It’s spring in March and the daffodils are going strong on the local hillsides in the San Francisco Bay Area. So are the camelias, abutilons and iceland poppies in our front yard.
DON'T MISS!
I've written hundreds and hundreds of posts over the years. To help you find your way to the best of the best, I've tagged my favorites "Don't Miss!" Scroll down here to find them.
Another way to locate Riffs on Life that you might enjoy is to click above on your favorite category – "My Ever-Changing Family," perhaps, or "Funny Button." You can also use the search box located way up top to hunt for stories by topic. There's fun reading at "garden," "aging," "kids" and, of course, "Jon."
Writing Tips — Begged, Borrowed, but Mostly Stolen From My Favorite Writing Coaches
I’ve been writing personal essays, newspaper columns and blog posts for years now. I’ve learned some writing tricks the hard way — by trial and error. Others I’ve just plain stolen from my various writing coaches. Here are some of my favorite personal essay writing tips.
Writing the Personal Essay — Forget the Good, Go for the Bad and the Ugly
When I’m writing a personal essay or a blog post, I find that nice stories in which I behave well and come off looking good generally don’t work so well. I look for the bad story, the ugly story, the story that shows off my marvelous human shortcomings.
Impermanence: Everything Changes — And So Can I
Impermanence. It’s a helpful, if not always comfortable, idea: Everything changes. It just does. My Aunt Grace died last month. My son Peter will be married in May. And 56 wind turbines are now up and running on the pristine rural countryside near my father’s birthplace. Read more.
The (Two-Year-Old) Rhetorician at Our House
What’s rhetoric? I’ve always thought of it as the high-flown language of politics. But really, it’s something we humans do all the time, and that includes the two-year-old humans among us.
Real Snow in Minnesota . . . and Real Warm in My Real Austrian Walkjanker
My authentic Austrian Walkjanker jacket has hung forlornly at the far end of a plastic garment bag for decades. It had no place to go till my son got engaged to a Minnesota girl — and I had a chance to show it a good time on a snowy weekend in Minneapolis.
Grace Falconer Perlmutter Kleis — How to Be a Glamorous Gal at Age 98
My aunt was tall, red-headed, blue-eyed, self-sufficient and glamorous at a time and place when most women in her hometown wanted nothing more than to get married, have babies and put up green beans and blackberry jam. Read more.