Recently, my 87-year-old mother became belligerent with one of her caregivers. It seems the caregiver tried to talk Mom out of visiting her mother, who’s been dead since 1982. Swear words were hurled; medications administered. We’ve come a long way since the time two years ago when my mother literally tried to hit and bite…
I’m not one of those literary types with a “Kill Your Television” bumper sticker on my Volvo station wagon. I don’t own a Volvo, I’ve never quite identified as a literary type, and I happen to like TV. There are juicy dramas like Mad Men whose writing is better than most current movie screenplays. There…
“Hey, you know that piece,”—[singing]—“what is it?” my friend asked. “Hmm. Schubert, I think.” She sang some more, and I knew I was toast. The melody would haunt me until I found out for sure what it was and who wrote it. So much of the information we want is available online and from books: …
A funny thing happened recently while I was giving my dog a haircut. I had planted myself next to him, trimming as much as possible before he could object. Suddenly I realized I was getting overly zealous on his left hind leg. Mind you, his hair wasn’t extra-long there. It was simply that the left…
How is it that it took me the better part of a week to enter an online novel writing contest? You have to understand that the manuscript is ready to go; I didn’t have to complete, revise or polish it in order to submit it. I’d already honed my synopsis, pitch and bio. And I…
You start poking around to make dinner. You go to the fridge and pull out some fresh produce. At the sound of the vegetable drawer opening, your dog trots over and starts barking, reasoning that if it’s late afternoon and stuff is being taken out, a raw carrot, his favorite treat, cannot be far behind.…
Start with a father whose retail LP record shop sits at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph in Berkeley, just opposite the Cal campus, during what’s generally called “the turbulent 1960s.” This father of yours has a violent temper and an abiding skepticism of institutions of higher learning. Mostly, though, he’s known as that short,…
how do I use a payphone – can I just put a quarter in and achieve a dialtone Such was the Instant Message I got from my college junior one recent evening on my laptop. I won’t dwell on how close I was to typing back, all in caps, “What!? You don’t know how to…
We’ve all chuckled over the “rotten rejections” writers have endured on the way to fame. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.” Well, I seem to rack up “rotten acceptances.” Maybe it’s the price I pay for choosing a controversial religious subject to write about. First I…
It all started when my sister Deborah gave me a birthday card of four older women in swimsuits holding hands with each other and wading out into the ocean, their backs to the camera. “Like the four of us!” she pointed out, as if an explanation were necessary. “Yeah, let’s hope when the Braver sisters…