Speaking of....

 

I have been the featured speaker for these events and organizations

Libros Schmibros at the Hammer Museum shared with J. Michael Walker

Professional Journalists Association

Los Angeles Festival of Books on a panel 

Los Angeles Archives Bazaar

Los Angeles Public Library Best Friends

Los Feliz Arts and Architecture lectures 4 times

Los Angeles Geographers Association

Los Angeles City College

California Library Association 

Google at Santa Monica

California Map Society twice

Los Angeles Corral of  Westerners

Western Association of Map Librarians

Board of Library Commissioners

Los Angeles Library Foundation- the Committee

Waverly School 4th graders

Crossroads School 7th graders

Los Angeles Natural History Museum

Mt. Washington  Homeowners Alliance

Glassell Park Improvement Association twice

Whittier Genealogical Society

Torrance Genealogical Society

Bruckman Award at the Los Angeles Athletic Club

Southern California Genealogical Society twice

Palos Verdes Historical Society Sherman Library

Urban Rancho at  Sycamore Grove

Los Angeles Breakfast Club

Hollywood Heritege Museum

Fullerton Public Library

Aloud at Central Library

The Chapparal Club

Little Landers Society 

Eagle Rock Historical Society

Los Angeles Public Library Docents 

protein acids ticking

 

"Young as I am, I can hear in myself the protein acids ticking; I awake at odd hours and in the shuddering darkness and silence feel my death rushing toward me like an express train. The older we get and the fewer mornings left to us, the more deeply dawn stabs us awake."- "the lifeguard" by John Updike

 

The Land of Nod

Lisa Sewell

The night after she returned from the hospital  the uneven rumbly liquid breathing of one soon   to go under kept me at the surface of thoughts  I couldn’t escape. Clonazepam, Lorazepam,  not even Ambien could pull or sink me. And in the morning,  sure enough, we couldn’t coax or shake her awake   except for a few seconds when someone or thing   wrenched her eyes open and let her answer no  to every question in a scornful voice we’d never heard before  before pulling her down to that rocky undertow.  Through the morning and afternoon every breath,  a grunt, a rattling that soaked the bedclothes and pillows in sweat.  Then at 3 pm, she returned—recognizing her two daughters  speaking her own name and the name of the president.  The hospice nurse put a line through the word “Comatose”  scrawled at the top of her chart and for the next few hours  a light or absence seemed to emanate from her almost  emptied irises. No sentences. No speech as the white   nimbus of hair, thick and lively around her head  nodded yes to sitting up and getting dressed—  to sweet potatoes and Jeopardy! as though part of her   remained in that rheumy underwater place  that took her breath away and wiped out the syntax   of explanation and inquiry, leaving only  no I won’t and certainly not and don’t ever wake me up again.