In June 1992, the same month that my kids spent at camp in North Carolina, my parents toured the British Isles. In fact, part of the reason we sent our kids to the June camp session was so they could visit my parents later in the summer, after my parents […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Oregon
Nursery School: Singing in the Rain
The Willamette Valley is wet. That’s what I remember most about the winters when we lived in Corvallis, Oregon, between 1959 and 1961. As I am writing my current work-in-progress, I find it easy to write about winters on homesteads near Oregon City—I just think of my preschool days. Wet. […]
Continue readingLloyd Center, Mickey Mouse, and Santa
I’ve written before about the time that Santa came to visit my brother and me at our house. That’s the only time I remember Santa coming to visit me as a child before he dropped off our presents. But I remember one time when we went to visit Santa at […]
Continue readingThree Weeks in Kindergarten
I started kindergarten in Corvallis, Oregon, in September 1961, when I was five-and-a-half. I was so excited to finally be in real school—I had a neighbor friend who was a second-grader, and she told me how wonderful school was. She had lorded it over me, because she went to real […]
Continue readingBack to Research: Oregon Land Laws in the 1840s
The reason most settlers went to Oregon was because they could claim free land. In my first Oregon Trail novel, Lead Me Home, all I needed to know about the Oregon land laws was that settlers could file land claims once they got there. But in the sequel I am working […]
Continue readingThe Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, by Rinker Buck
I have immersed myself in the nineteenth century over the last few weeks, editing my Oregon Trail novel for what I hope has been the final big push. It still needs some tweaking, but the book is essentially done. While I was spending hours each day deep in my novel, […]
Continue readingFighting Fires: Now and Then
Many of the forest fires raging in the West this summer are not far from places I know—outside of Twisp and Omak and Okanogan near Lake Chelan in Washington State; Clark Fork near Lake Pend d’Oreille in the Idaho Panhandle; and other fires in Oregon. I remember fires from lightning […]
Continue readingA Life-Long Friendship Now Forgotten
I’ve posted pictures of my mother as a child (see here and here) and others of her as a young woman before I knew her (see here and here). Some stories behind the pictures I know. And others I wish I knew. Mostly, I wish I’d known my mother better. […]
Continue readingCannon Beach, Oregon: Then and Now
I was fortunate to spend several days at Cannon Beach, Oregon, in late July. We stayed at a resort just north of Haystack Rock, right on the beach, and the weather was perfect—mid-70s, and lots of sunshine. I can’t say I got my fill of walks on the beach (see […]
Continue readingBanking in the American West in the 1840s—Before and After the Gold Rush
I’ve blogged about some boring topics related to my research for my Oregon Trail and Gold Rush novels, but this post may discuss the most boring—banking. Yet one of the biggest problems I had in plotting my novel was how my protagonist could move money from the East Coast to […]
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