Bird Watching
I’ve never been a bird watcher. I don’t really care about counting the number of species or specimens I see, nor to I want to travel just to look for birds. And yet, in my new home (we moved almost two years ago) and sitting on my lovely screened porch, I do enjoy watching the […]
Adult Children and Random Trips in June
June is a good month for travel. Most places are not yet too hot, yet the weather is reliably warm (usually). As I searched for a topic for today’s post, I came across photographs of a couple of trips my husband and I took in past Junes. 2007 and 2008 weren’t too long ago in […]
Politics in 1864: The National Union Party
The news in 2021 is full of stories of political conflict. Republicans are split between Trumpists and Never Trumpers with economic and social conservatives scattered across the mix. Democrats are spread from moderates to liberals to progressives. But as a student of American history, I have come to believe that most of the political controversies […]
On “Renascence” and Reopenings
In junior high and high school, my favorite poem was “Renascence,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay wrote “Renascence” when she was only nineteen years old, which might explain why I found it so appealing when I was also in my teens. Something in its emotiveness spoke to my adolescent angst. The poem begins simply […]
On Birthday Cakes for Children, Then and Now
I mentioned in an earlier post that the employee cafeteria at Hallmark Cards where I worked used to bake and decorate special-order cakes for employees to purchase. They would even match the cake decorations to the party goods that Hallmark used to sell. In my efforts to simplify my life as a working mother, I […]
Alien Terrain on Earth: Craters of the Moon National Monument
Six years ago in late April, my husband and I drove from Washington State to our home in Kansas City. I had decided to buy my father’s car from his estate, and we needed to get it across country. We drove much of the Oregon Trail route—in reverse, from west to east—with a few stops. […]
Byron Pengra and the Oregon Central Military Road
Once the emigrants to Oregon survived the plains and the Rockies, they still had to traverse Oregon Territory. I’ve written before about some of their choice—raft down the Columbia River, take the Barlow Road around Mount Hood, or take the Applegate Trail to the south then up the Willamette Valley. Each of these choices presented […]
An Update on My Work-in-Progress, and a Peek at a Possible Cover Image
In my monthly newsletter, I usually update readers on the status of my work-in-progress, but I haven’t posted about it on this blog in several months. (So subscribe to my newsletter!) My story is progressing, albeit slowly. I drafted the whole story during NaNoWriMo last November, ending the month with a very rough draft of […]
Random Photo: Spring Tulips and a Birthday Clue
I had no good ideas for a post today, so as I sometimes do, I looked through old photographs for inspiration. This time, I was looking for something spring-ish. And I found a snapshot of my brother and me examining spring tulips. I didn’t remember this picture, but it was one that my father saved […]
Vaccine Envy . . . No More
I wrote in early February that I was eagerly awaiting my COVID-19 vaccine, but at the time I thought it was still a few months away. I turned sixty-five this past Monday, which made me eligible under Missouri’s rules. I always expected that my birthday would give me little preference for the vaccine. I thought […]