You ever have one of those days when you swear the universe is sending smoke signals but you just can't read them? Yeah. I had one yesterday, its residue strong enough to push me to write about it today. I was preparing to leave for an evening of non-fiction readings by two local authors at the newest event sponsored by the Springboro Historical Society -- Reading Between the Wines -- where I serve as facilitator. I have the honor of introducing the readers for the [...]
New Year's Eve...one foot in the past, one in the future. We watch a ball drop, twine arms and sip champagne and the months of the old year wind out behind us like a scroll. January...weather alerts and bowl games. February...does he/she love me, does he not? March...the winds blow, carrying the faint aroma of rebirth before the cold clamps down again. April, T.S. Eliot's cruelest month...but you get the picture. Twelve months gone. Our past is written, at times in lyric poetry, often in [...]
Two and a half months from today, I will allow Dr. Raymond Sekula, world-renowned neurosurgeon, to make an incision behind my left ear, drill out a quarter-size piece of my skull, open the lining of my brain and insert a microscopic teflon sponge between a blood vessel and the nerve it impinges. Then he'll glue, paste and tape me up. All this to cure my rather rare hemifacial spasms and release me from the trimonthly injections of botox around my eye used to control the spasms [...]