Dear D ( Read more... )

The sign is new, and contrasts strangely with the tangled growth behind it. Blue and russet and metallic gold are not colors normally seen beside the roads of the Florida Panhandle.

"John David Patten Community Park", the sign proclaims.

A rutted track runs perpendicular to the blacktop highway. Pale sand beckons us through spindly pines and a few ( Read more... )

Early on in our acquaintance, D. insisted on our doing the "Please Understand Me" personality typing quiz.  I thought it was interesting, and went along.  According to the test, we are almost perfect opposites -- which is supposed to be, counterintuitive though it is, a good thing.

I also scored high on "judgemental".  Not usually considered a good ( Read more... )

When the husband and I moved to North Florida to raise greyhounds, I quit a time clock-punching job that involved precision timing in the exposures of various materials to light.  I had gotten so that I could count down a thirty second, or a two minute,  exposure accurately, without the darkroom timer.  The hour and the minute and the second hands ( Read more... )

". . . . Add another 1.8 degrees and as many as 2 billion people could be without water and about 20 percent to 30 percent of the world’s species near extinction. Also, more people start dying because of malnutrition, disease, heat waves, floods and droughts-all caused by global warming. That would happen around 2050, depending on the level of ( Read more... )

After "journeying with no destination" for three years, J decided that we needed to get serious; after all, he was looking for a wife when he met me.  I was not, I'd informed him in the beginning, looking for a husband.  Three years had not changed that resolve.  So, we parted two weeks ago, as friends but with the proviso of no further ( Read more... )

When I bought this house, I knew from the bright green parallel lines of grass, and the feeling of walking on a bog in the yard, that the septic system was in dubious health.  The guy I bought it from seemed amazed to hear that a septic tank needs to be cared for; he assured me that it hadn't been pumped in the 20 years he'd owned the house and had ( Read more... )

It was a wonderful weekend.  Drove to Apalachicola to visit D.; we went sailing, ate fabulous food, and I met most of his new, highly creative and interesting friends ( Read more... )

I am stepping out of my office, coffee cup in hand, homing in on that wonderful-smelling hazelnut coffee someone has made in the break room. Kitty is hurrying down the hall toward me, full of news: "Did you hear? She's dead!"

JoAnn comes up the hall from behind me. "Who's dead?"

"Anna Nicole Smith! They found her body in a motel room in Hollywood, ( Read more... )

Hard to believe so much time has passed. It hasn't really been wasted, yet i'm hard-pressed to come up with anything extraordinary that's happened in the past month.

That is, perhaps, the real gift of "real" writers -- they can take the components of any ordinary experience: a trip to the grocery store, standing in line at the fast food joint, ( Read more... )