My Blog
Over the past year, there has been a 20% increase in hate crimes in major metropolitan areas across the United States. These incidents – ranging from malicious harassment and property damage to direct violence – are motivated by biases against the victims based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity and disability. Many believe, and rightfully so, that this spike is in direct relation to the rancorous 2016 presidential election. Unfortunately, this phenomenon has hit close to home as members of the Seattle…
So today I made a list of all the failures I’ve had over the past ten or so years. Yeah, I know. It’s not something a person would normally want to do. It’s a tad masochistic. (“Ya think?” yells the peanut gallery that sits in the back row of my brain.) But sometimes a chick can’t help it. Sometimes I just have to stare it all down and see what I can decipher. Maybe a comforting metaphor is lingering just beneath the surface. Maybe not.…
Dear Melania Trump, Elaine Chao, Janna Ryan and other Wives of the GOP, Although we reside on different planets in separate universes, I'm writing this as a fellow human sister and with the faith that you are fundamentally good women. I’m confident that somewhere in the sacred depths of your beautiful hearts, you know with complete certainty that something is terribly wrong. While you may not be in a position to express your gnawing trepidation out loud, I suspect that you understand, without question, we’re…
On New Year’s Eve, I received a package from my sister Mary. It contained a tiny silver Buddha, smiling delightfully, thumbs-up. According to the box, his name is Syd. The card that came with him said, “Silver opens the mind and lights the way forward. It is reflection, insight and wisdom.” I held the tiny silver Buddha in my hand and was immediately smitten. These are overwhelming days, loaded with uncertainty, fear and worry. As I’ve articulated in previous posts, our collective psyche has been…
Things are rather heavy these days. There's a pall draping our collective psyche. I can see and feel it everywhere: on social media, in the weary faces of both loved ones and strangers, in the low vibration that moans just beneath the surface of everything. We’re despondent still over a looming Trump presidency and all – known and unknown – that it brings. We’re grieving so many things, including the demise of the country we thought we knew. We’re awash in ambiguity and it hurts.…
At this point, the shock has worn off. We’ve crawled out from the rubble of our collective disbelief and disappointment and are regaining our equilibrium, uneasy as it may be. We’re slowly squaring with the ice cold reality that Donald Trump – a deranged, unqualified and dangerously erratic narcissist –is the president elect and, even more chilling, that millions of our fellow Americans wanted this. We all wish this were a horrible dream that we’ll eventually wake up from. But with each creepy cabinet appointment...each…
There is probably nothing I can say about the unhinged narcissistic man-toddler that is the GOP candidate for president that hasn’t already been said. OK, maybe there’s one thing: If said man-toddler even thinks about grabbing my genitalia, I’ll give him a swift knee to the nuts and as hard a right hook as I can power to the upside of his oddly-coiffed head. Moving on, we’ve watched the presidential campaign for months now. We’ve seen the debates. We’ve expressed our outrage again and again. In…
" or play with stupid apps on my phone" It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. The last thing I put up was in July and was about my young nomad taking off again. Prior to that, I wrote a post about a Yayoi Kusama exhibit I’d recently seen in Houston. That was back in June. The “Out to Lunch” sign has been hanging on the blog for a couple of months now. Obviously, this is unlike me. While…
Seattle, May 2016 As he put a few remaining things into his backpack and took care of a couple last minute tasks, like vacuuming his room and boxing up his computer, it took everything I had to keep from crying. Trying not to cry takes enormous effort. It’s like wrestling a bear or beating back a wildfire. My chest constricted. It was hard to breathe. A swell of sadness rolled through my body, too strong to contain or manage. But I…
Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity I was in Houston visiting family when I heard the news about the massacre in Orlando. Like everyone else, I was stunned, horrified and deeply saddened. Now just over a week since the shootings, I continue to cycle through an array of emotions. Mostly, I feel grief for all the lives that were lost and heartache for the families of the victims. I've also been wrestling with a bleak despair over the state of our humanity and…
