I wish I knew more about plotting a novel. It’s one of the reasons I kick myself for not beginning my writing career earlier in life. If I’d spent my twenties starving in a garret as a writer, I’d be through the worst of the learning curve now. I’d have […]
Continue readingMiddlebury College: Teaching Maturity Along with Liberal Arts
I’ve often said that the best thing my parents ever did for me was to send me 3,000 miles away from home. At age 17, I went from home in Washington State to Middlebury College in Vermont. And I grew up very quickly. I hadn’t liked myself very well in […]
Continue readingYou Know Your Children Are Grown When . . .
1. You find a long list of alcoholic beverages in your car in your son’s handwriting, and realize there’s nothing you can (or should) say to him, because he’s thirty years old, and he was on a liquor store run for his grandmother. 2. Your daughter tells you not to […]
Continue readingWhitman Mission
I mentioned in an earlier post that I wrestled with whether to set my Oregon Trail novel in 1847 or 1848. I decided on 1847, because I wanted my characters to stop at the Whitman Mission. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, early pioneers to the Oregon Territory, were killed by Cayuse […]
Continue readingGrandpa and the Grandchildren’s Gallery
This past weekend we buried my father-in-law. He was the first grandparent my children and their cousins lost. As the family mourned, of course, we told our stories. The four cousins – my son and daughter, and my nephew and niece – were close in age, born between 1978 and […]
Continue readingCentral Planning . . . or Planning Central
I’ve written before about my planning abilities. They are being severely taxed this week, as we gather the family for my father-in-law’s funeral. Throughout the week, we are coordinating the arrival at the Kansas City airport of my two adult children, and my husband’s sister and her husband, cousin, niece […]
Continue readingDeath and Taxes
As the saying goes, nothing is certain but death and taxes. My father-in-law died this past weekend, and I am with my mother-in-law. Please re-read my June 11 story about my father-in-law and the fireflies to see what a fine man we lost. But I will have to get back […]
Continue readingTwo Degrees of Separation from the Oregon Trail, and an Old Murder
I’ve just begun to realize what a gift my father gave me in having our old family movies saved to DVDs. Each time I watch them, I remember something new – or something old – in our family history. You’ve seen a few of my family stories in earlier posts […]
Continue readingMemories of Desert and Lakes . . . and Our Rainy Respite
As a desert-born girl, I hate the rain. I don’t like it dripping on me. And I hate the Midwestern humidity – I’ve never adapted to it in 33 years of living in Missouri. This hot, dry summer of Midwestern drought has brought back many memories of the hot, dry […]
Continue readingExercise Your Right To Vote
Before my maternal grandfather, a taciturn businessman from Oregon, married my grandmother, he allegedly told her, “I don’t care if you’re Catholic, but you’d better vote Republican.” I don’t know if the story is true, and I don’t know how my grandmother voted. After all, she gave my mother the […]
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