On Sunday, I drove across the Cascade Mountains to sunny Yakima for a three day teaching conference. In this city my grandparents once called home, I let the sun melt away my everyday stresses and felt my curiosity perk up. While strolling the neighborhood, I discovered churches with large blocks of dark stone rising above the city… Read more
words
Every summer about this time, I remember the libraries have programs for reading with prizes to encourage reading. My mom tells me I began doing this in the card catalog days of my grade school years, and most summers I’ve remembered to sign my kids up before the end of July. (The libraries are always generous and let… Read more
Over ten years ago, I took a class on adult psychology in a small classroom on Pill Hill in Seattle. The professor stood in front of us in a button up shirt with slacks that blended into the dark background of the room behind. As he described his experience of a wrenching divorce, he said he… Read more
Last Sunday, I went to the closing ceremony of the Whitney Memorial United Methodist Church, a congregation of Japanese Americans who voted to shut their doors this spring. I sat in the back of Puyallup United Methodist Church in a different pew from where I sit most Sundays. Here I saw Shirley DeLarme and Ann Berney… Read more
Criticism and rejection are the best parts of becoming a writer or other artist. I know. That’s insane. Even as I write this, I am avoiding re-reading critiques I recently received. I am avoiding it like I avoided driving down the icy road where my van slid and almost tipped over the edge of a cliff last January… Read more
The moment I waved the gate card at the unresponsive lock, I knew I should have read the email before making the hour and a half drive out to Lake Trask. My boys and I looked up to see the sign on the gate boldly telling us to park our vehicle and check in at… Read more
The other day my son said, “You know you’ve got a LOT of books on writing on your bookshelf. Have you read all of those?” Mostly, I told him. (He wasn’t particularly impressed — just astounded that I could stay focused for that long on reading books about putting words on paper.) And he doesn’t even… Read more
It’s an absolutely crazy idea but one of my colleagues and I are going to start an art club at work. It’s crazy because who has that kind of time? It’s crazy because I should focus more on my writing. It’s crazy because we so often want to flee the building at the end of… Read more