I thought that editing the Milton Katims’ piece for Music Journal stretched my editing skills to the max. I was a 24 year old freelancer when I picked up an assignment that curled my dendrites to a tight coil. What he could induce with his baton was one thing (he conducted the Seattle Symphony for more than two decades) but decipherable he wasn’t. What I guess I’m trying to explain is that I’m not a novice at editing. I was rewrite editor for my JHS newspaper (quite a title, I know), editor of of my high school paper, edited a weekly shipping journal, hey, this isn’t...

Bryce has a perplexing problem. Something’s missing in her life. Her cell phone’s gone. No forwarding address, no heartfelt good byes … just one day it was there and the next day it wasn’t! I have a theory that it happened about the same time she started “planking” (looks like a push-up) in the gym. Gravitational forces may have re-situated her precious aqua phone far from home. I keep telling her that it’s on an adventure. Away. But where? Nobody said it would be easy. But unlike me she hasn’t got the hang of worrying. Last heard from, she was...

I’m thinking of starting a gym for people who bend backwards not to perspire during work-outs. (You know, of course, that bending backwards is not a medically approved method for keeping dry…) I envision a gym for people who don’t bring towels in their duffle bags and who take enormous pride in their under-active sweat glands. A place for gym attendees who stand tall knowing that they leave behind no traces of residue on the machines they’ve visited. A work-out site for those of us who’ve done our best to avoid the company of “wet wipers,” the wretched...

You may have guessed. Lately, our kitchen has become a meeting site for those tiny black ants that seem to prefer late summer  weather. Ours love purple onion scraps but also are adventurous eaters who will sample whatever’s within reach — and they have a very long reach. We squoosh them with our fingers but have begun wondering if they deserve greater respect and  a change of scenery.   We look to you our readers to show your compassion for family expansion by adopting a few or maybe 100. We will deliver them, likely attached to a food bit rather than our arms or knees which they ...

We’ve just tallied a record-setting sum of nine almost familiar entrapped pigs this season. We can see that  these invaders come in three  or more basic sizes: huge males, almost as huge males, and an occasional medium-sized sow. Breaking a recent tradition of grand sized pigs , however, our most recent catch had ample room to frolic in the cage. He was a medium-sized male, and the noisiest to date. We were told that he’d  probably tip the scale at a modest 100 pounds, less robust than the last two boars who who were well on their way to 150 pounds, if not more. When we asked a few times...

I never bought much online when I lived on the mainland.  Not one single thing in my 20’s in New York or during my four years in Pennsylvania. That’s when Amazon was still known best as a long river, not far from the Selym River (family joke). I just checked the date: and Amazon.com was incorporated July 5th, 1994, in Seattle, not that far from where I once lived in Beaverton, Oregon…  but very, very far from the second longest river in the world. Take note that there was some name changing that took place — the original name for Amazon was Cadabra, Inc. which got dropped...