(Camarlench,1849-1916) I think I lost a friend. Oh, at first I thought I might have just misplaced her– I’m really so forgetful these days. So I looked in all the usual places. I looked behind the curtains and in my email inbox. I looked in the plastic storage box where I keep my ‘important’…
My Very Own Christmas Story (originally published December 25, 2011)
www.allisontregnier.com It’s Christmas day and the sun shines boldly above a thin veil of haze. I walk the streets of my neighborhood and quiet rules the day. No cars, no familiar faces… not even a mouse. Just yesterday tempers were still frayed as cars engaged in parking space battle and last-minute shoppers foraged for last-minute…
Watch Out the World is Changing (originally published November 6, 2011)
If you keep your eyes and ears open, occasionally you’ll be in the right place at the right time to watch the world change. Sometimes it will be obvious and at other times you’ll only realize it years later and wonder how you missed it when it happened. The shift in racial and sexual equality…
Sleeplessness (originally published October 26, 2011)
Last night I couldn’t fall asleep which is not at all an uncommon event. It wasn’t always that way. When I was younger I slept with no awareness of the world around me. I slept so soundly that my dreams were long played out and already forgotten by the time I woke. Twelve hours on…
If You Could Turn Back Time (October 20, 2011)
If you could live in 1850 on $30,000 a year or live in 2011 on $30,000 a year, which one would you choose? $30,000 a year in 1850 would make you a very wealthy person able to afford the best care, the best housing and the finest material possessions.That was the question. Out of the…
The Gift (originally published October 6, 2011)
It was a day so hot and close that only children could function at full capacity. This was the farm where my father had lived as a boy. It was difficult to imagine the formal older man roaming these hills and playing in this creek. Difficult to picture him coming in from a hard day…
The Sound of Music (originally published September 29, 2011)
A giant finger reaches from the sky and plucks the golden string that sets into motion the rhythm of the city from ocean to bay.Music spills from the doorways of windowless clubs where unknown bands sweat in obscurity. Elsewhere in the city, six hundred people float upon the jazz guitarist’s plush and intoxicating tunes. At a…
Green is Blue (originally published September 25, 2011)
Imagine if everything you believed in was suddenly turned upside down. If green was now blue or an elephant was now a marsupial that might not matter too much to you. If a tomato could feel pain or a house cat could spit poison, you probably would change certain behaviors. But what if you were…
A Second Chance (originally published September 21, 2011)
Photo by Bob Burrows Indian summer is here and it feels like a second chance. A blanket of heat has settled over the land and lowered the oxygen level for those existing under its canopy. I move more slowly to conserve energy for it isn’t the same summer heat that stirs the passion…
Falling in Love Again (originally published September 18, 2011)
SHE arrived in New York from her native Afghanistan 30 years ago, leaving behind a country scarred by colonialism, tribal lords and fundamentalists for whom religion became a vessel of hatred. Armed only with an unbeaten spirit, she met and married the man who would become her rock in her newly adopted homeland. A savvy and…