I want you to want me

Does anybody besides me remember that song from a gazillion years ago — I want you to want me? I caught the tail end of this Cheap Trick hit on the radio and it got me thinking …

Are any of us really, truly, wanted? (more…)

Live … from SRQ … it’s County Town Hall live!

Hey — this is really cool. Sarasota County is having a public discussion tonight (Monday) at 6:30 p.m. — it’s going to be a community conversation about county budget issues that affect all of us. It’s like a virtual Town Hall meeting and the folks at the county ratcheted things up several notches by implementing several ways that county taxpayers can participate. (more…)

Marry free … or move to New Hampshire?

This piece will appear in the June 17th print issue of Creative Loafing, and they’ve already posted it online at their website. Read it here or at CL (you can post your comments at either site) or just look for it at newsstands on Wednesday (the 17th) if you prefer!

Ah, New Hampshire – that bastion of backwoods, barns, and covered bridges – has given me yet another reason to love it: On June 3, the Granite State legalized marriage between same-sex couples.

I’ve had a major jones for New Hampshire since catching my first glimpse of that state’s motto — “Live Free or Die” – while on a family vacation when I was a teenager. (more…)

Sleep intoxication

Sleep Intoxication

Inside:

I drink my sleep
In big waves
Of weightless
Thirst

Random lovers
Strap themselves in; (more…)

MC Coolidge — Best Blogger … I could get used to the sound of that!

But in the meantime, I’ll have to settle for Best Blogger “Finalist” … and I’ll have to settle for seeing it … not hearing it. Look what Sarasota Magazine just SUPER sweetly delivered to me today! And, yup, it’s going up proudly on my office wall. (Now, if only I could glow as radiantly as the woman on the cover!)

Hunkering down for hurricane season

As we’re already being told ad nauseum, hurricane season is upon us. I’m the first one to admit to being a scaredy-cat when it comes to a land-falling big one, but on the other hand, there are some things to enjoy about the next several months.

Number one at the top of my list — tourist season is over! All my favorite places get quieter and easier once the out-of-state license plates disappear.

On a sticky July Saturday, I can finally snag a seat outside my favorite sidewalk café along Main Street. On a slow Friday night in the dog days, I can actually find a parking spot outside that ultra-hip neighborhood hang-out I can’t get near the rest of the year. I can take a chair in the nearly empty bar, order a chilly Chardonnay, and toss back a few jumbo shrimp, all in relative quiet. (more…)

Nice girls finish fat?* Oh, I’m SO glad I’m a bitch!

After I left my husband and moved into my own apartment, I had a lot of time for navel-gazing. In my first few months alone, with only copious amounts of take-out pizza and twizzlers to keep me company — I had time to do a lot of thinking about the fact that for WAY too long, I’d been WAY too nice. Played WAY too fair. Given away WAY too much with WAY too little coming back in return.

As my waistline grew bigger and my mood got moodier, I decided to change my nice-girl ways and become a bitch with a capital B. (more…)

Woulda … coulda … shoulda

Today, if I’d stayed married, I would have been married ten years. But I didn’t. Stay married, that is. The only one of my siblings to divorce, yup, that’s me — little black sheep of the family.

I left the man I’d promised to love and stick with through thick and thin. Keeping the first part of that promise was easy: I still loved him — or maybe I still loved the man I’d wanted him to be — the day I left him.

It was the sticking around through thick and thin part I couldn’t stick with. (more…)

My head is an organ for burrowing …

Excuse my borrowing of Thoreau’s words to title this column … but if that isn’t an apt passage for being a writer I’m not sure what is. But it’s more than just being a writer, his words are evocative of the human experience — at least if that experience involves an examined life.

As homage to HDT, I call my teeny-tiny home and wild and unruly double-size yard — Walden II.

I’m in a Thoreau state of mind today … it’s a good thing I’m alone. Well, not completely. I just ran into a snake outside, and the birds are plentiful. (more…)

How best to serve those who served? — MC appears in today’s Herald-Tribune

The editors at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune are running a piece of mine in today’s (May 23) paper. It’s a column about my experience working at a veteran’s homeless shelter in Boston. If you pick up a print copy, you can find it on page A12 in the op/ed section.

Or, you can click through on this link and read it at their website: Those who survived but struggle.

If you like — or don’t like — what you see, you can post a comment online at their site or here at mine; or you can write a letter to the editor by clicking on this link: http://www.heraldtribune.com/section/opinion04

Wishing everyone a safe and happy and thoughtful Memorial Day weekend!