Carolyn Schroeder

One cannot avoid music when reading a Haruki Murakami (Japanese, b. 1949) novel. His writing is steeped in the songs of his time; and he's getting up there now, so the musical landscape is wide and varied. However, things get weird quickly because chronological time, as we understand it in our limited human way, has no place in his novels. This necessarily applies to music. His stories are adventures in dimensionality; places where linear and literal thinking are often suspended. The...

Patrick is Dad's cat. He is the big, manly, rabbit-soft tabby and white feline pictured above. Patrick's Origin Story: We all have one. When I lived in Illinois, a small group of dear friends and I ran a tiny (six humans on the best of days, two on the worst), all-foster dog and cat rescue called Animal Heartline Humane Association. We would intake cats and dogs from high-kill county shelters, especially in the rural areas of Illinois and Indiana, where awesome abandoned pets were...

I got word yesterday afternoon that preliminary pathology had come back on my sternal bone biopsy. Metastatic breast cancer, confirmed. Ugh. This was not what I had hoped for, but flipped towards the positive (which becomes a survival skill one must employ immediately), it seems to be the tengu the physicians and I already knew, and assumed. It could have been much, much worse and much more ... metastatic. My friend Murielle, who guides me in all things zestful cancer treatment and...