The Denny Party: Final Miles to Portland
After four months and nearly 2,000 miles on the Oregon Trail, the Denny Party reached the Columbia River. But the journey was far from over. The last miles to Portland would be among the most dangerous of the entire trip—and would divide the family between two very different routes. On August 10 or 11, 1851, […]
What Twenty-One Years Have Changed
Twenty-one years ago, in August 2005, my family gathered to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. We stayed in Pacific Grove, California, very near where my parents had honeymooned in Carmel in 1955. My parents, my husband and I, and my sister and her family made the trip. My brother and his family couldn’t come. […]
The Singer Sewing Machine
Today is the 175th anniversary of the Singer sewing machine. On August 12, 1851, American inventor Isaac Singer received a U.S. patent for a sewing machine, an invention that would transform the way clothing was made. My mother had a Singer sewing machine with a floor pedal. She probably got it around the time she […]
Practicing Gratitude
Back in November 2022, I wrote about ending each journal entry by listing five (more or less) things I was grateful for that day, something I’d been doing for two years at the time. I’ve continued the practice ever since, and I now have six years’ worth of gratitude in my journal. My lists are […]
New Lenses: The World Back in Focus
When I wrote last about my cataract surgery, I described how strange it was to have a world that had suddenly contracted. My close vision was good, but anything beyond arm’s length was a blur. I knew it was temporary, but knowing that didn’t make it any less frustrating. That stage is over. I have […]
July 1851: A Month That Changed the Denny Party’s Future
By late July 1851, the Denny Party had been on the Oregon Trail for more than three months. They had crossed the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, followed the Platte and Sweetwater Rivers westward, traversed the desert to the Snake River, endured hailstorms, nursed sick children, and left the familiar landscapes of Illinois far behind. Yet […]
Into Draft 3: Finding a New Balance
It’s been a couple of months since I wrote about my work-in-progress. The good news is that Draft 2 is finished (and didn’t take as long as I thought it would). In Draft 2 I focused on addressing what I saw as the major problems in the manuscript. I worked through comments from my critique […]
America at 250: Out of Many, One
Last Saturday was our nation’s 250th birthday. Along with many other people, I’ve been thinking about the question of who is an American. For me, the answer is simple—an American is anyone born here or who has been naturalized. Although my own family history in the U.S. stretches back for generations, I see no reason […]
New Lenses: Seeing the World Differently
I wrote after my first cataract surgery about that experience. Later in June, I had the second cataract removed. I still haven’t had my eyes refracted so I can order new glasses, and I expected my distance vision to be poor at this stage. What I didn’t expect was how much my view of the […]
Denny Party: Through Mountains and Desert
By June 1851, the Denny Party had already traveled more than a thousand miles from their homes in Illinois. The excitement of beginning their journey west had given way to the daily realities of the Oregon Trail—dust, illness, exhaustion, and uncertainty about what lay ahead. Whooping cough continued to trouble two of the children in […]