It was the summer of 1992 and the Grateful Dead had scheduled the "Veneta Third Decadal Field Trip" to celebrate their own three decades in music. What was more, Veneta, Oregon was/still is the venue for the Oregon Country Faire, the biggest and best hippie fair on the West Coast, if not in the country, maybe the whole wide world. Read more about Furthur
A woman I follow on Twitter asked her followers to tell her a story about being brave. This is my story, but for reasons unknown to either of us, it refused to post. But it's a good little story, so I'm posting it here. Read more about When I Was Brave
I was in my favorite seat in my favorite row in the Oakland Coliseum that night. All was as perfect as perfect can be. Except for HER. My usual touring buddy had fallen head over heels for a redheaded minx who was totally fucking up my trip. Read more about And Just Like That
I love doing dishes. Well, that might be overstating it.
Most of the time I don’t mind doing dishes, much of the time I like it, and on rare occasions I do love it. Read more about Doing Dishes
My first job in Chicago was for an outfit run by the mob. My first date in Chicago was with a wannabe mobster. And the first time I was fired was for being on drugs. Maybe it should all have been a sign of some kind. But it wasn’t. I had no idea of what I was doing. Read more about A Date in the Life
I may have mentioned a time or two that I was raised a Christian, Lutheran to be precise. My mother was a pillar of our local church. I may have even boasted of having served as the only atheist secretary of Illinois State Luther League. Not that I did anything noteworthy in that position – can’t remember doing anything at all, actually. But I was elected somehow. And being my mother’s daughter, how could I say no? Read more about Confirmation
It’s one of those gray chilly days in October when not even the piles of golden leaves light up the outside while inside the furnace, set at its usual temperature for winter, does little to chase away the chill which has crept into my bones. All I want to do is crawl back under the covers. It’s the perfect time for a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Trouble is, I have a horror of being thought lazy. Read more about Lazy Bones
I knew Thomas Ahlstrom as part of our merry little band of would-be pranksters living in Chicago in the late 60's. There were me and my new husband, Barry Stoner, and Michael Hall, the latter two students at the Lutheran School of Theology on the South Side; Michael's wife Sherry; Carl Franzen, a friend of theirs from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota; and Thomas Ahlstrom. We called ourselves The Magic Strider, since most of us had read Tolkien. To me, Carl was always the Magic Strider himself. Thomas, however, was Gandalf. Read more about Thomas
