Happy Pride Month! Yesterday, Mol and I were in downtown Olympia at the corner of 5h and Washington for the dedication of two crosswalks painted in trans flag colors. I was part of the speaker line up and though the mood was celebratory, I felt it necessary to bring some #realtalk to the event. You…
Hello from the wet side of Washington State where it is finally warm enough to wear shorts sometimes, the itch to garden has become irresistible and we’ve even had to wear sunscreen a couple of times. Writers Chat I will be hosting a social gathering for introverts on Tuesday, May 9th. We will be at…
Hello from sunny, now breezy with cloud cover, wait now it’s raining, no now it’s hail, back to sunny… Olympia Washington. Mol and I have set up our seed starting area in the garage and popped in 50 tomato seeds (5 varieties), cabbage and a mix of seeds we’re gonna harvest as microgreens. Update: Because…
Sad News As many of you know, tragedy struck my household about a week ago. Percy, our sweet fluffy boy, was hit by a vehicle and killed. We only know that because of the kindness of strangers who gathered him up and took him to Animal Services. Because he had a chip, I got a…
Adventures with Words, January 2023 – from CK Combs, Author I used to do New Year’s Resolutions, back when I was younger and hadn’t learned to choose my battles well. I piled up goals and ambitions, listed anything I could think of that I believed would improve my life. And every year there would come…
In this bonus edition of Adventures with Words, I will share what I’ve been reading. I set a goal to read 50 books in 2022. On December 31st, I finished number 81. I use Goodreads to track my booklist. Goodreads (like many other platforms) creates a year in review and from it I have my…
Hello! I’m going to try this newsletter thing. All the cool kids are doing it and I want to be cool. Also, I want to build systems to connect with readers that aren’t dependent on fascist billionaires. I’m planning a monthly schedule, with occasional short announcements if they are time sensitive. Making space for creativity is…
After a friend reminded me that HBO had created a series based on Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, I picked up my copy of the book. When I first read it, close to its publishing date of 2014, I was reminded of The Stand. The idea of a flu killing most of the…
Last year I read 33 books. This is well shy of my goal of 50, though I am pleased with the quality of what I read. I’ll share my list and some of my impressions. I’d love to hear what your favorite reads of 2020 were. Sandman Vol. 8, Neil Gaiman, et al. On Earth…
I took the Goodreads reading challenge last year and put my goal at 50 books. I got to 41. A mix of fiction and non-fiction. Fiction was mostly speculative, fantasy and scifi genres. Much of my non-fiction reading was motivated by a desire to learn about whiteness and systemic racism and included works of history,…