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Turn Down the Music and Read: Born To Run
When I popped into one of my favorite indie bookstores in Oakland to buy Bruce Springsteen’s new memoir, BORN TO RUN (Simon & Schuster, 2016,) two dudes were working behind the counter. I knew all...
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’80s Song Lyrics Reinterpreted for 2016
Last night I was the emcee for The Basement Series, a quarterly reading series in San Francisco that raises funds for Dave Eggers ScholarMatch and Lit Camp. The theme for the night? The Morning After....
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The Other Significance of November 8
Tomorrow, November 8, isn’t just Election Day. It would have been my parents’ 58th wedding anniversary, if Dad hadn’t passed away in July. And so the Universe shifts just a little, because for the...
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A Walk Through My Bubble
The view from my bubble on Election Day I knew I lived in a bubble. Northern California, where “organic or non-organic?” is a question asked more frequently at a grocery store than “paper or plastic?”...
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Up and At ‘Em
From the peaceful round-the-lake rally against Trump in Oakland on November 13 Ok. Enough. I have unfurled from my tight ball of misery over last week’s election results, slipped through the shock,...
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Letters For Scarlet – The Mixtape
Julie C. Gardner and I bonded online over our shared love of dogs, music, and reading. We’re also both moms of college freshman and, though we’ve never met IRL, provided moral support to another in...
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Music-Themed Holiday Shopping Recommendations
O Holy Night, it’s already end of November and I’ve done zero holiday shopping so far this year – whoops. Normally all that’s left for me buy by December 1 are the tangerines for the toe of the...
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Laughing in the Face of Loss
A big part of why I write is to remember. There are moments and feelings and circumstances that I want to be able to revisit, and since elementary school when I began to scrawl those stories into a...
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#Roc4Tim with Grandma D
In my concert-going life, I’ve been lucky to have some pretty special access to shows. From working backstage during my college years at Irvine Auditorium in Philly and watching performances of Jimmy...
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Hitting The Books On Christmas
When we got married in 1992, we got a couple of oddball gifts. One was a Waterford crystal clock, which wasn’t weird, but the note I found underneath the tissue paper surely was – “Congratulations on...
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Next Cat Club Dance Party: Sat January 14
It’s time for another Midlife Mixtape ‘80s Dance Party at San Francisco’s Cat Club, on Saturday January 14th! And this time we’re raising money for two important causes: Planned Parenthood, and...
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The Day After
In 1983, I was in eleventh grade when ABC aired The Day After. It was the thick of the Cold War and the movie’s premise, about a nuclear war between members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, seemed less...
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With Grateful Thanks to Midlife Mixtape Readers
To everyone who has read Midlife Mixtape this year; To everyone who has liked a post, shared a post, left a comment; To everyone who has supported the authors whose books I’ve reviewed, and the...
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Time To Write Your Thank You Notes
Yes, for any gifts you received last month. But I’m talking about something else entirely. Back at the end of 2015, in thinking about how I wanted to commemorate my then-approaching, now receding...
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Good Girls Don’t (But The Cloud Thinks I Do)
I have always put waaay too much stock in being considered a Good Girl. When I was a kid and my older siblings got in trouble with my parents, I was famous for swooping in from wherever I happened to...
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Concert Review: Lord Huron
The Band: Lord Huron, January 7 2017. I finally found a description of this band that makes sense to me: Fleet Foxes meets Vampire Weekend. Kinda dreamy, but kinda bouncy, and really its own specific...
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Musical Taster Plate
You’ll have to come to the Cat Club on Saturday night to get the full meal, but I’ll be dj’ing some of my favorite ’80s dance songs from 10 pm – 11 pm and wanted to share a couple of musical morsels...
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“The Weight of Him”– The Mixtape
Ethel Rohan is a Bay Area writer by way of Ireland, one of the people I’m happiest to see at various local literary doings. Her debut novel, THE WEIGHT OF HIM, comes out on Valentine’s Day this year....
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Watermark Conference for Women 2017
On Wednesday, February 1, I’ll be making the trek down to the South Bay for my third Watermark Conference For Women, and I could not be more excited. This annual event brings together women from all...
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Pace Yourself
Since November 9th, I’ve woken up most mornings animated by rage. I hide it pretty well, what with the family being around, and the Nutcracker, and the Lord Huron concert, but seriously. I wake up...
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