by Lynn Lipinski | Feb 4, 2021 | Essays and Features, Personal
“Can you be Bananas the Monkey tomorrow?” I was seventeen years old, punching my time card as a waitress at Casa Bonita, a massive Disneylandish restaurant sitting behind a bright pink storefront in a strip mall near a wig store and a check cashing place....
by Lynn Lipinski | Sep 22, 2020 | Essays and Features, Personal
Depending on the light and my mood, the potted cacti and succulents on my front porch resemble either the strange skyline of a science fiction city or the motley cast of characters in Star Wars’ Chalmun’s Cantina. A tangle of golden snake cactus, the opuntia’s...
by Lynn Lipinski | Sep 15, 2020 | Essays and Features, Oklahoma, Personal, Unsolicited advice
Summer camp is not just a rite of passage, but also a fine social experiment in making friends, overcoming homesickness and trying new things. A week at summer camp in Robber’s Cave State Park in Oklahoma’s Sans Bois Mountains when I was 12 brought me a...
by Lynn Lipinski | Sep 9, 2020 | Essays and Features, Oklahoma, Personal, Writing
The summer of my eighth birthday was overshadowed by a grisly crime made all the more harrowing because of its child victims. On a humid and rainy Sunday in June 1977, the idyllic memories of summer camp I had shared with my friends shattered into shards of horror...
by Lynn Lipinski | Aug 23, 2020 | Essays and Features, Los Angeles, Personal, Writing
In 1999, I landed a job that offered excellent medical benefits with one hitch: no dental coverage until after the first year. Perhaps I could go without dental benefits for one year? It seemed a calculated risk worth taking, my then-husband and I thought. We were...
