My father liked to cook, but my mother did not. Cooking was required of a good homemaker, and she vowed to be a good homemaker. So she prepared the meals all the years her children were growing up, and did so reasonably well. But her heart was never in it. […]
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The Evil Blue Pyrex Dish
I discovered as I cleaned out my parents’ house that there was a memory in every drawer and cupboard. The memories would surprise me—I had no warning of when one would strike. One afternoon when I was alone in the house I looked through kitchen cabinets, trying to decide if […]
Continue readingStorytelling Is Important in Many Professions, Whether Reciting the Facts or Making It Up
Lawyers are supposed to tell a story when they are trying a case. Professors taught me that in law school classes, I read countless columns by James McElhaney in the American Bar Association Journal over the years giving the same advice, and I went to a National Institute of Trial […]
Continue readingFrom the Perspective of a Point of View Nazi
In my critique group, I’m known as the point of view Nazi. I am usually the one to notice when a writer has crept from one character’s point of view to another’s in the same scene. And I usually push my writing partners to go deeper into their protagonist’s point […]
Continue readingShoe Shines and Parenting
My husband is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. More than forty years after he graduated, it is still the most formative experience of his life. Among the many things my husband learned at the Naval Academy was how to shine shoes. A spit-polished pair of shoes is the […]
Continue readingStories: Past, Present, and Future
A week ago when I posted, my father was alive. He was a regular reader of my blog, and often called or emailed me when I posted about family issues. He didn’t call me to comment on last Monday’s post about my grandparents’ house. But he did email me on […]
Continue readingHand-Me-Downs: The Little Blue Coat
As the oldest child, I didn’t have to wear many hand-me-downs. Occasionally, I wore clothes from the daughter of my mother’s friend. When I reached junior high, I sometimes had to wear something of my mother’s. I hated that, because styles meant for a thirty-something woman in the late 1960s […]
Continue readingWorldwide Gold Rush to California Begins
My Gold Rush posts this year have traced the spread of the news, from the discovery of gold in January 1848 until the knowledge reached distant corners of the earth. Although Johann Sutter wanted to keep the discovery secret, he could not contain news of such import, as we have […]
Continue readingThe Cousins and Rudolph
I wrote on Monday about my children and their cousins. The picture above is my favorite picture of the four of them, primarily because I know the story behind it. They were singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to the adults that were present. The youngest, my daughter, was nineteen months […]
Continue readingSeeking Inspiration at the Plains Indians Exhibit (Nelson Atkins Museum of Art)
As soon as I heard about it, I wanted to see the Plains Indians special exhibit at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. After all, I’m writing novels about travel across the plains in the 1840s—my visit to the museum would be research. So my husband and […]
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