Kaleidoscope

“Mr. ZIP is on the street,” my husband tells me when he sees the Postal Service truck at the corner. Don adopted that nickname in reference to the character the USPS used to illustrate ZIP codes when we were young.* He tells me so that I’m warned that mail will be...

The Earthquake The earth trembled And rocked with the rolling surge Of a colicky ocean wave And glass bottles vibrated Like echoing bells And books leaped from The library’s rattling shelves. I awoke And registered the earthquake On my personal Richter scale And...

Memorial Day was memorable. We don’t celebrate much on holidays, but this year it brought on more melancholia than I’d expected. We don’t have family nearby, and friends are usually busy with their families, so my husband and I spend quiet holidays together. This...

Every May, I look for the jacaranda trees to bloom. In Southern California, they appear as the weather turns warmer. In years when the weather is unseasonably cool, I have to wait for the purples, which spread across the Southland like wildfires. Homeowners gripe...

Random thoughts (because it’s hard to focus these days): On Easter we watched Andrea Bocelli sing “Amazing Grace” on TV.“You know he’s blind,” I said to my husband.“He’s just looking down at the words,” he replied.“No, he’s blind. He usually wears sunglasses,” I told...

Most days my husband and I are OK stuck at home together, 24/7. We started isolating ourselves on March 17, just two days before California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued stay-at-home orders. Don and I get along, although we approach things differently. I’m a worrier; he...

This is like retirement on steroids. My husband and I are following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders for California that he issued on March 19. Pres. Trump extended social – or physical as some are calling it -- distancing practices through April 30. It will be...

I was supposed to be at The Ambassador Hotel the night Robert F. Kennedy was shot. Although I had never met the senator, I was a “Kennedy Booster,” one of the high school and college students like those pictured in the film “Bobby.” My group from the San Fernando...

"I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.” -- Joni Mitchell in a June 8, 2000, article by Deidre Kelly in the Toronto Globe (“ ‘I sing my sorrow and I paint my joy’”) At the holidays, I often listen to “River” by Joni Mitchell:“It’s...

Today I went to my friend Linda’s celebration of life. It was one of the few times she was there before I was. Her decorative urn was placed on a table across from a watercolor I had painted of her years ago. I met Linda after I moved to Simi Valley in the ‘80s. We...

As a child growing up in California’s San Fernando Valley, I looked forward to letters and packages from my great-aunts Ethel and Mildred. Their sister was my maternal grandmother, and I’m grateful I was named after her and not Ethel or Mildred. My spinster...

Google “Mary Scott” and you’ll see why I use my maiden name, Kolada, as part of my professional name. There are numerous Mary Scotts, some also in Ventura, including another patient of my primary physician, which has caused confusion. Some people remember my name...

When I was in second grade, the nun who taught us made me classroom monitor. This meant that after lunch, as my classmates filed in and colored in their coloring books until class started, I monitored. I patrolled the room and distributed demerits for infractions like...