Learning Valuable Camp Skills at Camp Eucalyptus

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(Originally published in the Beach Reporter, in Manhattan Beach, CA on 8/27/92.)

It was with great trepidation that we set out for Camp Eucalyptus on a hot summer Saturday morning. My two co-leaders for Brownie Troop No. 569, and I, were to devote an entire day to learning basic camping skills so that we might pass that knowledge along to our little urban-dwelling Brownies.

I didn’t bother doing my nails the night before, and I certainly didn’t wear any makeup. I was there to get down and dirty – and down and dirty we got.

Camp Eucalyptus is a patch of urban wilderness set down smack-dab in the middle of El Segundo. After years of living in the area, I never even knew it was there.

It’s an official Girl Scout campground and is available for both for training leaders, and for actual camp-outs for troops. We wondered about the barbed wire running along the fence top, though, and would we really want to camp right under the holding pattern for planes at LAX? Continue reading →

Ectoplasm in Dorm Rooms: A Meditation on the MFA

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(Originally published in the Tishman Review online 10/6/2015. You can also link to from “Published Works.”)

I am fifty-six years old and I have gone back to college to get an MFA. The last time I slept in a dorm room was thirty-five years ago, and when I am assigned my room, I fancy myself as a nun might, plodding serenely off to an austere, chilly room in the convent. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Dorm rooms may be Spartan, but dorm life is not. Dorm life is noisy, messy, mysterious, and unnatural. For example, there are seven women in my room right now and one of the women is weeping, really and truly weeping. She is also drinking wine straight out of the bottle, which I have only done once in my life, just to see how it felt.

The weeper had a bad workshop today. She is crushed, so she says. Being older than her I doubt it. She doesn’t yet know crushed. Crushed is when you have to tell your children, ages eleven and twelve, that you and their father are getting a divorce. Crushed is a sister with a lupus. Crushed is all four days of Thanksgiving weekend alone.

But I listen and put on my sympathy face. This is something I excel at. Being a Virgo, one of my main attributes is that I empathize with others. People want to tell me everything, even complete strangers, especially complete strangers. They zero in on me with laser-like precision, even on a bus. Even when I stare intently at a fire hydrant and pointedly display body language not conducive to starting up a conversation. Continue reading →

Be the Best Writer You Can Be

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(Originally published in Tishman Review online 2/9/2016. Read here or link to in “Published Works.”)

My guiding principle in writing has always been that I try to write the very best essay, story, or poem that I can at that moment. I have spent much of my career writing essays and feature articles for newspapers and magazines, and now, of course, for online news sources and journals. Sometimes these print publications are free to the community, or cost the reader one or two dollars. Mostly, I have gotten paid for my work, even if often it is barely enough to buy a new inkjet for my printer.

The key is that I never say to myself, “Well, it’s just The Beach Reporter or it’s only Main Line Life” (two community newspapers I have written extensively for – one in southern California, one in suburban Philadelphia), “I’ll just slop something down.” Whether I’m aiming for The New York Times or the Pioneer Press, my commitment to my most excellent writing is the same. Continue reading →

A Mom’s Beach Day Wish Comes True

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(Originally published in the Christian Science Monitor, July 8, 1999)

It was one of those rare days at the beach. The humidity was low, the temperature hovered right around 80 degrees, the sky was washed with watercolor blues, and the flags snapped briskly over the boat harbor. Lake Michigan was quiet and waveless, and even the water temperature had risen above the frigid level to merely bone-chilling.

So what was wrong with this picture?

Actually, everything was right. I had finally reached that nirvana of motherhood – that fantasyland that mothers of young children only dream of. My adolescent children, who had accompanied me to the beach, had run off with their friends as soon as we’d arrived. I was alone.
I could reach into my canvas beach bag and read a book or magazine uninterrupted. I could roll over and nap. I could buy myself an ice cream and not have to share it. I could float lazily on a raft, write a short story, reinvent my life. Continue reading →