It wasn’t until a government agent called me that I realized I was somebody else. Not an impostor exactly, but something like that.

Since birth, I had been Jane Coffin Bradley, a moniker I bore through jibes a […]

The other day I walked out to my mailbox. There was an official letter from the City of Los Angeles parking violations bureau. Hmmm. I know what this is about. My daughter has not paid a past due traffic […]

BEYOND THE PULPIT

The Dreaming

I am a retired minister. That is what the umbrella title for the occasional pieces that may appear in this space refers to. It is fair warning that what I write about may have […]

                                                         Home Schooling

“What are you doing?”  Juliana’s voice drifted in around the corner of the living room, coming to rest finally in his willing ear.  He […]

It was just about a hundred years ago that Martha dropped dead. She was found on the floor of her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo and that was that – the end of the last known passenger pigeon on the p […]

I wasn’t a natural writer but I always wanted to be one. Born in New York City, I soon moved to Providence, Rhode Island with my family and then to Washington, D.C. where my father began working for the C.I.A. A […]

In 1983 I gave up on acting. I was a sophomore in college. It was not an easy choice.  Since junior high, I had been convinced I was going to be America’s answer to Laurence Olivier. I had chosen to atte […]

A Writer Retreats

I was on a quest. A quest for a room of one’s own to finish my draft, far from the hurly-burly of New York City.

A lucky Google search led me to The Porches Writing Retreat and a photo of a […]

When I recently encountered STREETLIGHT for the first time, I found myself wondering about the name, why it was chosen, what associations it is meant to evoke.  Then as I explored the magazine I ran across Susan […]

“If we can’t educate you, we’ll make a pet of you, or sacrifice you.”  This from Jean Sampson in her class Gutsy Abstract Oil Painting at The McGuffy Art Center where Jean is a resident studio artist. This is a […]

The recent New York Times news article asking the question: “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” was painful for me. Because I know where one of them is – on my desktop, unpublis […]

In the last week’s blog, Memoir/Essay Editor Susan Shafarzek’s question, “What do I mean by STREETLIGHT?” triggered  in me a memory of growing up in Memphis and our neighborhood streetlight that drew us kids in […]

SL:  Congratulations on the publication of your short story, “Phoenix” in Streetlight’s upcoming Winter Issue.  When did you start writing or realize that you were a writer?

JD:   I remember that when I was eig […]

Writers, or those who want to write but don’t, like to say they have Writer’s Block, Capitalized, as if to makes it real, an explanation for why they’re stuck. They can’t get started or get back to the project […]

From what Fern can tell it looks like a fight. Fern’s watching through a back screen door which makes the scene look like a pointillist painting. Grace flies across the kitchen floor at Philip, something in her h […]

She adjusted the nasal cannula in his nostrils. She couldn’t hear the oxygen moving through the tubing.

“Is that better?”

He nodded, saving his breath for breathing.

“The flight of stairs was a lot.” S […]

If You’re Here With Us, Give Us a Sign of Your Perversion
My wife is a ghost hunter. Actually, my wife considers herself more of a Paranormal Anthropologist. But, essentially, she’s a ghost hunter. And if tha […]

That’s the kind of remark that librarian Ruth Kneale encountered often in her research showing that all the old stereotypes of her profession – you know: they’re a mousy, prim, timid and bespectacled lot – persist […]

For days after her mother’s death, while adults move around her making funeral and guardianship arrangements, Sarah stands by walls. Her six-year-old fingertips search the wallpaper in the day care where they h […]