National Senior Citizens Day Eclipsed
August 21 is National Senior Citizens Day. It’s a day set aside to support and honor senior citizens and to recognize their achievements and contributions to our communities. President Ronald Reagan began the day with a proclamation in 1988. The definition of “senior citizen” varies from one group to another. AARP membership begins at age […]
Random Photos: Going Home Again . . . A Vacation Remembered
My husband and I didn’t take too many summer vacations at my parents’ home when our kids were growing up. We saved our visits for every third Christmas. In addition, my parents visited us once or twice a year in Kansas City, and we sent our kids out to Washington State without us as soon […]
Bloch Galleries at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art
A few weeks ago I did something I’ve been wanting to do since March—I went to the new Bloch Galleries at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Actually, the Bloch Galleries are in an older part of the museum, but they have been newly renovated and new works displayed. Henry Bloch of H&R Block fame recently […]
Great-Grandma Lillie: A Midwestern Pioneer
I was thinking recently about my great-grandmothers. It dawned on me that they all probably had very interesting lives—or at least interesting from the perspective of the 21st Century. I never met any of the four women, and only one was alive during my childhood. That great-grandmother was Lillie Evelena Smith Claudson. She’s the great-grandmother […]
Seeking My Roots in Copenhagen
Ten years ago, in the summer of 2007, my daughter and I went to Copenhagen to visit my niece who was studying there. I can trace one branch of my ancestry back to Denmark, so the prospect of visiting that nation appealed to me. I wondered if I would feel a connection there, as I […]
Libraries Out Loud
I’ve written before about the wonderful libraries in the Kansas City area, including the Kansas City Public Library, the Mid-Continent Public Library, and the Johnson County Library. I am proud to say I have library cards with all three systems. And I am prouder to say that Kansas City ranks as one of the most […]
A Story for Mutts Day: Meeting of the Minds
Today, July 31, is Mutts Day. I saw this reference on one of the many “national day” sites, and decided to believe it, even though there is no reference to how the day originated. My husband and I have only owned mutts since we’ve been married. First there was Rickover, whose mother was a Brittany […]
Postage Costs in the 1840s
I wrote a post last year about the difficulties of mail service during the California Gold Rush years. I was thinking about this issue again recently when I bought first-class stamps at our local Post Office. I typically wait until I’m almost out of stamps (which I was last week), then I buy 100 stamps. […]
Amelia Earhart Day: Memories of Atchison, Kansas
July 24 is Amelia Earhart Day. The news recently has been full of speculation about her disappearance, because of a History Channel show suggesting that a photo might have shown her and her navigator Frank Noonan with the Japanese in the Marshall Islands after her disappearance on July 2, 1937. However, Japanese archivists found the […]
Lessons from My First Writing Conference
I started my life as a writer in early 2007, so I’ve now been trying to develop my skills at writing fiction and creative nonfiction for a little more than a decade. I recently pulled out my journal volume from ten years ago, wanting to get a sense of how my writing life has changed […]