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She examines my eyebrows, using her fingers with maroon nails to smooth the tiny hairs, pulling the light and magnifying glass closer to see exactly where the line of the arch should be.

I lie on the table, my head on a slight incline, a pillow under my knees. I fold my hands like a person might in a casket and I wonder to myself, will she come to the funeral home and fix my brows and do my hair. But then I remember that my brows and my hair won’t matter because I want to be cremated and then planted with a sturdy tree. If they did matter, I would want Kris to take care of them. I trust her to make me a good looking dead person.

She drips the hot wax under the full line of my right eyebrow. I know what is next but the stripping…

Happy 2017, everyone!! Here’s to a great year of reading.

In many places, life is just easier if you are a boy. For you and for your family. Afghanistan is one such place.

10-year-old Obayda lives in Kabul with her mother, father and three older sisters. She loves to go to school and wear dresses and dance and swing her beautiful hair around. Her father is a respected policeman, and the family is content and prosperous. Her future looks bright. But the future cannot always be predicted. 

One day, as she waits outside the pharmacy for her father to pick up a prescription for her illness, a bomb blows up and changes everything. Her father lost a leg and his will to live, and the family had to leave their life in Kabul to move in with his family in a small village.  Life is so different now. Her father refuses to leave his…

A tiny Yellow Rumped Warbler found the bull kelp a perfect perch for hunting sand flies and other small insects on the beach. This girl would quickly dart down form the kelp to snag a small meal and quickly return to her perch. Seeing her sitting on the head of the bull kelp made us realize just how small she was. We watched a documentary about songbirds the other night called The Messenger. Here is a link to the website http://songbirdsos.com
It is a very timely reminder about what a world without song birds would be like.

Everyone’s writing about their New Year’s resolutions so I think I should join in. My resolution is to continue what has been a pretty successful two-week effort to control my own moods.

I am a sitting duck for episodes of depression and anxiety, times that I describe as ‘sinking like a stone’ or ‘beating it back with a stick.’ These are usually consequent to nothing, feelings that rise up to choke me while I’m stirring a pot on the stove or wiping the snow from my car. It is a feeling of not having done enough or having done too much, regretting the past or dreading the future. A poisonous little menu, don’t you think?

Sometimes, the moods are dark but fleeting. Sometimes, they move in and stay, fat, sloppy clouds that sit on my lap and drip on my papers for weeks, sometimes months.

I am mindful of the…

I am concerned about the future…not the fact that we are watching the first pieces put into place for the next world war, the 3rd and possibly the last one, but other little things concern me too.

Healthcare and Medicare, (which Paul Ryan is itching to dismantle), and threats to Social Security concern me. Pardon me for pointing this out, but that social security is MY money and I will want it back if I can ever retire. I have been paying into it since I was sixteen years old. Regardless of what some politicians say, social security is fully funded until 2034, and after that it is about three-quarters financed. It should be there when I retire, but it may not be if smoke and mirrors tiny sticky fingers Trump goes anywhere near it.

I will tell you what the problem is with healthcare and insurance costs. The…