SHORTS, NOVELS, AND OTHER THINGS
I love forsythia, their delicate yellow flowers with the barely detected scent. What I didn’t like, when I was a kid, was the fact that a forsythia branch was the means by which punishment was enforced in our home. While my mother had a Master’s degree in verbal tongue-lashing, my father was in charge of …
F is for Forsythia Read More »
Although eucalyptus is used in the saunas of many spas, I was first encountered its unique odor when we moved to California in the 1970s. Eucalyptus trees were first planted in California in the mid-1850s for use in shipbuilding, similar to its use in Australia. However, the California blue gum eucalyptus split and curled when …
E is for Eucalyptus Read More »
Okay, this is not pleasant for almost everyone else, but this smell was certainly integral to my life as a teacher of human anatomy. I taught in a dissection lab for over 40 years and the smell of the embalmed bodies is one that lingers – not in just memory but also on your clothes. …
D is for Dead Body Read More »
Of all the spices in my spice drawer, cinnamon is the one I use most often. In addition to its wonderful aroma, it also has medicinal properties: studies have shown that it relieves arthritis pain, lowers LDL cholesterol and blood sugar, and boosts cognitive function and memory. What I like about it is that it …
I’ll bet not a lot of my readers have ever heard of this product. It comes in a square green metal tin with a cow udder printed on the side and a cow’s head and flowers on the top. This is because it was developed – way back in 1899 – to soothe and heal …
Anise is a smell (and a taste) that had dire repercussions in my twenties. I love its taste and smell, and there are two liqueurs with that flavor: anisette and absinthe. Absinthe, also called wormwood or the green fairy, was banned in the US until the 21st century because of its supposedly addictive nature. But …
A friend encouraged me to sign up for the A-Z Challenge, for which you blog every week day but Sunday during the month of April. Using one letter a day, in alphabetical order, you blog about something that begins with that letter. An interesting challenge and an encouragement to write. Turns out I was number …
We’re having another dreary day of cold rain. We’ve had so many of them that my husband commented, “It’s like winter in Cleveland.” Not to deprecate Cleveland, but we lived there for five years, and the winters were pretty depressing. Having to curtail my activities because of another shoulder replacement, except for …
It’s Like Winter in Cleveland Read More »
I’ve been given lots of advice lately about self-publishing, especially once I told my friends I’m too old to work and wait through finding an agent, who then finds a publisher, who then may want me to re-write my book (yet again). After all, Death in a Red Canvas Chair was something that started out …
Working at Self-Publishing Read More »
With apologies to Brittany Spears: I just had another shoulder replacement. This is the consequence of my competitiveness – competitive swimming, tennis, field hockey, basketball – that lasted long after a normal person would have put some of these activities aside, mainly because I wanted to get better at each sport. But there is a …
Woops, I Did It Again Read More »
