The Year That Shall Not Be Named

by Pam Hines | Essays

It’s April 2021. We’ve just finished THAT year. The year that stopped the world, ended and disrupted many lives, careers and livelihoods. The year that trust and hope were hard to find. As if the Covid19 Pandemic were not bad enough, as if the raw scab of...

The Three Kitchens of My Life

by Macarena D. Gardetti | Essays, Food

“Over the years, the kitchens I grew up in and around continued to draw me in, like a moth to a flame, as though I might recapture whatever innocence I’d lost in that warm, fragrant space.” Sasha Martin My Childhood Kitchen Yes, it was small. A small rectangle that if...

A Morning in an Oxnard Hotel

by Macarena D. Gardetti | Essays, Travel

I stepped on the grass into the open golf course. The silver morning mist under my Converse’s darkened part of its cloth with every step I took and I felt that coolness brushing my socks. The big birds appearing and disappearing in between and their singing...

Directions For Going Home Again

by Pam Hines | Essays

Once you’ve left, can you ever go home again? Many have tried. Some had made it. Some would sooner drink poison. Like any other treacherous journey, a road map might get you going, and keep you on track. What to Bring: All your worldly possessions A perpetually...

The Inner Dialogue of Workplace Signs

by Pam Hines | Essays

The Inner Dialogue of Workplace Signs The countless signs posted around my workplace direct and dictate in terse, demanding words. I sense they have an undercurrent of real meaning. They have subtext. They have their own inner dialogue. It all went downhill after they...

Bridges of Los Angeles County

by Pam Hines | Essays, Los Angeles

The Los Angeles River It’s supposed to be a river. It looks more like a poorly traveled freeway. An elongated concrete basin. Not even an aqueduct. That  would require water going someplace, maybe to nurture things or to create power with motion. The LA River,...