We’d had the big white box of old 8mm and Super 8mm family movies for 40 years, handing it off from sister to sister after Mom died of breast cancer in 1975, each one of us promising to digitize or otherwise take care of these precious family heirlooms. No one had.

Then one summer in Santa Cruz, at the little beach house Mom had bought with an unexpected windfall the year she died, we set up an old projector my husband had found on eBay, along with a portable screen. …

Back in July 2020, when U.S. Senator Tom Cotton made news by saying that slavery was a “necessary evil” on which the United States was built, I learned a number of things they never taught me in school — mostly via The 1619 Project, the collection of scholarly essays that Cotton was trying to smear.

From Nikole Hannah-Jones — the Project’s founding mother, New York Times journalist, and Pulitzer Prize winner — I learned that Black people have done more to realize the ideals of this nation than any other group.

Think about it.

Probably the most famous line in…

It’s February 18, almost a year since the lock-down reality took hold— so much longer than we imagined it would last! I’ve gotten my first vaccination, and I know many others who can say the same. My second one is scheduled March 1. So I have to wonder, is there light at the end of the Covid tunnel?

I can’t say for certain. It could be my imagination. And maybe once we get out of the tunnel, we’ll find the world has irrevocably changed. …

Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than they know how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the fourteenth chapter of the novel Thirsty Work.

Waking up the next morning was like swimming through Jello. I struggled upwards, toward the light, toward the air, toward release, but the thick, viscous stuff made my arms and legs useless, kept…

How did America become what she is?

• A place where young people are 50 times more likely to die by gun violence than they would be in other comparable countries
• A place where 3 women a day are killed by their intimate partners or ex-s
• A place where 1.5 million children are living on the street
• A place where we lock up more people than anywhere else in the world

These signs of stark brutality contrast mightily with the laudable “American character” portrayed in countless articles, movies, and books. America: the city upon a hill, shining a beacon of hope to other countries around the world. America…

I’m not the only one who felt that getting Donald Trump out of the White House was a lot like getting rid of an abusive dad. I got up at 5am to watch him leave on live TV. It meant that much to me.

The cessation of his authority plays out in many ways. …

Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than they know how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the thirteenth chapter of my novel Thirsty Work.

It seemed we had crossed an invisible threshold. Suddenly, we were in the midst of a crowd. A half a block behind us, on Ursuline, one or two people meandered; but Bourbon Street…

Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than they know how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the twelfth chapter of my novel Thirsty Work.

It was growing dark by the time Cathy and I returned from Schwegmann’s with an armload of insecticide. We put Roach Motels in every cupboard, every corner, every closet in the flat. We…