Stephanie says

The spate of male sexual assaults against women in the news of late jogged a memory of an assault against me.   My assailant was neither Donald Trump or Bill Clinton or Bill Cosby.   Just another misogynistic man asserting his power over the lesser species.   I was a newlywed pushing my shopping cart down the cereal aisle at the local grocery, vaguely aware of another shopper behind me.   My peripheral vision caught a movement, then a hand caressed my ass, before the figure passed ahead.   I was stunned but not too stunned to identify this person as a totally unknown man. I was at a complete loss of how to proceed.   I was frightened that he was waiting ahead of me.   Or waiting for me in the parking lot. I panicked but found the store manager, told the events, and was walked out to my car.   I was shaking so hard I could barely drive.   This was long before the age of cell phones so there was no recourse except to drive home. ...

I've got a leaky pipe in the laundry room.  Water on the floor alerted me - and my response was to locate the drip and catch it with a little bucket.  This was approximately a year ago.  A couple times each week I empty the bucket and think about either fixing the leak myself (because I have a lot of experience in plumbing - learned from manuals during a very dismal time in life when an outlay of cash wasn't possible.  My labor was free however.  It's not rocket science. )  Upshot, I let it go.  About two weeks ago I noticed the bucket was dry.  Hmmm.  You realize I am a very smart person so you'll follow that I reasoned the leaky pipe repaired itself, as it would, in some other world. Oddly, the other night as I was locking doors, etc., on the way to bed, standing in the laundry room, I heard a drip.  Drip, drip, drip.  I drew some conclusions about that dry bucket. The small leak wasn't so small now.   Water, being water,...

Two bone-jarring kilometers from Todas Santos over narrow beach road of washboard and sand are the final leg of the trip.  Finally here.  Here being Baja, a semi-tropical paradise of wind-capped ocean pounding up steep sandy beaches, where scrub trees and cacti dot the rising elevation from water’s edge.  Higher still and there’s the stuccoed house with deep, thatch-roofed courtyards, skirted by a green verge of banana and mango trees, asway palms at dance in the breeze, and bright bougainvillea flowers tumbling down walls in a riot of color. Now a passing whiff of plumeria.  I settle into my room: ground floor, ocean view and comfortably appointed.  The door does not have a lock.  Okay.   Ellen is at hand to meet us as we arrive.  This is the third year she’s held the writing retreat at Serendipity. Here comes Sheri: tall, blond, and thin, (they’re all thin.  Except me and Sharon, the only ones of any ...

Meandering through the busy streets of Orvietto, I admire the Italian custom of evening strolls.   It’s a small hill town dating from Etruscan times, built on tuff cliffs towering above fields and vineyards, those cliff walls an ideal defense.   Tuff is a porous stone and Orvietto is known for the caves carved out beneath the city; wine cellars sure, but also pigeon coteries in event of a siege. The pigeons provided communication, meat and eggs.   I so admire good planning.   We’d arrived mid-day by bus, delivered to the station at the bottom of the hill.   Rather than schlepping our bags, we splurged on a taxi for a thrilling ride up the cliffs, through narrow streets, the taxi whizzing along barely clearing the spaces between buildings, and certainly at the peril of any pedestrians.   A tossup between sheer terror or adrenaline – it was definitely a buzz. Orvietto was the Italy I’d come to see.   The rave is always about Sienna; I couldn...