Category Archives: Personal

Big Fires Everywhere…

“Extremely dense & tall smoke plumes from numerous large wildfires, some of which have been generating nocturnal pyrocumulonimbus clouds (fire thunderstorms), are almost completely blocking out the sun across some portions of Northern California this morning.” –Climate Scientist Daniel Swain … Continue reading

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Coronavirus Dispatch #3: It’s Surreal

I’m going to keep these short, as none of us have a lot of bandwidth these days. But yes, it’s surreal. We have gone over 20,00 deaths in the U.S. as of today. In a few days, it will be … Continue reading

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Coronavirus Dispatch #1

Here’s how it started, at least the official story, from a site called CIDRAP (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy) that I just happened upon today on the web: “As suspected, a novel coronavirus has been identified in some … Continue reading

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Happy Holidays…

Somehow, it’s mid-December. This year does feel especially Christmas-y, if only because the weather is decidedly wintry… and the sister of a school friend, whom I have not seen since I was twelve, volunteered to send me a Christmas pudding … Continue reading

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Loma Prieta Memory: Reading Pinter by Candlelight

(Note: I lived through Loma Prieta in 1989, which is now, incredibly, 30 years ago. The first section of this essay was written in 1999, on the 10th anniversary of the earthquake.) I’d been in San Francisco for a little over a … Continue reading

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A Short Month, but an Exhausting One!

September was pretty exhausting! Due to a reshuffle at a magazine I work for, I was unexpectedly placed in a different role: copyediting rather than proofing. When I used to work for the Pacific Sun in San Rafael, I envied … Continue reading

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A Pride Month Update

It’s Pride Month, and I have been fairly busy on the writing and self-publishing front. First, I just put A Knight’s Tale, Books 1 & 2, my LGBT medieval historical romances, on Smashwords; they can be found here. I’ll update … Continue reading

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Some Thoughts on Charlottesville as the Eclipse Approaches

I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about the tragic events in Charlottesville this weekend except to say that my greatest fear after Trump was elected was that there would be blood in the streets. And so it has … Continue reading

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Now that we’re into the second month of the new presidency, I find myself feeling a mixture of emotions. Exhausted, first of all, as the pace of everything has speeded up. Enraged at wretched cabinet picks like DeVos–that’s a given. … Continue reading

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Christmas

Christmas is here, a time of year when I feel inexplicably content and happy much of the time. As I’ve gotten older Christmas has become less about “getting stuff” and feasting, and more about memories. Somehow it all adds up … Continue reading

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