For Rebecca, Alonzo, Stjepan and Luka

Many years ago, on the day before I was to perform with a local dance company, a friend was shot and killed in the city, and I completely fell apart. There was no way I could possibly get up on a stage and dance, especially as the evening started with my solo – my first big chance to show myself as a dancer – and I was in quivering shock.

for Taylor on his birthday

During his long career as a professor, Herb and I attended many a dinner party with his colleagues, and at one they were gossiping – yes, scientists gossip – about another colleague they wished the Department would get rid of because he was a ‘nutcase.’

for the circle makers

Herb and I had a loving and good marriage all our adult lives, but one subject had the power to drive us apart, and that was Crop Circles. His scientific mind simply would not entertain the possibility of magic creating huge, spectacular artworks showing up in farmers’ wheat fields, and my intuitive heart was delighted by such unexplainable happenings, like mysterious gifts appearing out of nowhere.

Yesterday a robin hopped into our birdhouse, poked his head out and sang his song, wings tucked in and feathers bristling in anticipation. A sweet female answered his call, alighting on the arbor before hopping down to join him, and together they disappeared inside. I...

Do you remember the sorority and fraternity scene in high school with all its hazing rituals for testing the ‘pledgies’ with public humiliation? I was always amazed watching girls sink to their knees to sing to an upper-class Sister,  “I’m a whale down soror, a...

For Adriel Heisey

Several years ago I had the great good fortune to fly above the Sonoran Desert a few times with a wonderful aerial photographer in his hand-built ultra-light plane, in search of prehistoric ruins. We took off from Tucson in pre-dawn darkness, the wind in our faces and our feet dangling in plain air – and my heart in my mouth – and we communicated by talking through the walky-talkies in our helmets.

This week I saw some of the best theater I’ve ever seen, PARADISE SQUARE, a musical depiction of New York City in the late 1800s, when newly emancipated slaves from the south were arriving along with Irish immigrants escaping the Irish potato famine. It was the...

For Carol M.

Sitting around the campfire on my brother’s farm with friends late one night last summer, I stood up to shake out a stiff knee when I lost my balance and stumbled backwards, falling and catching my hand in the metal spring of a folding chair that snapped shut like a vise onto my knuckles. It was the very definition of a ‘freak accident.’

While having morning tea at a friend’s place recently, his teenaged son came into the kitchen still tousled with sleep to tell us his dream – a nightmare, really. It was about an evil takeover of the world, the details still vivid in his grainy voice and frightened...

Who doesn’t have stories? I certainly do. Growing up in wartime in a family of frightened Jews, I took in their fear and anger with every breath. My child’s body was acquainted with grief, and I learned to swallow down tears until I could no longer feel the sorrow,...