Category: Ramblings of a Writer
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A Special Day
CHARLENE UNDERWOOD DEALT WITH death often in her job. That morning, before the call had come from Richard, she’d already told a patient and her husband that the biopsy taken the week before showed that her cancer had returned after a four-year remission. She’d been so empathetic, so comforting as she offered tissue and pamphlets…
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A Little Romance for Spring
I wish you a warm and happy spring. Once the pollen dissipates here in north Florida, and I stop sneezing, it should be a lovely season!
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Head to the Mountains
Missing the Smokies This year marks the first one in eight that we haven’t spent the late spring settling into our cabin near Murphy, North Carolina. We sold the cabin in November, and while the best decision for us, I can’t help but sigh wistfully when I think about the majestic beauty of the Smoky…
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Montauk Point Memories
Head to the Beach I grew up in Michigan but never left the state until the summer of my tenth year. My parents and my older brother set out in our Chevy station wagon for Long Island where my oldest brother and family lived. That trip left me with amazing memories that I treasure and…
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MARCH 4 – MARCH FORTH
Fifteen years ago today on March 4, 2008, the first of my four older brothers died. By his own hand. He left behind questions with no answers as I struggled to fight my guilt. But I kept marching forth once I pulled myself off the floor and stopped screaming. I wrote about it several years…
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THE GRATEFUL FATES – IT’S ABOUT TIME!
How many iterations of this novel did it take to get it just right? As many as needed. I began it with an idea and a working title of Four Women and a Man. The earliest version I can find is dated in 2017, but I think I started it before that date. It went…
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Remembering Rachel Carson Today
“For there is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, in the ebb and flow of tides, in the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature. The assurance that day comes after night and spring after winter.” Rachel Carson Rachel…
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#OhioChemicalDisaster – Shows Us We’ve Learned Nothing Thirteen Years After Deepwater Horizon #Oilspill and Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster
When I published my novel Trails in the Sand in 2013, I had hoped one of my messages would be heard and repeated. On the surface, the novel appears to be a family saga with more secrets and drama than an afternoon soap opera. That was my vehicle for telling the story of two major…
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Remembering the Brave Heroes
My great-grandfather, Harmon Camburn, enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 two weeks after the start of the Civil War. He was nineteen. His infantry unit, 2nd Michigan, fought in several major battles during the horrific war. His final and nearly fatal active participation in the war occurred on November 24, 1863. His unit had…
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A Bit of Spring as Summer Surges
Last year, my husband constructed a butterfly garden next to his raised beds. This year, we are enjoying the flowers of his labor. And so are the butterflies and bees.
P.C. ZICK 