In response to my last email newsletter, one reader wrote me about how her family regularly switched children from parents to grandparents for visits. That reminded me of how my family did the same when I was growing up. The childhood swaps I remember best were in Madras, Oregon. Madras, […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Richland
Vaccines Then and Now
As of early February 2021, the news is full of stories about vaccines against COVID-19, the pandemic that hit the United States early in 2020. For almost a year now, we have restricted our activities on almost every front. Working from home. Limited church services. No restaurants. Buying as much […]
Continue reading
Learning to Type
I wrote recently about my 8th-grade graduation in June 1999 and my parents’ absence for that event. Their absence, and in particular my mother’s inability to drive me places, caused me further consternation that summer. I had decided to enroll in a summer school class on typing at the high […]
Continue readingFifty Years Ago: My 8th Grade Graduation
I wrote recently about my daughter’s 8th-grade graduation in 1999. After I wrote that post, I realized my own 8th-grade graduation was thirty years earlier—in late May or early June 1969. That’s fifty years ago—hard to believe it is half a century in the past. No lightning struck our house […]
Continue reading
Fortieth Anniversary of a Speeding Ticket
I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that this year my husband and I celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary. We started dating in March 1977 and were married that November. We were apart for most of the summer of 1977, each working in different locations after our first year of law school. […]
Continue reading
Not Wild About Wild Asparagus
The house we moved into when I was six and a half, in October 1962, was at the end of a block-long street. Next to us on the east was a vacant lot. That lot remained vacant until well after I no longer lived with my parents, though at some […]
Continue readingSocial Media: Reconnecting and Lurking
I’ve written before about how social media has helped me reconnect with relatives and friends. Well, I’ve had two new experiences in the last couple of weeks where social media again has warmed my heart in this way. A second cousin found me on Facebook recently. I’ve met her and her […]
Continue readingSecond Grade Anonymity
Throughout my first-grade year, I felt exposed. As I’ve written, I was a superstar during my three weeks of kindergarten and in the first first-grade classroom I attended, because I could read and the other pupils couldn’t. Even after we moved and I came into a new first-grade class […]
Continue readingMay 18, 1980, Eruption of Mt. St. Helens
For most of the 1979-1980 school year, my parents lived apart. My father had started a new job in Bellevue, Washington, and my mother remained in Richland, Washington, with my younger sister and brother who were in school there. My sister was in her sophomore year of high school, and […]
Continue readingSnow Days: A Recent Phenomenon
Maybe this is one of those “when I was young, we had it tough” stories. But when I was young, we didn’t have snow days. At least, I don’t remember my classes ever being canceled due to snow, nor for any weather-related events. It might have happened, but I don’t […]
Continue reading