Autumn is replete with skeleton imagery--from the funny, caricatured, glow-in-the-dark bones of a Halloween costume to the ornate and joyous depictions in Dia de Los Muertos alters and festivals. The light! The fire! Sometimes, with seasonal shifts, my rheumatoid arthritis flares. RA is not your granny's arthritis, mind you. It begins in youth as an autoimmune disorder and chronic inflammation burns away cartilage. Without cartilaginous padding, bones grind together, grow spurs, become unhinged, knees or wrists or all joints simply stop moving altogether. For years, I thought my fascination with skeletons was rather morbid, but now I realize I identify with them! Since I am always aware of my bones grinding together, I am always reminded of the fact that I am a skeleton. Here is a skeletal college Assembled and pasted into my journal when I was trying to do some writing about a knee surgery I had. I eventually wrote the story--it turned into a longer, fictional pie...

I don't really like the word "juvenile". "Justice", post-Treyvon Martin, is just a concept. I certainly don't believe in the "system" all that much. That being said, I find myself doing a 10-week Write To Connect series at a high-security prison for girls in Tampa, FL. The facility is imposing and bleak. It is what it is, a kind of jail--but I am wondering also, if it is not a refuge. Inside, the staff are warm and the girls laugh and joke with them. The girls--well, I hardly feel like I've earned their instant enthusiasm.  There were requests for hugs before the first class was even over. Since I am small, older, somewhat delicate--looking, the girls seem to like me right away. The tallest one wants to stand beside me so that everyone can be thrilled by variety. We talk about disability, in that it is a story, a set of experiences, my experience with difference and limit, that I can bring in and set down beside their experience of differenc...

Thanks  to Lynn Norton at the Tampa Arts Council, I ended up ended doing three Write to Connect workshops at the Rose Manor , one of Tampa Crossroad's residential treatment facilities for women who have lost their children and run out of options due to addiction. (I will be returning for a one-time class at the Manor, with a different group, at the end of June.) In the past, W2C classes have focused on people with disabilites, so this was a new, but not unfamilair group for me. Addiction is an issue I have been close to, with fmaily and friends, in my life, so  I felt an immeidate kinship with these women, and in the three Friday sessions, I am not sure who received more in terms of poetic healing, them or me! With my recent move back to Florida and the struggles that that now involves--to radically start over, I felt very aligned with the women. They have given up a great deal to "hit a bottom" as they say in the langauge of recovery, and now, they work kard to ...