Author Archives: Bronwyn Wilson

How To Be Really Rich

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Watercolor painting of the Rosson House (above) by Jerry Wilson.
(l-r) Phyllis, me, Julie, and Murphy

(l-r) Phyllis, me, Julie, and Sherlyn. 

Α week ago, my girlfriends and I took a trip back in time, to the year 1895.

Our morning started off in 2016 but when we stepped inside the Rosson House, a Queen Anne Victorian home in Phoenix built for Dr. and Mrs. Roland Rosson in 1895, time whisked backward.

The Rosson home, fully restored to its original grandeur and open today for public tours, features 10 rooms, five fireplaces, and a creaky, oak staircase.

The staircase can make you dizzy if you look down or try to ride the bannister down.

The staircase can make you dizzy if you look down or try to slide down the banister.

Before entering the home, our tour guide introduced herself. “Hello, I’m Debbie. I’ll be your guide,” she said with a cheerful air swinging her dark, wavy hair as she took our admission tickets. Eight of us stood on the beautiful porch with ornate railing waiting for her to open the front door and begin the tour. read more

SHUSH! QUIET!

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My quiet patio view.

My quiet patio view.

This past week I realized my life is too noisy. Maybe yours is too?

Here are some suggestions for correcting this “issue.”

To escape the noise:

Take a visit to Tucson and stay at the Hacienda del Sol resort. There, you can get a room with a patio that overlooks the Santa Catalina Mountains framing the Sonoran desert lit up in colorful wildflowers and scrub brush. Enjoy the quiet. Of course, you may still have the noise rattling around in your head and that could be a problem. But the desert in all its cactus glory utters nothing except for the occasional chatter of a bird. No political campaigns, no commercials talking about erectile dysfunction or how to lose 50 pounds on Nutrisystem. No whoosh of traffic, no trucks blowing their horn because you were reading a text message on your phone when traffic stopped and you didn’t notice it had started moving again, no landscapers shaping hedges with sputtering trimmers that sound like rocks in a blender. Just you and a peaceful desert breeze with the scenic view of creosote bush, teddy-bear cholla, and the deep pink blooms of the hedgehog cactus. read more

The Word I Didn’t Have Permission To Say (but I said anyway!)

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I loved the song "Surfin' USA" ~ it was (bleep!)

I loved the song “Surfin’ USA” ~ it was (bleep!)

Back in the sixth grade when I attended Louis G. Zeyen Elementary in Garden Grove, California, I liked spicing up my vocabulary with “bitchin.” I used the slang word liberally as in “The Beach Boys are so bitchin.” Or whatever I thought cool, wonderful, awesome, I called it bitchin.

That was the word my classmates used, in the same way the children of the 80s used “rad.” My dad overheard me use the word bitchin one day and said to me with a serious frown, “Don’t ever use that word again.” read more

The Hardest Part of Being an Author (why I gnaw on pencils)

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We endure the hard plastic chairs as we anticipate the opening of the 2016 Tucson Festival of Books. The sign in our author tent states: “Autographs available.” Both Julie and I have our pens ready for the signing spree we expect to happen the moment the book lovers flow through the gates. Julie and I display our books on stands along with a sign stating a raffle for a packaged set of our books.

Let the mad rush to our booth begin!

Let the mad rush to our booth begin!

In my rush to pack for the two-day festival, I had forgotten to apply half of my make-up and hardly combed my hair. I also forgot the Panama hat I had purchased specifically for the event. When you forget to comb your hair, a Panama hat works wonders. read more

Finally! The Long-awaited Surprise Revealed

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Or Jerry.

Or let Jerry.

Finally! My birthday arrived yesterday. I could at last see the artistic cat-gourd creation Jerry made for me.

A few blogs back, I wrote about my trip to the Wuertz Farm Gourd Festival (see archives on right for “Eat. Pray. Gourd). In Washington state, our festivals honor umbrellas and basset hounds dressed in tuxedos and pink princess dresses. In Arizona, the festivals honor ostriches and hard-shelled squash. I had never attended a festival dedicated to gourds, so I had to see what it was all about. read more