(Facebook readers, please click HERE: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) (Sunset photos taken last week in Riedlingen) May I introduce you to a new friend of mine?  Her name is Dotsy.  We met after her daughter Googled “Microcystic Adnexal Carcinoma” and found my references to the disease on this website.  Remember how I mentioned, a year ago, that there […]

(Please, please, please, Facebook readers, click here: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) There are Internet “plagues” that put Egypt’s seven afflictions to shame.  The latest of these is Facebook’s “25 random facts about me.”  The point is simple: you list 25 facts about yourself, post them, then ask several of your friends to do the same. As I’ve read […]

(If you’re reading on Facebook, click this link to be redirected to the site where the layout and pics will be as they should be:  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) The choir room was buoyant with the usual pre-class maelstrom of activity.  I was singlehandedly rolling the grand piano into position (far be it from any BOYS in the […]

  Kandern has been encased in thick fog for several days. (These first two photos courtesy of Sandee Shuman. She’s a great photog!) It’s not the wispy, whimsical fog that makes you want to whisper as you walk through cloud-feathered hills.  It’s a shroud–the kind of opaque whiteness that makes a person feel so heavily […]

(Facebook readers, please click here to be redirected to the actual site: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) Four weeks ago yesterday, I had a meltdown.  Oh, you might presume I’m exaggerating.  Michele Phoenix, the fearless Miss Phiphi, the courageous cancer-overcomer, wouldn’t have a full-blown, twelve-Kleenex-alert emotional Tchernobyl…would she?  She’s too tough.  Too pragmatic.  Too…  Human.  That’s what I am.  […]

(Reading on Facebook?  Oh, PLEASE do click on the following link before reading on.  The pictures simply must be seen in their original context!    https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) I know I should be getting ready for a big evening out–doing my hair, painting my nails, pulling out my party dress (which, in my case, is a dress […]

(If you’re reading on Facebook, please click here before going on…it’s much prettier and the pictures look better!  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) I caught myself listening to melancholic Christmas music yesterday.  With so many bright and cheerful CDs in my possession, I wondered what it is that occasionally draws me to that one track that’s either subdued or […]

If you live in a remote village of Africa, the sound might have been a bit muted.  But if you live anywhere within a 1,000 mile radius around Basel, Switzerland, you most certainly heard the over-the-top celebrating that happened at about 11:30 on Wednesday morning.  I had entered the “klinik” 20 minutes earlier for my […]

WARNING:  If you were ever in my Creative Writing class, please don’t read on.  You may suffer irrevocable literary damage, and I wouldn’t want to be blamed for sabotage-by-puny-poetry!  NOTE:  Given the topic of this entry, I’m sure you’ll understand that I’ve provided no illustrations…DISCLAIMER:  The  cartoon at the end of this entry might be […]

(Facebook readers, please click here to be redirected:  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine.) And here I was wanting to write a terrifically positive post in which I’d bypass the usual topics (tumors, radiation, barbaric medical procedures!) and focus instead on my mom’s recent visit and last night’s Christmas banquet.  But I received an email yesterday from a person I […]