Taking Root
Seventeen-year-old Delaney Moran is trying to make it on her own but panic attacks threaten to undermine her independence. Luella, a determined social worker, and Murray, the owner of a music store, want to help her but in doing so, they uncover a secret from her past.
My Writing Blog
Latest Posts
Virulence and Values
Politics weren’t central to my upbringing and though I’ve never been an activist myself, what I’ve seen in recent months has shocked me to the core. As the recent events surrounding the insurrection at our Capitol unfolded, my thoughts went to some people I have loved and lost, grateful that they hadn’t lived long enough […]
Rinse Cycle
Remember when we used to rely on weather forecasts that were broadcast with our nightly news? We’d get a good-enough sense of when to expect rain from the fuzzy satellite image. Many years ago, I used to ride the bus to work. At one of the stops along the way, a cheerful woman named Marilyn […]
The Rooster’s Last Call
After over four decades as a Berkeley institution, Au Coquelet Café on University Avenue closed its doors a couple of months ago, another casualty of the pandemic. For the past several years, my husband and I would visit Berkeley every other month or so for an evening of Irish music, sometimes at the Freight & […]
Other Writings
Thoughts on Fishing
My junior high school English teacher asked each of her students to find a poem and bring it to class. Flipping through the pages of my parents’ Viking Book of Poetry, I settled on “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. In exquisite detail, she portrays an ancient, grandfatherly fish that could fight no more. Old hooks and pieces of line were embedded in his jaw but what I remember most was the sadness and surrender she described in his eyes as she held him half out of the water alongside the boat, before letting him go. Her poem resonated with me in an almost visceral way because I’d often gone fishing alone or with my father.
