Several readers — thank you theredbaron, Jill, and COat50 — wrote me yesterday to inform me that Mitrice Richardson had been found. As in, her body had been found, life long since lost from it. (LA Times account here.)
It was another reader who informed me of her case, nearly a year ago. She thought I [...]

A quick sketch of the complexity of people.
The boychild and I were at a stationary supply store this morning, getting the nicest congratulations on completing Kindergarten/ congratulations on starting preschool gifties I know to give these kids: spiffy little hardback notebooks and fresh felt-tipped pens with which to fill them.  Per usual, the boychild is [...]

E.U.P. • February 27, 1995 — March 24, 2005.
[I posted the photograph above and the poem below for the past two years on this date.  Most of the explanatory text below, last year too.
Muted backstory about my nephew here (I provided an anchor link to the relevant part, but it seems to [...]

Pops, indicating the height of the trees when his dad planted them 70 years ago.
In my recent, breezy, Twitter-length series of As to some Qs about lesbian fatherhood, I wrote: “My dad is one of the beacons of love in my life.”  True story.  One of his most oft-repeated definitions of family is this [...]

Kid’s baseball card photo/talisman, Berkeley, CA.
Had to wait ’til Monday, since over the weekend the spirits flagged too much. Kept looking at pictures of pictures of my nephew, who would have turned 15 on Saturday. Couldn’t post a picture of anything other than him, but then couldn’t really post about him, either. So, a blank [...]

The boy and I are driving back from a morning’s peregrinations — hardware store (my idea, natch), bakery (we both agreed, natch), library (his suggestion) — and we were listening to one of his favorite songs on the Free to Be You and Me album: “When We Grow Up.”
It’s sung by Diana Ross, and here [...]

This image is of a Wonka-esque factory along Copenhagen’s harbor, taken by me using my sister’s cellphone camera.  I was brandishing it out the window of a moving taxi en route to the Opera House and the beloved’s and my first date night with childcare (ever? certainly in a foreign country).
My then-family of three was [...]

The deathless Malvina Reynolds, on death (and loving life). “This World,” 1961:

Baby, I aint afraid to die,
It’s just that I hate to say goodbye
To this world, this world, this world.
This old world is mean and cruel,
But still I love it like a fool,
This world, this world, this world.

I’d rather go to the corner store
Than sing [...]