In Mill Valley, on our sunny side of town, September is tomato time. Those tiny seedlings we planted in the corners of our veggie beds back in May have transformed themselves into a tangled, tentacled jungle of photosynthesizing leaves and stalks. The greenery produced delicate yellow blossoms that grew, as if touched by a sprinkling of fairy dust, into a rainbow of marble-to-baseball-sized red, orange, and yellow fruit. Horticulturists near and far will blanch as I mention the magic behind […]

 Technically speaking, I am a writer, not an artist. For more than a decade, starting straight out of college, I was a freelance journalist, pitching stories to editors at magazines and newspapers. My articles and essays often combined first-hand experience with more traditional reporting. As a result, I know what it’s like to put a little bit (or a lot) of myself into a story and then send it out to the world, vulnerable to praise and criticism. That process, […]