I have another post up on Write Brain Trust, listing all the books that this wonderful writing group has published in the past year, including my own Family Recipe. Check out these books by Kansas City area writers.
Fred Geary Woodcuts: A Window Into History Feeds Today’s Imagination
I happened upon an exhibit of Fred Geary’s woodcuts at the Kansas City Public Library’s Central Branch earlier this week. It was another example of how writing historical fiction has changed my perspective on the world. (See my earlier post on reading a newspaper article about modern gold panning.) Geary’s woodcuts were mostly done in the […]
Arachnophobia and Love Revisited
The spiders are back already. After a mild winter and a hot spring and start to summer in the Midwest, they are creeping out of the attic earlier this year and bigger than ever. So I thought I would post my essay, Arachnophobia and Love, from my Family Recipe book. I hope you enjoy it. P.S. No […]
Writing Memoir: Family Myth Defines Us, Unless We Define Ourselves
Earlier this month I attended the Kansas Authors Club, District 2, retreat at Lake Doniphan Conference & Retreat Center in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. (Yes, the Kansas authors were brave enough to cross the state line. The Border Wars have been over for a long, long time.) My favorite part of the day was the morning session […]
Fort Laramie: Outpost of Civilization to Weary Travelers
By mid-June, the emigrants traveling the Oregon Trail in the 1840s had trekked 650 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Fort Laramie, in what is now Wyoming. Although they had traveled for two months or more, they had only completed one-third of the journey from Independence to Oregon. Most of the wagon companies were weary and […]
Dad, Me, and the New Capri
In the fall of 1972, a few months after I got my driver’s license, my father bought a sporty new Capri sedan. The Capri would be my mother’s car, replacing her small Ford Falcon station wagon, the car in which I had learned to drive. The Falcon was an easy car to drive – small, good […]
My Father-in-law and the Fireflies
Fireflies don’t live in the western United States, and I never encountered them growing up in Washington State. I didn’t see my first firefly until after I was married and moved to Missouri. We were in my in-laws’ backyard on a hot, humid evening in June. It might even have been Father’s Day weekend when […]
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Great pictures on Adventure Dates of Ash Hollow, Windlass Hill, and Courthouse and Jail Rocks — all important landmarks on the Oregon Trail. I’ll be writing soon about the emigrants’ progress along the Trail in June, but for now, take a look at these pictures.
Internet Dependent
Last Sunday I worked all afternoon on the Internet through my laptop’s wireless connection. I uploaded a blogpost, responded to email, read newsletters, and checked the answers to The New York Times crossword puzzle. (I didn’t do very well on the puzzle this week.) About 5:00pm the Internet suddenly vanished. Poof! it was gone. When my laptop […]
My Son Made Me Tweet
It’s my son’s fault I’m on Twitter. Or rather, you can blame it on @jamestweeting – his Twitter handle. He doesn’t call. He doesn’t write, not even emails. He’s rarely on Facebook. But he does tweet. A couple of years ago, James told me how to follow him on Twitter without having an account. If you […]