Does it require a senseless tragedy to bring out the best in a community?
There’s probably no good answer to that question. Today, as we commemorate Tucson’s mass shooting and tragedy of only one year ago, this is something we should ask ourselves.
Goodbye to 2011–Reflecting on Ten Years Ago
December 31, 2011 By 1 Comment
The year of 2011 has come and gone, without disasters like we knew on 9/11. That’s not to say our world is at peace or there is no more danger, because that isn’t true. But revisiting that one day was a time of reflection: all of us remember where we were and what we were doing, ten years ago.
On September 11, 2001, a group of us were cocooned in natural beauty, indulging in the completely hedonistic pursuit of wine, fine cooking, and our shared passion for history. We wallowed in the peace of this golden setting, once a luxurious estate of the 1930s set amongst rolling grassy hills that were topped with sprawling oaks and surrounded by the vineyards of Northern California’s world-famous wine country.
Here are the memories we all should have treasured from that special week: [Read more...]
Getting into the Holiday Spirit
November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Jody's Story: A Christmas Legend
Mornings in Tucson are nippy and our fall is finally here. What a beautiful time of year!
Brilliant orange sycamores reach toward the heavens in competition with the bold color of our western, cobalt blue skies. This morning, when the clouds parted over the Catalina Mountains, we even noticed a hint of snow, high on the pine-covered crests. Next week it will be Thanksgiving… there’s always so much to be thankful for, like good friends and the time to enjoy them.
It seems like the year will speed by after that and Christmas will be here. Just in time for this special time of year, my piece of short fiction, a tender, modern Christmas tale, Jody’s Story: A Christmas Legend, has just been published
Essay Published in Blue Guitar Literary Journal
November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment
It is a comforting thought that, in this era of financial cuts to anything resembling the arts in general and writing in particular, our State of Arizona actually has a Consortium for the Arts! Sure, it may not be the grand-scale financing that we all might wish for, but we do have support. That’s the great news.
The Consortium is supported in part by the Arizona Commission for the Arts with funding from the State of Arizona and the National Endowment for the Arts. All of us who support our local PBS station and NPR should rejoice. We are part of that bigger picture too.
Welcome to my Writers Table.
October 31, 2011 By 1 Comment
Writing a book is easy.
That’s discounting those many hours of thinking about it before you even put pen-to-paper (or sit down before your computer), when ideas simmer in the back of your mind and bubble over with what-ifs or the hours of necessary research so you won’t get a tidbit detail wrong that might discredit you with your readers.
Then follow those long, soul-searching moments—should I include that passage or is it really helping the story? Those moments go on and on.
