Book Review: Barkskins, by Annie Proulx
I’ve seen several reviews of Barkskins, by Annie Proulx, that compare her book to James Michener’s epics. The comparison is apt, and I felt the similarities myself. But her saga of the development of forestry in North America was more like Michener’s later works, not his earlier, stronger novels. It was history, thinly covered with […]
Embrace Your Geekness Day
According to the Days of the Year website, July 13 is “Embrace Your Geekness Day.” The point, the site says, is that we have to be a little geeky in today’s world, and on Embrace Your Geekness Day, we are told to go “show the world how intelligent, technically savvy and clever you really are!” […]
The Summer of ’64: Pacific Grove
I’ve mentioned spending summers with my grandparents in Pacific Grove, California. It seemed like I spent several idyllic summers there, but there really weren’t that many. Only twice did my brother and I spend long vacations with our grandparents. In 1963 we spent a month there, but our mother was with us, so that didn’t […]
Busted! by Ghostbusters (1984)
I don’t have any particular desire to see the Ghostbusters movie which just opened, but the trailers and reviews that I’ve been seeing bring back memories of the first Ghostbusters movie, released in 1984. My husband and I did see that movie. We’ve always liked movies—our first date was to a movie, though I can’t […]
Flags and Foreboding
For the Fourth of July when I was seven, someone gave my brother (who was almost six) and me U.S. flags—one for each of us. Each flag was about 12 inches by 18 inches, and it was stapled to a thin dowel about two feet long. The dowel had a pointed tip at the top […]
Read Local Kansas City
Most people are familiar with the “buy local” movement. There’s also a trend now toward getting readers to “read local”. Just as buying local” helps consumers find fresh vegetables, unique clothes and jewelry, and original home decor, “reading local” lets readers discover authors with fresh new voices and intriguing tales right in their neighborhood. If […]
A Story I Couldn’t Tell Before: It’s Okay to Stop
The last time I saw my mother was in mid-June 2014—just over two years ago. That was the trip during which she spit out the Communion host, which I then had difficulty disposing of. This week-long visit gave me my last memories of my mother before she died. Mother had been hospitalized for a gallbladder […]
Gambling with Gold: Vice in San Francisco in 1849
As I continue to research and edit my work-in-progress about the early years of the California Gold Rush, I recently found some interesting first-person accounts in A Year of Mud and Gold: San Francisco in Letters and Diaries, 1849-1850, edited by William Benemann (1999). Some of the more fascinating information concerned the construction of gambling […]
A Story I Couldn’t Tell Before: The Time Dad Cussed At Me
I only remember my father swearing at me once. I heard him curse in general on occasion—a “hell” or a “damn” when he pounded a finger while hammering or the like. And he’d call politicians “damn idiots” sometimes. But he didn’t even say these things often in my presence when I was a kid. The […]
Highland Fling or Irish Jig?
In June 1992, the same month that my kids spent at camp in North Carolina, my parents toured the British Isles. In fact, part of the reason we sent our kids to the June camp session was so they could visit my parents later in the summer, after my parents returned from Europe. Unfortunately, my […]