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Showing posts from 2015

Candles and flowers

Saturday I got nothing done, thinking and reading and watching things unfold. I woke up to "Did you hear about Paris?" And then, like most of the rest of the world, did almost nothing but hear about it all day long. I went for a walk this morning to quiet all the chatter still in my head. Social media, augh. It won't let me stop thinking about Paris and Lebanon and Syria and bombs and horror and how quickly fear turns into the same kind of hate that caused the horror in the first place. If that makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to me, either. But I don't think love and fear happen together. And some of the chatter helps. A huge conversation with the whole world on what to do when people suffer. It's amazing we can do this. My favorite story today was the little 3 year old French boy and his father being interviewed by a reporter, and the boy thinking they might have to move to a new house because of the mean men with guns who

Rat Gets a Little Honor

My favorite slave boy, Rat, prefers to be invisible most of the time, but his story (told by him, written by me) picked up an Honorable Mention this month from the Utah Arts Original Writing Competition 2015. You can see the results of all the category winners here . Thanks, Utah Arts! Love that Typewriter on Green painting.

Barefoot Style

Apparently, going barefoot is out of style. Bare feet run fast--if you're Kenyan Not that it was ever quite in , but minimal shoes and barefooting were sort of a thing. The Haitians and Jamaicans grew up without shoes, and those guys were fast . So were the Kenyans. And Zola Budd. And that secret running tribe in the Copper Canyons of Mexico, who ran in thin, leather huaraches. There was Barefoot Ken-Bob, the barefoot guru. And Barefoot Ted. But then people got injured when they stepped out of their ultra-cushioned shoes onto the actual ground, or into a pair of shoes with no raised heel and very little padding.  LOTS of people got injured. Achilles tendon damage. Foot bone stress fractures. The military actually banned minimal shoes. The rash of injuries isn't too surprising, when you think about it--something like spending your whole life in a cast and suddenly expecting your leg to hold you up. Or walking around wearing sunglasses all the time and then taking t

Apologizing to the Birds, again

*Note:  I wrote this post a couple of years ago, after the Boston Marathon bombings. In the following months, my son  had brain surgery, his friend's sister was diagnosed with leukemia, my daughter got an ulcer on a major artery and almost bled to death, and a friend of mine lost a daughter in a tragic accident up the canyon. And then last month our bishop and half his family went down in a plane crash, and my son asked me, "Why do so many things keep happening?"  A part of me wanted to say, it could be worse. Things could be so much worse. We live in a little bubble of safety here below our Wasatch mountains. But I didn't tell him that. It wouldn't change the pain. Or the shock of each new thing. So I just said, I don't know. But there was this: my kids all wanted to stay  a little closer to home and to each other for awhile. And whenever we saw one of our neighbors, we cried together. I still don't have an answer. But I think we all love ea

We Are Hungry

I love food--it's a fact. And I'm picky. It has to be good food. If I don't like it, I don't swallow. No, not that bad, Ratatouille. But it's true my neighbors have become addicted to my hot fudge sauce, to the point where they sneak the jar into the closet and eat it cold with a spoon. And they won't share with their their sisters when there isn't enough to go around on everybody's ice cream.  Worse, I'm afraid I've turned my children into food snobs. It's sad. And expensive. And a really big problem, because I write novels and I DON'T HAVE TIME TO COOK ALL THE TIME! And nobody at my house will eat frozen burritos. And my garden is still dead. Missing last year's garden Especially the tomatoes          And the fresh basil to put on the tomatoes I made food yesterday. It was supposed to last for two dinners and several days' lunches at least, but it's already gone and there's nothing to eat