Some New Stuff

I've reorganized this thing, blog-web page combo thing, a bit. Over on the top right under the mysterious header photo, you'll now see two new pages,"Stories" and "The Book." On the Stories page, you'll find short pieces, mostly fiction, a few little slice of life essays. I wrote the current one on a dare, and … Continue reading Some New Stuff

The Lovely Quotes

We write what we don't know we know. -Grace Paley Art is transferring feeling from one heart to another. - Tolstoy Only truth can do that. - Andre Dubus III, the author and teacher, probably best known for his novel The House of Sand and Fog, at tonight's compelling and hilarious opening keynote of the Pacific … Continue reading The Lovely Quotes

Shinny

June's Story of the Week was called Shinny. Shinny is the name Canadians - and some eastern Washingtonians, I've since learned - give to pick-up hockey. Shinny It was super cold that day, but Will decided to cut school to go play shinny on the skating pond anyway. The ice’d be good and hard and … Continue reading Shinny

Cabbage, 1934

This is a piece I wrote at a Hugo House class this spring, taught by Cathy Kirkwood, called "Writing the Other." Cabbage, 1934 She stands in her kitchen, near the refrigerator, as far from the sink full of dirty dishes as she can get. It does not help that there is a small window above … Continue reading Cabbage, 1934

Faith, hope, and charity

This was the kind of bar she never went into, never looked at twice. A dive bar, and not a cool dive bar for yuppies who wanted to trick themselves into believing they were slumming by drinking their microbrews in a place with walls covered in graffiti and waitresses covered with multiple piercings. No, this was a real dive bar – graffiti and piercings, sure, but not a microbrew within hailing distance. Cheap beer, cheap whiskey, and the chance to buy bad cocaine if you had the cash and the courage. Loud music, mostly country. Big guys wearing faded t-shirts with ripped off sleeves under denim vests covered in Harley patches, tattoos twitching on their beefy arms. Women in spike-heeled black boots whose curves overflowed their tight jeans and whose hair showed the effects of too many bad perms.