I’d like to say I don’t believe in ghosts, the spirits that haunt the human world after the body has ceased to contain them. Ghosts have stories; they haunt a place, […]
A Skeptic’s Ghost Story
Texas, Oh Texas
–After “The Beautiful” by Michelle Tea Belly up, back down on scratch grass growing in cracked black soil, my childhood fingers slipped inside the cracked handles of the earth. High winds pushed […]
What Our Dreams Can Mean
One of the most satisfying dreams I ever had was incredibly violent. I was a teenager in my dream, leading my friends through a maze-like neighborhood, while a group of bullies followed […]
The Best Girl Scout Leader in the World
Girl Scout Motto: Be Prepared The Girl Scouts is an early twentieth-century organization founded by women, for women. Being a Girl Scout from 1969 until 1974, from second grade through sixth grade, […]
Crime of the Month: Predatory Landlords
The Crime of the Month is greed, the kind of greed perpetrated by Westwind Enterprises, a private-equity firm. Located in San Jose, California, Westwind Enterprises is a predatory private-equity firm that buys […]
Turning into My Mother
The older I get, the more I feel my mother inhabiting my body. I’ve recently cut my hair in an attempt to gray gracefully, and when I look in the mirror, […]
Confessions of a Gambler
The first time I won $1,000 gambling, I was playing the Enchanted Unicorn game in a small gambling parlor attached to Benny’s, my favorite local bar. Enchanted Unicorn has images of princes, […]
When You Have to Share Your Birthday Month
I never expect much fanfare on my birthday. I wasn’t raised to expect it. My parents were practical, sober, working class people, stable but not particularly affluent. Some years my mom made […]
My Personal Time Capsule 2020
2020 has been a doozy of a year. Between a global pandemic and a fractious presidential election, many of us in the U.S. are ready to leave 2020 in the rearview. But […]
Exegesis of a Journey and a Poem
The winter holidays are on their way. Since leaving my hometown in Texas thirty years ago, I have spent almost every Thanksgiving and Christmas since driving or flying hundreds of miles to […]
