From Old Photos to Aura Frame

I’ve written many times about photographs taken from my childhood or from my children’s childhood. When I was young, black and white snapshots were still the norm. My grandfather got a color camera sometime while I was still a toddler, but my dad didn’t get one of those snazzy new […]

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A Rite of Passage: Learning To Drive

One of the pitfalls of skipping kindergarten was that I couldn’t get my driver’s license until several months to more than a year after all my high-school friends. I didn’t turn fifteen and a half (the age for getting a learner’s permit in Washington State at the time) until October […]

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The Family That Waterskis Together . . .

I’ve written before about the idyllic summers I spent as a teenager on Coeur d’Alene Lake. And I’ve written about waterskiing. I recently found some old pictures of those days—pictures of my father, mother, brother, and me all waterskiing. As I looked at these pictures, I remembered how each of […]

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My Memories of Albany, Oregon

I wrote last week about using Albany, Oregon, as a setting in my current work-in-progress. Writing that post caused me to remember my own experiences in Albany dating back to my preschool years when our family lived in nearby Corvallis, Oregon. My dad was getting his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering […]

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A Driving Tour of California, 1967

I only recall one summer driving trip in my childhood to California. We made a Christmas driving trip in December 1965, right before my maternal grandfather died (though at the time I didn’t know he was so ill). And my brother and I flew to California—either with or without our […]

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A Childhood Epizootic

In these days of the coronavirus, every cough and every ache or pain makes us fearful. At least, that’s how I’m feeling these days. Spring is coming regardless of the pandemic, and I try to take solace in the warmer days, the brilliant sunshine, the greening of trees and lawns. But […]

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Memories of a Flat Tire

I’ve written before about the odd things that can trigger memory. I had another such experience last week. I drove to a meeting on a foggy morning after a snowstorm past a grove of red cedar trees. They are called red cedars, but they are actually members of the juniper family. […]

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Five Years Without a Sky Above Me

My father died five years ago yesterday, on January 5, 2015. His death was sudden—I’d spoken to him the day before, and I’d had emails from him that morning. My brother talked to him that evening as our dad decided to go to the hospital because of some abdominal pain. […]

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Random Memory of My Dad, the Butcher

On Father’s Day, of course, I think of my father. And in the summertime, I think of summers long ago. This year, a random memory of my father popped into my head—I remembered going to see my father work as a butcher while he was in graduate school. I’ve mentioned […]

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