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 […]
My Grandmother’s Pearls and the Nature of Memory
My father’s mother gave me a pearl necklace many years ago. I think the occasion was my high school graduation, but it could have been for my sixteenth birthday or some other milestone in my teens. It was the first “old” piece of jewelry I received. In fact, I thought the necklace looked too old-fashioned […]
Black Bean Soup for Homemade Soup Day
I recently learned a surprising factoid: Today, February 4, is Homemade Soup Day, even though January is National Soup Month. Those of us in Kansas City have been fortunate this year—our January was warm, and we had less need of soup than most winters. On January 28, as New England dug out from its massive storm, our […]
My Mother the Librarian . . . And How Libraries Have Changed!
February is Library Lovers Month. I come from a family of library lovers, and I am one myself. When I was a child, we could only check out six books from the library at a time. My mother took my siblings and me to the library almost every week during the summer, and I checked […]
A Progress Report on My First Oregon Trail Novel
January has been Creativity Month, but I haven’t been very creative. With all the family issues I’ve had to deal with surrounding my father’s death, revising my current work in progress—the first novel in my Oregon Trail series—has taken a back seat. The family work I’ve been doing has been necessary and important. But I hate […]
Placer Mining in 1848-49
Last year I recounted the story of James Marshall finding a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in January 1848. He looked down into the mill race and saw the bright and glittering metal. Like Marshall’s original find, many of the early gold discoveries were made by men who simply spotted the precious metal in or […]
Out of the Closet
Here is the post I had planned for January 7. I think I’m ready for it now: One of the things I love most about my house is the huge closet in the master bedroom. It is about ten feet by fourteen feet and lined with rods on the sides and down the middle. I […]
A Lesson About Wonder from Myself at Seventeen
I was a valedictorian in my high school class. There were six of us with 4.0 averages (no extra points in that era for A+s or Honors or AP classes). Because there were so many of us, we were each given three minutes to speak at our graduation ceremony. We each chose one emotion to […]
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Social Media in Times of Stress
Before my father passed away on January 5, I had scheduled some posts on my Facebook author page about Clean Off Your Desk Day on January 12, and today’s Organize Your Home Day. I forgot about these posts in the middle of much bigger worries. So in addition to my emotional posts from this blog […]