The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people. Click here to see…

Reading this week has been a stutter step–great or awful. A poet whose work I have long admired has, in the latest collection become a parody of his former self. He has gone from surreal and astonishing to shockingly obtuse and gritty. Gritty assand in the fried clams, setting my teeth on edge. I read…

Stephen King has said that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” I say it’s good intentions never met. Like sending holiday cards. I meant to do this, really I did. But here we are four days from Christmas and I don’t own any holiday cards, no Santa Claus stamps, and too many other…

Recently, Lori Deboer, my fiction coach, suggested I go to a writer’s conference, and I dreamed of attending one. No, really, I dreamed I went to an expensive gathering fraught with critique and agents who hate writers. On the final day of that conference, I was lost in the staircase of a dormitory, asking everyone…

  Frank Gregg is a talented singer-song writer and guitar player. I could listen for hours, and have, to his music. When he’s in front of an audience, there’s peace in the world.   He married a beautiful woman and between them they raised four great kids and have a slew of grandkids. But along…