News + Muse

pass the moonshine

2013-05-18T02:07:48Z

Happy to know that my piece "Flashback," will appear in the upcoming Spring/Summer issue of moonShine review.

I left my baggage in San Francisco

2013-05-10T20:35:44Z

I'm not afraid to say it: I have phobias. Fears of flying, bears, raw chicken juice, errant microbes, heights. I’m pretty afraid of heights. This news came late to the friends we recently visited in the East Bay. After a hike up Albany’s Indian Rock (the closest I’ll get to Machu Picchu), then a thrill ride up and down the streets of San Francisco, they took us to the tallest point in the city -- Twin Peaks.

To my left, I could see the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz; to my right, the East Bay and some nice glinty hills and buildings. My friends called this Oakland. In front of me was a strange cloud formation that reminded me of a show I watched as a kid called, “The Secrets of Isis.” Market Street divided the city in half like a graham cracker.

I couldn't make out the Evel Knievel hills I had been on just an hour before. Everything had flattened out and become part of something larger and more important. It was instant perspective, as though all my fears had gathered up in that cloud and looked me straight in the eye. Ok, maybe not “all” my fears, but the irrational ones had drifted out there, allowing me to take in the panoramic beauty of the city and bay below.

When I was in middle school, my stepdad worked at Fort Baker and we visited him often. I never tired of looking at the bay and the fog gathering around the Golden Gate Bridge. Back then, my biggest fear was wearing the wrong pair of jeans, but I remember feeling a pit in my stomach every time I looked at Alcatraz. The way it lurked out there scared me (as a good prison should), yet I was also drawn to it –– how it tainted the beauty of its surroundings while contributing to it in a hollow, imperious way.

Driving back to the East Bay over both the Golden Gate and Richmond bridges, I didn’t feel that bridge-induced anxiety I usually feel. Like Alcatraz or that in-my-face cloud, my fears were nearby but out of my way. Maybe some fears, the irrational ones, don’t have to be conquered. They can just sit there, puffy and overblown, powerful but separate, threatening to hold us back but daring us to go on.

it was a dream, or I actually won NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" contest

2013-03-11T14:18:18Z

I think it's true, because there's my picture, lower left (taken by my very patient friend Koren Cranford). I'm as surprised as anybody, but so honored to have been chosen. Grateful to Guy Raz and everyone at NPR, to novelist and contest judge Mona Simpson, and to the creative writing students who read and selected my story. Also very grateful to my writing gurus for showing me how it's done (and for encouraging me to keep at it), as well as my family/friends for helping me hone my voicemail skills. Definitely what my cousin Kate would call a "lifestamp" moment.

Link to story on NPR, "Sorry For Your Loss"

Link to front page Charlotte Observer 3/18/13 (by Pam Kelley)

Link to Creative Loafing article 3/21/13 (by Natalie Joy Howard)

speak softly, unless it's time to rant

2013-02-27T04:35:00Z

"Be still when you have nothing to say;
when genuine passion moves you,
say what you've got to say, and say it hot."
- D.H. Lawrence

the joys of car-parenting

2013-01-13T17:13:10Z

Thanks to Michelle Icard at Michelle in the Middle for inviting me to be a guest blogger on her excellent website. I wrote about how the car has replaced the kitchen table as the family's favorite place to tackle the big issues. Michelle in the Middle is brimming with wit, wisdom and resources for those who either have middle schoolers or have flashbacks of being one, so be sure to look around. Enjoy!

"Parenting from the Driver's Seat," by Lisa Rubenson

small comforts

2013-01-11T14:32:00Z

Whenever there was trouble in the family, there were always Saltines. My grandmother kept the crackers in a pock-marked tin that she’d bought about twenty years into her marriage. It was round, with a brown top and actual-sized pictures of crackers all around it. Aloof and imperious, the adjective, “Oven-fresh,” hovered in italics above the name of the product, promising a hollow, impossible warmth inside. The tin stayed behind the chipped veneer of the middle cabinet, ready for any disaster.

Aunts and uncles, my dad – eventually my cousins and I – would come into the kitchen in various states of distress. We’d search for the tin like it was something holy. Holding it against our chests, we’d grip the lip of the lid and pull it with a desperate force. Then we’d fumble for the freshest cracker – often ripping open a new sleeve to take the one in the middle. The act of smearing on the peanut butter, as thick as the cracker could hold, gave us the necessary courage. We would walk and talk in circles around my grandmother, unburdening ourselves, while crumbs of worry and guilt fell to the floor.

My father was the oldest, so when my grandmother died, he tucked the tin under his arm and put it in the back of his car. The others teased him about taking it, but no one smiled when he drove off with all of the family’s secrets.

a little alliteration anyone?

2012-11-27T01:39:54Z

From the word nerd files: Saw this walking along San Francisco's Embarcadero en route to the Ferry Building. The editor in me wanted to get out my red pencil and turn this quote into something a little less...hyperbolic. But the word-lover in me reveled in the alliteration and the onomato-poeticism (yuh-huh, I can make up words on my own blog) of the cable cars' "clangor" and the "symphony" they created in the "cosmopolis." It's impossible to read this quote out loud without getting all mellifluous right there on the city sidewalk. Extra points for the clangor of cars in the background.

days of wine and wordplay

2012-11-19T21:07:00Z

I bought these bottles based soley on the label-writer's nod to English majors everywhere.

words with friends (Yard Art Day)

2012-09-11T02:33:00Z

More than 200 "yardists" from all over Charlotte and as far away as California, turned their front yards and porches into galleries for the first annual Yard Art Day on Sept. 3, 2012. This event, envisioned by Charlotte artist and photographer Deborah Tripplett, was a way to show the world what a vibrant arts community we have here in Charlotte. www.yardartday.org

We invited friends to stop by and share their favorite word with us. Top picks were: "kerfuffle," "crepuscular," "tomfoolery," "serendipity," and "spork."

“auto-larynx-blog-o-phobia,” or fear of talking to oneself on one’s blog

2012-08-17T21:03:25Z

I used to keep a journal, the old school kind with a lock and hiding place. I’d write nonstop for days like I was Robinson Crusoe documenting everything that happened to me from dawn to dusk. Then a day would go by and I’d forget to write. Then two days, then a month or even a year. The next time I’d pick it up and see those sad, empty pages staring up at me, I’d spend paragraphs apologizing for my neglect.

Here we go again. This blog has had no new entries since April. It’s now August. In the marketing business, every day that goes by without a post, tweet or virtual shout out, is like an empty billboard on a well-traveled highway. Worse, it can be a one-way ticket to the city of irrelevance. If you fall off the radar and no one hears the blip, did you really fall?

I have no problem sharing my goofy observations and personal adventures in a Facebook post. But blogging about what I’m doing professionally feels strange, as if the work stuff is somehow more private. I admire those that can do it well, with just the right blend of self-promotion, altruism and humility. I’m interested in what those people have going on. I’m even happy for them. So, why is the sound of my own “voice” so hard to hear? Is it because I’m a low-talker? Because I'm writing about me writing? It’s all so… meta.