Essays: Everyday Journeys
A personal story shares a truth, reveals a universal secret, transforms a relationship to a person or the past. It sets one on a new path or changes a view. We all have stories. Do you have one that needs telling? Contact me; I'd love to tell yours.
My Dream Machine
Daylight saving. Hooray, I say, along with, well, everyone, more light in the evening. In an attempt to make something of it, a lot of pundits, politicians and reporters will pick up the age-old debate of time change—to do or not to do. It’s a boring old debate. I’m with those that say it’s fine [...]
My Mother’s Colander
Heirlooms: Revisited, The NY Times published two paragraphs from this essay online on Nov. 22, 2022. From a submission by Meg Kenagy, 76, from Portland, Ore. “We cleaned out our mother’s kitchen, my sisters and I, in fits and starts, when she died 17 years ago. No one else wanted the old aluminum colander so it was uncontestedly mine. It [...]
Rabbit, Rabbit.
Rabbit Rabbit. Say it before anything. Coax in all the luck you can.
It’s Awesome, Isn’t It?
I wrote this sentence in an essay: “I learned that, when a thunderstorm was overhead, lightening cracking over thunder, it rattled the tent and shivered the trees, and in its awesomeness, you could hear sailors keening and the silence of birds as they burrowed deep into tree branches.” The writers in the group flagged “awesomeness” as the wrong word choice. [...]
Rewriting Gatsby
The Great Gatsby enters the public domain in 2021, and fans intent on writing new versions of the novel are already sharpening their pencils—somewhat figuratively, I assume. Does anyone write with a pencil? Who knows, that’s the joy of fan fiction: When Gatsby belongs to everyone, everyone is a writer, and there are a lot of pencils in the public domain. [...]
This is not how the day was supposed to go and other Christmas stories
Today, Christmas breathing down my neck, I am faced with a trip to the department of motor vehicles, a visit to the Costco warehouse store, a pile of packages to mail, and a long shopping list. I know exactly what kind of day is ahead of me. Of course, I do. I am Eeyore, looking down at the puddles, dragging [...]
Summer Reading: My Essay in the Boston Globe
I have carried on for years, buying up titles, in the grand belief that, one day, it might be me in that deck chair. That one day, it might be me, luxuriating in the promised land of Summer Reading.
Where the Birds Have Been
When I was young, I was quite certain that birds had words, and if I just listened harder or at the right time or if I was able to decipher the music notes in my grandmother’s bird book, I would know what they were saying, where they were going, and where they had been. It was the same feeling I [...]
Fan Fiction: Reimagining Bonanza
The first story I wrote was fan fiction, although I had never heard of fan fiction when I wrote it. It may not have even been a genre in the year I was 14. The story was a takeoff on the popular TV show, Bonanza...
A Father in his Day
My father was a father in the time before fathers jogged and took boys’ weekends and, even, God forbid, attended book club meetings. He was a father in a time when being a wage earner was a seven-day-a-week job. When a man did not take a day off because his wife was having a baby. When vacations were dictated [...]
Why Mom’s Stories Matter
When my mother was a child in the 1920s, Sundays were for family. Relatives began arriving at the double-decker house in the city soon after Mass. A ham or roast was slid into the oven and potatoes were put on to boil ...