My father died in 1991. He was 77 and had been diagnosed with a form of Alzheimer's about six months earlier, although the doctor suspected that, since Dad was an intelligent man, he had been masking the symptoms for a long time. The sad thing of the ailment is the peeling away of the subject's past and personality. I had been living in Los Angeles ( Read more... )

I sat down this morning with every intention of working hard on at least a couple of writing projects (either a script or a non-fiction book).  But my fingers hovered over the keyboard as I looked at my Documents file, and they just didn't want to go there.  I even opened the file for a short story that needs polishing, but after skimming through ( Read more... )

I've finally gotten back to regular entries on my blog for The Scribbler's Guide to the Land of Myth.  Or at least, begun the process of being regular (let's see if I keep it up).

This time out, I'm tackling the issue of Father Figures.  There just aren't that many good ones out there, by and large, so I wanted to highlight what makes a certain one ( Read more... )

So the last three days have been pretty much filled with shoveling our way through all the stuff in my mother's house. It seems that as she got older, she got more concerned about keeping "important documents" in case they were needed. I don't think she threw out a copy of a paid bill, notice of anything, bank statement.... anything. But the habit ( Read more... )