Did you play the alphabet game on car trips as a child? I vividly remember someone shouting START and then peering out the window to find the letters on signs. We couldn't get them off anything that moved, so signage on cars and trucks were not allowed. Who ever found a letter first would smugly …
Category: travel
N is for Normal
An entry for the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge I wince when I think of normal, especially as used in the phrase getting back to normal. In several discussions this past week, I concluded many of us feel rudderless. What do we do now that we're vaccinated and things are starting to …
K is for Karaoke
An entry for the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge: As a member of a Writing Circle at the Chicago Cultural Center some years ago, I wrote the following one page story using the assigned word of the week--dark. It's based on a diary entry I made on a trip to FL with …
Tears of Thanksgiving
They started in my church parking lot. When I turned in, off of 26th Street, an older masked man motioned for me to veer right. Then a second older masked man signaled for me to open my window. He leaned over and told me to follow the car in front of me. I did. And …
Grief at Twenty-one Months: A Fun Memory from a Long Marriage
For the past few weeks, I’ve been sorting, thinning, and throwing away files. Dozens of them. And reminiscing. Yesterday, among my writing files from the early 2000s, I found this dialogue between Marv and me and thought it would be fun to post on a Grief Anniversary. Fun memories from a fifty-five-year marriage go a …
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A Ordinary Kitchen Story During Extraordinary Times
It’s four o’ clock on a Wednesday morning here in beautiful South Dakota and I am still awake. Doesn’t that opening line sound a bit like “Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown…” I’m not sure why I’m still awake, but there are two likely reasons. I came home last …
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“A NEW FRIEND”
On my recent trip to New Zealand, I was able to meet Judith Baxter, a long-time blogging friend. The ability to meet folks from around the world is a special perk of blogging. What a treat to meet in person! Neither of us ever thought this possible. Read her delightful account of our short time …
Gratitude Party on Turning Seventy-Eight
When I turned 72, I used this same "gratitude" blog title. Musing over the past year and a half since Marv died, I can write with the same sentiment today. To catch up, I spent Christmas in Aruba with my daughter and family. You may remember we were there two years ago also, just a …
Buses, Pickpockets, and Crowbars
My trip from the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City coasted along from the Iowa hotel, to the airport shuttle to Cedar Rapids, to the flight to Chicago, and on to the L train headed to the Loop. Problem number one began with the announcement of L track repairs. After settling comfortably onto my …
Immersed in Memories
In preparation for writing my next book, I completed a tedious and heart-tugging task today. My book will be about the "adventure" Marv and I undertook last year with his seven-month process of living with a terminal cancer diagnosis and my life afterward. The starting point for the book with be the blog posts I …
Write Along with Me 