Creative

Scheherazade, fabled storyteller of Arabian Nights, under sentence of death, told stories with no endings. Endless new beginnings, night after night, kept her alive. But stories, for all of us,…

Photo by Sheila Swayze You burst from the starting gate and though I pull on the reins, I hang on for the ride, longing for 1940's snail-pace years when I…

Outside the local supermarket in my small town, Salvation Army volunteers sit beside the Red Kettle, ringing their red bells, playing recorded Christmas carols. Mostly older, they work their shift,…

[caption id="attachment_7634" align="alignleft" width="275"] Patrick Moore, center. After Sarah died, Moore married Mollie O’Connor, at right. At left is Annie Gray, later Annie Gray Shannon. Photo Courtesy Michael Shannon.[/caption] Irish-born…

It’s December, and I go to Mission Plaza to try on different lives. Inside the church, I inhale whispered prayers and notice how others do it. One woman kisses the…

One in a series of historical nuggets that local author, historian, and teacher Jim Gregory has mined from our rich, robust, and sometimes rowdy past here on the Central Coast of…

One in a series of historical nuggets that local author, historian, and teacher Jim Gregory has mined from our rich, robust, and sometimes rowdy past here on the Central Coast of…

In the moldering ruins of Holyrood Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots lived, loved, suffered, where her secretary Rizzio was murdered, in the crumbling Abbey where Mary prayed, Mendelssohn found…

Mountain View Cemetery, San Bernardino   The long hallway from the lobby to the KVEC radio studio on Sacramento Drive in San Luis Obispo is lined with memories, vintage black-and-white…

In the spring of 2015, on a three-week trip to Paris and the British Isles, I took my new Samsung Galaxy S6. I was able to use Facebook, respond to…