Articles about Posts
In my Method Writing class with Jules Swales [www.julesswales.com], fellow writer and friend Maria Iliffe-Wood and I have been studying the Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke. This piece, “I Earned My Right to Be” is my take on the Sixth Elegy. If you love writing and want to release the fullness of your inner…
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I love two men. Thank goodness that on the earthly plane, these loves were sequential. On the spiritual side they are simultaneous. My first love, tall dark and handsome, swept me off my feet when I was 24. He scooped me onto the back of a motorcycle and showed me through sensual, passionate presence how…
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On a walk among luminaria, I found evergreen magic. In the city block of my Phoenix neighborhood, on Christmas Eve and Christmas night we observe a tradition of lighting luminaria, votive candles in white sacks, placed along the edges of our sidewalks. I took a walk in the dark of Christmas evening to enjoy both…
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Christmas presents, gifts of light, can arrive at any time of the year. They can even unwrap in a university classroom in July on a campus shimmering in summer heat. Before the age of 30, I yearned to belong. I didn’t seem to fit anywhere. I was too quiet. Too shy. Too intense. Too emotional.…
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Author’s note: Fiction is a mysterious mix of truth and imagination. I offer this fictional story in memory of my Grandma Sandel whose presence at my high school Christmas concerts meant everything to me. A silvery ribbon of soprano, my voice hung in the still air of the high school auditorium. A spotlight illuminated a…
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Our expressions were quizzical. We stared at an 11X14 white paper that had six squares on it, each drawn to look like a television screen. My late husband, Jim, and I were in Cincinnati attending a Reality Therapy workshop with trainer Bob Wubbolding. We had been instructed to create a story board – a visual…
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St. Hedwig’s Church was poised, expectant, still. My family, Ma, Dad, me, Laura, Carol, Michael, and James, filed into the church in a Polish neighborhood of Detroit for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. My father chose a pew near the high altar, and we scooted into the row between the creaky wooden benches, the rock-hard…
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This was a woman’s place — a somewhat glitzy, somewhat faded, somewhat cluttered nail salon. The nail techs were women – all from Vietnam, all petite, most with dark hair and all with lovely Asian features. From the tiny older woman with the lined face, her grey hair pulled into a tight bun at the…
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“I’m crying,” my sister, Laura, said, as she explained over the phone to the radio show host why she couldn’t speak. She was on Facebook livestream with Mojo in the Morning, a popular 95.5 FM Detroit-area radio show. Laura’s black puffer coat blended into the dark early morning; frost bitten with Michigan’s winter chill. She…
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Oh, break my heart Break open, wide, and vast and unlimited Break open, as memories Of loved ones passed Flood into and radiate Deep shadows. Oh, break my heart Embrace the flash of Love. On November 18, 2022, William Ronald Pfeffer, my late husband’s brother left this side of life. As I lit the candle…
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