Columns – Starshine Roshell

Saying Farewell to our Fairytale Farmhouse

Published on August 14, 2025

Casa Roshell Ready for a New Cast

I’ve been told I’m a lousy movie date; I predict punchlines, spoil plot twists, and (yawn) anticipate jump scares. As a professional storyteller who’s penned and plotted my way through five decades, there’s not much that surprises me anymore.

But this? I never saw this coming.

It was a year after our youngest son left for college, and I was puttering around our spacious family home, rearranging tchotchkes and fluffing throw pillows, like ya do. When it hit me. Hard. Exactly the way a throw pillow doesn’t.

Spoiler: This Doesn’t End Well for the ‘Washington Post’

Published on February 28, 2025

It’s Déjà Vu for This Former ‘News-Press’ Reporter as Bezos Dictates His Paper’s Content

Democracy Dies in Darkness. That’s the Washington Post’s lofty motto, and it’s always given me goosebumps, in the best way.

But news from the Post sent unwelcome chills down my neck this week — along with a sickening déjà vu.

Billionaire owner Jeff Bezos announced that the news outlet will no longer publish any viewpoints on its opinion page that don’t support and defend “personal liberties and free markets.”

And So It Begins …

Published on November 11, 2024

Misogynists Are Already Crawling Outta Their Hovels

It starts like this: Young men standing on a local freeway bridge waving signs that say, “YOUR BODY, MY CHOICE.” A dude strolling Carpinteria in a T-shirt bearing the same phrase. High-school boys texting it to female classmates.

The phrase is a derisive flip of “my body, my choice” (see what they did there?), which feminists chanted for reproductive freedom in the 1960s … and again recently as we lost that hard-won right.

Co-opting it as an endorsement of rape culture is gross, but it shouldn’t be surprising. When you elect a convicted felon who’s been found liable for sexual assault, who brags about grabbing beauty contestants’ vaginas, and who calls his opponents bitches, you send a strong signal that this is all acceptable — even entertaining — behavior.

A Totally ’80s Summer

Published on October 16, 2024

Four Months. Twenty-Six Bands. One Awesomely Weird Decade.

They call it the Proust Effect: when a sensation triggers a vivid and specific memory from our past.

For Proust himself, the sensation was taste: a morsel of madeleine cookie melding with tea on his tongue in In Search of Lost Time. For some, it’s smell: a whiff of your mother’s perfume, or the unmistakable scent of whiteboard markers.

But for me, this summer, it was sound that ferried me back to a bygone era. Specifically, it was two dozen 1980s bands resurrecting the lost soundtrack of my youth — live on stage, right before my eyes. And ears.

Broken Hearted

Published on April 4, 2024

Tales of a Tetchy Ticker

It starts with a flutter: butterflies in my chest. Not sweet, delicate butterflies but twitchy, back-alley ones, like monarchs on meth.

If you’ve ever danced hard, hiked fast, or run far, you know the ribcage-rattling thuds I mean; they’re life-affirming when you’re deliberately exerting yourself. But they happen to me when I’m eating breakfast. Or driving my car. Or trying to fall asleep at night.

For more than 20 years, I’ve had an arrhythmia that sets my heart racing at up to 210 beats per minute for no apparent reason, at inopportune moments. On a good day, it leaves me breathless and lightheaded. On a bad, it sends me scurrying to the ER for relief.

Tig … Before the Gig

Published on January 16, 2023

Starshine Chats with the Comedian and ‘Don’t Ask Tig’ Host — and Asks Her Anyway

Listen, I love me some vulgarity — and it ain’t tough to find. Streaming services are flooded with hilarious-if-raunchy comedy specials.

But I have mad respect for comedians who slay — who, in fact, leave entire theaters full of adults wiping laugh-tears from their cheeks — without ever dipping into dirty.

Clean comedy is harder. And honestly, that’s why Tig Notaro does it.

Santa Barbara School Teacher’s Rant Is All Wrong

Published on February 14, 2022

Starshine Roshell Sets the Record Straight

It’s been a minute since I wrote a column — for a couple of reasons.

Like many folks, I’ve been desperately trying to ferret out some Zen in this frustrating COVIDy world. You know, to find that healthy, elusive balance between “responsibly engaged” and “on the verge of a primal scream.”

Also, frankly, I was sick of my own voice. If our nation has learned anything lately, it’s that we need to make room in our media diets for more underrepresented points of view — and fewer ranting white women.

But then two ranting white women went and #^¢%ed up my Zen.

Uncertain How to Un-Hermit

Published on May 12, 2021

Once You Get Used to Quarantine, It’s Hard to Give It Up

At the end of a long cement hallway, a guard pulls the keyring from his belt and jabs a key into the iron lock. With a crank to the right, he steps aside and the cell door — at long last — swings open.

“It’s over,” he mutters with disinterest. “You’re free to go.”

My breath lodged in my throat, I steal a glance out the slit window of the lockup that’s held me captive for 14 surreal months. A tiny airplane crawls across the sky, and I can just make out the hiss of a nearby highway where free people are out living normal lives.

“No, thanks,” I say, tucking back into my book. “I’m good. But can you let me know when lunch is served?”

Fictional Friends: COVID’s Perfect Companions

Published on February 24, 2021

Quarantine Has Left Me Overly Involved in the Lives of My Streaming Pals

Once upon a time, I had friends. Actual flesh-and-blood buddies with whom I made plans. Went out. Shopped and danced. Ate and drank. Took walks. Met for coffee. Attended shows.

We knew the intricacies of each other’s families, kept up on each other’s work, hobbies, and health. Their problems were mine; my struggles theirs. They felt like my Allies for All Eternity.

And then the Pandemic hit.

Unity? Nah. Togetherness? Yes, Please.

Published on January 28, 2021

Big Thoughts from a Small Room While Awaiting My COVID Results

“Just keep looking straight ahead,” the woman said as she fed the cotton-tipped stick up my nostril, through my brain, and into my soul.

It was my first time being tested. I told her so before the prodding began.

“It’s not fun,” she had warned me — and she spoke the truth. It was uncomfortable, it brought tears to my eyes, and it went on forever.

But the same could be said of the year leading up to it.

Category: Columns