This is to try out adding “media” to my blog posts. One day, I took Don’s camera and walked around Old Town, shooting textures and details. This agave is growing outside Rosa’s Cantina.
ORANGE CAKE
Of all the people in our family, my mother was one of the least competitive. She loved to talk, but she seldom bragged or tried to one-up her friends. It seems ironic to look back and realize that my mom was the only one of the family to win a blue ribbon at the LA… Read More
Incident at the Pink Motel (12-minute exercise at Boomers)
I was reading The Pink Motel during silent reading in the fifth grade. It belonged to Alice Goldstein. She had loaned it to the classroom library. Alice had told all the fifth grade girls how good it was, and I had finally gotten my turn to read it. Now I wasn’t much of a reader… Read More
Summer Feet (a 12-minute exercise at Boomers)
My mind goes immediately to feet when I think of summer. When you start walking around barefoot or put on sandals, summer is here. To get to the mailbox to mail a letter for my mom, I had to cross Lincoln Avenue. Now this was no problem during the cooler months when I was shod… Read More
Bats and Losers
Here is a five-minute exercise on Late Evening and a 90-second one on Crossing the Finish Line Up above the tops of the tall pines, bats swooped. The sky still glowed with a remnant of blue light so we could see the bats. Before us at he center of the fire ring, the ranger was… Read More
Curb, 5-min object writing
I didn’t like the exercises I wrote today, so I’m putting up this one from 4/26: No benches or planters near the Baskin Robbins, so we sat on the curb of the parking lot. My cone was nutty coconut, pure white and sweet with huge chunks of walnuts and almonds protruding from the surface. His… Read More
Cyclist: 5-min object writing
I helped him peel his black Lycra shorts down over his hip and thigh, scraped raw and embedded with gravel from the road. He winced and bent his head back in pain. He breathed deep, in and out, to keep from crying. Blood rimmed the edge of the peeled place, and the center was pink… Read More
On the Radio
During our recent visit to Nashville, we sat in on the live broadcast of The Music Row Show on WLAC. Former Temeculite, Scott Southworth, hosts the show with charming sidekick Heino Moeller. We sat in the corner of the studio, quiet as mice, while Scott and Heino interviewed publisher Woody Bomar and writer Brett Jones.… Read More
“I’m a lot less country than that”
So, how did a middle-aged, city slicker ex-English teacher raised on rock and roll come to write country songs? In the summer of 2009 while we were on vacation, my younger daughter had a brief romance with a cowboy who introduced her (and me) to country music. The songs were witty and had an appealing… Read More
