The Hellish Handbasket

When I'm at the coast, I take long walks on the beach. I aim for the middle ground between soft dry and soggy wet. I walk in the early m...

Like most people around the world, I have a hill of beans in front of me. Individually, each one of our little pinto bean molehills is not a...

As I was sitting at a laundromat in Anytown, USA, yesterday, washing my skivvies with the neighborhood hoi polloi, I saw the photo of my mot...

Tis the season during which the residents of the mobile home park dress up in costumes and shuffle over to the clubhouse to drink strawberry...

I had a birthday this week. To celebrate, I treated myself to the trifecta. I don't mean I went horse racing. I mean, I sidled on down t...

I've been thinking about the past. You don't have to tell me that contemplating the past is rarely a good thing. Living today for a ...

A life lived in fear is a life half-lived. I know that is true because Fran said it in my favorite movie, "Strictly Ballroom," and...

Most days, I can't tell if I'm in my right mind or not. Some days I think, I can do this, I can camp in my car, be a nomad, go on ad...

Homelessness probably can be a spiritual experience for people who are supremely enlightened. I’m not one of those people. Homelessness to m...

Have you heard it said, "When one door closes, another door opens"? What are we supposed to make of that? It's not a truism, i...

Dumb question, right? You would say, gosh, Carol, nobody, if you put it like that . But what are we talking about? Defeat is the flipside of...

How many times over the past couple years have I said "my heart is broken"? Haven't you? More times than we can count, probabl...

I grew up on a quiet shady middle class street lined with a mishmash of old farmsteads and ranch-style houses in the armpit of northeast Por...

The brain is back. As much as it ever was, anyway, which is good news for me, out here alone in the short branches of the wild west. It'...

Happy new year, Blogbots, all six of you. How are you doing? I hope you are staying safe in this stupid cold season. Yes, cold. Tucson temps...

Once again my week overflows with blessings and curses. Among the blessings, I count a quiescent check engine light and the absence of littl...

Darkness falls fast in the desert after the sun sets. Twilight doesn't linger. During the day, I imagine the little dudes snoring in the...

I keep returning to a theme—the idea that life is neither all good nor all bad. After trying to weigh the good stuff against the bad stuff, ...