I am the latest of a long line of Catholic women who married Protestant men. The stories of our weddings show how interfaith marriages have changed over time. This post is the story of the first such marriage of my ancestresses that I know about. In Sacramento, California, in 1898, […]
Continue readingCategory Archives: History
Memorial Day. Remember. Today and always.
Join the nation in a moment of silence at 3:00pm on Memorial Day to remember our fallen soldiers.
Continue readingJesse Applegate and the Great Migration of 1843
In May 1843 – 170 years ago this month – Jesse Applegate and his brothers and their families left Missouri for Oregon. They were among the early pioneers to Oregon, four years earlier than the emigrants of 1847 in my novel about the Oregon Trail. In fact, 1843 was the […]
Continue readingFlat Stanley Visits Kansas City
My niece, a second-grader in a Seattle suburb, assigned me homework. She wanted me to take Flat Stanley to landmarks in Kansas City, to help her class learn geography. For those of you who are not familiar with Flat Stanley, he began as a character, Stanley Lambchop, in a 1964 […]
Continue readingPoetry and Childhood Memories: Plume, by Kathleen Flenniken
I received Plume, a book of poems by Kathleen Flenniken, from my daughter, who bought it for me because the author grew up in Richland, Washington, as I did. The poems in Plume are about Ms. Flenniken’s childhood in Richland and her work experience at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where […]
Continue readingProvisioning for the Journey West
Emigrants preparing for the move to Oregon had plan carefully what they would take. They had to balance the amount of food and other supplies they needed for the journey, what they could afford to buy, the weight their wagon and teams could pull, and what mementoes and tools they […]
Continue readingA Novel Blog Hop: Lead Me Home
J.G. Burdette, who blogs at Map of Time: A Trip into the Past, tagged me to participate in a Blog Hop for authors. What’s a blog hop? This one is an interview with ten questions posed to a writer about the novel he or she is writing. The author answers […]
Continue readingChinese Landscapes – Ancient and Modern – and the Search for Spiritual Order
One of my favorite oases in Kansas City is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I go there when I have a spare hour or two. Last week I went to the Nelson’s special exhibit entitled “Journey through Mountains and Rivers: Chinese Landscapes Ancient and Modern,” and came away with a new […]
Continue readingWeaving Threads of History into Story
In February 1847, while the Donner party struggled to survive in the snows of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Elizabeth Dixon Smith and her family prepared to leave Indiana for Oregon, a baby was born in Denmark – my paternal great-great-grandfather Charles N. Claudson. (I’m told his last name in […]
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Humor Amidst the Tears
I wrote on Monday about the tragedies of Alzheimer’s, which are real and heart-wrenching. But there are moments of humor as well. Two of our family’s amusing stories occurred in May 2010, not long after my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Several family members had gathered in New Orleans for […]
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