How Do You Read? Ebook or Paper?
I have always read avidly, as much as my time permitted. Libraries are invaluable, because I couldn’t afford my reading habit without them. My husband gave me a Nook Color e-reader for Christmas 2010. I was skeptical when I opened the box. I wasn’t sure I wanted to switch to ebooks. But overnight, I was […]
Working Through the Generations: Happy 80th Birthday to My Father
I’ve written before that I am a lot like my mother. But I developed my attitudes toward work by watching my father. My earliest memories of my father at work date back to when I was in pre-school. When he was in graduate school earning his Ph.D. in metallurgy, he worked a variety of jobs […]
Flat Stanley Visits Kansas City
My niece, a second-grader in a Seattle suburb, assigned me homework. She wanted me to take Flat Stanley to landmarks in Kansas City, to help her class learn geography. For those of you who are not familiar with Flat Stanley, he began as a character, Stanley Lambchop, in a 1964 children’s book by Jeff Brown. […]
Poetry and Childhood Memories: Plume, by Kathleen Flenniken
I received Plume, a book of poems by Kathleen Flenniken, from my daughter, who bought it for me because the author grew up in Richland, Washington, as I did. The poems in Plume are about Ms. Flenniken’s childhood in Richland and her work experience at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where she spent a few years […]
Spring Has Sprung. Maybe. Finally. Again.
Forsythia have always signaled spring to me. Yellow is not my favorite color, but the appearance of these cheery flowers on the dead branches of winter brightens my mood. Every year, whenever they choose to appear. This year, the forsythia did not appear until April. Some years I see them in February. That’s the way […]
Provisioning for the Journey West
Emigrants preparing for the move to Oregon had plan carefully what they would take. They had to balance the amount of food and other supplies they needed for the journey, what they could afford to buy, the weight their wagon and teams could pull, and what mementoes and tools they would need to build a […]
A Novel Blog Hop: Lead Me Home
J.G. Burdette, who blogs at Map of Time: A Trip into the Past, tagged me to participate in a Blog Hop for authors. What’s a blog hop? This one is an interview with ten questions posed to a writer about the novel he or she is writing. The author answers the ten questions and then […]
Chinese Landscapes – Ancient and Modern – and the Search for Spiritual Order
One of my favorite oases in Kansas City is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I go there when I have a spare hour or two. Last week I went to the Nelson’s special exhibit entitled “Journey through Mountains and Rivers: Chinese Landscapes Ancient and Modern,” and came away with a new appreciation for Chinese art, both […]
Weaving Threads of History into Story
In February 1847, while the Donner party struggled to survive in the snows of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Elizabeth Dixon Smith and her family prepared to leave Indiana for Oregon, a baby was born in Denmark – my paternal great-great-grandfather Charles N. Claudson. (I’m told his last name in Denmark was Clausen; it was […]
Humor Amidst the Tears
I wrote on Monday about the tragedies of Alzheimer’s, which are real and heart-wrenching. But there are moments of humor as well. Two of our family’s amusing stories occurred in May 2010, not long after my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Several family members had gathered in New Orleans for my daughter’s graduation from Tulane […]