From the movie, Motherless Brooklyn, quote from actor Ed Norton playing Lionel Essrog: “Frank said anyone teaching God’s love while they hit you with a stick should be ignored on every subject.”

Can anyone relate to this quote? Catholic school memories could take you down this path if you went there for elementary and high schools. I can remember kids getting hit with yardsticks and yes, while they preached about God’s love. Nuns making us wear a dunce hat standing in a corner. There were so many instances of this type of poor teaching, aka abuse, school became how to…

This story stems from a writing prompt given to our writing group when I was in college.

“Zeus, aged, like the wind in his hair, but strong and virile as a youth, climbs Olympus and opens the mountain’s eye and reaches in to take the light that molds to his hand like it was a part of him. It is the source of his strength, it is eternally his, it is only his.”

Zeus reigned over everyone. He had fifty-four children and twenty-three consorts. A powerful Greek god and a protector of truth for which he doled out justice to…

Once upon a hill lived an old woman with scraggly grey hair wrapped in a bun. Wisps of curls laced her face top and side like bunches of frayed cotton balls. She rarely went to the market or outside except to tend her garden and then only on Sundays. Her mailbox was attached to her porch wall outside her door.

She ate from the abundance of her garden and froze the meat from her pigs and ate the eggs from her hens. Her garden produced mounds of greens and lettuces, tomatoes on vines, watermelons that trailed along her fence. …

How can you put ten thousand wishes
to bed with you
filling my head, my room, my bed,
and even my shoes

I see them on the walls all written out
there’s so many, what is that about?

Writing them down, there’s not
enough paper to fit them all
a sleepless night about to call

So I must choose and it’s too hard
so bear with me while I deal the cards

First thing would be sitting outside
the breeze on my face before I die

Being with family a lot, here and
out-of-state
reminding me now before it’s too…

Memories, fragments of a party,
a place, a time

When my children grew, it was
special to be home with them
no other memories like it
to nurture, to feed them, to love them
watching as infancy grew to school
age
what delightful memories remain,
many in pictures, but mostly in my
head and heart

There’s the memory of when our
dog jumped into the pool to save
screaming children just having
fun

Memories of people I’ve loved that
are gone that rush in like slips of
paper making me take note
the hurt of missing them turns
into joy as I remember…

Women are true revolutionaries. They fought for the right to vote, burned their bras, and continue to fight for equality. I like to think of women as masters of the universe too. Women are so often made to feel like we don’t know anything, and respect for our bodies and intelligence has been denied throughout the ages.

During the witch trials in the late 1600s, their sensitivities and healing methods were touted as witchcraft. Ignorance replaced sensibility and gave way to fear of the devil. Religious fanaticism put women on trial declaring them witches condemning them to death. 24 were…