New from Bacho Press
Haiku verses in homage to my superstar dog, whom I followed around the parks and gardens of Portland much like a devotee of the great Matsuo Basho in his day.
Since the publication in 2014 of An Uncommon Cancer Journey, I have branched out in various writing endeavors: memoir, social justice journalism, and especially music. The venues include Oregon Humanities, Street Roots, and Oregon ArtsWatch. You can check them out in the website’s Articles section.
This is a story of healing, not only from “terminal” cancer but also of a marriage in trouble, and the adventure encountered by two determined and committed people along the way.
My migration from the world of audiology and noise effects to a much different kind of writing is nearly complete. As my swan song I published “Occupational Hearing Loss from Non-Gaussian Noise” as a monograph in Seminars in Hearing last summer. And now I’ve responded to the pull toward writing about a variety of non-technical interests. You can find my work in various Oregon publications, most frequently in Oregon ArtsWatch, where I’ve interviewed several musicians and playwrights and written some reviews.
September of 2018 marks my move from Portland back to Ashland. While I’ve enjoyed the cultural opportunities, great restaurants, and wonderful friends I’ve made in Portland, Ashland will be my forever home. The natural beauty, the sense of community, and my old friends have never stopped calling me back.
To Heart Mountain
A writer travels to see the site of a World War II prison camp that her father designed.
Seeking to understand – and end – Islamophobia
COMMENTARY | How education and interfaith communication can lead to a better world
Truths self-evident and the camps
The daughter of a man who built a WWII confinement camp talks with the writer of a play about a Japanese American hero of the fight against incarceration
Pilgrimage to Heart Mountain
After 74 years I made a personal pilgrimage to the site of the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming. The reason: My father had worked there as an architect and supervisor in the summer of 1942, constructing a makeshift prison for the thousands of Japanese Americans who would soon be forced to inhabit it.
Coming Home to Ashland, Oregon
The hero in Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 novel, “You Can’t Go Home Again,” realized he couldn’t go back to his home town because he had written such revealing things about its citizens that they greeted him with nasty letters and death threats. While I may have enjoyed complaining about Ashland’s political underbelly, I haven’t written the great exposé, and whenever I’ve visited, my friends have always said, “So when are you moving back?”
Losing Bacho
Sometimes the loss of a beloved pet is a strange sort of gift in that it brings up old losses that may have been floating beneath the surface for years, losses that are deeper and often more complex, losses that may need additional grieving. Losing Bacho has reminded me of the deaths of both parents and my relationships with them. And losing Bacho has naturally rekindled the grief of losing Jack.