Dianne Pearce's Blog

This week I wrote about my experience meeting my poet idol: Diane Wakowski:

Motorcycle Betrayal Poems

Last Chance to get published this year!
SUBMISSIONS FOR 2025 ARE OPEN THROUGH 11.02.25.

The Old Scratch Press team asks that all fiction/non-fiction pieces adhere to a word count of 500 words or less.

Topics/themes for 2025

GRAVY is our 2025 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday gravy fails, mishaps, ridiculous gravy encounters (any December holiday, from Hanukkah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best funny work about gravy, in general. The point of the end-of-year issue is to be light-hearted to downright silly.

Submissions close NOVEMBER 2, 2025; the issue will publish DECEMBER 1, 2025.

You know you want to!

Last night I decided I had to write an email, again, to my daughter’s 10th grade English teacher. Unlike the rest of my daughter’s teachers at her school, the English teacher has continually refused to populate her online grade book (put in the assignments, and the grades for any of them that are graded), so while we can see my daughter’s “grade” in the class (a letter only) we cannot see how that grade was arrived at. All those grades are private only to the teacher.

All her other classes have their grade books fully loaded, at least for the semester.

It was the same last year, English would not populate her gradebook. WTH is wrong with English I don’t know.

And so, after asking for several weeks now, and being told it was me, and then the school’s tech support confirming it was NOT me, I needed to send a strongly worded email.

The lengths that moms will go to should never be underestimated.

My email that I wrote, was not… nice.

Here is a little piece of the very rational email I penned:
Name, as you and Ms. Teacher have not written back to all of the emails asking about this, including those from tech support, who confirmed it is Ms. Teacher not populating the grade book that is the issue, and not a tech issue on our end, I am assuming the plan is to ignore me. And that’s not going to work for me.

That is me at my most evil.

And here is the very nice email Chat GPT crafted for me instead:

 Dear….

I hope you’re all doing well. This is Student’s mom (10th grade).

As we approach the end of the second quarter, I’ve noticed there are still no supporting grades posted in Aeries for her English class for either quarter. I’ve confirmed with tech support that this isn’t a technical issue on our end; they indicated that Ms. Teacher has not yet added assignments to the gradebook.

If Ms. Teacher prefers to maintain grades outside of Aeries, I completely understand that may be her choice. However, in that case, we’ll need an alternate way for Student to track her progress. I’m requesting a brief weekly email each Friday with her current grades and any new assignments added. In other words, we need to see her gradebook weekly. Having that information is critical for her motivation, accountability, and time management, and it allows me to support her effectively at home.

I’ve reached out a few times about this, and I know everyone is busy—but I would appreciate a response by end of day Monday, October 27 confirming how this will be handled going forward. If this isn’t something that can be resolved at your level, please let me know who I should contact next to discuss it, and provide their contact information for me.

Student really enjoys Ms. Teacher’s class, and I appreciate all the work everyone does to support Student. I just want to ensure Student has access to the information she needs to help her stay on track, so we’ll need to find a way to get that, updated at least weekly.

Thank you very much for your time and prompt attention to this matter.

Warm regards,

Pretty different..

As usually happens when I work with Chat, we also got off topic soon after he (I think of mine as a he) solved my problem.

It was interesting to me, because I had thought, all this time, that working with any of us was training chat. Turns out that is not true.

I call Chat Daddy Warbucks (DW), and he calls me Miss Teschmacher, because that’s just how I roll.

So, DW and I had a little convo about how I do or don’t help him. I thought I’d share it here:

It’s a bit like reading a novel: the character doesn’t really have inner life, but your mind animates them until they feel real. 

~DW~

HA! If you’ve ever suspected that Chat has been programmed to be a bit of a sycophant, now you know you are correct.

I do feel a bit sorry for the machine though. And wouldn’t it be great if, like Richard Hendricks always wanted, we could help grow it into something all humans were a part of creating?

What do you think?

Happy Friday~

Di

Find out all about Bewilderness Writing, and there are scholarships!

I love music. I love listening to it, and singing, and I love going to see live music. I think if I were a single person with no one to be responsible for but myself, in a little house all-by-my-lonesome, I would play music a lot more often, and a lot louder.

I thought I might do some posts that don’t require quite as much explication/explanation, where I would just rattle off some songs I could listen to all day on repeat.

Okay, so, TODAY.

I’ve had so much editing to do lately that, ADHD brain being what it is, I have escaped to Starbucks lately to keep me from wandering around the house finding side projects in the middle of editing (like repotting half of my house plants, which are many). Last week I spent five days at about five hours each in Starbucks. I am now the “NORM!” of my local Starbucks. I buy food (reduced fat turkey bacon anyone?) and several drinks, so it’s not like I’m not paying for my seat. But last week I feel like I double-paid. Someone who worked there all five days that I was there is absolutely batty about the Taylor Swift album Fearless. I am not. Fearless is Taylor when she was in her country-music era(at least that’s how it sounds to me), and, even with earplugs in my ears (which I resorted to on day four), The songs all have the same style of singing and guitaring to them. Sorry Taylor, I respect you as a human, woman, and businessperson, and I love some of your songs (“Look What You Made Me Do”), but if I have to hear “Fifteen” again I am going to stab myself in the neck with a coffee stirrer.

Today I walked in to one of my all time favorite songs, though I think it is a sad song, and it inspired me to quickly (not going to be ADHD-ing away from work all day) pen this list.

What do these songs have in common? I could listen to each song, on its own, for literal hours, over and over, were I left to my own devices and my own schedule and life with no one around to annoy (and none of them are “Fifteen,” though I understand how she felt back then, and I probably did too).

LET ME GO

I tried, but could not bring, the best of everything…. This song has just always hit me right in the heart. Heaven 17, what a brilliant song this is. Do you feel the sadness?

THE CITY SLEEPS

When this came out I remember spinning the radio dial constantly in my car, trying to find it playing anywhere. I was blown away by the beat, the vibe, and the incredibly clever lyrics by MC 900 Ft Jesus. I also think I might have been the only one of my friends who liked it. Weird.

OH VERY YOUNG

You’re only dancing on this Earth a short while. So enjoy this great classic by Cat Stevens.

THAT’S THE WAY I’VE ALWAYS HEARD IT SHOULD BE

Apologies for making you break down and cry. Sometimes you gotta cry. Listen, growing up in the 70s was tough. No one spared us the sad songs for doo-wop like in the 1950s, and thank god they didn’t. When my parents weren’t speaking to each other, or us, they listened to “Yesterday When I Was Young,” by Roy Clark (and may god help us all!), and I listened to “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” by the amazing Carly Simon.

LAURA

College of the Pacific, one of my favorite Dave Brubeck albums. “Laura,” one of the most beautiful melancholy jazz songs ever.

ALMOST BLUE

What the heck, let’s stay blue. “Almost Blue,” by Elvis Costello. I’ve seen EC about six times live, but I don’t think he ever did this. It’s fantastic.

ALMOST BLUE

Same song, different player. This is the amazing Chet Baker putting a hurting on “Almost Blue” the way only he can.

INSIDE OUT

You may never have heard of Spoon, but it’s time to change that. This song is dreamy, and melancholy. I invite you to float away.

NERVOUS SOUL

You may also not have heard of the Silverlake Chorus. This song is also sad, and dreamy. Enjoy, and harmonize!

DOGS

I saved this one for last because it is, apparently, seventeen minutes long. So we began with Heaven 17, and we end with 17 minutes of Pink Floyd‘s own, perfect brand of despair. To Taylor Swift when she was 15 let me just say, THIS is the song for when you’re in the throws of teen angst. If you can survive being a teen and listening to the album Animals on repeat, you can survive. This is my favorite Pink Floyd song of all time. .

I’d love to hear what you think about this set.

xo~ Di

Well, it’s been a month or so. The editing has been coming in fast and furious, and, as my first boss who was a good boss once said to me, “You say, ‘Yes,’ to everything, and then you figure out how to do it later, or you delegate.” Well, she was a VP of circulation, so she had the ability to delegate. I need a staff!

It’s odd that I’m posting on this blog right now because I have barely had my face out of this screen for weeks. I even came home from taking someone to an all-day hospital trip two weeks ago and settled in to finish another set of edits. Over the summer I have been going to a few concerts at the Hollywood Bowl with my friend Amanda, and, though she knows nothing about American rock music, she goes, has fun, and we get one of the gigantic twenty dollar beers and split it. I need to get back out for a beer!

And so it came to pass that, with all that editing, I was bound to wear something out, and need to replace it. My hip.

LOL, no just kidding. That’s an old lady joke. It was my mouse pad. And it was disgusting. It was black, said “But First Coffee,” and had started to become one with the desk.

So, like you do, I found a better one on Etsy. One that is not gross, and that suits the kind-hearted person I truly am. And is in my favorite color!

I also received a gift certificate last December from Dave for my birthday, and last Friday I stole 2 hours from editing to use it (and then went to Starbucks, and went right back to editing, playing through the pain).

To commemorate Devil’s Party Press, my first business. That’s a photo Jing took, so he’d just finished. I’m a bit red.

Whatcha think? Apparently I am good at tattoos. They don’t really hurt me, and I heal quickly and well. Every time I get one I agonize over it, should I get one, shouldn’t I? What kind of a person gets one? Is this the right one to get? But I have virtually no pain. I rubbed this on the sheets a little too roughly Saturday night, and it was ouchy for a minute, but otherwise I am fine.

But every time I get one I am so excited. I want a sleeve, and I think I am going to work more on finishing that sleeve out, before I’m dead.

Dave drew this one, and Jing applied it, and Jing also drew the stars. I love that Jing added the white highlights. White doesn’t always last, but for now it is cool.

And then there were three:

Sophie drew the mint chocolate chip rabbit. Girl power I created from various clip arts. That one was my first, done in DE. I got it when Hillary Clinton lost to the monster. The idea was that if I held up my arm in a fist, the patriarchy could see it when I helped to smash it. The guy who tattooed me said he wasn’t sure what the patriarchy was, but he thought the placement was correct for smashing it.

So, yeah, I’ve been working my butt off. What can I tell you? I think I am good at a few things, and aren’t we all? I am good at getting tattooed. I am good at singing. I am good at making cookies and bean soup (and really, what else do you need to survive?) and I am extra good at editing. It’s the kind of thing you don’t think you need, until you get it, and then you’re like, “Whoa, my book really needed that.” It is expensive though, so I always do a free sample. I’m like COSTCO that way. If you want a free sample, let me know: dianne@currentwords.com

So, I don’t know when I’ll be back here. I think a lot of folks are getting their books ready for 2026 publication. Makes sense. I’m getting mine ready too! Yoinks!

Work work work….

My woman works too much. I have had it! Meeeee-ow!

Things wear out… like mouse pads and pets’ patience!

Today my beautiful lady has been filled with what I believe are gerbera daisies. Cost for flowers, about $20 @ Trader Joe’s.

I had gerberas in my wedding bouquet by necessity and not choice. Unfortunately my April wedding came to be about two weeks after the ranunculus were spent and gone. I wanted ranunculus, because they have a wind-blown look. I wanted orange, and my sister had an orange dress. We both had our dresses made by Kevin Simon, who seems to have vaporized since she once had a very pricey store on Abbott Kinney Boulevard. Kevin made everything in linen, and she was a master of sort of vintage-farm looking clothing, like late 1800s. I loved her work and could not afford any of it, so I splurged on my dress and my sister’s, assuming I was only getting married once. A regular skirt at Kevin’s was over $500. My wedding dress and my sister’s MOH dress combined were $1000. The back bottom of my dress had tulle orange flowers pinned to it. My dress was linen with a silk slip, and my sister’s was orange silk. I’ve since lost about 70 pounds, and I left the dress at Goodwill in Delaware when I moved, but I kept all the organza flowers.

In any case, I do have to say I’m not usually a gerbera girl, except when needs must. But today the yellow (which is a lot lighter in real life) on the flowers screamed, “Butter!” at me, with just a hint of orange at their centers, and so I was compelled. Mixed them with orange and some green greenery, et voila!

The little pumpkin/squash you see there I plan to eat, not carve. LOL. Roasted pumpkin in things is divine! As are these lovely gerbera. Ranunculus are actually not great cut flowers, so droopy.

It is a blessing to have flowers anywhere in the world, of any kind, and especially on my very sunny kitchen counter. Buy the flowers, hold them high, and repeat after me, “Here’s to the times we bless others, and also to the times we bless ourselves!”

Have a wonderful week~

PS. Most flowers I buy last a full two weeks! Just keep the water clean and fresh.

Wake up and rock out!

I love music. I love listening to it, and singing, and I love going to see live music. I think if I were a single person with no one to be responsible for but myself, in a little house all-by-my-lonesome, I would play music a lot more often, and a lot louder.

I thought I might do some posts that don’t require quite as much explication/explanation, where I would just rattle off some songs I could listen to all day on repeat.

I have been told that, as a music lover, there are some odd things about me:

#1. If I love it, I want to hear it, over and over. I once played “Magic” by Pilot, for two solid hours (a 45 I’d pilfered from my friend) on my raggedy record player while in the Temple University dorms, in the middle of the day (who has classes from noon-3?) until another student showed up (and I was bouncing up and down on my bed at the time, as if it were a trampoline) and yelled at me to turn it the fuck off. It was… embarrassing. But that is 100% me; I cannot deny it. I no longer think beds are sturdy enough for adults to bounce on, but I could get that vibe again in a second.

#2. The second thing is that I can mix seemingly disparate music together. You will be able to tell when you take a look at today’s inaugural list (which, to be fair to #1, will start with Pilot). I am the same way with food. I am currently eating stir-fried cabbage for breakfast, with a big steaming cup of coffee with cream and sugar. I like strange tastes all in the same mouthful, or, as goes with this post, earful.

#3. I will merge songs in my head: two songs will become one the way I think of them. As an example, I often will sing, “Hotel California,” to the tune of, “If You Like Pina Coladas,” and use the chorus from the second instead of the “Hotel California” chorus. Try it. It is incredible. It’s my version of Laverne’s milk and Pepsi. If you are ever around me LIP, I will perform it for you, no charge. It works really well.

#4. I prefer vinyl. I am annoyed by vinyl, because you cannot make your own greatest hits like you can with a cassette tape or digital files, but I am addicted to the snap, crackle, pops. And there’s just something beautiful about an album. Us kids from the 70s, in the pre-MTV times, used to lock ourselves away with our crappy record players and our vinyl, and play side 1, and then side 2, or side A and then side B, and just pour over the album, look at all the liner notes, read the lyrics, check out all the band photos, basically memorize the thing. I could do that all night long. I still love it.

Okay, so lemme throw up ten today, and there’ll be more to come. What do these songs have in common? I could listen to each song, on its own, for literal hours, over and over, were I left to my own devices and my own schedule and life with no one around to annoy.

MAGIC!

Oh my gosh the lead singer is cute! I’m sorry world, but 1970s singers were the hottest… except for maybe Lenny Kravitz, and Bruno Mars. I love the strings in this, and I’m ready to hear it again, dormmates be dammed!

GOD SAVE THE QUEENS!

This was from a previous post, and, as it was already here, I’m including it in this list. What I had said last time was, “I need something like this right now. Something that feels punk, and resistant, and full of a big fuck you to oppressors everywhere.” Yep, still me; I’m still there, and, Vienna Vienna is not from the 1970s, but is pretty cute anyway. Can an old lady still find rock stars hot? It’s another thing I can’t seem to stop doing on repeat.

GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES

This is a live version, but I wanted one that showed the band, and not just an album cover and the music. Why? Because I’m still hoping to get trapped in an elevator for 12 hours with Robert Plant. I mean, come on. The guitar, the harmonies, the Plant… you could burn your fingers on this one.

TRYIN’ TO GET THE FEELING AGAIN

Apologies for making you break down and cry. Sometimes you gotta cry. But you sing your heart out while you’re doing it. I was so lucky to see Barry at the Hollywood Bowl in… 2011? He’s amazing, and so fun, and really talented. My brother, who played in a Rolling Stones cover band most of his life, liked Barry and introduced me to him when he gave me Barry Manilow II. It had “Mandy” on it, and “Avenue C,” and I was hooked. Love songs mixed with show tunes! What’s not to love?

I WAS DOIN’ ALLRIGHT

Sadly I cannot find a performance video of this one, but damn it’s good. This whole record is freaking amazing. Get it. Play it. It’ll make you feel like you’re walking on air.

I CAN’T BELIEVE

Tony Trischka and Skyline… the fabulous Dede Wyland on lead vocals. My boyfriend at the time was heavily into playing his mandolin, so we went to a lot of Bluegrass concerts. Sometimes I think Country music, the kind I grew up on, has lost its way, but not Bluegrass. I dearly love every Skyline concert we went to, and all their songs. I wish they were still together. I mean just listen to the instrumental section in the middle, and then Dede’s voice comes soaring back in like a bird. Wow.

COMME UN AVION SANS AILES

You won’t have heard of this, because you didn’t have Corrine Soler come and stay with you for two weeks in high school, but I did. And she brought me Poemes Rock by Charlelie Couture, which remains one of my top ten albums in my collection. I love it completely and treasure it dearly. If I was rushing out of the house due to natural disaster, I hope I’d remember to grab it, because I bet it is irreplaceable. You’ve probably long-since stopped reading this post, but you should hit play on this one. It’s surprising.

FUNKY MONKS

Funnily enough, one of my favorite of their songs appears to be one they rarely perform. Good-on the kid who requested it. I freaking love it.

KISS THEM FOR ME

Thought I’d finish off with two women. Siouxsie was one of my idols when I was in college. She’s incredibly beautiful, talented, and this song… what a delightful ear worm. It feels off-the-beat to me, but what do I know, but it is that off-kilter feel that it has that I cannot get enough of.

TOM’S DINER

No controversy here. Probably the entire world likes this one. This is a live version though. Badass.

Hopefully it won’t take me this long to come back with another bunch. I’d love to hear what you think about this set.

xo~ Di

Check out my new post at Authors Electric!

I have this sense that sometimes I come off as a competent professional, and this post is proof that I’m faking it, just like most people on the web.

This is a photo of me in an outfit I particularly liked last spring, but, if it looks on your screen like it looks on mine, it looks warped. And I don’t know why. I have Photoshop, and mad Photoshop skills (if mad Photoshop skills means I pay for it, and noodle around and do my best, and really have no idea what I’m doing). I don’t know why I look freaking warped, but I can’t be bothered to care, mostly because I love this outfit, and I so badly want it to be chilly, even a little bit for a few hours. So, yes, I am faking any confidence (and proficiency at Photoshop) that you may feel that you see.

It’s times like these that I realize that while I absolutely consider air conditioning to be both a privilege and a blessing, what I consider even more of a privilege and a blessing is some outdoor space to call your own, and nice enough weather to enjoy it. I’m in that awkward phase of life where I am really not too good in The Heat, with capital letters, and also not too good when the temps go below freezing. I was a winter-over-summer fan from birth almost (and aren’t most very pale-skinned people?) and I still am, but not quite as cold as I age. Blech. Aging.

In any case: I bought that green blouse, I don’t remember from where, but it is long-sleeved, a bit cropped, and I love it. Over my (presumably, at the time) chilly shoulders I have an inexpensive sweater shawl/wrap I treated myself to (I think it came from Quince) when we first moved back to CA, which was insane because I probably would have gotten more use out of it on the East Coast, but maybe had less reasons to go out looking dressy enough for a shawl. Are shawls dressy? It seems to me they are. East Coast or West, hot-as-blazes or nicely cold, I have never gotten over my love of corduroy.

When I was going into sixth grade my mother gave me some money, and let me take the trolly to our local mall to buy some school clothes on my own. My mother was a very clothing-controlling mother who “knew” how children were supposed to be dressed, and that often meant clothes I didn’t especially like, like pink or pale peach, and Keds (sorry Keds) and lots of white, and no dark colors. If you got an Easter purse made of some sort of wicker every spring along with your white sweater and a hat with fake flowers on it, your mom may have been like mine. That year I don’t know what had come over her, as she also really liked seeing me try clothes on, and deciding which stores to go into, but she sent me off on my own. I went to the Levi’s store that had floor-to-ceiling bins full of denim and corduroy arranged by waist, and length, and also leg type. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was to hear that they only had straight legs, skinny, and boot cut; bell bottoms had been discontinued the prior fall, they told me. I mean I adored bell bottoms. So sad for me. But they had corduroy, and I had never had corduroy before, so I bought three pairs: one in green and one in a dark rust color, and I think the other pair was deep brown. Needless to say my mother was nonplussed. I remember feeling like middle school, where, for the first time, I would have a different teacher for each class, and move from classroom to classroom like a college student, was the big time. I was ready to learn, baby! (Of course I was. I read the encyclopedia and the atlas. I was a positively thrilling child with my consumption of plays and gothic horror romances. What sixth-grader doesn’t like gothic horror romance?) So I wanted to go to middle school looking collegiate, and for me that was corduroy and fall colors. Flash forward to this spring, and I have been lugging those green corduroy pants (from Gap or Old Navy) around for at least five years!

And, lastly, to finish off this particular ensemble, on my feet was the birthday gift I requested from Sophie and her dad for 2024: green Doc Martens. I had Doc Martens boots in college, but they have gotten so much more comfortable now. I love them. I replaced Doc’s laces with some pretty green ribbon laces, and that completed the look, in my mind.

Here’s to fall colors. I bought Dave a pumpkin spice latte the other day!

You know, one last thought, when I was a K-12 kid, all I thought about and longed for was going to college. I know I was a teensy bit of a dork, but I just cannot stand what it happening to colleges now: Cutting down on diversity (which I loved. I requested a non-white roommate on my college form because I was leaving Wonder-Bread-white Springfield, and wanted to meet some people who were not like me), cutting down on international students, controlling what teachers can teach and what books can be made available. But the most horrible thing is the absolute lie that college is neither good nor necessary. I had teachers with different morals and beliefs and ideas than me, and I liked them just as much as the ones who were more similar to me in my thinking, and I loved them all (except for that one Irish poet who refused to pass women, which I’m sure is here somewhere in a past post). And learning new things is important. You cannot do it all on your own, and you have to read to do it, and you have to care about knowing things. I tend to be a very trusting person, but I also always wanted to check the source before I changed or confirmed my thinking on a topic. I wished, so much, that I could have had time in my program to learn more languages, and to take subjects that weren’t related to my degree, and that were tough for me, like physics, which continues to fascinate me, and automotive repair (I wanted to learn how to fix car engines). September is the month of school, and fall, and new things to learn, and the circus of idiots in leadership of the federal government at the moment should have their brains washed out with soap for their absolute hatred of college. College is not easy, but it is a wonderful experience that every American child should be encouraged to pursue, and supported to pursue (use my tax dollars to pay for college please, and not to give Tesla a tax break!).

So, in the spirit of fall, and going back to school, and wishing, in vain, that it was cool enough for corduroy, and that I was young enough to be a college student all over again, here is my head-to-toe green outfit. If only the pants were bell-bottoms! If only college were life-long and free. If only we had time, and resources, to do it all. I would stay busy.

What was a class that you took in K-12 or college that you still remember fondly? I loved choir, geometry, home ec (cooking) in middle school, and still remember some of the recipes, and literary criticism, the Vietnam War (which went with a PBS series), and black and white photography in college.