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Jello
My arena of influence has expanded into the Land of Eat, specifically the Province of Dessert. Who knew that such a thing could occur, especially in a human burned out long ago on the confection perfection demanded of/by a 4-H practitioner who achieved Grand Champion...
Zymurgy
zymurgy MEANING: noun: The branch of chemistry dealing with fermentation, as brewing. ETYMOLOGY: From Greek zym- (ferment) + -urgy (work). Earliest documented use: 1868. NOTE: While zymurgy's day job is raising spirits, it also moonlights as the last word in a...
Life is Improvisation
I love improvisation, a theatrical situation in which actors play off of each other unscripted. They create little dramas and comedies just by speaking dialogue and acting out scenes they make up as they go along. I admire improv actors whose high-spirited goodwill...
No Fair!
Back home in Indiana I reveled in all things 4-H. It was a way to fill the long hours of summer in a very small town.
Baking yeast rolls to perfection, stitching just so, and lumbering around in an old car taking ridiculous photos under the guise of art.
Holiday placemats made, the etched glassware crafts, and on and on and on with ardent endeavor.
So attending the Orange County Fair and lingering over the children and adults’ exhibited wares had been a high point of summer ever since we moved here. A bit of roots relatability.
Safe Harbor
33, 000 miles on the odometer. We had driven 1000 of those miles in a week's trek through Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. In a powder blue Crown Victoria with a trunk large enough to transport Jimmy Hoffa's body as well as our minimal luggage. It was the annual...
Nate the Pig, a picture book by PJC, illustrated by Savannah Nau
1. I am a Blue Butt. 2. But I’m not what you think. 3. I am a crossbreed of Hampshire and Yorkshire Pigs. 4. I wallow in puddles and baths of mud 5. But not for reasons you think. 6. I don’t perspire to release body heat. I need to maintain my cool 7....
Paul McCartney and the break-up of the Beatles
A few years ago I experienced dissolution of a family that I thought I'd had. I mourned and felt terrible - until I remembered my favorite Beatle, Paul. He was the odd man out in the dissolution of the Fab Four, the apparent lone ranger like me. I'd always...
They
Sigh. If you ever want to wave a conversational red flag in my face, just say "they" did it or said or thought it. Be ready, for I will ask you, "Who are 'they'?" I rise forth from a lifetime of blame from a tattletailing little sis along with the mischievous...
Bunco vs. Hunk-o
It’s 6:45 p.m…6:53, and then it’s 7:00 sharp, the time we planned to meet. I’m sitting in my BMW, soothing my neurotic apprehension with hits from the ‘80s on Sirius. The moon is smiling aloft on this typically faint-starred night. The light bleed of the human mass...
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