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 […]
Family Night Casserole and Other Hashes
My mother and her friends exchanged recipes when I was growing up. From Dorothy Walker we got the wonderful Italian Spaghetti Sauce recipe featured in my book Family Recipe. From Nadine Spanner we got a decadent chocolate fudge cake with gooey frosting that is rich and moist and tastes like heaven. I made it just […]
Remembering Generations Past
My husband was the fifth generation in his family born in Saline County, Missouri. After we moved to Missouri in 1979, he and I – and later our children – spent several Memorial Day weekends helping his mother gather flowers and vases to decorate the graves of grandparents, great-aunts, and cousins fourth-removed in the local […]
The Fluidity of Time
This past weekend I traveled through southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas, visiting places of historical and recent significance. We moved from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR, to the Walmart Visitors Center, also in Bentonville, to the nearby Pea Ridge National Military Park (a Civil War battlefield), to the Museum of Native […]
Story is Everywhere; You Control It
If you want to have an impact on people, you need to tell them a story. For years, I read articles in the American Bar Association publication ABA Journal on trial practice and the importance of advocates telling their client’s story to the jury. But recently, the importance of telling a good story has come […]