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pretty in pink – for my daughter
For almost twenty years, this Hong Kong orchid tree has welcomed me home every day. I recall the evening we planted it. It was at the end of a hot Saturday when our little family drove to a nursery in Moon Valley in search of a tree exactly like those which provided shade during our weekend strolls through the Biltmore Fashion Park. At the time, this open-air mall boasted a row of what I finally learned were Hong Kong Orchids. My then two year old loved to stand on the tips of her toes and stretch each of her piano-player fingers high into the sky, hoping to pluck one of the…
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silent night again . . . from sandy hook to dunblane
December 14, 2012 Cold and lifeless, the bodies of twenty little children lie where they were gunned down that morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It is a crime scene that the day before was a school. The medical examiner’s team begins its work through the night to make sure there are no mistakes, no shadow of doubt about the names of those children – 12 girls, eight boys – along with those of six women shot at close range by a 20 year-old man, whose name everyone now knows. Later, a state trooper is assigned to each anguished family in close-knit Newtown, Connecticut, as they wait for confirmation of what they already know. And stunned families…
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Van Morrison & Ghosts of a Halloween Past
Given the courage, we live by moments of interference between past and present, moments in which time comes back into phase with itself. It is the only meaning of history. We search the past not for other creatures but for our own lost selves. ~ Roger Shattuck 1958 (Source: Listening to Van Morrison, Neill Marcus). We knew it would be a quiet Halloween at our house, falling on a week-night, the Wednesday before the 2012 General Election. Naturally, there was homework for voters, with a plethora of Propositions to study and choices to make over who would be sent to Washington. It didn’t feel like Hallowe’en with November just hours away and the…
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Dear October – Please Don’t Pink for Me.
Dear October, There are 13 more days until you disappear and all your pink trappings will be removed from grocery store shelves and replaced with the amber hues of Thanksgiving. And some of us will forget to be aware of breast cancer – until next year, when you do it all again. I’m weary of you and your pink ribbon culture. I’m weary of your unrelenting message that the answer to the breast cancer epidemic which will kill over 40,000 women in the United States again this year – is to get a mammogram, feel the boobies/tatas/hooters, and raise more money “for the cure.” I’m tired of your mythology. I’m…
