Recipe — Lemon Bread
Unlike me, my father liked to cook. In fact, he paid part of his way through college as a short-order cook for his fraternity. When my father traveled and found a food item he liked, he cajoled the cook into giving him the recipe so he could make it himself. Several years ago, my father […]
Writing Milestones: Journaling and Blogging
I don’t want March to get away from me before I write about two milestones that occurred this month—the fifteenth anniversary of when I began keeping a journal, and the fifth anniversary of this blog. I’ve written before about starting my journal. One of my early posts on this blog was titled “Take the Plunge—Start […]
Guest Post on Wayne Turmel’s Blog
Last Friday, March 24, I was a guest on Wayne Turmel’s blog. He introduced his interview of me with the following comment: “The opening of the American West is great fodder for writers of historical fiction. Huge vistas, dramatic action, and characters who lived just long enough ago that they don’t feel foreign to us.” […]
Elizabeth Markham: One Woman’s Perspective on the Oregon Trail and on Matrimony
I am surprised that in five years of writing this blog I have never written a post focused on women’s perspectives on leaving their homes and journeying west on the Oregon Trail. I’ve written about specific women—Narcissa Whitman, Jessie Benton Fremont, Elizabeth Dixon Smith, Keturah Belknap, and others—and quoted some of their words, but I’ve […]
Treasures & Trash: Or Why I Hate to Clean and Why I Hate to Throw Things Out
I could have titled this post “Tidying Up, Part 2.” But I decided on “Treasures and Trash” because that is what I found. It started as a simple project. I have a chest in which I have stored items for many years. It’s a small chest, the height of a short dresser, and it has […]
My Grandmother’s Jell-O
As a child, I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother, my Nanny Winnie. My mother, brother, and I even lived with my grandparents for a few months when I was small. So I know Nanny Winnie cooked for me a lot. But I don’t remember any signature dishes she made. I remember […]
A Neophyte (Me) Develops a Website
My new website, https://www.theresahuppauthor.com, has been live for a few weeks now. Regular readers might have noticed that I’m still tweaking things—the background, colors, etc. But I thought I would recap what I’ve learned as I developed this site. My decision to develop my own website, rather than continue with my Story & History blog […]
Lent: Too Old to Fast . . . At Last!
The Catholic Lenten obligations prohibit eating meat on Ash Wednesday and on Fridays during Lent and require fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. As our pastor reminded the congregation recently, “A Catholic fast isn’t a real fast. We get to eat three times a day.” Which is true—the Lenten fast permits two small meals […]
Not Proud of Middlebury College Now
As readers of this blog know, I am a proud alumna of Middlebury College, Class of 1976. My years at Middlebury contributed greatly to making me the person I am today (see here and here). But this week I am not proud. Last Thursday, March 2, 2017, Middlebury students protested an appearance by Charles Murray, […]
THE PAPER CHASE and Other Chases
This Saturday, March 4, 2017, marks the 40th anniversary of the first date my husband and I ever went on. We’d planned another date in early January 1977. That date had been to see The Paper Chase, a movie about first-year students at Harvard Law School. We were first-year students at Stanford Law School—the same […]