Winter, Wind, and Tumbleweeds
Did you see the story last week about tumbleweeds taking over the town of Clovis, New Mexico? The pictures of the piles of tumbleweeds as tall as tractors brought back childhood memories for me. The house my parents built in Richland, Washington, in 1962 was at the end of a one-block street. Past our house […]
What a Difference a Year Makes!
A year ago I was suffering from the worst stomach flu I’d had in a decade. And within days, my daughter would break her leg skiing, requiring me to leave my sick bed and fly to Vancouver, British Columbia, to care for her. Plus, my mother had just moved out of her home and into […]
Dragons and Clinkers in the B House
When I first saw the scene in the movie Home Alone where poor little Kevin tiptoes down to the basement and confronts the fiery maw of the furnace, everyone in the theatre laughed at his fear. Except me. Because I remembered a similar furnace from the house where my family lived when I was a […]
California Gold Rush: Discovery of Gold at Sutter’s Mill
Most of us who have studied American history are aware of the Forty-Niners—those intrepid souls who in 1849 left their homes to seek their fortunes in the California Gold Rush. But the Gold Rush actually began in early 1848, when gold was found at Sutter’s Mill. Over the last two years, I have posted about […]
Writing About Race in Historical Fiction
As a writer of historical fiction, one of the issues I struggle with is how to portray interactions between characters of different races. I could ignore the topic by not having characters of different races in my novels, but I think part of the purpose of writing historical fiction is to show the time period […]
Balancing the Myriad Aspects of Writing and Publishing
As I enter my third year of blogging (my first post was on January 17, 2012), I find I have to search my archives before I write so I don’t repeat myself. I was going to write a post today about having goals for your writing, but found that I had written a post in […]
Percy Murray’s Peppermint Ice Cream
One of the things I love about winter is peppermint ice cream. I’m not a big fan of ice cream generally, but I do have a few favorite flavors—peach in the summer, peppermint in the winter, and rich chocolate any time. These days, I typically buy the low-fat versions, but they are never as good […]
Memories of Cold
We are ahead of pace on snowfall for the season, and the average low temperature this month has been about 18 degrees below average. It is cold. Monday morning this week, the temperature in Kansas City was -11 degrees. As luck would have it, I was scheduled to be in court on Monday to serve […]
You Know Your Children Are Grown When . . . [Part III]
I’ve written before about the change in perspective I’ve developed now that my children are grown. See here and here. Now, after our Christmas experiences this year, I am facing this upheaval again, because: One child is looking at buying a house . . . with a real estate agent sending daily lists of prospects, […]
Focus on the Present: Be a Buddha, Not a Janus
One morning last week as I wrote in my journal, I grumbled about the Midwestern cold and ice. The snow that had fallen a few days before Christmas had melted just enough to leave a glaze behind on walks and driveways. On Christmas Day I fell on the ice and injured my wrist. So the […]