your friends and chat. Kids could play on a swing set near the screen. And, of course, a… Read More

I knew Grandma Geitel as a seamstress, a maker of chicken soup with knaidelach, someone who drank hot tea in a glass with sugar cubes, and someone who liked to gossip about her eight sisters and their lives and times. Read More

(The title is a nod to a quintent from The Mikado, for all you G&S fans out there. Having been in at least three productions, that song popped into my head as I thought about this prompt; it seemed so appropriate.) We had a lovely, fragrant garden in my first house in Detroit providing fond… Read More

The Democratic Party has won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, but lost the office of the President due to the Electoral College. The Electoral College has GOT to go! The framers of the Constitution had a population made up heavily of farmers, many of whom were illiterate and lived… Read More

My grandfather loved horses and gambling more than he loved my grandmother, so he spent a lot of time at the racetrack. Read More

The “Haven for Newlyweds” Art Park contained more than one hundred sculptures by Korean artists scattered throughout the lush park with its paths in rolling hills and forests. Read More

Billy Joel probably never ate at the Italian restaurant my family favored when I was young, since he grew up in New York, not New Jersey, but he must have had a similar place in mind when he wrote the song “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” Don’s 21 was located on McCarter Highway in Newark,… Read More

To me becoming an English teacher was a punchline. And yet, that is just where my college path led me. Read More

Okay, I admit it. I’ve always been a lousy speller. Though one might not expect this from a straight A student, it is true. I can’t account for it. Perhaps it has to do with lack of ability to visualize abstractions in my head. I don’t know; it just is true. In fifth grade  (the… Read More