Monthly Archives: June 2015

“Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that,” Martin Luther King, Jr.,  penned in his book Strength to Love, published in 1963. Over the last several days this quote has flowed across the internet. Perhaps it is intended to bring comfort to the citizens of Charleston or to all of us who feel so inadequately helpless in the aftermath of the June 17^th shootings in a building that should have been sacred, should have been safe, should have been immune from the terrors we face on the streets outside our houses of worship. But that day, hate forced its way inside and darkened forever the light of a place of holy sanctuary. And this is to be Dylann Roof’s legacy – hate in the Holy City. Continue reading →

I turned forty last month. No fanfare, no party, no banners. Nope, just a quiet celebratory lunch with a close friend, coffee time later with another friend, weekend barbecue with the family. This year, in acknowledgement of the close of a decade and the beginning of another, my mother graciously agreed to crack open the family recipe box to make my favorite cake – apple with cream cheese frosting, saved for only the most appropriate of occasions.

You must understand – this cake is decadently dangerous with approximately 1000 calories per whiff, and that’s before you take a bite. I eat one sliver then leave the rest in Tucson with my family to decimate as they choose.   (Hey, in the epic Battle of the Scale in my family we play for keeps. In other words, I don’t “keep” the cake anywhere realistically in arm’s reach in my normal life.) It really is an enormous sacrifice for my mother to make this cake. It sits on the counter seducing you to destruction with its Siren’s song floating melodically throughout the house and across the patios. Honestly, the cake might be a teensy bit evil (Exorcism has not been ruled out. Just kidding.  Pretty sure God himself would eat this cake). But I digress… Continue reading →