Barry and I recently spoke with the ebullient Melissa Hamilton on our podcast. She brought along her sidekick, Sunny, an adorable puppet. (I *may* have a literary greats finger puppet collection and a couple of dusty YouTube videos of me with Kwali the Koala bear, my humble hand puppet, somewhere.)  It made me wish we were using the video portion of our call as well as the audio, so you could have seen Sunny, but alas, we are not.

“Think bigger” is Melissa’s motto, one her life exemplifies. She works in science, but she doesn’t see that as being disconnected from her creativity. Besides writing, she also plays piano and plans unicorn parties (among other duties) at the planetarium where she works. I only wish I had asked her to bring a selection to read to us on the podcast – she writes for children, and her voice is readymade for reading in children’s voices. She’s as much fun as she sounds.

ABOVE: Barry and Melissa after class in Kyoto.

We have been on several group trips with Melissa abroad, the last one to Japan where we had Italian food in Hiroshima on a day so hot we thought we’d all pass out. (Our friend Joe joined us for lunch. More on him another time; we saw him in Paris this past July and Barry and I acted in a skit he wrote.) It was so hot Barry went into a guitar shop during lunch and didn’t even ask to touch a guitar, if that tells you anything about just how hot it was.

ABOVE: Melissa and her awesome t-shirt at our farewell dinner in Kyoto.

We hope you enjoy the episode with Melissa.

P.S. We’re proud to announce that our son graduates from rehab today. Next up is a sober living house where he will remain for at least nine months. Today he said he’s really excited to go on this leg of his journey. It does a mother’s heart good. Please continue to think of him as he finds a job and tentatively reenters the world.

Copyright Drema Drudge, 2022, all rights reserved.