It started last Tuesday night.  I awoke in the wee hours coughing like a person with terminal pneumonia.  In the few hours since I had retired feeling quite normal, a painful, bronchial cough had seized my lungs.  I knew from the tickle that refused to leave my throat that… Read full post »

Jodi Arias is now officially a murderer.  She is the 32-year-old woman who savagely cut her boyfriend’s throat from ear to ear, nearly decapitating him.  As if that wasn’… Read full post »

The day I became aware of Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson’s speech at the February 7, 2013 National Prayer Breakfast I was dumfounded.  Huh?  The same Dr. Ben Carson who struggled through his young life in a Detroit ghetto?  The same Dr. Carson whose mother was… Read full post »

I’m thinking it is pretty pathetic to feel as if one has said all one has to say about everything, but that’s how I feel. 

My writing get up and go got up and went about two weeks ago.  I refuse to believe it has anything to do… Read full post »

I woke up this morning feeling groggy and seriously unmotivated, but I had made a commitment for 10 a.m., and a commitment for me is like an Eleventh Commandment.

It only took the party in my mouth that toothpaste creates to perk me up.  Even… Read full post »

I have given her a name.  My new constant companion, Multiple Sclerosis or “Eminess.”  (Sorry Mr. Marshall Mathers or Eminem)

Sharing my personal business with others has never been a big deal for me. I’d rather be an open book than locked up alone with my own… Read full post »

Atlanta is a city unlike any other I have visited or lived in, at least when it comes to the visibility of poverty. 

Chicago has two complete “Sides” almost dedicated to the impoverished: The West Side and the majority of The South Side. People familiar with the layout… Read full post »

Those who know me well understand I spend the vast majority of my time inside my own head.  It’ not, I don’t think, because I am self-absorbed so much as I am self-curious and self-driven.

Last week I received the news that there is an 80 percent… Read full post »

You know how every time you go to a different doctor – whether it be for a consultation or a test – the first thing you get is a clipboard full of forms to fill out?  God, I hate that.  Especially after I found out that all that information was… Read full post »

I’ve just participated in a marathon comment thread on a post by fellow blogger Ron Powell.  If you have the time to read more than 250 comments, some of which are worthy of posts in their own right, you won’t regret it.  In essence,… Read full post »

Marco Rubio is a good-looking, smooth-talking political animal.  He side-stepped the dubious Time Magazine characterization of him as a “savior” deftly enough to put a lid on the jokesters of late night. 

Because I prefer to hear both sides of just about any sto… Read full post »

Thoughts twirl and spin.  So many topics.  So many issues.  State of the Union? Who really knows?  We really need to care.

Guns are a constitutional right.  Why?  Some think the government will run amok. Others fear people who are have-nots want t… Read full post »

It’s not that often that I stumble across something that excites me to the point of spending ten bucks to download a music album.  Why pay when one can find the same music on Spotify?

Yesterday I was jumping around on the web and came across a complete… Read full post »

It all started when I was about eleven.  Being from the suburbs, we didn’t have much need for elevators.  Seemed like everything was on ground level back then. Mama took my sister and me to visit one of her work friends in The City.  This lady lived in… Read full post »

There seems to be an active and vocal group of people on the political left who have a lot of negative feelings about wealthy Americans.  Every time I read a comment on a blog post that asserts some version of “Screw the rich. They are… Read full post »

Isn't’ she cute?  Meet 15-year-old Chicagoan Hadiyah Pendleton. 

This King College Preparatory High School student had the thrill of a lifetime when, as head majorette, she led the school’s marching band past the reviewing stand where the President of the Unite… Read full post »

 Max: “Ms. L, you are not going to believe this, but the headlamp I ordered to replace yours is broken.”

Ms. L:  (Long silence, looking quizzically at Max, her official Lexus service professional) "Oh…whaaaat…hahahahahahaha…you have GOT to be kiddin… Read full post »

Like millions of other smitten Americans, I was pretty much tethered to the TV on Inauguration Day.  The day was magical, almost as surreal to this sexagenarian dreamer as the first swearing in of Barack H. Obama as President of the United States had been… Read full post »

I did it.  Yesterday I completed my quest to see each of the nine movies nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Amour,  Argo,  Beasts of the Southern Wild,  Django Unchained,  Les Misérables,  Life of Pi,  Lincoln,  Silver L… Read full post »

Warts and all. That’s the way I like to tell my stories.  That’s the way I look at myself and the people I love.  There are no perfect people in real life.  Just flawed, broken, struggling human beings who make decisions; some good ones, some bad ones.… Read full post »

I fed the beast again today.  That would be the one that lures $20 bills out of my shallow pockets each week during Hollywood’s awards season.

I had to see for myself how a movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture could not garner a nod… Read full post »

   Keep the Community, Ditch the Site

Open Salon is a community that uses the OS website to stay in touch with a core group of people who enjoy writing and discussing all kinds of topics. We, the writers, are the community; Open Salon is only a platform.… Read full post »

He nods goodnight to the guys with the dark glasses, leaving them to serve as sentries on his front porch.

While stepping across that familiar and long-missed threshold he inhales deeply and slowly sighs it out while he quietly shuts the door.  It is 7:30 p.m.

She is already… Read full post »