• Adult Poetry,  Poetry

    One Night in a Coffeehouse

    “One Night in a Coffeehouse” Free-Verse, March 20, 2017 He sings in the near-empty coffeehouse About alcohol addiction and love. He thinks no one in the lackluster crowd is listening. Two employees try their best to acknowledge him, While a college student studies his books, And a lady whose whole life is a musical hums her own tune. Annoyed by the six laughing ladies in their bible study group, He changes his line-up to include All songs he knows that take the Lord’s name in vain. The ladies talk over the too-loud guitar music, Determined to finish their lesson, While he plays louder and louder to drown out the noise. The…

  • Essays,  General Thoughts

    My husband: the best example of a good father

    My husband, Jonathan, is a wonderful father. Just like I knew he would be.  I had witnessed firsthand his relationships with his four nephews and two nieces while we were dating. In fact, two of them “chaperoned” us on our first date when we took them to see a kiddie movie. I had also seen the relationship Jonathan had with his own father, Dean, who is a great father in his own right. We had the kid conversation early in our relationship and were both in agreement that we wanted at least one, but preferably two. Jonathan didn’t care if we had boys, girls or one of each. I always…

  • General Thoughts,  Pop Culture

    When a celebrity dies

    I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Why are we (the collective “we”) so moved by and intertwined with celebrity deaths? Celebs are mortal just like the rest of us, so it is inevitable that they will die someday, but when they do, they have more mourners than the rest of us. This is especially so when they die tragically or die young, which often coincide. When someone dies at age 98 in their bed surrounded by family, we say it’s a good death because they lived a long life. Many people die much younger than that. Tragically young. What’s the cutoff age? Is it 40? 50? 60? What…