Trusting Strangers I was out late walking alone. It’s always a challenge to adjust to the time changes, but here, in June, where darkness is only a brief few hours in the middle of the night, I couldn’t sleep. All my life, darkness has come after dinner. There’s a reasonable…

…it’s an old habit “It is solved by walking,” said St. Augustine, a Black North African saint, philosopher, and doctor born in 354. I guess that means I can’t ask him what “it” was. What did walking solve? I’m not sure, but as a dedicated walker myself, I have some idea. I have that…

Garlands of flowers, a beaming bride in white, young women attend in turquoise, waiting their turn to be given away. Guests arrive in finery The men in serious clothes, dark suits. Who ever thought of giving a man away? …

…And Will Hold Us Down by Any Means Possible Talking to my grandniece as she was about to finish high school, I asked: “Are you going to go to college?” “No. I’m going to be a wife and mother. What is the point?” She responded. She’d grown up in a…

Or Anyone’s Body — Governments are established to rule among people, not within a person’s body. Look at any definition of government. From Webster’s Dictionary: “exercise of political power in directing a people, a country, etc.; system by which community is ruled.” Let’s be logical. Can the government control what a man does with…

Do you judge people at a glance? — So many jokes and stories are told about old people and women — blondes in particular — that even if you’re old and/or blonde, you may buy into the assumptions that are made about you. Of course, racial stereotypes have been in our society longer than we have and getting rid of them isn’t easy. We may judge people based on their weight, their clothing, hairstyle, the car they drive, where they live or a disability.

Learn by automatic writing — Telling stories connects us in a way that dry facts don’t. I have just finished teaching a memoir class for people in my community. The results, I hope, will be that a few more people are writing their stories, perhaps more skillfully. So many reasons exist for us to tell…

What’s that like? — I’m the grandmother of a transgender person. What’s that like? Unsettling. When my son called one day, and along with his child — who until then had been one of two identical twin girls — they told me she, now he, felt he was male, not female. Not an overnight…

I just returned from a trip to Tucson, where I saw my granddaughter, Melissa, graduate from the University of Arizona with degrees in Music Performance (Flute) and Biomedical Engineering. A strange combination, you might think. In any case, three generations were there to enjoy and celebrate. When we started planning…