La Pájaro: Puts the Bird in Birdie

Elvis, Charlie, and Life Changin' Art

You may have read this, but I'm linking it for anyone new.

My latest post to The Nervous Breakdown is about the summer I took Arts and Crafts:

One summer I collected Monarch butterflies and pinned them to an old walnut board in the family barn. I was eleven and chubby with a Dorothy Hamill haircut. My younger sisters and I built endless Mexican blanket forts in our battered living room and dressed our long-suffering dog in my dad’s blue boxer shorts. My mom decided she couldn’t take one more minute of our endless muggy summer, and she signed us up for the one-week August hell known as Arts and Crafts camp at the Town Hall.

Read the rest of the story here.

Were you ever forced to take a summer camp or class? Tell me about it!

A story I never passed along because I was chicken

I wrote a story last month about grief, about a shamanic ritual I chose to deal with that grief. I posted it at TNB, and never posted the link here until today. Some of you found it, left me dear comments. I was worried about posting the link here, worried that I might be judged for the ceremony I chose, the danger of it, the illegality of it. I'm not so afraid now. I am human, a failure in many ways, someone who is always searching for meaning beyond the layer of skin that thinks it can hold my thoughts, my being.

I hope you enjoy it.

Thirty-six Days Past Solstice

I have a story posted at Brad Listi's The Nervous Breakdown. Please visit my story: Thirty-Six Days Past Solstice in a Circle of Dead Refrigerators and leave me a comment over there!