At the gala celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, our group of longtime members sat laughing and talking like children at the kids table on Thanksgiving.
Read MoreI have been spending a lot of time with the Guadalupe over the last few months.
Read MoreLast May when we returned to Santa Monica for a visit, we were greeted by the same weather that had welcomed me when I moved to Ocean Park 20 years ago.
Read MoreDella became a widow on her 35th wedding anniversary. At 58 she was not sure what she would do.
Read MoreMy Grandmother would entertain us with her stories. Some evenings, at our urging, she would recite
The Spell of the Yukon by Robert Service, the sad improbable tales of Sam McGee and Dan McGrew.
There were lessons in the lyrics.
Last December was the first month in over 30 years I did not send an invoice to a client.
Read MoreIt was the toughest job I have ever had and one of the most rewarding.
Read MoreWe were 1950's free range kids. Woolman Street was our playground—we ran down the sidewalk and clambered up the steps to our small yards and porches to play.
Read MoreJust outside my window the garden brings hope and solace. It has lessons if we pay attention.
Read MoreIt was the first Saturday of spring, March 23, and the conditions couldn't have been better — 70-degree temps and an offshore wind.
Read MoreIt's not quite dawn and I am standing at the top of a dune at White Sand National Park. Cold, anxious and mesmerized by the breaking light, I can't believe I am here.
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Coq au Vin is the signature dish in my culinary repertoire. I use Craig Claiborne's recipe from the tattered New Times Cookbook that was given to me by my sister for my first Christmas as a newlywed in 1975.
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He said his name was Leslie as he smiled and gestured to his collection of cowboy hats. "Visiting from out of town?" "New York City," we replied, which was no doubt our first mistake.
Read MoreThe three of us, my sister Dianne, nephew Eamon and I, were standing on Jackson Street in front of what had once been my Grandmother Egan's house.
Read MoreSlipping into the pool for the first time in nearly two years, it came back to me—the sense of well-being that I find in the water.
Read MoreIn the last year of my father's life he obsessed about his father's grave. His life had been upended in nearly every way, yet regularly he would call the office at St. Patrick's Cemetery in Butte, Montana to assure that his father's grave was being cared for.
Read MoreWhen I was growing up, my grandmother used to reminisce about how she ran away to the icehouse to meet my grandfather for their planned elopement. It wasn't until I discovered a hundred-year-old newspaper clipping in a box of family photos that I began to imagine a more complicated story.
Read MoreIn late April, for our final assignment in my online photography workshop we were asked to shoot self-portraits. I don't know many photographers who enjoy self-portraiture and I am no exception. But I had a concept.
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Although I may be a fallen away Catholic, I am a practicing Guadalupana. She is my go-to intercessor whenever there is a request for prayers or when I need a little personal grace.
Read MoreIn the time of Corona, celebrating special events requires exceptional ingenuity. Without question one of the most creative to date was the elaborate virtual birthday party orchestrated by one high school girlfriend for another.
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