What energizes you?

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    What Energizes You?

    By Bonnie Koagedal

    Energy is everywhere. We are made of life energy. A person can influence their life, health and others by sending energy through thought. I call these thoughts: prayers without movement.

    Still mindfulness is a prayer. Thoughts are energy similar to words. They carry power and pain.

    These teachings came to me recently as the pandemic shutdown escorted me into quiet times in one place called home. These teachings were told to me years and years ago. I did not grasp the fullness or capacity of energy through thought until the shutdown. This time was my vision quest.

    When we can become no thing, no place, no thought as Joe Dispenza teaches we can affect our energy above and beyond our bodies. I was fascinated and obsessed for several months about these teachings.

    As a child and into young adulthood. I felt I had too much energy for my own good. I bounced off the walls of my life and experiences. I pushed myself to have adventure after adventure and not stop. Like many people who experience trauma or tragedy, a dramatic circumstance sends us to another side of our life energy.

    I learned to pray and turn my worry over to a universal God when I experienced the trauma of having a premature baby at age 38. She was born at 24 weeks gestation and was given a 5% chance of survival on the night she was born. She is now 28 and an amazing human.

    What this experience led me towards was an ability to stop and enjoy the universe rolling on in my favor, whatever my favor was. I learned to clear my worried mind and let the universe provide. Inner mindful energy is a space I enjoy immensely now as much as being out and about meeting people and doing energetic hobbies. What energizes me is drastically different from what energized me early in life.

    I gain great energy communing with my soul, my spirit animals and nature.

    I am over the moon grateful for the authentic me that was able to emerge in this marvelous life. The art of “Be Here Now” is my mantra and way of living my life to its fullest.

    Bonnie Koagedal moved to Sonoma County in 1986. She lives in Petaluma with her husband and fur friends. Bonnie enjoys soul seeking hobbies which include writing. Bonnie works in Senior Support Services part time. She tours families to board and care homes for a placement service. Favorites: Travel in her motor home and trips to her home in Arizona

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    Mycorrhiza*

    by Patricia Morris

    I live under the canopy of a grandmother valley oak. It grows in what is now called “my neighbor’s yard,” due to the way we white settlers swept through this what-is-now-called a nation over the past 300 years and took over everything. Massacred people who were living here, infected them with deadly diseases, tried to re-make them in our image. Declared that we “owned” the land, bought and sold it; built structures to live in, structures that got bigger and more permanent as time passed; built fences to delineate MINE.

    But before all this, there was the valley oak. Like all oaks, it began as an acorn, scrunched into the dirt next to a small seasonal creek. Its roots sank deeper each year, reaching for the water. Its mycorrhizal fungi spread wide, linking fingers with the grandfather sycamore nearby, and the great buckeye at the deeper part of the creek. They grew up together sharing food; sharing information; sharing tenants such as woodpeckers, scrub jays, red-shouldered hawks, squirrels, and woodrats.

    The grandmother oak watched placidly as the Coast Miwok women gathered its acorns, ground them into mush, and fed them to their families; as the Spanish and then the white folks pushed in and planted crops and orchards, grazed cattle and sheep; as roads were laid down and houses sprang up, displacing meadows and pastures.

    Fifty-one years ago what I call “my house” was built beside the oak out of dead redwood trees. The oak, by this time the oldest living being in the area, grew protective of this redwood structure, and even of the humans within it, despite all the destruction they wrought. I’ve had no doubt, since first setting foot on what I now call “my lot,” that the tree is protecting me and sending me love. Its ever-expanding canopy of leaves covers over two-thirds of my house in the summer, keeping it cool on even the hottest days. In the autumn, as its acorns hit the roof, the deck, sometimes even my head, like small exploding artillery shells, I give thanks and gratitude for the way it shares its abundance.

    On a cold, dark winter night, silver stars glitter through the outline of the oak’s bare black branches, its ancient arms reaching to the cosmos. My tiny form sits in a tub of hot bubbling water. Boundaries between me, tree, and twinkling stars dissolve into emptiness.

    * fungus which grows in association with the roots of a plant in a symbiotic or mildly pathogenic relationship. Oxford English Dictionary

    Patricia Morris lives under the trees in Northern California and writes on Monday nights at Jumpstart Writing Workshops. She dates her love of stories to being read to while sitting on the lap of her Great-Aunt Ruth, a children’s librarian. Her writing has appeared in Rand McNally’s Vacation America, the Ultimate Road Atlas and The Write Spot anthologies Possibilities and Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, edited by Marlene Cullen.

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    This Sparks page on my website, The Write Spot, is, hopefully, a place for entertaining, fun, and enlightening reading.

    “An Exercise in Barbecuing” by DS Briggs is one of the funnier stories in Discoveries.

    The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing Discoveries is for sale for a limited time for $6.99

    An Exercise in Barbecuing

    DS Briggs

    Very recently I leapt into the world of backyard barbecuing. For years I have secretly wanted to learn to barbecue. In my family it was always my Dad’s domain. However, I love grilled foods and got tired of waiting for Mr. WeberRight to BBQ for me. I proudly acquired a very big, shiny new Weber BBQ. It came with a grown-up sized grill width of twenty-two and a half inches. I dubbed my new friend “Big Boy.”

    Unfortunately, for me, Big Boy came in a big box with far too many pieces. It was with a definite leap of faith to undertake putting Big Boy together. He did not have written directions, nor a you-tube video and I have no degree in advanced “IKEA.”

    Instead, Big Boy came with an inscrutable line drawing and lots of lines leading to alphabet letters. Still, I have my own Phillips’s head screwdriver. I used to call it the star-thingie until an old boyfriend corrected me. But I digress. Suffice to say, after trials and even more errors, I constructed Big Boy.

    Okay, so it took me three hours instead of twenty minutes, but Big Boy was upright and proud. I just wanted to admire my handiwork by this time and Big Boy was clean, so very clean. In fact, he was too clean to use. I postponed the baptismal fire and nuked my dinner that night. In a couple of days, after repeated trips to the store for important and essential tools of the trade: A cover to keep Big Boy dry and clean, real mesquite wood to feed him, and long-handled tongs. For my own protection I bought massive mittens. I was almost ready to launch Big Boy. 

    A few forays into the garage for additional must haves—my landlord’s trusty but rusty charcoal chimney fire starter can with a grate on the bottom and handle on the side and a dusty, spidery partial bag of charcoal in case my mesquite wood failed to turn into coals. I was finally ready to light up the barbecue. I chose to inaugurate Big Boy on a humid, somewhat breezy day. No gale force winds were predicted. As a precaution, I hosed down the backyard weeds. I found matches from the previous century and a full Sunday paper for starter fuel. The directions to stuff the bottom of the charcoal chimney can with crumpled newspaper and then load up the top part with either charcoal or wood sounded easy enough.

    I chose to use the mesquite wood based on advice from Barbecue Bob, a friend of mine. I lit the chimney and soon had enough white smoke to elect the Pope. I waited the prerequisite twenty minutes for coals to appear. Nada. Nope. No coals in sight. The wood had not caught fire, although the paper left a nice white ash. Hungry, but not deterred, I re-stuffed the bottom of the charcoal chimney with more newspaper and set the whole chimney on top of a mini-Mount St. Helens pile of newspaper. I found smaller bits of wood since the lumber did not ignite. I lit the new batch of newspapers again. After a second dose of copious white smoke, miracle of miracles, the splinters of wood caught fire. Finally, it produced enough smoke for the oleanders to start talking.

    “You do know it is a red flag day.” I know bushes don’t really talk, so I assumed the warning came from the owner of the fish-belly-white legs and flip-flops standing behind the tall, overgrown oleanders.

    Having no clue what Flip-Flops meant, I explained that I was trying to learn how to BBQ. I asked what she meant by red flag day and she said that it was extreme fire danger in the hills. Aside from the fact that there was not a hill in sight, I told her that I had the hose at ready. I also asked Flip if BBQing was banned on red flag days. She didn’t know, however, I think I heard the word fire bug. Perhaps she just wanted to let me know that she knew who was playing with matches on a red flag day in case the fire department asked.

    Reassuring Neighbor Fire Watch, I carefully emptied the chimney’s coals onto Big Boy’s smaller, lower but still sparkling clean grill. Using my mitts, I gently crowned Big Boy with the very clean, shiny huge upper grill. The sacrificial chicken had, at last, a final resting place. Whoosh! The previously white Pope smoke was now black and voluminous. Turns out olive oil makes lots of good smoke and less-than-helpful flare ups of flame. With my hands still ensconced in bright red mittens and using a very long tong, I turned the chicken. Only slightly blackened. I kept turning the chicken every five or ten minutes. More black, but not at the briquet stage—yet. I figured I had better recheck my BBQ Bible, the thick one with pictures so you can compare your results with theirs. Their advice was to cook the chicken until it had an internal temperature of 189 degrees Fahrenheit. I hoped Fire Watch was not watching because I dangerously left my BBQ unattended to go rummage through my kitchen drawers in search of an instant read thermometer. I knew that I would need it someday when I bought it a decade earlier. I inserted it and watched it slowly rise to 145 degrees. Only 44 more degrees to go but I was starving and the coals were cooling! I knew this because according to said Bible you hold your hand above the coals and count three Mississippi’s for good heat.

    By the time I had counted “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . . fifteen Mississippi,” even I could tell the coals were dead. I pulled the chicken off the grill. The skin was definitely done. Delicious? No. Blackened? Yes. Delectable? No. Vaguely resemble the BBQ Bible’s picture? Not at all.

    So for the lesson summary: Two hours of perseverance resulting in one hardly edible, even when finished-in-the oven chicken. Adding insult to injury I had a very dirty, sticky, greasy, too-large-for-my-sink grill to scrub.

    Lesson learned: find a home for Big Boy and call take-out.

    DS Briggs resides in Northern California with Moose, her very large, loving, and loud hound/lab mix. She has been privileged to contribute to Marlene Cullen’s Write Spot books: Discoveries, Possibilities, and Writing as a Path to Healing.

    Share your barbecue story on my Writers Forum Facebook Page.

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    The Bachelors

    By Nicole R. Zimmerman

    My father migrated from Cleveland to San Francisco in the mid-1960s with several boyhood friends. A decade later, my parents played occasional weekend tennis with my “uncle” Vic and his wife at Mountain Lake Park. Uncle Vic would bring us piroshki in thin paper bags, purchased from Russian bakers in the foggy avenues where they lived with their son in an Edwardian walk-up. The smell of the ground beef and onions wafting through the steam always made my mouth water, and the doughy pocket left a greasy stain. While our parents remained on the courts, we climbed rooftops and ran—just my older brother, our young friend, and me. There was a rope swing that swept over the lake from a muddy bank, but nobody jumped in or swam; it wasn’t that kind of water. Sometimes we ventured across the street to a mom-and-pop corner mart for ice cream. Pulling apart the plastic seam around an IT’S-IT, I would rotate melting mint or cappuccino on my tongue before crunching into the dark chocolate–covered cookie. It is mostly the freedom of those long afternoons that I remember, playing together outdoors for hours, never bored, our parents always trusting in our return.


    In the early ‘80s, newly single, my father kept a nearly empty refrigerator at his apartment in the Cow Hollow neighborhood. Among the dill tomatoes, horseradish, and Gatorade there was gefilte fish swimming in gelatin in a jar—the cold, colorless substance sticking to the pockmarked whitefish. Aside from fried hot dogs and root beer floats, salami and eggs were about all he knew how to make, which we ate on chipped, metal-rim dishes after the divorce. Sometimes he took us to Original Joe’s where we watched the line cooks move fast pans over the flames from our counter stools. Otherwise it was Tommy’s Joynt on Van Ness or the Jewish deli on Polk where I’d order a block of cream cheese wedged between two halves of a bagel. For my father: corned beef on rye, a little yellow mustard but otherwise dry.

    After high school I held a summer job working the register at a shop selling souvenir T-shirts at Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s mostly the smell I remember. Sea lions basked on the docks, their fetid scent mixed with the aroma of steaming crab set alongside the sourdough bowls, a tangy delicacy to which I sometimes treated myself. In the early mornings the restaurant owners hosed the sidewalks, all the detritus from the asphalt accumulating in gray puddles in the gutter, then washed down among the sewer rats, which scurried under the grates.

    I continued to live with my father for a couple of years after college, serving potato-and-egg skillets and coffee in a carafe to yuppies who inhabited the neighboring Marina District. On Saturday nights they frequented bars and hollered from motorized cable cars that ferried them along Union Street, claiming territory no longer mine. Later, I waited tables at Uno Pizzeria on Lombard, packing leftovers into a cardboard box to take home. With my brother long gone, I often sat, alone, on the metal slats of the fire escape. A cluster of yellow windows glowed from Pacific Heights like fishing boats bobbing in the harbor. While my father watched weekend sports from the swivel chair at his desk inside, I’d listen to the echoes of a foghorn lullaby, biding my time.

    Soon, I made my own migration. It was Uncle Vic who introduced me to the Mission District, including its culinary delights. In this sunny southern neighborhood across the city, cathedral bells chimed and green parrots hung upside down from palms lining Dolores Park, where children licked tropical popsicles purchased from a paleta vendor. He took me to a taquería, speaking Spanish to the ladies in line while I slurped agua fresca for the first time. Like my father, I still didn’t know how to cook. After moving, I subsisted on grilled open-face tacos topped with melted cheese and avocado—newfound comfort food devoured on the front stoop of the Victorian flat I rented. My roommates said I ate like a bachelor.

    Previously published in Issue No. 40 (Food & Memory) of Still Point Arts Quarterly (https://www.shantiarts.co/SPAQ/SPAQ40/files/zimmerman.pdf). A shorter version was originally published in the Readers’ Notes section of Ruminate.

    Nicole R. Zimmerman holds an MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco. She was a 2019 recipient of the Discovered Awards for Emerging Literary Artists, produced by Creative Sonoma and funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts.

    Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for the Best American Essays series, and her work appears in Sonora Review, The Rumpus, Hypertext Review, About Place Journal, Halfway Down the Stairs, Birdland, Origins, Creative Nonfiction, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

    Nicole lives with her wife on a farm near Petaluma and leads women’s writing workshops that follow the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method.

    You can learn more about her writing and workshops at https://www.nicolerzimmerman.com/.

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    All Summer Long 

    By Deb Fenwick

    All summer long, busy house sparrows flit in the eaves of our house. Each morning, they collect tiny twigs and things I rarely notice from the ground and end up making a life with them. Seedlings sprout and reach toward a warm, welcoming sky.  Children ride bikes and screech with delight. No hands! Look at me! Watch! When the sun sets at nine o’clock, those same children, liberated from the rigidity of school night routines, line up for ice cream with wide, wild eyes as fireflies send signals across the garden. The crickets just keep chirping. 

    All summer long, there’s lake swimming in midwestern waters that have been warmed by the sun. And better still, there’s night swimming where a body, unfettered by the weight of gravity,  gets its chance to remember what it’s like to glide through dark mystery. 

    My feet don’t touch the bottom of blue-black water, and it’s just the right amount of uncertainty. I plunge into the cool deep and open my eyes to see almost nothing. Almost. Everything is opaque—shape-shifting while bubbles rise to the surface and my body moves through muffled sound. Everything I think I know in the daytime fades away under the water’s surface. When I come up for air, my eyes squint and adjust to July moonlight. Soft water splashes as I rise to stand on coarse sand. Maybe I’ll hear a screech owl. Not children screeching. They’re all asleep now. The flies send signals, and the crickets just keep chirping. 

    Deb Fenwick is a writer from Oak Park, Illinois, who spent many years learning and teaching in public school settings.

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    Los Padres Lope

    By DS Briggs

    They hit the trailhead of the Lone Condor Trail in Los Padres National Forest. After last night’s party complete with hot tub and paper umbrella drinks, Michelle was in a fragile state. Hungover was not how she envisioned starting a ten-day backpack.

    The trail started gently. The meadows still full of flowers and new greenery. The transformation from scrub and madrone to wild grasses and wild flowers was amazing and spoke to the renewal of life. The vigil she stood last April seemed long, long ago. For days they had wondered if anything would be left of the forest. The fire capriciously jumped here and there. Michelle’s Go Bag was packed and stowed safely in her red convertible. While the ashy gray skies rained over the hillside community, in the end, Half Acre was spared.

    Sweat started beading between her shoulder blades where the pack had left a paper thin space. She adjusted her hat and grunted.

    Declan looked back. Michelle was struggling but thankfully not whingeing. He admired her silent resiliency and determination.

    The ragtag group of five hungover hikers started to string out on the path. Warnings of holes, tree roots, and occasionally a snake sighting were passed downline.

    Les called a rest break, the shade from the failed homestead’s lone palm tree provided some respite from the heat. Some, but not much. The hydration system Les wore didn’t look so silly after their water bottles drained quickly.

    “Please God, let me make it to camp before I kill him,” grumbled Michelle when Les blew his damn whistle again.

    “Los Padres Lope” inspired by the writing prompt:

    Use hot tub, paper umbrella, palm tree, camp or camping, vigil, convertible, fire and transformation in your writing.

    DS Briggs resides in Northern California with Moose, her very large, loving and loud hound/lab mix. She has attended Jumpstart Writing Workshops for several years and enjoys writing in short bursts. She has been privileged to contribute to Marlene Cullen’s Write Spot books: Discoveries, Possibilities, and Writing as a Path to Healing.

    DSB’s love of writing developed out of her love of reading.

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    Memories

    By Frank Hulse

    Confession is good for the soul. So here goes:

    Something I’ve been gnawing on, off and on all day like a dog bone with just a little more flavor.

    I can remember my combination lock from my freshman year in college.

    I can remember what the locker room smelled like. It was directly adjacent to the indoor swimming pool so it was primarily chlorine—but there were more than a few other smells I won’t describe here.

    If I see a post or a picture from a high school classmate, I can immediately hear her/his voice.

    I can remember church camp out at Osage Hills State Park when I was in 8th grade and showing off in the swimming pool, more or less like a peacock when it fans out its train.

    I can remember going on a snipe hunt with all the kids and one of the girls stealing a kiss (given freely).

    I can remember the smell of frying bacon and coffee brewing on our first day of vacation and the new striped t-shirt, freshly laundered, ready to go, and corn on the cob from a street vendor in Estes Park, Colorado.

    I can hear Barbra Streisand singing The Way We Were (Memories).

    I’m happy to have these powerful memories . . . but I wish I could remember where I left my cell phone.

    Yep, a mind like a steel trap, rusted shut and stuck in the 60’s.

    William Frank Hulse III is a native Oklahoman, born and raised in the Indian Cowboy Oilman community of Pawhuska. He began his college career at Central State College in Edmond but enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1968. While serving in the military Frank completed his undergraduate degree with the University of Maryland. Upon his return to civilian life in 1975, Frank was employed by Phillips Petroleum Company for almost 30 years. Since retiring he plays guitar and writes.

    Note From Marlene: You are welcome to comment on my Writers Forum Facebook Page.

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    Ode to a Table

    By Julie Wilder-Sherman

    Lined with age, scratched without intent, indentations of mountain ranges from 7th grade homework reside in her second panel.

    Rings of white from overly hot cups and larger spheres from sizzling casserole dishes placed upon hot pads too thin.

    Dents on corners from swift, careless movement, black pen lines etched through paper, bleeding into the wood. 

    The long, suffering life of my dining room table, surviving, still standing with the family that unthinkingly scarred her.

    Julie Wilder-Sherman began reading books at an early age, encouraged by her mother who would allow her to take books to bed when she was as young as two years old. Raised in a family of readers, writers, performers, musicians, and political activists, Julie followed her dream of singing professionally and met her husband, bassist Jeff Sherman, while singing on The Love Boat. Together they enjoy cooking, eating, reading, and traveling to all corners of the world. Julie remains politically active and helps to manage the Petaluma Postcard Pod supporting democratic candidates, issues, and policies. 

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    I Scream, You Scream

    By Nona Smith

    It’s been well over a year since I’ve done any grocery shopping at Safeway. Early on in the pandemic, it was Harvest, our other local supermarket, who quickly adopted safety precautions: it made mask-wearing mandatory, limited the number of shoppers inside the store at any given time, provided handwashing stations outside, and offered free Latex gloves. Safeway was slow to adopt protective measures, making me feel unsafe in Safeway.

    Fast forward eighteen months, and I’m fully vaccinated and in need of a cake mix Harvest doesn’t carry. Being as health conscious as it is, the shelves in the baking section at Harvest are laden with organic, gluten-free, paleo, KETO, dairy-free cake mixes. There are only a handful of non-organic, full-on gluten, white sugar mixes on the very bottom shelf. I’m guessing their placement there is to give the consumer time to re-think their unhealthy choice while bending over to reach one of those boxes. So, I’m off to Safeway to find my cake mix.

    Of course, it’s there, nuzzled amongst dozens of others of its ilk, within easy reach. I pluck it from the shelf and decide to do the rest of my grocery shopping while I’m already in the store. I pull out my grocery list.

    When all the items are checked off, I crumple the list and stuff it into my purse. Then I go in search of the shortest check-out line, which––because shoppers are encouraged to stand on the six-feet-apart circles painted on the store floor––brings me half-way down the ice cream section of a freezer aisle. And, because I have nothing else to do while waiting for the line to move, I begin perusing the freezer cases and discover an ice cream trend. The highest end ice creams––Haagen-Dazs, Ben and Jerrys, Talienti––have adopted “layering” as a new marketing gimmick. Only pint cartons are offered this way: four layers of different textures and flavors. I’m imagining plunging my ice cream scoop far enough down into the container to reach all four layers at the same time. Nope, I determine, it can’t be done. One would need a spoon to get the effect the product promises. I suspect the idea really is, to sell more product by encouraging shoppers to have their very own pint to dip their very own spoon into. I can’t imagine this trend will last beyond the summer.

    The line moves, and I find myself in front of a section containing lesser-known brands, such as Fat Boy and Fat Boy Junior. I’m wondering what kind of market research led someone to name their product that when the line shifts again.

     Now I’m in the popsicle section and looking at a product that reminds me of the summers of my childhood. I can almost hear the tinkling notes of the white ice cream truck as it announces its tour through my neighborhood. And here it is in Safeway’s freezer: the Good Humor Creamsicle, orange popsicle on the outside, velvety vanilla ice cream on the inside. I’m tempted to put a package in my shopping cart. The only thing that stops me is knowing the Creamsicles would melt before I got out of the store.

    Another five minutes pass, and I’m now standing in that spot between the end of the aisle and the conveyer belt, leaving enough space for shoppers to pass through with their carts. An idea strikes me, and I reach into my purse for the crumpled shopping list and a pen. Smoothing out the list, I jot some notes about what I’ve just discovered. As a writer of personal essay, I know that anything––and everything––is fodder for a story. Why not ice cream?

    By the time I’m wheeling my cart out of the store, I’ve decided to make a stop at Harvest on my way home and do a little market research of my own.

    Standing in front of the ice cream freezer at Harvest, it’s just as I suspected. Yes, the high-end, four layered, products are there, but there’s no sign of Fat Boy or his son. Instead, there’s a product called Skinny Cow. Also, it appears there’s an equal amount of low fat, sugar-free, nonfat, nondairy ice creams made from soy, almond or coconut milk as those made from actual full-fat cow’s milk. The Rebel label promises “high fat/low carbs” for people on a KETO diet. There’s even an ice cream designed for kids who don’t like vegetables. It’s called Peekaboo and is made with “hidden veggies:” vanilla ice cream with zucchini, chocolate with cauliflower. Who knew? The freezer is filled with organic, health-conscious choices, seemingly designed to keep the Harvest shopper living a nutritious lifestyle.

    I tuck the note-filled grocery list back into my purse and head home. Maybe one day I’ll write a piece about ice cream.

    Nona Smith is the author of Stuffed: Emptying the Hoarders’ Nest and numerous other short stories published in various anthologies, including The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, journals and the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times.) Currently, she is writing a mystery about a woman named Emma whose dear friend goes missing. In her search for her friend, Emma finds herself. Nona writes personal essays and memoir pieces as well as fiction, always with an eye towards finding the humor in situations. She lives on the Mendocino coast with her husband Art and two mischievous cats.

    Stuffed: Emptying the Hoarders’ Nest and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year are available at Gallery Bookshop and on Amazon.