Recipe: Easy Bean and Sausage Soup
Bean soup isn’t really a summer dish, but a few weeks ago I needed something easy to make on a day when my husband and I had to eat dinner at different times. He had an evening meeting and needed to eat before he went. My late afternoon meeting meant that I wouldn’t be able […]
To Russia, at Long Last
One of the prime selling points of the Baltic Sea cruise for me was the scheduled stop at St. Petersburg. I had studied Russian in high school and college. I’d lived in the Russian dorm at Middlebury College for one year and eaten countless meals at the Russian table in the dining hall. At one […]
Farming in Oregon in the 1850s
I wrote in February of this year that I didn’t know which issues in Oregon’s history in 1850-1852 might impact my current work-in-progress. I’m slowly answering my own question as I move through the first draft. The land laws are a major factor. The discovery of gold in the Rogue River is so far only […]
One Election Worker’s Perspective
For the past ten years, I have worked as an election worker in my precinct, checking in voters and handing them their ballots. But it is getting harder. We used to have at least six workers at every election, but as technology has improved, we are down to four in all but the Presidential election. […]
Our Alla Tour in Helsinki
As I mentioned recently, my sister did most of the planning for our Baltic Sea cruise. She decided to use Alla Tours for the St. Petersburg shore tour, rather than the cruise line (Celebrity). As she and I explored at the Alla Tour options described on their website, we found that they had options in […]
Random Photos: Our First House (and Our Son)
After thirty-four years in our current home, my husband and I have started looking for another house. The process is slow and time-consuming, and I probably won’t write much about it until we make a decision. But it is a topic that is much on my mind. Today’s random photos relate to the first house […]
My Life On Board Ship
My husband and I traveled for twelve days in July aboard the Celebrity Eclipse on a cruise through the Baltic Sea. I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d never been on a large cruise ship before, only the Viking River Cruise in 2014. Well, that’s not quite true. I had been on a smaller […]
Reflections on Past and Present (and Future) After a Visit to the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
One of the places that my husband, mother-in-law, and I visited in California in June was the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, where Nixon was born. None of us had been there before, and we spent a pleasant half-day going through the exhibits. The topics covered included Nixon’s childhood, his early […]
More Beaches to Write About
As I’ve written before, any year is a good year when I get to walk on the beach. This summer, I’ve walked along two beaches and seen several others. The first beach was in California—on Balboa Island in Newport Beach. My husband and I took his mother to visit in June. She had vacationed on […]
I’m Back!
The reason I took most of July off from blogging is that I’ve been traveling a lot in the last couple of months. First a trip to the Los Angeles area in June, and then a cruise on the Baltic Sea during the first half of July. I couldn’t write enough posts ahead to keep […]