I read newspapers, always have. Always one every day; oftentimes two or more. When I…
Widow’s Weeds 3: Heart’s Desire
Unless I want to be an Edie, Big or Little, in an ersatz-colonial Grey Gardens, I need to begin the process of emptying this house. We’ve been happy here. At least I think so. It is hard, indeed, to truly know what Dan was thinking about much of anything....
Widow’s Weeds 2: Sell My Home? I Live In My Home!
Do I want to sell my house? No, I do not. At least not now and not to you, whoever you are. That has been my answer to phone calls and what I would respond to the people who send letters. Vultures, the bunch of them. Carrion Eaters They read the obituaries and do the...
The Harford 100-Mile Biennial Exhibition: The Educator’s Eye
Marcia Gayle Snee is a wonderful artist and dear friend, so when she said her work had been accepted into a juried exhibition at Harford Community College’s Chesapeake Gallery, I was thrilled for her. Curious, also, about just what might be in the exhibition....
Dialysis 4: Mountains of Waste
Home hemodialysis ends. It always does, whether that person gets a transplant, changes over to in-center treatment or dies. Right now I should be mourning my loss but instead I am consumed by anger and disgust at the assault on the environment that home hemodialysis...
Widow’s Weeds 1: All That Time
Becoming a widow leaves me with an extraordinary amount of time. The Before Time I knew taking care of Dan was a full-time job: dialysis occupied four hours, four days a week, or a bit more. While the treatment itself, according to the computer in the Cycler, lasted...
Eating Invasively
“You are so brave!” The woman next in line at the Wegmans looked gobsmacked. I smiled at her as the fella behind the fish counter weighed and wrapped the fillets I had chosen. Did she find the idea of eating something called “snakehead” gross? Or was it a matter of...
One Person’s Nude
One pleasant morning, in the late 1980s, I started my work as the Education Curator at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa. The phone rang; it appeared we had a problem with an upcoming tour of elementary school children who were also scheduled for a studio-art...
Dialysis 3: Anāhata and the Art of Dialysis
The schlepping and stacking and priming and replacing of all the stuff associated with keeping the Cycler and Pureflow up and running is madness. I have absolutely no idea how anyone even slightly weaker or less competent than I—and I am seriously not competent—can...