Baby Brother

I hated my baby brother when he was born. I tried to ignore him. I unhooked the safety pins on his diapers hoping he’d get hurt. I ran away from him after he could walk well enough to follow me around.
My baby brother is 63 years old now. I no longer hate him. I must [...]

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Pot Luck

The woman in line ahead of me moved slowly down the table. She talked to me as if we had been in mid conversation when we lined up at the pot luck table.
“Lordy, I remember when a pot luck dinner was a big event. You know? Why, women used to make their best dishes. People [...]

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Hard Road

I smiled at the young twit interviewing me for some magazine or other. I secretly wished him a hard road to the top while smiling and answering his inane questions.
I thought back to some of the interviews I’d had when my first best selling novel came out. Thought with painful longing for an in depth [...]

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Yesterday

Yesterday I watched Letters from Iwo Jima, the Clint Eastwood movie. I’ll be watching the companion film, Flags of Our Fathers soon.
There is so much to be said about a movie like this. I think about the danger of accepting cultural values blindly. The unexamined lives we live cause so much needless loss. What defines [...]

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Share the sunlight

Venezuela is changing their whole time system by half an hour to 4 1/2 hours off GMT so that school children can share the sunlight “equitably.” OK. Sure. That makes sense.
Why not just start school half and hour later? Now everyone in Venezuela and all around the world will be confused about what the [...]

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Forebearance

“I hate your forebearance!” I shouted. I think I actually shook my finger in her face as words burst from me. “You judge nothing. You condemn nothing. You’re a real nothing.”
She smiled. Trying to be soothing. It didn’t work. “Judgment and condemnation are not the only responses to life,” she said. “There are other ways [...]

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Read the manual

New phone. Lots of fun.
Play with the settings.
Take some photos.
Make a phone call.
No one can hear me.
It’s the mute button.
Accidentally touched it.
Go read the manual.
Mute ain’t in the manual.
The phone can do it,
But the manual don’t know it.
How ya gonna un-mute?
Touch the same button again?
Yeah, maybe, or maybe not
It un-mutes for a sec
Then all is [...]

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Going like sixty

“Hello, 9-1-1? Yeah, I’m calling because this woman just went through a school zone going, like, sixty at least. I caught some of her license plate. It was an Ohio tag and started with ZTY 3. I couldn’t catch the rest. But the car was a dark blue SUV.
“Huh? Why do you need my name? [...]

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And another thing

I imagined a glass wall between my ears and her words. They were bouncing right off. Yep. I mentally sang “lalalalala” through every word. Then she stopped talking. I sneaked a quick glance her way, to see if she’d really run down so fast.
She was merely gulping down a swig of beer. “And another thing,” [...]

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Phone Call

I answered the phone call and got a cheerful, “Hello, this is Stacy,” in my ear. This set me back just a bit.
“Aren’t you dead?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m calling you from heaven.” She did sound a lot stronger and healthier than she had the last time we talked a couple of weeks ago–right before she [...]

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