Early in the morning I set off from Truckee, California, to make my way down the mountain from Donner’s Pass to Sacramento. This trip ranks right up there with one of the more reckless and foolhardy things I’ve done in my life. Right up there with hitching thousands of miles alone from West Africa to…
In February I’ll be presenting a workshop at the Story Circle Network Memoir Conference in Austin. Here’s a more detailed look at my workshop. The post on the Telling Her Stories blog is titled: “Put Story Poems in Your Memoir Tool Box.”
The quirky makes life juicy, no? –a woman swimming in the outdoor heated pool wearing a wet suit and a thick stocking hat. –children huddling inside a hollowed out snow cave. –a famous poet at the next table. –a $20 tip on a modest dinner tab…left by a man who used to bus dishes. –a…
Sunday noon the Rigpa retreat at Squaw Creek ended with fireworks inside us and snow outside the windows. As we left Squaw Valley it felt as if we were driving in a convoy…mostly towards route 80 West…destination Sacramento. That was to be my route back to Lake County. It promised to be a rather a…
I’m in Squaw Valley, California, along with 300 other students at the annual Rigpa (my Tibetan Buddhist group) fall retreat. We’re staying in luxury at the Squaw Creek Resort. Many of us are handling details of business and family life while we’re here. Cell phones and laptops abound. It’s a ten day retreat…mostly a teaching…
Here is the second post in our Critique Cycle for Story Circle Network’s blog “Telling Her Stories. In the first post we discussed the definition and purpose of critique. In this post we discuss what the group’s responsibilities are to make a critique useful.
I’m in Squaw Valley, California at the Rigpa (my Buddhist group) fall retreat. We’re staying in luxury at the Squaw Creek Resort. When I arrived, I felt overwhelmed. It was just too big. Just too fancy. When I came into my room, I immediately set to work. All six pillows were immediately tossed to the…
Here’s my gratitude short list: Mainly, grateful for continued connections with friends across the U.S. and all over the world. Continuity is sweet in a life on the move. How good it is to come back to Lake County…to see it’s beauties…and have friends who still want to see me. So often a move has…
WHAT MAKES REAL MEN TICK? When I was a college student back in the 1960’s, my roommate and I decided, after a series of disappointing love affairs, that we were going to study men and try to figure out what made them tick. We were tired of the insipid frat boys and wimpy intellectuals. We…
I arrived in Lake County a few days before Thanksgiving in order to visit friends and one of the landscapes of mountain and water that hug my heart. The weather was unseasonably warm with blue skies and intense light. My host loaded up our kayaks into his truck. We paddles from the county park over…