After last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris, people started modifying their Facebook profile pictures with an overlay of the French flag, ostensibly to show support for Paris and the people impacted by the violence that took place across the city.  As with anything on Facebook, this quickly became a trend. Shortly thereafter came a wave ... Read More

Shit can hit the fan in a variety of ways: your angry bosshole impulsively fires you; your sweetheart walks out the door; you’re hit with a crushing unexpected expenditure; a project you’ve poured your soul into falls apart; you make a big mistake that you have no hope of fixing. These are just a few examples ... Read More

The New Year is here. It’s time to take a few deep breaths, square our shoulders and get it on. I’m feeling stupidly optimistic about the year ahead. Here are ten thoughts going in:   Weird is better than humorless. Experts agree. So, if you feel that special inclination, go for it. You’re not getting ... Read More

Two weeks ago today, our worlds intersected on the 12th Street Bridge. It was just the two of us. I was on my way home. You were seconds away from ending everything. I was unwitting. You were despondent. You climbed on the railing. I wondered what…but before I could even finish the thought, you jumped. Life ... Read More

This post has been temporarily removed.     *** Stay with us. Don’t sink to the bottom like a fish going to sleep. Be with the ocean moving steadily all night, not scattered like a rainstorm.   The spring we’re looking for is somewhere in this murkiness. See the night-lights up there traveling together, the ... Read More

A few weeks ago, former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson had a bit of a public unraveling at a press conference. He was speaking to reporters about his first fight card with Iron Mike Productions, a new promotion venture, when his remarks took an unexpected turn to the personal. He opened up that he’d recently ... Read More

  It seems that all roads lead back to grace and love. For the past several days, I’ve watched as a community has shared collective grief over the untimely passing of one of its own– Joshua Wolff, who died yesterday from pancreatic cancer. Joshua was a highly regarded jazz pianist and even more, a great ... Read More

  An Open Letter to LGBT Youth, My name is Katy. I live in Seattle. I am a writer, a jazz singer and the proud mother of a wonderful gay teenage son. You don’t know me. We’ve never met. But I am writing today to deliver this message: YOU MATTER You matter a lot. You ... Read More

  RIFF ON A PERFECT WORLD   In a perfect world….. The days would begin and end with a chant, a wink and a smile that stretches across miles, winding in and around the Milky Way and back again. There would be outbursts of spontaneous salsa dancing in grocery stores and it would be the ... Read More

I spent the weekend trying to write a new post for this blog. My plan was to kick off a new series about the creative process, starting on the topic of inspiration. Although I’d riffed on the subject in my journal for a week or more, when I sat down to write this weekend, I ... Read More