Super excited to share my article that’s been published in Bend Magazine. I love this community-oriented publication and am proud to now be a part of it. It’s a super quick read so please take a moment and give it a once over. Tell me what you think! Writer, world traveler, volunteer, and a champion for the underdog I believe in one love, equality, doing the right thing no matter how difficult it seems, and the indisputable need to care for the planet and everything that lives on it. I'm trying

Did you ever think that the last time you had sex would be the last time you had sex? I asked this of a male friend of mine who hadn’t had been intimate for six years. I knew someone else for whom it’d been eight years, probably nine now. For me, it’d been over two, and I was struggling with that reality. None of us were actively seeking celibacy but it seemed to be the way things played out. The worst part for me was that the last time wasn’t even good. Certainly not what I wanted to have as th

I was raised eating meat. Forced to eat it even though I mostly didn’t like it. Not because my mom was a bad cook, in fact, just the opposite. I just never liked meat, even as a small child. OK, bacon is tasty, but honestly, who doesn’t like bacon? And my mom’s Italian Beef was awesome, but mostly because of the loaf bread it lay on that was soaked with the savory gravy. When we had a roast, I only wanted the end piece; it was small and had all the seasoning on it. It’s the same reason I liked

I’m not a spender. Growing up wearing hand me downs, being afraid to ask my mother for money, and having spent the majority of my life not being able to “keep up with the Jones’s” made me frugal. Having expensive taste but not the income to support it taught me to save for what I really wanted instead of wasting my money and settling for a cheaper, more disposable substitute. Age and travel altered my priorities. I prefer the freedom that comes with having good credit and no debt. Nowadays I rar

Variety is the spice of life, or so the saying goes. It must be true. It’s why some people cheat on their partners, or why people get excited with new and fresh styles in all classifications of the arts. It’s why the arrival of yellow and purple carrots created quite a stir of delight in kitchens around the world. We seek it in our diets, fashion, and lives. Could you imagine if you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life? What if there was only one type of cheese, or everyone wo

I’ve lived in a lot of states throughout the US; mostly in the suburbs of big cities where most people were all about themselves. Here, it’s 130 miles over the mountains and through the woods to the nearest big city. Until now, never had I experienced living someplace where there was a true sense of community. Not only do the residents consciously support locally owned businesses, but many go out of their way to avoid places and products that are sell-outs, like a local brewery that sold out to

I’m tired of hearing about yet another senseless killing of an innocent black man. I’m dumbfounded that, as advanced as Americans are in science and technology, many are still psychologically stunted in the Jim Crow era. We know that racism is learned and not innate. There are examples everywhere that show how young children don’t even see the color of ones skin. So I began to wonder, when exactly, does this happen? Of course, if a family is racist, it begins at birth. But what about children b