In these angry, bewildering, terrifying post-Roe days, a bit of related wisdom came to me: I now understand why I didn't find my elder siblings earlier in our lives, when I was much angrier. There is no telling what I might have told my sister, when I found her, and wouldn't it have been terrible …
Author: bnzoot
(Mostly) harmless, middle-aged California girl transplanted and thriving in the South. Enjoys pondering Life, the Universe and Everything. Always interested and inspired by the world around me, even when I shake my head wondering, What is God THINKING?
Most of my working life was spent in Corporate America as a Secretary, then a Contract Manager. I took some time to go back to school, until circumstances.... led me to Education, which was inspiring and horrifying in equal measure.
I'm a cock-eyed optimist with a dark side and here is where I let loose of some thoughts appropriate for public consumption. Except for the times I'm completely inappropriate.
Mother’s Day: Lost, Sought, Found
It must have seemed possible to invent a more palatable past, to stay one step ahead of the truth if one just moved often and fast.
Pandemic Diaries: Waste Not, Want Not or, the Return of Cloth Napkins
He lifted it high over his head, as he would the Stanley Cup if he were one of his beloved Boston Bruins celebrating victory, it being a 6-pack of cheap paper towels. Clapping my hands in excitement, visions of all the many spills wiped and cleanings achieved with such treasure danced in my head. But …
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Pandemic Diaries: The Devil’s Arithmetic
The Devil's Arithmetic is a concept found on both sides of World War II's concentration camps; for the meaning to the interned, see the book of the same title by Jane Yolen. For the Nazis, it was a careful calculation of how little prisoners could be fed, clothed, and housed before they died of starvation …
Pandemic Diaries: I Need a Schedule
Last week we were meant to be on holiday, so our Social Distancing was more of a long, lazy West Wing binge, with intermittent movies thrown in. Staying in and watching movies, walks, working jigsaw puzzles, and reading is pretty much our jam but it is remarkable how readily we slide into abject sloth. Or …
Pandemic Diaries: Social Distancing Week One
We were supposed to be in Napa, then San Francisco. We would have been in the airport right now and then boarding a steel tube likely filled with COVID-19, having passed through two of the busiest airports in the country, also probably simmering in virus. Fortunately we paid attention to the first stories and followed …
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A Bumper Sticker Wants to Make Me Cry. Again.
Bumper stickers: I love them, and am always buying them though seldom affixing them to the actual bumper of a car. Rather, a succession of ironic, witty, or just plain weird stickers have adorned cork boards in various offices and cubicles, excepting of course the years of obligatory Honor Student stickers, followed by, "My Daughter …
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Hair Time
"Avert your eyes. I'm not here. You're not seeing this," I hollered at Paul, still in the shower, as I sat on the edge of the tub, lathering my legs from the travel-size can of Barbasol my daughter left here last Christmas. Starting with the right leg I continued, "This is on the same continuum …
First Love
He was the first boy I ever loved, my cousin Randy. Our mothers were sisters and close, and we'd been close since I don't even remember, since I was born. I can still see us in the pool one hot California summer day, I was maybe seven, he nine years old when Randy said he'd …
Juneteenth
One Sunday morning it was June 19th, or Juneteenth, and Mother Freda Marie, a brilliant African-American woman and the assisting priest at my parish, asked us if we knew why the day was special, other than it being Sunday? Mine was the lone hand raised. This particular bit of history was specific to Texas, and …
Southern Fried Californian 