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Another year gone? Good.

Posted on December 29, 2016

Every day since Christmas, various media sources have been running retrospectives of 2016. While I’m happy not to have to listen to screechy Mimi warbling “All I want for Christmas, is you” or Annie Lennox moaning that she wants to “frolic and play, the Eskimo way”, revisiting the major events if last year is like binge-reading the obituaries for a week. Looking back serves no purpose – we can’t change the past and mourning gets old. Reading Facebook is a downer as well, with folks despairing about all of the famous and almost-famous folks who passed on. Yes, it’s sad, but consider the awful natural and man-made tragedies afflicting the world, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees and innocent bystanders who have lost…

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Categories: Modern life

Fun with Food

Posted on December 23, 2016

Normally, I’m not a gadget gal, but in the last six months, I’ve purchased two electronic wonders that have changed the way I cook and that actually make being in the kitchen not so mind-numbing. Don’t get me wrong – I love to cook and eating good food is even better, but after more than fifty years of making meals, it’s become tedious most of the time. I mean, how creative can you be with boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs, fish, pork and beef after you’ve made thousands of meals? Plus, Hub will eat anything except cauliflower, so if I decide to make omelettes three times a week, he doesn’t complain. This is a man who has yogurt and Holy Crap cereal with…

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Categories: Modern life, What I'm Doing

Alan Watts – My Kind of Philosopher

Posted on December 13, 2016

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was a British writer, a philosopher and a theologian, and he was definitely not ordinary. Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit—to the “conquest” of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature. Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see…

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Categories: Argument, Did you know

Picture Day!

Posted on December 6, 2016

Monday, I had the most fun experience in a long while. A photo shoot. At home instead of in a studio. In fact, I did more wardrobe changes than a diva at a concert, because we had to have the right ‘look’. And I loved the process! The last batch of professional shots I had taken were five years ago, and I never really liked that they were so starkly lit and the poses so predictable. They were inexpensive and suited a purpose for a while but I wanted something different to use on social media sites and for book covers. Kathryn Hollinrake is a professional photographer. I don’t mean someone with an expensive camera and a bunch of long lenses strewn about, either. This…

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Categories: What I'm Doing

Friday Follies

Posted on November 25, 2016

Whew! Project binders assembled and couriered off. Woke up in the middle of the night thinking, damn, I forgot to sign the cover letter. The pursuit of perfection continues….Once I clear my mind though, I can get back to Christmas decorating, shopping, baking, thinking about my second novel and getting ready to self-publish several short stories before year end. My office resembles an explosion in a paper factory. Three-hole punch dots everywhere. I want to win the lottery so I can have a housekeeper who cleans and cooks and irons, because after decades of doing that several times a day every day, I’m bored with trying to be creative with chicken breasts, fish and pork. This low-carb thing means pasta is out, which is…

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Categories: Modern life