I’ve mentioned that I found some treasures during a couple of cleaning projects I undertook recently (see here and here). And I’ve written about the two puppies that my family acquired over Memorial Day weekend in 1997 (see here and here). (Someday I’ll post the story of how they were […]
I mentioned in a post in March that I was looking for the speech I gave at my son’s Eagle Scout ceremony. I’d found pictures of him at that event, but I didn’t know where the speech was. In another monumental cleaning project a couple of weeks ago, I found […]
I’ve done a fair amount of sightseeing in Seattle, but I’d never been to the Chihuly Garden and Glass Gallery until a trip this autumn. The gallery and gardens sit under the Space Needle, but somehow I’d always passed them by. This time, I made a special visit just to […]
When I was a very young, my father made a bookcase. It’s made of a pretty wood (maybe oak?), and it is solid. It has a curved lip on the front facing at the top of the bookcase. I thought that made it a fancy piece of furniture when I […]
February is Library Lovers Month. I come from a family of library lovers, and I am one myself. When I was a child, we could only check out six books from the library at a time. My mother took my siblings and me to the library almost every week during […]
Many family heirlooms—or future heirlooms—have sentimental value because of the stories behind them. But the stories of others are lost to time. I have a porcelain coffee pot and six matching demitasse cups and saucers that are in the latter category. My mother sent the set to me not too […]
On one of the spring vacations my family took, we were in a gift shop full of tchotchkes. Neither my husband nor I am fond of tchotchkes, and I was ready to move on. Nothing in the store looked interesting to me. But our children wanted to browse, to find […]
After every natural disaster, as people pick through the remains of their homes, we hear them tell reporters that what is important is that they and their families are safe. They are overwhelmed by their material losses, but they know their family’s survival is the most critical fact. And yet, […]
By mid-August the emigrants traveling the Oregon Trail in the 1840s had passed Fort Hall. They rode for 300 miles along the cliffs on the south side of the Snake River until they reached Three Island Crossing, where they forded the river to the north. Temperatures were often over 90 […]
