I was 30 years old and feeling pretty snug in my spot.  As the managing editor of a respected NYC trade journal, I spent hours and hours each week interviewing shipping executives.  Everything was as my title suggested … manageable, until one spring day, when my boss, Jon Jacobs, set me on the trail of my very first ever high tech (as we called it back then) assignment. “Call Bill Bugbee at CSS in Oregon and find out what’s going on out there.” “Oregon?  His name is what?” I asked in a mocking tone. “His name is Bill Bugbee …” How could I start a...

Back, long ago, even before I wore pink poodle barrettes in my hair … the  name debate began. My mother judiciously guarded her first choice, while my father was busy polling the folks at work. Raking through ancient memories, I can’t remember clearly my Dad’s take on this subject  …  Just that he loved the name Debbie … Deborah.  Maybe it was part of the Debbie Reynolds magic that made this beautiful name so very popular back then.  Not to overlook the majesty of the Old Testament birthright. It’s a fabulous name and is parked way up there on my evolving Girls...

I couldn’t help noticing three noisy but well-restrained card sharks huddled closely, absorbed in a splashdown of discarded jacks and queens. A loving patriarch and his cunning and brave young sons, sprung free from their school routines, were now eagerly plotting their next kills. Just a few days before, further down the coast, an enraged tiger shark,  (the real deal), had nipped an unfortunate swimmer and scooped up national headlines … but these players were far too immersed in their own impending blood bath to worry about sea battles. It was probably about 8AM and my tanksuit was still...

Now if Jon (my former editor at Brandon’s, heavily armed with both Harvard and Berkeley credentials) were running the show here, he’d never let me get away with this!  The entry that you’re about to read — at least, I hope you will — is being presented for the third time.  A senior resident of my “Stories” section, after having been conceived in September,’06, “Looking Up” was beamed over here on 9/17/13, after I succumbed to the spell of  yet another full moon. And now, it’s back again… Twice was more than enough, Jon...

Maybe it was my yellow cotton gardening gloves from the Puako General Store that made the difference. They mottled up right away,  which made it seem like I’d been digging up carrots with Peter Rabbit since childhood. Which is hardly true … but I’m guessing a few untrained but eager to learn tomato seeds may have been coaxed into believing that I was well-mentored in the by-laws of cultivation, which gave them the confidence they needed to survive the harrowing underground route past the lava layer and on through the compost to get a closer look at the beaming Sunlight above. Not...