Jim Roberson May 22, 1950-October 13, 2018 I first met Jim over the phone. We had just bought our house, and I was looking for a fence guy. We had three dogs at the time, and no fences, and life was pretty chaotic. There were moving boxes everywhere, and when I had to take…
Fire Danger: Extreme
(Talking About That Thing That Everyone Is Tired Of Talking About But That I Can’t Stop Talking About…and camping) For those who don’t know, when I was a little girl, I thought my father was Smokey the Bear because he worked for the Forest Service, wore a similar outfit, and reminded me of a bear…
The Last Trip of the Summer
The Third Way: The Last Trip of Summer When I am scheduling student presentations, I sometimes remind my students that oral reports or speeches are just like death. You know they are scheduled from the beginning of the term, but somehow you are never as ready as you would like to be, and yet, inevitably,…
The Dogs of L.A.
The Second Way: The Pittie in the SplittyAnd then there are the dogs. We have had dogs since we first met, and our current pair has now been properly introduced to the Bus. Buddy the pit bull actually came from the Dodger Stadium rental. One rainy morning we were headed out to breakfast when we…
Three Ways of Looking at the Bus in L.A. The First Way: Lost Angeles
Three Ways of Looking at the Bus in L.A. The First Way: Lost Angeles August 6-15, 2018 I’m getting ready to teach a class about Literary Los Angeles, so I’ve been reading about L.A. and thinking about L.A. and now I need to try to write about L.A. and yet I know this is an…
Precious Cargo
For Robert August 1, 2018 Precious Cargo Years ago I had a friend who was involved with and later married her college professor. That they were romantically linked caused something of a minor scandal at the time, although it was her husband who in fact officiated at my own wedding through the graces of the…
The Governor
July 27, 2018 Back when we were in Oregon, waiting breathlessly for Larry’s calls, and I swear, it was just like being a teenager and waiting for that boy to call, except this time everyone in the house would fall silent when the phone rang, there was great confusion about why the bus wouldn’t idle….
The Geologist’s Daughter
July 26, 2018 The Geologist’s Daughter For years I have wanted to write a book about my father, some sort of wide ranging epic, a TC Boyle, John Irving-ish sort of book with liberal sprinklings of Steinbeck, of course. The problem is I have never actually found the story I wanted to write, but…
Fear and Anxiety, Anxiety and Fear
July 24/25, 2018 Fear and Anxiety, Anxiety and Fear I was about ten years old the first time I was able to label a feeling as anxiety, even though I didn’t know that actual name, yet. I’d been through a rough patch, moving from California to Washington State to Connecticut to California again with…
On Camping(a very long post about camping, politics, and America…sort of)
Robert and the Bus, Campsite 201 July 19/20, 2018 On Camping I’ve been writing this essay in my head for years, now, and I’ve even told the story on occasion, but I don’t know if I have ever captured it truly, and perhaps that is a high bar to set here, but I’d like to…
