True story, near death experience on the Chesapeake Bay.

My mother tells a story and revisits the little community that has been the subject of my last few chapters.

The graveyard cleaning social. A difference between welcome and greeted. 

Preaching, hot and hard. Bareback riding with only one good arm. On the roads at night. Hospitality.

Bible Belt preaching, about 1900. Melissa White and the men in her life, those who were and some who might have been.

In the 1950's a farm couple moves to town.

How we came to be, our cabins, our straight chairs, echoes of our music and our sunsets.

Dedicated to anyone who has ever been a member of a Writers Group and to all those who wondered what it could be like.

Wounded animals, bloodied feet, broken masts, finality.

Hurricane intensified. Crew anguished.

Stay aboard or hide ashore?

Waking, listening. Onslaught.

Together ... and waiting.

Quiet moments before the storm.

Unshackling, uncleating, stowing and fretting. Soundings, makin' bidness, and calling the Owners. A call to home, where is home?

Phyllis and Mike transformed; a disappearing power yacht; hard labor in the sun; an unexpected presence.

A macho moment, a jump-ship moment, and Phyllis's chance for romance.

Power and vitality - a really big yacht, the scent of money and young men - in the path of danger.

Wealthy owners and guests, with comings and goings?

Gracious whiling, a change in Phyllis and change in a tropical storm.

Two on a beach, inches close, lifetimes apart.

On board - the Owner's stateroom, ashore - too crowded on an empty beach.

A bridge for two, a dinghy for two, an ocean just big enough for two.

Crew, crew, crew. Smouldering, smouldering, smouldering.

Two churches, one priest. Reflections on swift currents. Timelessness, loss and decay.

To shoe or not to shoe. To shore or not to shore. Attitude and a welcome change.

Another skip, lights in the night, and tell-tale waters.

Explanations.

Something desolate, something cold.

Bathing, bathing ... and bathing, after a long, long time at sea.

A room on the ocean, on one of a thousand islands, and no way to see.

Seeing and not seeing at sea. A surprise visit.

Psyche is overtaken by a U. S. Coast Guard helicopter in mid-ocean. His crew surprises John.

Night vision, a path of light to Venus, the loom of St. Croix.

Running lights, night encounter.

John just about figures out what separates those who go down to the sea in ships from everyone else.

Jonathan is disconcerted, how exotic can the mundane get in the sway of the French?

A captain checks the anchorage, the boats, the docks, the ... everything.

Rayanne looks into her coffee cup ... and does some sorting out.

Carioca gets saved ... maybe. Rayanne gets smashed. Somebody gets promoted. Kitt finds an easy floater.

Coast Guard patrol boat, Sandy challenged ... broken? Rayanne and Noor - the nightmare was real.

Rayanne disables her first terrorist, explosives missing from the centerboard well, Lusitania in St. Thomas?

Waltzing in something borrowed and something altered, cruise liner collisions in the dark, Sandy fighting outnumbered, Rayanne leaps ... and misses!

Kitt again? Carioca ... Culebra? Vieges? The Virgins? George? ... George?

Spaulding and layers below layers of misery, revelations of Kitt and the powers-that-might-be.

Bad morning, French surprise, no board, and a voice behind you.

Boys on floating chicken coops, missing explosives? Triangulation and sleeping on the beach.

Rayanne soars, a dark and stormy night, cat fall, and a promise

Courtesan's coming, Rayanne asks a favor.

George is sighted, Kitt turns up, Rayanne wins one round and gets a shock.

Cotter pin, bolt, death lurks underwater.

Collision? Get the Rasties to safety. Stricken. Underwater gamble for life and death.

Carioca falls off, the centerboard drops, the sound of a collision in heavy seas ... and nearly thirty people clinging to the boat.

Hesitation ... the boat people!

Girl from Ipanema, rickets, hookworm, scurvy and Sandy's rump.

Clair de Lune, then into the jungle.

Amazing Grace, toe rings and Rastafarians.

The shooting starts. Noor takes a hit.

Escape in white with cobalt blue, a machine gun, a big stick ... under attack?

Rayanne and company clear out. Carioca turns stallion. Sandy bares all. Dominica looms.

Rayanne tackles Florence. Sandy tackles some empty bellies, and Henry gets softened up.

Foul darkness down below. Sandy delivers a stomach punch.

Opulence and style, squalor and stench. Sandy goes armed.

What's the deadliest gun you can carry on a sailboat? Darkness falls.

A dangerous weapon, sinister documents, a critical eye ... and beignets.

Anthony dons khaki. Sandy gets ready to fight. Noor challenges the party line. Rayanne tackles totalitarianism.

Noor attacks the galley. Rayanne goes red. Sandy wrestles a visitor from their past.

Rayanne may have seen someone ... or not. Sandy goes competitive ... and loses?

Sandy takes the plunge.

Rayanne sobers up in the dark.

Rayanne, Noor and Sandy get their assignment.

Eulalia emphasizes, Noor goes skeptical, Sandy shows interest and a harp gets appended.

The minister objects. Sandy confesses.

The dishonorable and the impertinent.

Rayanne panics. Sandy probes.

Rayanne starts seeing things ... and gambles.

How far do sounds carry over the water?

Rayanne besieges the Consulate, Sandy pitches in.

Noor's challenge.

Rayanne charges.

Rayanne offers to buy?

Saved by Anthony ... or not?

Sandy talks—Rayanne snaps.

What Rayanne didn't know.

Rayanne finds out.

An unpremeditated rescue.

Echoes of military splendor.

Rayanne sails with the dolphins, flies with the fish.

Rayanne body slams the entire French nation.

Noor hears a voice.

Rayanne takes on the harbor patrol.

Rayanne tackles the VHF.

Sandy and Noor collect a policeman.

Rayanne tampers with the evidence...maybe.

Sandy and Noor head for the bar on St. Barth's.

Flashback - how this mystery started off as the three friend's sailing adventure.

In the first chapter of the next Rayanne, Noor and Sandy mystery, due out this spring, Rayanne's on-deck self-portrait painting session gets interrupted, violently.

Home with a mother and kids who are different, different from one another and different from what they are expected to be.

The fourth chapter of the right-brained detectives' mystery, "Death Picks A Blue Palette." Rayanne's best friend Verajean has a surprise for her.

A football player, eight cars, a truck, a sitter and a live-in maid, a credit card, a stripper and some stainless steel.

Poems "Old Men," "Kentucky Wonders," "Guadeloupe," "You," "To A Child of Divorce," "Irelyn," "Betty Gail," "Woody," and "Phyllis."

Second half of the previous podcast's short story about Prohibition, the Great Depression, an immaculate conception, a Model A, too many uncles-by-marriage, and too much aloe.

Prohibition, the Great Depression, an immaculate conception, a Model A, too many uncles-by-marriage and too much aloe.

A Macumba witch, in the Brazilian state of Salvadore (Bahia), and a legacy of the Portuguese colonials.

Oklahoma, World War II, the USO, race, rodeo and life among the Indians and in the tourist camps.

Life inside the Nixon administration, as viewed from the Office of the Public Printer, and memories of a true gentleman.

The third chapter of the right brained detectives' mystery, "Death Picks a Blue Palette." The police show up and the Art Center Director gets unhappy, very unhappy.

The second chapter of the Rayanne, Noor and Sandy mystery entitled "Death Picks A Blue Palette." The first body is found.

The first chapter of the first book in the Rayanne, Noor and Sandy mystery series. Rayanne is a portrait artist, a drawing teacher and an accidental detective, whose studio is in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D. C. Rayanne and her sidekick Noor, a born again, tough love lesbian, are confronted with a series of murders in the Old Town artists' commmunity that the police want to write off as suicides. Rayanne's only weapons against the murderer are her intuitions, her very skeptical best friend and Noor's lover, Sandy, a killer ex-Marine.

A Boccaccian Tale—Love, mistaken identity and misbehavior in the medieval mode.

Dignity, misbehavin' and Southern ways.

A coming of age tale, growing up in Western Kentucky.

The small-town South and tobacco land. Incest, suicide, love, old men, old ways, Blacks, white folks, the Nixon administration from inside, travelling behind the Iron Curtain. Life ashore and at sea. Making fine art. WWII homecoming. Short stories, poems and essays in the manner of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. Southern writer in the Faulkner tradition, poet, essayist, sailor, delivery boat captain, computer scientist, advisor to presidential appointees, professional photographer, college mathematics teacher, English teacher, artist and traveler.