What Is Story (Redux)? . . . And a Sense of Urgency
My first post on this blog went live in January 2012, but I didn’t start a regular posting schedule until March of that year, so I consider March my blog’s anniversary. This blog is now three years old. I deliberately set the blog’s theme “Story and History” to be broad enough to let me write […]
My Father’s Bookcase: A New Family Heirloom
When I was a very young, my father made a bookcase. It’s made of a pretty wood (maybe oak?), and it is solid. It has a curved lip on the front facing at the top of the bookcase. I thought that made it a fancy piece of furniture when I was a child. My father […]
A Reflection on Scrivener and on Organizing Writing and Life
Last September I posted about my first few weeks using Scrivener, a software program for writers. I said at the time I was using Scrivener to organize my blogs, novels, and short works. I use it mostly to plan my blogs. When I began with Scrivener, I used it to draft the next blog posts […]
On Birthdays and Owls: Remembering My Mother
Today would have been my mother’s 82nd birthday. One of my most popular posts on this blog is the one I wrote to mark her 80th birthday. By that time, she was in assisted living because of her Alzheimer’s, and she could not really celebrate her birthday that year. Last year—her 81st birthday—was even worse. […]
Family Ritual: Reading Aloud at Bedtime
March is National Reading Awareness Month. I’ve written before about how important reading has been in our family, but my earlier post (here) focused on how my mother read to me when I was a child. My husband and I also read to our kids when they were small. We read to our son (our older […]
Use of Rockers and Long-Toms During the California Gold Rush
As I wrote last month, the early California gold miners began with placer mining, simply picking the nuggets off the ground or from streams, with hands and pans and knives. Soon, however, they wanted to sift through more dirt faster to increase the profitability of their prospecting. One of the earliest tools they employed to speed […]
From the Perspective of a Point of View Nazi
In my critique group, I’m known as the point of view Nazi. I am usually the one to notice when a writer has crept from one character’s point of view to another’s in the same scene. And I usually push my writing partners to go deeper into their protagonist’s point of view, showing not only […]
My Grandfather’s Clock
When I was in second grade or so, my class sang the old song, “My Grandfather’s Clock,” by Henry Clay Work. The lyrics to the first verse are My grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf, So it stood ninety years on the floor; It was taller by half than the old man himself, […]
Genealogies Found: Some Family Myths Verified, Others Not
One of the things I found in going through my father’s papers was some genealogies on various branches of our family. Readers will be hearing some of these stories in months ahead. This first installment relates to Charles N. Claudson, our ancestor who emigrated from Denmark. I wrote previously about Charles, who was born in […]
Shoe Shines and Parenting
My husband is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. More than forty years after he graduated, it is still the most formative experience of his life. Among the many things my husband learned at the Naval Academy was how to shine shoes. A spit-polished pair of shoes is the mark of an officer and […]