Worrywart
I was born without a sense of humor. I am, however, very high-strung. Not a good combination. A few years ago, I decided that the key to managing stress in my life was humor. I just had to learn how to...
View ArticleParenthood: The Job You Can’t Quit
“I stink at being a parent, and I don’t want to do it anymore. All my kids are going to end up in therapy, and I’d just rather go hiking really.” (via pictures funny16.com) If you’re a parent, you’ve...
View ArticleFar Out: Best First Lines of Sci Fi and Horror Novels (that I Think You...
The modern American reading public has the collective attention span of a stressed-out, sleep-deprived gnat with ADD. At least, that’s what conventional wisdom would have us believe. English teachers,...
View ArticleYou Better Not Tell: Best First Lines of My Favorite 20th Century Novels
Once, in another life, I went to college – four of them actually, in three different states where I studied a variety of subjects, got disillusioned or distracted, dropped out, moved, got a another...
View ArticleOut There in the Cold: First Lines from Short Stories Fit for October
It’s here. Fall. Time to open the windows and let the wind in, to dig out sweatshirts pushed to the back of the closet. Afternoons are quiet now that cicadas are finally gone. Trees are turning. Geese...
View ArticleCatching Comet Dust – the Orionids
In 1066, Halley’s Comet appeared just before the Battle of Hastings. The comet passed particularly close to the earth that year and was described by witnesses as a bright new star in the heavens. King...
View ArticleBoo 2: More Scary Movies You Can Watch with Your Teens
In honor of Halloween, here is my second list of horror movies you can watch with your teenagers – a countdown of creepy culminating in a classic everyone (I think) should watch. Note: Unlike my first...
View ArticleDeserted Island: Shackleford Banks
At the southern end of a 200-mile string of barrier islands off the North Carolina coast known as the Outer Banks is Cape Lookout National Seashore. And at the southern end of that is an uninhabited...
View ArticleSanctuary
All my sanctuaries are green and empty of people or at the edge of the sea and deserted. Some are hard to get to and some are harder. Some have names like music – Aransas, Edisto, Hatteras, the South...
View ArticleLayers
Tiny trilobite graveyard preserved between the layers of a Cambrian Shale. There’s a spot on the Conasauga River in northwest Georgia where you can visit a late Cambrian ocean preserved in a...
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