thoughts, tales and travels
SHORT STORY DISCUSSION GROUP Our OLLI short story group recently read the brilliantly subversive anti-detective story by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. The author has posted an excellent biography on his web site. Reading that story inspired me to pick up Murakami’s novel 1Q84, and I’ve been slowly reading it...
Last session, we discussed “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. You probably either remember reading it sometime in the distant past, or you sort of think you might have read it but you’re not sure because everybody’s heard of it, right? It’s one of the most famous of all...
My days are woven of past and present, real and imaginary. Today I continue to invent the story of a young couple trying to avoid the trading and smuggling schemes of the English and Dutch settlers living between the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River, which they called the South...
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. We’re reading the most original and classic American psychological short story thriller of all, Edgar Allan Poe”s “The Tell-Tale Heart. Short story discussion group at OLLI is guaranteed to get weird! Style: Edgar...
Bill and I met at the parking garage near the market, free on Saturdays, and then set off towards the steps beside the lovely Victorian Shelton-McMurphy House leading up the back side of Skinner’s Butte. We’re trying to get in some hills to get psyched up for Tibet in the...
My novel set in colonial Delaware and Maryland involves learning on several levels: discovering my own Delaware roots through research, becoming more focused and consistent about writing, and slowly acquiring the skills of writing fiction, which I’ve never really tried before. I’m grateful for the insights of my weekly writing...
In our OLLI short story group this Thursday we are reading a less-known tale by the nineteenth century master Nathaniel Hawthorne. Maybe you had to read Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter in high school. “Wives of the Dead” was presumably written about 1829 when Hawthorne was twenty-five years old and had recently...
We’ve been watching a recent PBS called Expeditions Unknown which features some recent discoveries in the Guatemalan biosphere reserve. We visited the reserve along with many other Mayan sites on our tour in March 2016, although they were only beginning to talk about El Mirador then. It’s really exciting to see...
One of our oldest American ghost stories The short story discussion group at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Eugene is reading the story “Peter Rugg, the Missing Man” by William Austin (1778-1841) for discussion on Thursday, June 7th, 2018. “The time to which Rugg’s career dates back is that...
It was a beautiful day for the Prefontaine Classic at Historic Hayward Field, with cool breezes wafting through the sun-warmed air. We sat in the old East Grandstand for the last time last night. After this season, the whole track complex will be taken apart and redone. Before that happens,...
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