Julia Park Tracey

Very exciting news — I went to the Press Club of the East Bay (formerly known as East Bay Press Club and also the San Francisco-East Bay Press Club) award dinner Friday night and guess what! I won an award! 😉 The award was for the editorial I wrote about the Alameda Sun (editorial pasted below) on the occasion of the paper’s fourth anniversary. Here is what the judges read: Editorial: Third Place: Courtney Semple. Contra Costa Times. “Strongest Image After Tragedy Is One of Community. Second Place: Michael Hytha. East Bay Business Times. “Fix Delta Levees.” First Place: Julia Park. Alameda Sun. “A Sunny Anniversary.” Judges’ comments: “When any…

I recently returned from a trip to Europe to visit my eldest daughter, who is working in London for six months. We met up in Paris, and after some days there and in Belgium, we crossed the Channel to England and finished our sojourn by visiting a plethora of literary sites. People who know me realize that I am a Jane Austen aficionado (aficionada?) and understand that a trip to her native land, and a walk through her very environs, is like a heroin hit to me: once is not enough, and I suspect I’ll anxiously pursue more of All Things Jane until I die. The literary trail began in…

“Mommy’s tired,” I tell my kids when I am so. “Mommy needs a nap.” Today was one of those days, after one or two of those weeks. I indulged myself, or rather, stopped fighting the feeling and drooled for an hour or two on the couch in the sunlight. Half-dreams and half-lucid thoughts, visions and plans all comingled and seemed real enough. They vanished upon my awakening. My girls were gone for the weekend but came home this morning for Mother’s Day, Simone with a red dress for prom. She looks gorgeous in it. It’s a perfect ruby red, and suits her figure. Prom is June 3 and she and…

Here is the long work that was in progress along the way through Europe. Not perfect, but I like it. Please comment — would love to hear feedback. Thanks — A Dozen Days (Without You)*Tuesday, April 18Below me, green velvet.Above me, palest blue sky. Then nothing.But here, trapped in this missile thatshoots me away from you,I feel death’s hot breath at my neckwith every bump and shimmy.Each moment expands, an elastic eternity,and I am cold and drugged and wondering.Cassiopeia hangs like a bat in the dark.I awaken at dawn at the top of the world,my face inches from a stranger. Wednesday, April 19Faces everywhere.Voices. Dialects.Nude statues recline, their flaccid manhoodforever…

and trying to catch up. Biggest disaster yet: the photo disk from my week in England is corrupt (Paris pix are fine) — none of the photos from Bath and later London are salvagable (I think). My bags went through the X-ray machines at Customs, which might have done it, and I took a look at the pix yesterday and there was something funny going on, I should have saved them then but tried to look at other pix. When I put the disk back in the card reader, it keeps saying I/O error and the camera just wants to format the disck. Can you hear me scream? This is…