Division of Labor: Pumpkin Carver
I don’t know how I became the pumpkin carver in our family. My husband and son are the ones with the Boy Scout totin’ chips. And I’m pretty slow at slicing vegetables. But my role as pumpkin carver, once started, became inalienable. My husband and I moved into our first house in October 1980. I […]
Haunting Book: Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
This week’s haunting book is a novel about a privileged Englishwoman, Ursula Todd, born in 1910. She is born over and over throughout the novel, living a series of lives, each life slightly different from the one before. Life after life poor Ursula lives, some lives happy, others not. This book has been on many […]
Barlow Road to Foster Farm: Civilization At Last
I’ve mentioned the grueling Barlow Road around the south slope of Mt. Hood before. Barlow Road was the last leg of the Oregon Trail for the emigrants who decided against floating down the Columbia River. The descent down Laurel Hill on Barlow Road past the summit, a 60 degree slope in places, was one of […]
Haunting Book: Defending Jacob, by William Landry
This week’s haunting book is the story of a family in turmoil. The protagonist is Andy Barber, a prosecuting attorney whose teenage son Jacob is arrested for murdering a classmate. Did Jacob kill the other boy or not? The reader is left wondering throughout the book. Andy’s instant reaction is to defend his son, and […]
October Is Uniform Season
Now that I no longer have children in school—not even college!—I don’t mark the passing of the seasons as much as I used to. I look out the window at my magnolia tree, knowing it will soon lose its leaves, but that doesn’t mark the coming of autumn for me nearly as much as Back […]
Haunting Book: Still Alice, by Lisa Genova
My posts last October about the “haunting books” I had read are among some of my most viewed posts, so I have decided to review more haunting books this year. (See here for the last haunting book of 2012, a book similar to today’s choice.) My first haunting book for October 2013 is the novel Still […]
Preserve Your Family’s Stories During National Family History Month
October is National Family History Month—a month for those with an interest in genealogy to spend a little extra time on their hobby, and a month for all of us to reflect on our forebearers and on how our pasts have shaped our todays and tomorrows. For tips on activities you and your children can […]
Driving With My Daughter In Maui
Two years ago in late September, my daughter and I took a trip to Maui—a belated celebration of her graduation from law school the year before. She and I have different interests, but we decided Maui offered enough activities for both of us to enjoy. And (at least tacitly) we agreed we could tolerate a […]
The Wizard of Oz: Stories and Memories for Kids (and Writers) of Every Age
Last Friday, September 20, 2013, NBC Nightly News aired a piece narrated by Brian Williams about The Wizard of Oz. Although the reason for this news segment was the just-released 3D version of the film, Brian Williams waxed nostalgic about the world in 1939 when the original movie came out. He placed us in a time […]
Stepping Back To See the Big Picture: Exhibits at the National Archives
When I researched the 1840s for my Oregon Trail novels, I started with the big picture—the general route the emigrants took, their modes of transportation, what was going on in the East at the time, etc. Much of this research never made its way into my early drafts, but I had a sense of the […]