Memoirous

I’ve reached a new goal: Print Books Available through D2D as well as KDP (Amazon). When I first published through Smashwords it was digital ebook only. After being acquired and changing its name to D2D (Digital2Digital ) they began to do print also. The 2 platforms, D2D and KDP are similar but different. It was a learning curve to take the titles offered at D2D through their system. Even now, I’m not sure they’re quite “there” yet. I can make changes in 90 days. Especially, with 365 Affirmations—the set up was NEVER going to be perfect, the layout is way too glitchy. All the effort was in preparation for me to offer—hopefully by September— a short story collection . Stay tuned. I’m excited to announce that all my books  will be promoted on @Smashwords for 50% off the entire month of July as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale! Be sure to follow me for more updates and links to the promotion for my books and many more! #SWSale2025 #Smashwords

 Why I’m on Substack This question is one I often ask of anything: How can I align the stars? I’d like to be a working artist. I’d like to get paid for my content, for being a creative. I’d like to be a real author. If only the universe allowed me. I’ve been doing this shtick for over 35 years and I’m not a spring chicken anymore. For instance, random strangers ask me if I’m retired. The answer is no and I often don’t even know what it means to be retired. But, again, I’d like to. Some days all I want to do is write and feel like I’m reaching an audience, that my work has meaning. Substack is, hopefully, one more way to engage a reader and grow my audience. It’s about having a platform—something writers are constantly asked about particularly if they want an agent. It’s a lot like Wordpress.com especially as I’ve noticed at Wordpress more premium options. The difference is Substack is free. Whereas at Wordpress you have to pay—if even just to make sure your site is fr...

Coolish mornings, hot hot afternoon, Waiting to see what happens Is like bombs falling from the sky No one knows. Is this how it’s always been— The Cuban Missile Crisis, Invading Iraq— Americans on the seat of their pants— Put down the remote and go outside. My mind swirls in a thousand directions, My body is at hyper-alert, All it takes is just one mistake— Hold on!! There’s a cardinal at the bird feeder! Sometimes I say to myself: I can’t take anymore, then . . . The youngest asks for bubbles and I find I can go on. After a rainy night, the peonies look like melted wax, piles of petals at the base of the bush, mounded, cascading, spilling all around. We’re not at war, yet.

I wrote here earlier  that’s it’s been a dream of mine, a bucket list thing, to hike the Kungsleden in Sweden. It seemed farfetched as-- 1)       it’s in Sweden. Not only that it is a 13-hour train ride from Stockholm to just the southern terminus of the trail. 2)       It’s 467 kilometres long, a little over 290 miles. Most people do it in segments. There are numerous lake crossings and one section of road. Most hikers can hire a boat and/or use the row boat system to cross the water and there are buses for that one bit of road. Nevertheless, there are logistics, time, and money that stood in the way. Here I stand at the precipice of age 67, a lone female, nearly invisible in today’s society. But, here I am. It’s time to go. On August 24 I’ll fly from Detroit to Stockholm where after landing I’ll have a few hours to collect food and fuel for the trail before catching a train north. I bought refundable tickets. Stomach dro...

 There was a time when I had so much to say, pages to write, stories to unfold. I’m struggling now to come up with two sentences. I had posts queued at Blogger. I wrote letters to the Editor, my senator, congressperson. I effected change. These days—there is this ennui, where I wonder: Will things always be this way. I feel robbed of words. A drifter picking through old bones, looking for a scrap. Where is the girl with too much on her mind, afraid to settle, unstoppable? Where have all the wild horses gone? Must get going, must move, must not stay here for long.

Drifting down, cottonwood fuzz Gathering into snowbanks of fluff Whirled into the corner of the garage Entangled with leaf debris, the stray stone Wooly mounds turn summer into winter.   Drifting down on the back deck, bubbles Reflecting the sun, casting prisms My grandson stands in the midst Fluff, drift, colored bubbles, baubles Gifts from the sky, impossible to hold.

Despite the calendar date: Sumer is icumen in. This medieval round is delightful, gay, and carefree. I can easily imagine Renaissance women dancing around a maypole, celebrating the change of season. When I awake these days, I go outside with my cup of hot tea to visit the garden. Every day the beans grow higher, though NOT yet climbing; the cucumbers are 2 inches high, yet not spreading; the kale and chard are showing a bit of color. Something has dug with its little paw in a couple of pots next to the beds. I’m still thinking of how to restrain them. There’s also the need to weed—which means making sure I do not pull the wrong thing. I’m overly cautious. Last night there was a raccoon outside my door. I knew it was beginning to rain and thought: How can rain feel scratchy? When I looked over and saw it with its paws on my French doors, scratching at the window. I was entirely freaked out. I stuffed cotton under the door, in a little space opened up since the Tiny House is settl...

Last week was a much anticipated trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes with a friend from Chicago. I was grateful that the weather was much better than the weekend preceding—except there was a chance that smoke from the Canadian wildfires might confound plans. Indeed, the sky was not quite as blue and affected the color of the water. Still, the variating degrees of blue, aqua, green, rippling beyond the shore, stood out in contrast. I was glad to be there, eating fresh veggie wraps at picnic tables and climbing in my pedals the scenic drive and standing below—even if hazy—a wide sky. Here is a flashback to a few years ago to a post I wrote posted  August 01, 2023 Chasing Golden Raindrops After work one evening, I rode my bike home, the long way. The sky, enhanced by Canadian wildfires, Was itself on fire, the color of flames Orange and red, blue blaze. Ashy clouds with singed edges, wafted above, adding to the wooly haze. Air quality alert, my skin tingled— I felt a tightness in my chest a...

In 1975 and 1979 Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which established the right to education for students with disabilities. Prior to that special education was spotty, dependent upon what the local school board deemed necessary or were capable of doing. I remember—and let me place this memory: It was pre-school, meaning I wasn’t enrolled yet in kindergarten. My brother was likely at the high end of elementary school. We lived in Washington Township between Kettering and Centerville; we all attended Driscoll Elementary (built 1962), a school still in use today. In the year book, categorized by grade level, there was a section where the students seemed older (but, let’s be honest, looking at students from the past they ALL look older than today’s students!!) and didn’t seem to fit any particular grade level. I asked my older brother Steve who these kids were. He told me they were in a special educa...

Riding my bike on Memorial Day I passed many cemeteries dressed for the day. Spruced up. All the old flowers gone, the lawns cut, the gravestones cleared of debris. Ready to receive visitors. That’s how we used to spend Memorial Day as a kid, visiting my grandmother’s grave in Kentucky—and a few others that I could not understand who they were in our lineage. The tradition started as a way to honor those fallen in past wars. Growing up World War II was still somewhat fresh. That was a good war. The Vietnam conflict, never properly recognized as a war, was complicated. We didn’t have any family that had died in war. Dad was a Navy veteran and my mother’s brother had also enlisted and a few other uncles who had married Mom’s sisters. Again, we didn’t need to honor them because they were still alive. Anyway, while visiting grandma’s grave—a person, by the way, that I didn’t feel a great connection with as she had passed when I was a toddler—I would explore the graveyard and read the...