Food has always been important to me. Happiness is sitting together around any table sharing a meal and stories. A glass of wine, fresh water, coffee to linger, talking through the night. My mother taught me when someone was ill, take them a pot of soup, because a...

Bruce and I have been self-isolating in our apartment since March 16, two days before Governor Jay Inslee ordered Washingtonians to stay at home after the coronavirus outbreak shut down Seattle. Fifty days and counting. The stay-at-home order will be lifted at the end...

The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle, and the hills the greenest green…Perry Como, 1969, Seattle* It’s been a year since we left Montana and moved to Seattle. Everything is different here, including the sky. Our Idaho-born neighbor told us that the trouble...

I  published my book Planets & Passages, Tales of a Blacktop Gypsy late November 2018. My best friend, Mary Lawlor O’Hara, telephoned me on my birthday, as she always did, one week after publication. She wasn’t feeling well. In fact, she had just had a heart attack,...

The house on the hill stands empty, her windows dark, save one, the red and golden stained-glass cactus rose, glowing in late-day autumn sun. Twenty-seven years, as the first deep snow of winter fell, we moved into our hand-built house on the hill. There was no glass...

Did you know that June 16th is National Cannoli Day? I didn’t know it either and I’m 100% Italian American. Or at least I thought I was until DNA testing showed I am Middle Eastern too, with some ancient Saracen thrown in. While researching an article I was writing...

Murals are primordial. Our ancestors painted on walls 40,000 years ago, a celebration of continuity. In modern day, murals express the concerns and aspirations of a community. Mexican artist and muralist, Diego Rivera, painted scenes of revolution as well as everyday...

Sonny Bone’O is a friendship magnet. He and I cannot walk anywhere in the neighborhood without someone commenting, what a beautiful Boxer he is. People ask to pet him.  This is a good thing, especially when I’m down in the dumps, missing my old Montana home and...

How would I meet people and make friends in my Lake City neighborhood? Thirty-two thousand people living within four square miles was daunting. I happened upon the Lake City Branch of the Seattle Public Library within walking distance of my apartment. Oh, happy day!...

Born c. 1820 in what is now Rainier Beach, Washington, Kikisoblu, the eldest daughter of Chief Seattle is recognized around the world as Princess Angeline. Princess Angeline became famous as the subject of one of the earliest portraits taken by Edward Sheriff Curtis...