It had been a rather idyllic day, actually. We began our morning sitting on the terrace sipping fresh-brewed, homegrown coffee.  We basked in the radiant warmth of the sun after enduring several sunless, rainy days. It is the rainy season after all, and the reason everything stays so viridian green and grows at the speed…

After much trepidation, I am going to take a leap of faith and share with you my first Flash Fiction piece. What is that, you may wonder. It’s a short story written in less than 1000 words. I am honored to be working with a group of international novelists, and we all took the challenge…

Perhaps for the first time in my life, I am truly grateful for my many blessings, with a clarity of perception never before experienced. A decade ago I would have bemoaned their paucity, but today I am reveling in the richness of my life with an appreciation that somehow seems more pure, more organic. Passing…

I just had to add a rather amusing postscript to yesterday’s blog. As we sat in blissful tranquility this morning, overlooking the Central Valley with a steaming cup of primo cafe, K and I realized that one of the greatest blessings for us to social distancing this past year has been the almost total absence…

The last two and a half months have been emotionally and spiritually noxious for me, and based on my FB feed, for most of humanity. For a whole spectrum of divergent reasons. What is clear is that in the past year Covid has been weaponized by forces intent on obfuscating its deadly, scientific properties and…

Just three weeks to go until the fate of our experiment called democracy will either survive in some form or fashion, as imperfect as it is, or die a bloody and debilitating death. Overly dramatic? One can only hope. As an ex-pat living in Central America, I am stressing over the future of my native…

I awoke yesterday with a profound sadness upon hearing of RBG’s untimely passing. She had fought so hard to remain active on the bench until after the upcoming election, at such great personal expense. Her indomitable strength and courage of conviction, both in life and in death, will remain an eternal inspiration for all.  RBG…

As the reality of the indefinite duration of this pandemic sinks in, I vacillate between calm acceptance and unnerving despair. Way back when, when I was hoping for hope, I was momentarily blessed with a tsunami of light, which was quickly followed by a burst of demoralizing darkness. And that cycle of light to dark…

I have struggled for months to find the words, any words, to express the overwhelming despair that has swept my soul as I bear witness to the wide-ranging consequences of the Covid pandemic ravaging the world. What started out this year as just a “simple viral pandemic” has mutated into an insidious pandemic of mind,…