If you haven’t noticed before I am fairly obsessed with berries, enough so that my firstborn son uttered his first sentence about them. All the wild berries are frankly one of the best parts of living in the Northwest. They are like jewels, filled with vitamins and a microcosm of yum. I love them all, even the…
Category: World of Possibility
The Answer to Everything.
Sometimes I wish that I had a magic wand. Well, often I wish that I had a magic wand. Sometimes I wish I had the answer to all our problems. The recent waves of crazy make this more so than usual. Each time something happens it seems to up the ante on violence. Like the…
The Buddha in the borderlands
There are so many words swirling around these days. The world is filled to overflowing with events. I have been writing and writing – considering and dreaming – processing and lamenting. There are 31 posts in what I call the draft drawer. Tackling topics like; racism in America, hard friendships, Tamoxifen.. again, the healing power…
Charging up the Soul Batteries
A few weeks back in the last rays of sun Joe and I took a stroll on the there-and-back-again version of our neighborhood loop. The light was so good I wanted to drink it. We passed only one person in the perfect evening – one of our neighbors, enjoying his own stroll. He alerted us to…
This is Post #100 – When Wishes Are Horses
Can you Yipp? Can you Yopp? Doctor Seuss’ Horton the Elephant declared, “A person’s a person no matter how small.” after hearing the voice of the tiny visionary Dr. H. Hoovey coming from a dust speck. Which led Horton to take action to protect the tiny Whos of Whoville. The Who’s eventually banded together to save themselves, and in the end it is the last…
Breast, Singular
I wrote this in early 2015 for submission to The Sun Magazine’s Readers Write section. Topic, Breasts. Though it was not chosen for publication there, I think it is a pretty good piece. (Look here to read the pieces that were chosen.) So in celebration of the second anniversary of my mastectomy today I give it to all of…
Little Miracles Everywhere
Yesterday on my blustery walk home I saw what I believed to be a plastic bag caught in the blackberries next to the river. Just as I began to climb down the rocks to retrieve it, I heard a cheery bike bell in the distance. Martin! pedaling home from weaving class on his bike. Announcing, “Never…
The Questions We Ask
This post is another one from the draft drawer. It was written February 2014 about half way through my chemo treatments, but not posted at that time. The information still seems very relevant to me today, as I am still actively questioning and reframing. I read voraciously. When the bakery was getting started I read lots and…
Magical Realism
Many folks upon hearing they have a serious diagnosis of any kind, go immediately in one of a few different directions. Either they hunker down to being realistic at all costs, go look up their prognosis on actuary charts and prepare for the worst. Or they might try denial, LALALALA. Perhaps they decide to “Fight Fight Fight – never…
Winged seeds of childhood relics
My father was a small town osteopathic doctor. The community was not wealthy, and he accepted samples from the pharmaceutical reps so as to provide free medicine to some of his patients. Giving them handfuls of little two pill packages to see them through their illness. When his children were sick, we often got samples too,…
The Ocean Within – Part Two.
This is the second in a three part series of posts on the lymph system. See Part One- Yin Magic here. Part Two – Watershed Way back in 1996 when Joe and I moved to Astoria, my daily walk to work took me along the railroad tracks on the waterfront. Through a still active cannery, with huge…
Black Lives Matter
I start writing this having just returned from a community discussion hosted by the Lower Columbia Diversity Project. Facilitated by historian, author and activist Walidah Imarisha, and featuring a panel of Adrienne Cabouet, from Black Lives Matter Portland, and Leila Holstein, co-director of the Portland PFLAG Black Chapter. There were roughly 40-50 people in attendance. (Click here…
Riding the Pooka 