Christmas stories and iconography are full of bright stars, yet there is comfort in the soft glow of the farolitos that dot the landscape and lead us gently to our destinations.

I have been contemplating gratitude. Grateful for my family, for my friends from across my life and across the country, and especially grateful these days for the warm and supportive community of neighbors we have here in Santa Fe.

It was as a graduate student in literature at the University of California San Diego that I came to understand the concept of a critique.

Reading about the restaurant's recent revival, I was the one who was both amused and proud of my young self on a long-ago night at Le Veau d'Or in New York.  

Bordeaux, with its elegant 18th buildings, open public squares, and bustling shopping streets, could not have been more different than the American West, nor more beguiling.

This week, trying to winnow down a file box overstuffed with my father's papers, I rediscovered a curious, heartwarming copy of Uncle Florry's will.

Class reunions are few and who knows when we might be together again. So we indulged our nostalgia and laughed.

When my prom date Charlie Holtz arrived at the door in a white sports coat, I was waiting in the living room wearing a pink spaghetti strap formal, the most beautiful dress I had ever owned.

After all the recent rains, the the Santa Ynez Valley never looked more beautiful.

My great aunts Marion and Kathryn left their home and family in Butte, Montana to move to Los Angeles in 1928. A radical relocation in those days and yet they remained in the city for more than 40 years

I don’t need a valentine to remind me that I am loved.

After I moved back to Southern California from New York City, I took a quiz that said that my ideal car was a station wagon. Ridiculous, I thought—I was driving a racy red BMW sedan

Like Santa he would always come at Christmas.

Like Alice falling through the looking glass, we arrive in a mysterious space.

We have a guest blogger here at Practical Voodou. Archie Waters is finally ready to share his story of the stressful summer of 2021.

Waiting for the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland a young man approached us. "You're Nancy Egan, aren't you?" I had no idea who he was.

At the gala celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, our group of longtime members sat laughing and talking like children at the kids table on Thanksgiving.

Slowly the sun slips behind the hill beyond the arroyo.

I have been spending a lot of time with the Guadalupe over the last few months.

Last May when we returned to Santa Monica for a visit, we were greeted by the same weather that had welcomed me when I moved to Ocean Park 20 years ago.

Della became a widow on her 35th wedding anniversary.  At 58 she was not sure what she would do.

My Grandmother would entertain us with her stories. Some evenings, at our urging, she would recite
The Spell of the Yukon by Robert Service, the sad improbable tales of Sam McGee and Dan McGrew.
There were lessons in the lyrics.

The Golden Rollin' Belly, a pub with British pretensions and waitresses in wench costumes, had opened that summer just in time for the race season at the Del Mar track.

Last December was the first month in over 30 years I did not send an invoice to a client.

As I puzzled over the wide selection at Murray’s Cheese, the cheesemonger asked what I was reading. I said Hemingway's The Dangerous Summer. "Ah, a mahon," he recommended

While I am not of the culture, I am listening, paying honest attention.

Here in the high desert they say the sky is our ocean.

It was the toughest job I have ever had and one of the most rewarding.

We were 1950's free range kids. Woolman Street was our playground—we ran down the sidewalk and clambered up the steps to our small yards and porches to play.