Suprise Me

I must confess that I have never been very interested in science. Conversations on scientific topics tend to make my eyes glaze over. My only good science experience was in first grade. We had a lovely teacher named Miss Garcelon, who had just graduated from teachers college, and we were her first class. She decided, for… Read More

Our first nest was rather humble. We really couldn’t afford to do much feathering of this nest. Read More

(Mom) was drawn to challenging recipes.  With mixed results.  Her sardine pie became the stuff of family legend, firmly anchoring the bottom end of the results scale. Read More

I never asked to be a movie critic. And yet it happened. People don’t believe me when I say this; they assume movie reviewing is such a plum job that I must have scrambled and hustled to get there. Not really. In 1991 I’d been working at the San Francisco Chronicle seven years when the… Read More

In the early 1970s, I landed back in San Francisco. For three years, me, my partner and her two children had been living a gypsy life, traveling from one collective household to another, from San Francisco to the Colorado Rockies, to western Massachusetts and finally, back to San Francisco. Read all about it in The… Read More

A lesson was learned on Dover Street Read More

I came across that Oscar Wilde quote early on, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” Made sense to me and I put it into practice in every area of my life that I could. So I have usually taken the easy path, the comfortable, the delicious way quite… Read More

“You will always be friends” the counselor told us.  We were too entwined and besides, she had seen it repeatedly in the women’s community, a fluidity of friends and lovers staying connected despite everything.  I said nothing but promised myself, “Oh no, we won’t”. Read More

Patti and I simultaneously glanced up a side street, spotted a pizzeria, and nodded knowingly at each other. Read More

This was my first big revelation--not only had I thought I was different, I really was different. Not only was I in a different physical package from the rest of the group, I had a unique personality profile.  Read More