TRUE CRIME - TRUE LOVE MEMOIR

Did you know our New Year’s celebration comes from the feast of the Roman god with two faces, Janus? One face looked into the past, and the other turned to the future. Romans made promises to Janus, and now we make promises to ourselves in the form of New Year’s Day resolutions. Speaking of resolutions,…

Congratulations to our awesome contest winners! It was such fun seeing some of you compete and more fun learning something interesting about you. This was my way of saying thanks for being here and I thought it’d be a good way to get to know you a little better. I appreciate *all* of you! I…

In honor of the abundance of Thanksgiving, I’m offering two good news stories.  My first offering is a follow-up announcement to a previous story.  Seven months ago, in April of this year, I wrote a blogpost about 2018 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Jim Allison, an immunologist who discovered a cure for cancer. Back then, I…

I wanted to do this Facebook contest to thank you all for being here, as well as to learn a little bit about you. In the spirit of aloha, gratitude and connection – THANK YOU – and good luck! *To enter:1) Like this Facebook post2) and comment on it: What are you secretly awesome at…

A scientific study conducted in an Indian hospital concluded that the powerful Mahamrityunjaya Mantra, chanted repeatedly to coma patients with severe brain trauma, increased their survival rate by more than twenty-five percent. How is this possible? According to an article titled Neurosurgeons Studying Impact of Mahamrityunjaya Mantra, only if we can think of life and…

My cat family lived happily outside. The only times we touched was when Mama Kitty cautiously rubbed her furry back against my leg. She trusted me to feed her and her offspring, now longer than she is, but not nearly so rolly polly. I guess she ate as often as she could get me to…

Suddenly, I awoke from a dream: I look through my sheer living room curtains. Barry’s BMW and my Hyundai sit side by side in the darkened garage. The streetlight shining in front of our house illuminates a man between our cars walking toward our house. He doesn’t look threatening. I don’t know him. I’d recognize…

During frequent downpours in our rainy mountain valley, the cat family stayed dry. Mama Cat moved them from patio to under the house when they turned six weeks old. They were safer there, sleeping on top of boogie boards and ice chests and Barry’s and my cardboard boxes. I’m glad this is Mama Cat’s last…

Part 3 Before the cats appeared, I’d hung a bird feeder in a Madagascar Dragon Tree. This changed the ecology of the down-sloping backyard overflowing with strawberry guava, tangerine and banana trees, ferns, and anthurium plants (which my mom used to call “little boy flowers”). Dozens of rice birds, cardinals, and a few wild green parrots…

The good news about climate change is that it’s still not too late to reverse it if the people of the world all pull together. The best news about that is, we have incredible young activists marching, protesting and fighting to get people to do just that.  Climate control is the top priority of the…

Part 2 On a cool February morning three and a half years ago, I carried a bucket of towels and T-shirts to hang on the rope clothesline spanning the length of the patio. Hearing a rustling sound, I looked down. Wedged between the wheelchair and a chair protected by a plastic mattress cover, three baby…

Part 1 In 2016, three emaciated cats that were barely-bigger-than-kittens hunted geckos and rats under million dollar homes on this quiet mountain street. They optimistically raced up trees, trying to catch birds perched in shade trees in the overgrown backyard of the sixty year old house where my fiancé Barry and I had lived since…