Passionate Gardening -- The Three Worst Plants Edition
There you are, weeding your way under the roses, around the daylilies, behind the lion's ear (in Southern California, that is). The Wayside Gardens fall catalogue is on the porch behind you, your...
View ArticlePassionate Gardening -- The Sweet Spots
There are zillions of smells in a garden and few of them are shy. Steer manure, potting soil, cocoa mulch, the dog shit you just stepped in. Alaska fish fertilizer, especially if the bottle was...
View ArticleLawyer Stuff -- Cross Examination War Story
Cross examination isn't the toughest part of being a trial lawyer. My father used to say, "Your mother's cat could do a decent cross. The test of a good lawyer is a good direct examination." But a...
View ArticleMy Bernie Sanders letter to the L. A. Times
I opened my home town paper, the L.A. Times, this morning with something in mind besides the Sudoku (which is "moderate" on Saturdays anyway). I wanted to see how they covered the Sanders...
View ArticleWrite On! The Monster Within
WARNING: Literary investigators have determined that the guest host of tonight's edition of Write On! has NO PUBLISHED WORKS. Her comments may appear witty and insightful, but they are NOT...
View ArticleA Book That Changed My Life: Huckleberry Finn
I'm the fourth of six kids, born to an English major and a lawyer. Words were supremely important in our house, and my mother read to us almost every night when I was little: Scupper the Sailor...
View ArticleDead Cat Walking
He's not my cat. He's my sister's cat. She adopted him from a shelter as a tiny kitlet, and he lived with her for ten years. But when she moved into an apartment that didn't allow cats, she and my...
View ArticleGeronimo Pratt, 1947 to 2011
Geronimo Pratt has died at his home in Tanzania. I haven't found the cause of death. The Los Angeles Times has an obituary.
View ArticleDavid Copperfield and the Deathly Vices
Reading David Copperfield is like eating your way through the cuisine of, say, India, in one meal. It's like Tony Soprano's New-Jersey-embracing drive home in the credits for The Sopranos. It's...
View ArticleTake it to the Bank! Protest in Pasadena, California
So, OneWest Bank in California wants to foreclose on state employee. She fell behind in her mortgage payments when her brother, who lived with her and their disabled mother, was killed two years...
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Monday Murder Mystery: Death And The Dancing Footman
Welcome to Monday Murder Mystery where we gather each week to talk about mysteries. Discussion of all mysteries is welcome, not just those involving murder; and all genres of mysteries are welcome, be...
View ArticleHappy 98th, Charlotte Lucas!
Our oldest known Kossack has just scaled another peak in a Himalyan mountain of years, and congratulations are pouring in from across the cosmos.
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Monday Murder Mystery: Days of Swine and Porsches
Welcome to Monday Murder Mystery where we gather each week to talk about mysteries. Discussion of all mysteries is welcome, not just those involving murder; and all genres of mysteries are welcome, be...
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Charlotte Lucas, 1913 to 2012
Today I put on summer clothes and journey to a world I've never seen --Michikaze (free translation)
View ArticleWrite On! You want Character on Those Extras?
Sensible Shoes is off tonight with family and deadline obligations and asked me to pinch hit. So I'm knocking the dirt off my cleats with the bat and getting ready to dig in at the plate. The...
View ArticleWrite On! Herding Characters
What ho, writers! This is a Brand X edition. Sensible Shoes has family responsibilities tonight and asked me to fill in. I was happy to but I didn't have time to get my hair done, so please...
View ArticleWrite On! Auspicious Beginnings
This is a pinch hitter edition as SensibleShoes deals with real life.I've been thinking a lot about beginnings of novels, mainly my own deficiencies in the area. One of my college professors told me a...
View ArticleWrite On! Look Who's Talking.
Covering for Sensible Shoes tonight, and with some anxiety because I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about on this topic. Please feel free to disagree. This isn't even close to ex...
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Bookflurries-Bookchat
Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.And heads up! This edition...
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Bookflurries-Bookchat: Orphans
Welcome to Bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don't have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us. Tonight's edition is a...
View ArticleWrite On! NaNoWriMo Eve Eve
Ahoy and avast, writers! Also beware! We live in perilous times. As I write, we are poised on not one but several literary precipi: Precipice One: I am guest hosting Write On! because...
View ArticleWrite On! NaNoWriMo No Mo
Yikes. If I'm guest hosting Write On! it must be December. This means that a whole lot of things are in the rear view mirror that just a few minutes ago were only approaching from a great distance....
View ArticleThe Cookie Diaries, 2014
November 2. Terrible literary novel,* assigned by book group, is due November 3. While trudging through its turgid treacle, realize Xmas is 52 days away. Check USPS to see when cookies must be...
View ArticleNew Year's Resolutions And The Dark Tower
You can read it here. It won't take long; I timed it. If you've read it before and know all about the slughorn controversy and Browning's unconventional use of "estray" in line 48, it'll take about...
View ArticleBaby Boomers Are Going All ALBO
If you're a Boomer, you've likely heard it more than once. Some Gen X doctor or banker or employer, radiating an amalgam of condescension and contempt, says to you, "Well, now that you're A Little Bit...
View ArticleMeeting The Beatles, 1964
Except Paul. Paul was in the house.This is how I remember it:The Beatles played the Hollywood Bowl on August 23, 1964. It was the summer after my freshman year in high school. Somehow I had a...
View ArticleSo where's my Super Bowl ring?
Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying. --George Carlin I dread my beloved sister-in-law's...
View ArticleAndrea Del Sarto, Schadenfreude Gold Mine
Do you wake up in the night and involuntarily review your life, thinking of the terrible mistakes you've made, the (good) road not taken, good advice ignored, the doubling down on disastrous decisions...
View ArticleA Tough Mudder in Winter
It was almost exactly two years ago today: Saturday, February 9, 2013. According to the National Weather Service, Weather Underground, and Accuweather, it was 41.3 degrees F. in Temecula, California,...
View ArticleThe Weather People And The California Drought
Mr. Emmet and I watch a lot of local news. I think it’s a Zen thing. There’s a comforting familiarity, a seamless sameness, to it. There’s a daily checklist:* Five second mention of Important News...
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The Great Famine: Ethnic Cleansing or Market Correction?
In 1845, there were 8.2 million people living in Ireland. 40% were tenant farmers who relied on the only crop that produced enough to feed their families on their small holdings, the non-native...
View ArticleWrite On! We Have to Talk
Top of the evenin' to you, Writers On! I haven't been hanging out as much as usual lately at our Thursday soirees, but I have an excuse. Or a reason; I can't remember which is the good one. Mr....
View ArticleMeltdown at The Market; The Self Service Checkout
You provide the service, and guess what -- you don't get paid.Saturday 4:00 PM. Disaster impends. People are coming for dinner in an hour and I need acorn squash and long grain rice. These are not...
View ArticleOn The Upsurge of Humbledness
Humbledness is all around these days. I don't mean humility, a quality as rare as a cogent thought in Congress. No, certainly not that. I'm talking Humbledness, the state of being Humbled, the...
View ArticleC. Difficile and the Nosocomial* Blues
*Nosocomial, meaning"(of a disease) originating in a hospital."Even the luckiest, most heedless, most bulletproof product of the '60s runs headlong, one day, into the fact of his own mortality.Or in...
View ArticleThe Second Coming
Before I start crawling over it with a magnifying glass (and others, I hope, join in) please just read it:The Second Coming Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;...
View ArticleAntigone, Warrior Chicken
Do not fear for me. Make straight your own path to destiny. --Sophocles, Antigone Do you know why the Egyptians didn't have a chicken goddess? Even though...
View ArticleAdlai Stevenson and Second Grade Quailing
It was a warm, sunny morning in October 1956 in Pasadena, California. My big brother and I climbed aboard the school bus, bound for St. Bede the Venerable, our Catholic grammar school. School had...
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Police Privilege And Kendrec McDade
Kendrec McDade died three years ago, on March 24, 2012, in a crossfire of police bullets in Pasadena, California. He was 19 years old, a community college student with no criminal record or gang...
View ArticlePolice Privilege Gone Wild
[The City Manager] has failed to rein in a police department that needs careful oversight and control. His administration’s shell game with a report on the fatal shooting by police of Kendrec McDade is...
View ArticleThe Easter Rising, 1916, Part I
On Easter Monday morning, April 24, 1916, hundreds of men and women arrived at Liberty Hall, Dublin, many by bicycle, ready to fight for their independence from England. They came from the Irish...
View ArticleThe Easter Rising, 1916, Part II
I wrote last week in Part I that the Dublin Easter Rising was a short-lived military engagement, and the Risers were thoroughly defeated. The leaders chose unconditional surrender in order to save...
View ArticleChurch, State And Prayer Breakfasts
You know what I really, really hate? I hate when somebody adapts a Jane Austen novel for stage or screen and thinks they can improve on her dialogue. They can't. And furthermore -- oh, strike that....
View ArticleWhy I Don't Sing
It was a November day and I was one of a swarm of 62 second graders at St. Bede The Venerable Grammar School. I'd had a bumpy landing in grammar school and still spent most of my days in a state of...
View ArticleDreams, Doomed Dreams, And Life Goals
The New Year and the Chinese New Year and the old calendar/astrological New Year have come and one. It's time for Life Goals again.Life goals are the antithesis of dreams. Dreams are desirable futures...
View ArticleJune 5, 1968
Yesterday a diary by don mikulecky cited Chris Hedges saying he believes we are in a revolutionary moment.A revolutionary moment! Here I'm required by statute to insert a word from Charles Dickens on...
View ArticleInsomnia And Old Dogs
"Silence, foul fiend!" The former Senator/Secretary springs to her feet, knocking over two overeager camera operators and spilling the Younger Senator's water. "You and your loathsome kind have...
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Candidate Debates and The Art of Persuasion
"Mary, let me tell you a little story..." Every day I scroll through the diaries here at DKos looking for the latest pro-Bernie and pro-Hillary diaries. Well, all right, several times a day. And I do...
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Write On! Getting An Agent
Salutations, Writers! Sensible Shoes demanded that I explain how I of all people got an agent. It's definitely an astonishing event.Big deal; you can fly. Do you have an agent?
View ArticleBookflurries-Bookchat: Nonfiction? Really?
Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us. Buona notte, amici! I’m the...
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