A friend of mine in Washington State recently posted a picture of huckleberries she had picked. Now those of you who don’t live in the West may not even know what huckleberries are. You’ve heard of Huckleberry Finn, but did you ever wonder where the Huckleberry in his name came […]
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Musings On My 250th Post
WordPress keeps excellent statistics for bloggers, and so I realized recently that today’s post would be my 250th post. This milestone seemed worthy of comment. I’ve been blogging for about two-and-a-half years, for most of that time twice per week. I’ve written before about lessons I’ve learned blogging, and I […]
Continue readingSailing Along
A few years after we moved to Kansas City, my husband bought a sailing canoe. You have probably never seen a sailing canoe—they are rare, for good reason. A sailing canoe is a regular canoe to which a mast and a keel can be attached. Ours looked something like this […]
Continue readingA Summer Short: Sights on the Olympic Peninsula
I recently returned from another visit to see family on the Olympic Peninsula. It’s a place: Where picturesque villages line ocean inlets Where mountains vie with evergreens for majesty Where Mount Rainier can be seen from the Wal-Mart parking lot (look through the cart rack) Where wildflowers grow as profusely […]
Continue readingHarrison, Idaho, and Summer Parades
I’ve written before about the idyllic summers I spent during my teenage years on Coeur d’Alene Lake in Idaho. Some of my memories are of boating to Harrison, Idaho, a small town across the lake from where my parents’ cabin was. Harrison had the most accessible Catholic church on the […]
Continue readingProof of When I Couldn’t Write
I’ve mentioned before that I can’t remember not knowing how to read. I learned to read quite young, and I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t name each letter of the alphabet on the page. And as far back as I can remember, I knew the letters were put […]
Continue readingMemorial Day and a Tantrum To Remember
I described my son’s tantrum in my last post, so it’s only fair that in this post I describe one of his sister’s—her first tantrum, in fact. It occurred on Memorial Day, when she was just two weeks old. My husband and I took our family to see his parents […]
Continue readingNeeding a Boppy (Don’t We All?)
My son and I were reminiscing about his childhood recently, and we got on the topic of tantrums. “You didn’t have many tantrums,” I told him. “Not like your sister.” And he didn’t. But I do remember one phase of tantrums he had. My son was almost always a good […]
Continue readingMusings on a Prussian Coffee Service
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 […]
Continue readingHow Close Are We To the Civil War?
An article in The Wall Street Journal on May 10, 2014, by Michael M. Phillips, titled “Still Paying for the Civil War: Veterans’ Benefits Live On Long After Bullets Stop,” fascinated both my husband and me. My husband, because he has read many volumes of military history about the Civil […]
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